The World Is A Better Place Because of Crispin Glover...Or Is It?

I think I'm going to come up with a new phrase.

It's called "Crispiny".

When a friend of yours is doing something really fucking weird, let's say, like, mowing their lawn in asymmetrical patterns at nighttime with no pants on, or eating candy that they found on a bus seat right after a lady of the night got up from said seat and tries to explain to you that they, "wanted to get a better idea of what street walkers feel and think", or standing on the street corner shouting The Carpenters lyrics very angry-like, you can say, "Dude, you're acting super Crispiny right now."

And what does "Crispiny" reference?

Well, I'm sure I don't have to explain considering there is only one cultural icon with the name Crispin.

Actually, it looks like there was a St. Crispin in the 3rd Century, but unless he ran around with a severe hair part and collected medical equipment, I think you know who I'm talking about.

Crispin Hellion Glover.

It's hard to imagine that Crispin Glover has been acting for for almost 30 years.
The man's face hasn't changed AT ALL within that time.

1985

2008

The fact that he has not aged (and directs Shakespearean interpretations performed by people with Down Syndrome, dresses like a Nazi at Halloween parties, and dates women with more plastic in their bodies than a recycling plant), only lends to his creepiness factor.

Just ask my friend, *Gene Snozberry (Not his real name):

Me: What are your thoughts on Crispin Glover, Gene?

Gene: We had an intern at work a little while back who SOUNDED just like him. He had that like super slow delivery? Almost like a chronic stutterer whom has reformed his speech JUST enough to keep from doubling back on his syllables, but not enough to speak fluidly with any confidence. It's just this creepy drawl that keeps you hanging on his every word while backing slowly toward the exit...I was sort of afraid to be alone with that intern. That's the thing about Crispin Glover, he IS alienation. Has he ever played a character that didn't beam out creepy outsider in every direction? God, I love when creepy weirdos are well represented in cinema. It gives girls a point of reference when they encounter one of us in the wild. And for that, I salute you, Crispin Glover. Plus...he kind of made it okay to smell women's hair when they're not looking.

And then we got into a discussion on whether or not Gene smells women's hair and he said "no" and I said I don't either, but I did have a boyfriend who would take my shoe off in the middle of dinner at a restaurant and smell it and we decided that was really freaking strange. "Crispiny", if I may.

So why is a man who makes one feel like they've put cockroaches on their anus loved by legions of females and subsequently males who feel better about themselves knowing that legions of females love a man like Crispin Glover?

I really don't have an answer for that other than that he's fucking weird and we must all be really perverted. Read my story about meeting Crispin here.

Oh, and he's actually a pretty good actor...AND I WILL ARGUE WITH ANYONE TO THE DEATH ON THIS.

What is your favorite Crispin Glover performance?

Yes, I saw Ben at the movie theater three times and I loved it.

I'm making my lunch!

When Parents Join Facebook!

God, I remember the day like it was yesterday.

It was a Monday.

Just like any other Monday, really.

I was sitting at my desk, fielding through emails and phone calls as usual.

A notice popped up saying I had a new message in my inbox.

Looking back, it feels like everything happened in slow motion after that.

I remember dragging the cursor to the open web browser.
I remember the placement of the web browser window on my desktop. Not a full screen, and a little off to the right.
I remember that the sun was shining and it was 72 degress.
I remember that I was wearing a green Ramones shirt and I was smiling...

I was smiling.

Then the nine big black bold letters I never wanted to read:

"Your father wants to be your friend on Facebook"

How in the fuck did this happen?

I stared at the email for what seemed like an eternity. I was paralyzed. I couldn't move.

Do I befriend my father and risk him exposing the pseudo-literate/cultured facade I've worked so hard to create for my profile as the sham that it is? I can just picture it now- I get a note on my wall saying, "Lauren, dear, I'm looking at your profile pic, why are you reading Ulysses and dressed like Truman Capote? You don't wear glasses OR smoke!"

Or do I pretend like I never saw the email and when he asks, say something like, "Oh, you befriended me on Facebook? I have no idea what the hell that is." That would never work!

I realized I was going to have to accept that my father was now becoming internet savvy and it was just a matter of time before he caught wind of this Facebook. Shell-shocked for a week, I felt like I was just coming out of the woods when I get a phone call from my mother.

"Hey Honey! I think I'm going to join this Facebook thingy. Can you help me?"

I slam my head against the desk.

"Mmkay Mmmom", I mustered through smooshed lips.

I felt like a lead weight, heavy with anxiety. My heart beating fast.

Not her too!

"Are you okay with that?"

"Sure."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure."

"You don't sound so sure."

"Sure."

I breathe in deeply.

It's ok, Lauren. It's ok. Relax.

You will be able to handle this!

"Are you sure you want to join Facebook, Mom? I mean, it's not easy to figure out."

Silence.

Then the Jewish guilt trick.

"Oh...ok. Sure, yeah, if you don't want me to..."

Sigh.

"No, no, Mom. It's ok. Of course I'll help you."

And I did.

And I accepted my Dad's friend request.

And I helped my Mom create her profile.

And I suggested friends to them.

And I pointed out when they would accidentally write on their own wall instead of their friend's.

And then I get an email from my 90 year-old Grandmother asking me to be Facebook friends.

FUCK.

It's become a Facebook world and we all have to live in it.

Hipstercrite

I'm sitting in one of those cafes. You know, the kind that formerly housed a family grocery or hardware store, where the window front is covered in concert posters, Blik decals, and magazine cut-outs of community bestowed accolades. The now Mojito Green and Palm Springs Peach painted brick walls are thick with layers of paint with trendy names of time's past. The tin ceiling tells us that this building has been around a lot longer than any of us have.

I'm in the Mission District, San Francisco. I'm in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. I'm in Hawthorne, Portland. I'm in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

I'm anywhere.

But I'm actually sitting in Austin, TX and watching a beautiful, lanky young woman in glasses that resemble that of my great aunt Stella's, talk very purposely to her similarly clad friend, with a cigarette in one hand, and a Lone Star beer in the other. She was the gawky twig with the overbite that kids had no option but to make fun of in 8th grade.

She gets up from her seat. The manner in which she walks says that she still is that awkward child, but the way she moves her mouth, enunciating each word perfectly, passes off as a seductiveness that she is 100% aware of.

She knows that her kind is revered now. She wouldn't be wearing the glasses otherwise.

Behind me is a portrait of the ghost of Buster Keaton. The faint introductory beats of LCD Soundsystem's "Dance Yrself Clean" comes over the stereo and I have to laugh. In roughly 3 minutes, when the chorus kicks in, every single person in this cafe will be bobbing their heads. Every single cut-off jean wearing, vegan cupcake eating, Chuck Palahniuk reading patron will be individually thinking that their life soundtrack is playing for them and only them. That some omnipresent voice is writing their story. Or maybe some girl wearing over-sized glasses, sitting in the corner by herself, writing very purposely and trying to tell herself over and over that she is different from all of them.

But who am I kidding?

I've lived in Austin, Texas for one year and nine months. What originally started as a three month trial period turned into a fall-held-over-heels-in-love-with-a-city like no other. Deeper and deeper I fell as I met people just like me, people who have David Lynch-themed parties and bike-in screenings of Pee-Wee's Big Adventures and love to dance, dance, dance to Michael Jackson and wear dresses of their great-grandmother and want to be writers, musicians, lovers, and dreamers too.

I was home.

A year went by of attending these events, meeting new people, telling and hearing stories until one day it hit me like a ton of bricks: I was swimming in a culture where individuality mattered and nothing else. To talk and to appeal means more than doing, producing, or committing. I was not only losing my individuality in a competition for who was the most unique, but I was subsequently becoming less goal-oriented. More nonplussed.

Am I insinuating that ambivalence is synonymous with the hipster culture?

Maybe.

Or maybe it's that the majority of our generation was raised to believe that each of us are so unique, that we can do anything, go anywhere, have any job, have any partner.

Think about that.

That is one heck of a load of options bestowed upon us.

I could be a producer in Los Angeles, an urban planner in New York, a writer in Austin, a world traveler, a homebody, a bachelorette, a wife, a mother, or I could just sit at this cafe, listening to my life's soundtrack hoping that some omnipresent voice will write my story so I don't have to.

But I think it's time for me to get up.

A Day to Celebrate Jeff Goldblum

From here on out, I'm deeming every Thursday this summer the day of celebrating B-list celebrities with A-list personalities.

Last week we celebrated Rick Moranis, who will always be an A++ in my book.

Today we will be featuring Jeff Goldblum.

The Blum.

Brundlefly.

Dr. Ian Malcolm.

Big Giant Horny Perpetually Tan Middle-Aged Awesome Man.

Who doesn't love Jeff Goldblum?

Who?

WHO???

Tell me, because I will throw my Jeff Goldblum Jurassic Park action figure at that person repeatedly until they concede.

What is there to say about Jeff Goldblum that hasn't already been said?

He's the Cary Grant of our time.

Ok, that's a stretch.

He is the Cary Grant of our time if Cary Grant had been Jewish and really really popular at computer camp.

One thing that can not be denied though, is The Blum's contribution to cinema:

The Big Chill, The Fly, The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension, Earth Girls Are Easy, Vibes, Jurassic Park, Independence Day, Igby Goes Down, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

All classics! Jurassic Park would not have been the box success that it was without Goldblum's sweaty, brooding portrayal as... himself. Ground-breaking special effect dinosaurs?! Fuck that! $340,000,000 of the $357,000,000 earned at the box office was from the secret society, "The Daughters of Jeff Goldblum". You've just never heard about it.

I asked my friend, *Sullivan P. Rockfort (not his real name), his thoughts on The Blum's gift to humanity.

Me: Hey Sullivan. Do you have a second?

Sullivan: Of course!

Me: What are your thoughts on Jeff Goldblum's gift to humanity?

(Silence)

Sullivan: You know how I feel about...THAT man. I have traumatic memories associated with him.

Me: Oh really? Care to elaborate?

Sullivan: Well, I could go into an unsettling amount of detail here, but in the interest of keeping everyone's breakfast down, I'll keep it brief: I was having [love hugz] with a young lady and halfway through, in the throes of ecstasy, she says, "God! You're so fucking hot. You look just like a young Jeff Goldblum!" My passionate [love hugz] came to a slow halt. "What?" I asked. "I said I'm so attracted to you because you look just like a young Jeff Goldblum." I immediately extricated myself from the [love hug], gathered my things, and left without a word. Now it's not that I have anything AGAINST Jeff Goldblum. It's that I LOOK NOTHING LIKE JEFF FUCKING GOLDBLUM. I'm Colombian for crying out loud. I mean shit. I should be so lucky. So her calling to the fact that I resemble him, really just sent me into a shame spiral out of which there was no escape. I was ashamed of my non-Goldblumesque appearance...and damned if I was going to capitalize on one young woman's poor eye sight.

I will also share a little story with you below, one that I've shared before on this blog, so forgive me if you've already read it.

Watch this if you don't want to read my story:

I worked on a movie starring Jeff Goldblum.

We became set friends because I have a vagina.

I didn't use my vagina with Jeff Goldblum, but The Blum, he can smell vagina from 100 feet away.

After a long day of shooting, The Blum walked up to me. I was overwhelmed with the giant bronzed Jewish God standing before me.

He was beautiful and he was touching me.

And touching me.

And, oh wait, he's still touching me.

Ok, you can keep touching me, Jeff Goldblum.

I got lost in his deep brown eyes.

"I just love that little button on the end of your nose!" he said, caressing the tip of his finger on my, what I feel is a very large Jewish nose, much like The Blum's.

Maybe The Blum should have said, "Hey, you and I have similar Jewish noses. Let's go get married."

And I would have. I would have left with The Blum that very second.

"Oh Jeff, you make a girl feel like a hundred dollars. Oh wait, I mean a million dollars."

And with that, The Blum smiled broadly and held me close. So close that I could feel his penis.

Really feel his penis.

.....What is your favorite Jeff Goldblum movie?

My Ability to Go On Long Tangents About Bret Easton Ellis Will Either Impress You or Bore the Living Crap Out of You

I rarely write reviews because I suck ass at them.

I'm more into the aesthetics than analysis, which is great for walking through museums, foreign lands, and pedestrian malls, but not good for dating and probably not good for writing reviews.

However, since my favorite author, Bret Easton Ellis, rarely releases a book, I feel that the debut of his latest novel, Imperial Bedrooms, is worth talking about on my blog.

Plus, the hipsters, they fucking love this guy. I mean looooooove him.

They buy their freakin' Wayfarers and try to act all ambivalent about everything and use words like "apathetic" and "nihilistic" a lot. They tweet quotes from his novels and write short story homages to their modern-day J. D. Salinger.

It's actually kind of annoying.

Ok. So here is a little back story:

Bret Easton Ellis is the gentleman who wrote American Psycho, Less Than Zero, and The Rules of Attraction (all made into movies). He also wrote, The Informers (which I forget was made into a movie because it's so bad). He also wrote, Glamorama and Lunar Park (too fucked up to be turned into movies, though the same could be said for all his books).

If you already know these facts and are getting super irritated at my presumptuousness (I know I would be), then I'm sorry. I tend to lean on the idea that everyone in the world shares my love for the BEE, but I often finding myself going on boring tangents about the man wherein the person I'm speaking with finally interrupts halfway through and says, "Who the hell are you rambling on about?" Or they just walk away completely.

If you already know the back story on all this, just skip to the asterisk down below.

Imperial Bedrooms is the sequel to Ellis' first book, Less Than Zero, which debuted in 1985 when he was a fresh-faced 20 year-old college student. Thinking about this daily causes me to go into a deep depression.

Less Than Zero is the story of a bunch of over-privileged, apathetic kids swimming in the muck of 80's nihilistic Los Angeles. The narrator, Clay, who fled to college on the East Coast to purge himself of his nihilistic surroundings, finds himself back in LA on holiday break and partaking in the same apathetic behavior as he did before. He reunites with his on-again-off-again girlfriend Blair and tries to look for his childhood friend Julian, whom he's discovered has a roaring heroin problem and sells himself to men to pay for his habit. Other characters include Rip, Clay's crazy dealer, Trent, Clay's crazy friend, and a bunch of bimbo-y, anorexic, slutty girlfriends of Blair's. In typical Ellis fashion, the story plays out more like a slice of life, than a typical three-act structure. We learn that Clay really likes Elvis Costello, that everyone in Los Angeles sleeps with one another, and that young people get off on snuff films and have the potential of gang-raping a 12 year-old girl.

Moral of the story: Young people are the devil and should be feared.

There is the movie version of this book, starring Andrew McCarthy, Robert Downey Jr., Jami Gertz, and James Spader, that Ellis has admitted to only warming up to recently, but still concedes that the film and movie are two totally separate entities. Which they are. The only similarities are the title, the time period, and the characters' names. However, Less Than Zero the movie is endearing in it's own right, securing its place as an aesthetically romantic portrayal of Los Angeles and the disenchanted youth of the 1980's.

Have I gotten to Imperial Bedrooms yet? No, I haven't. FUCK!

Ok....

***Imperial Bedroom picks up with the characters twenty-five years later in Los Angeles. We don't know a lot about what has happened to them between 1985 and now, but we know that they haven't really changed. They still go to parties, they still do drugs, they still act apathetic and nihilistic, and they still fuck one another. The only difference is that they've had a little plastic surgery.

The book starts with Clay telling us about a book written about him and his friends, a book exactly like Less Than Zero, which was subsequently turned into a movie. Clay didn't really like either.

Clay is back in LA via NYC and he finds himself sinking into the same pattern of despair. He's a successful screenwriter, though we're not exactly sure how he got there. He runs into his old friends, Blair, Julian, Trent, and Rip, for they seem to all still live in LA and still run in the same circles. Blair is married to Trent, who is an agent and a closet homosexual, and she has had affairs with both Julian and Clay during her marriage which cause her to be super bitchy. Julian is a pimp and Rip is a club owner/looks like Mickey Rourke. Clay doesn't seem to be excited to see any of these people and his narration offers the same sort of confusion and discontent as his 18 year-old self did in Less Than Zero. His arrival in LA also coincides with a barrage of mysterious texts, cars following him, and people breaking into his house and moving items.

Damn. This post is getting super long. See! I told you I'm bad at this!

Clay is holding auditions for a film he both wrote and is producing called The Listeners. He sees a beautiful actress at a party and is instantly smitten with her. He doesn't see her again until she shows up for an audition. Her name is Rain and is a terrible actress, but does not know it. Under the subtle pretense of what one can get out of the other, Clay and Rain begin a tumultuous relationship.

Clay falls for her fast and starts getting super weird. Like Patrick Bateman weird.

I'm not going to tell you anymore. What ensues is a "who can you trust?" mystery that spirals down into a nihilistic landscape of apathy, murder, rape, blackmail, and a whole lotta of Elvis Costello lovin'.

I will be the first to say that Bret Easton Ellis, probably my favorite author, is not a great writer. He's a good writer. He's an excellent romantic. His talent lies in sentimentalizing the mundaneness of reality and the iniquitousness of man. Imperial Bedrooms is also very good, but not great. It's a good seventh novel, for it's roughly all six before it rolled into on. Ellis touches on similar themes such as Los Angeles vampires (The Informers), uber-violent sexual behavior (American Psycho), and where the lead character is haunted by ghosts, dreams, and symbols of the past (Lunar Park).

I've been reading reviews of Imperial Bedrooms where the reviewer has stated that they do not feel Ellis has evolved much as a writer. I agree that nothing much has changed in Ellis style of writing (except for the attempt of a semblance of three act structure in Lunar Park and Imperial Bedrooms), but do we really want Ellis to change? Would we actually like it if he started writing more like his peers? Ellis is good at was he does- writing flat stories with flat characters that we somehow relate to even though we're not nearly as fucked up as they are.

Though I was left scratching my head after reading Imperial Bedrooms (What has Clay been doing for the past 25 years? How did he get so violent?), I'm always left scratching my head after reading Ellis. Then I stop scratching and begin daydreaming about lying next to a pool at someone's multi-million dollar mid-century house, next to someone who is beautiful, who I may or may not be sleeping with but never really gave a shit about in the first place.

How To Disappear Completely

"Sometimes I feel like I’ll end up living in a glass house overlooking the city. Watching everyone but never touching them, and they will never touch me.” I say to my psychiatrist without really looking at her. I am looking past her. Out past the palm trees lining the parking lot, past the faux-Renaissance multi-million dollar house barely holding itself in place on the hillside, past the burnt mountaintop, and out towards the thick layer of purple-orange hue blanketing what one can only guess is the ocean, since the board game seems to end there.


 "You bring up the glass house a lot. Why do you think that is?"

I’m thrown by her question. Aren’t I the one to be asking the questions? Answers are not something I’ve been known to have as of late.

“I don’t know. Because this town is isolating. I feel isolated?” I ask, forcing myself to look her in the eyes for once.

My psychiatrist is beautiful. I imagine she is the woman I’d like to be one day. Behind the Donna Karen suit and Mercedes remote key sitting on top of her Coach bag is a loyal daughter, mother, and wife; picking up lunch at Bristol Farms after my session to bring home to her children who just finished their piano and tennis lessons for the day. When she enterts her $900,000 house in Studio City, she’ll kiss her husband on the cheek and smile, thinking, “I did good.”

Or maybe she is just as confused as I am.

Or maybe I don’t want that at all.

“Where is he this weekend?” she asks.

He is on a week long vacation in Mexico that I booked for he and his wife. He’s most likely sitting on the beach right now, drinking some ridiculously over-priced bottle of tequila because he can afford it , and thinking about how to get another agent, an agent whom he feels is threatening everything my boss has worked hard for, fired and blacklisted.

“Oh, he’s off jet-setting to Dubai or Paris or something. Who the fuck knows?” I say, acting as disinterested as possible.

Why did I just lie to her? I know exactly where he is. I’ve been thinking about it all day. That’s my job. To think about him all day.

"Are you staying in the glass house while he is gone?” she asks me.

“Yes.”

--------------------------------

An IM pops up on my computer screen: I’m so stressed right now.

I look up at my computer, then over at the opaque wall sitting between our offices. I can see his silhouette looking at the screen, waiting for a response.

Why? I type.

This fucking agent who is trying to fuck with me. I'll fucking bash his fucking head in.

Yeah. He seems like a jerk.

He’s a fucking piece of shit! I’ll make sure NO ONE ever wants to work with him again.

Yeah. I never know how to respond to these statements.

What are you working on?

Just finishing your itinerary for your trip.

Nice.

I’ve put all your details in your calendar and will email you and print you a copy of the itinerary.

Thanks.

Do you still want me to house sit and watch the pets?

Sure.

I let the conversation hang in the thick cloud of tension hovering between our offices. It will be any minute before the words I know he’s about to write will come across my screen. The words that both excite me and instill a deep sense of dejection.

I can’t move from my seat. I should shut off my screen, get up, rearrange the file cabinet, pick up the mail, run office errands, grab cigarettes that I will only smoke one of from the bodega next door, anything other than what I about to do in the next five minutes.

The thinking bubble pops backs up. Fingers type and backspace and type.

Do you want to help me relieve some stress? ;)

It takes me twenty years of unlearning to type the next sentence: How can I do that?

Why don’t you come over here and figure it out?

I close my eyes and sit up straight in my seat. I replay the scenario that is about to happen in my head: I will walk into his office. He will be massaging his hardened dick through his jeans. I will sit down in the chair across from him and my vision will become blurry. I will half smile at nothing in particular as I get down on the ground, crawl underneath his desk, unzip his pants, and run my hand up and down until my onset carpal tunnel begins to flair up. He will push his dick towards my mouth and never look at me. When it is finished, he’ll smile at nothing in particular, and I will go back to my seat and try very hard to let only one or two tears fall onto my computer keyboard.

---------------------------------

I’m standing in their bedroom. I can see all of Los Angeles from this spot.

During the day, leaning out on the left corner of their balcony, one can see the ocean. At night, the wind knocks on the sliding glass doors as the coyotes come down looking to play.

Their house was built a little over a year ago, after his wife saw a feature about Joseph Eichler in Architectural Digest. My boss commissioned a local modernist architect to build a house exactly like the one his wife saw in the magazine. During the nine months it took for the house to be completed (five of those months were trying to secure the permits), my boss and his wife lived at the L'Ermitage where I would often make 4-5 trips daily; dropping off food, picking up dry cleaning, driving them to a movie premiere, or taking the dogs to a groomer that costs more than my monthly rent.

My robe is open and falling off of my shoulders, but I don’t care. If anyone can see me, I can’t see them. The Jameson I snuck from their cabinet earlier is kicking in and right now, I am unflappable.

This very moment I control this city, but more importantly, I’m in control of myself. Every movement I make, every action rendered is purposeful and deliberate.

This very second, I understand everything.

The fact that I packed up and moved to this city and left everything behind, the fact that though I’ve met a thousand people, I don’t know a soul, the fact that I make my work my life, the fact that this town is already hardened pieces of me and I’m too young to know, the fact that the last time my best friend visited me, she left crying, shouting, “I don’t know who you are anymore!”, the fact that I no longer feel like I can talk to anyone, the fact that my boss, my mentor, broke my trust in adults, the fact that I misunderstand his need for control of everything around him as sentiment, the fact that I will do anything to make him happy, the fact that it this moment I want nothing more than someone, anyone who will look me in the eye and hold me, the fact that I hate myself for all of these things; it all makes sense.

In the kitchen, the Ipod I left on begins playing “How To Disappear Completely” and I realize it's dark, black almost, and I can't see anything in front of me except for a lone palm tree off in the distance, illuminated by the iridescence of Hollywood Boulevard. I make my way down against the wall into a pile on the floor and rest my head on the foot of the bed, never taking my eyes off of the tree.

Everything has slipped away and I will relive this episode day in and day out until I gather the strength to put an end to it.