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Archive | nostalgia

Treadmill licking; stylish jeans; other important stuff

One of the things Tobey likes to do is squeeze his little body in between the space between the treadmill and the wall and then lick the treadmill. (I tried it once, didn’t see what was so great about it.) He was doing this just now and I looked over and our eyes met and I’m pretty sure he looked back at me with a look that said, “I’m sorry, but I have to do this.” Other things he has to do? Eat Kleenex, come running when he smells turkey (even if he’s asleep), bark if he hears dogs and occasionally try to seduce computer chairs.

In other news, yesterday I went on an audition held at the building where Chelsea Lately is taped and it was the single most fashionable place I’d ever been. Every single person looked like they had a stylist. Some were in jeans but the jeans were in saucy color and looked brand new. My jeans are just in regular colors and look medium old to acid washed.  Ok I don’t really own acid washed jeans anymore but you get what I’m saying. I did once own an entire denim outift that was white with black polka dots. I looked like a Holstein.

Now you might be thinking, “You? Looking like a cow? STFU,” unless you know me well or have known me over the years enough to know that I used to be fairly bovine. Sometimes I like to hide this fact because I’m worried if people know I used to be fat they will then look at me now and think, “Oh yeah, I see it!” however I’m also still mentally scarred enough from all the years of being the fat kid to think it might do me some good to just say it instead of trying to hide it.

Also something which started in New York which always amused me is people thinking I must have it so easy because of how I look. To me this is sort of like if someone got mad at me for being a small Asian woman. I would hear the words but wouldn’t take them in because the person being described just isn’t me. I also occasionally get, “Oh, like you’ve ever had trouble getting a boyfriend?” as if I was the prom queen. Some day I will dig deep into my past and barf photos and stories all over you. Look forward to that day!

In other, other news, I just wrote back to a message I received on Facebook and now I’m receiving all sorts of replies which is making me realize the message I responded to was a group message. I didn’t realize this. That story had no point.

Also yesterday after the stylish audition where I forgot that wearing dresses to an audition gives the mic guy nowhere to hook the mic battery pack so you’ll end up essentially getting naked in front of a room full of people while they search for a place on your undergarments to clip the thing, I went to Teresa Strasser’s book reading. I met a lot of very nice ACS fans who said a lot of very nice things and now I have a big head and am a total dick.

Perhaps you are wondering what Adam said to me on my first day on the job? So I’d auditioned the first week of January and found out I got the job over the weekend and was to start that Monday. Monday rolls around and I’m sitting in the studio and Adam walks in and I wave and he sees me and then says, loudly, “That’s Alison?” I’ve been giggling about this ever since. [Do I need to explain that he was making a joke? Pretending they’d hired the wrong person? I think it’s clear however maybe the italics don’t really get across the exact tone of voice.]

Did I have anything else to tell you? Ummm… Ummmmmmm….. I’m going to be on The Film Vault this week… um… and I haven’t been able to individually respond to everyone who’s said really nice things to me but I just want to thank you all.

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Puppies, wisdom teeth, Dustin, socks, hoarding, babies

I’m the kind of person who can feel attachment to just about anything, as evidenced by the way I name my plants and can’t bring myself to buy a fish because I know it would crush me to find Fred or Skippy (the name of my fish) belly up and to feel I had failed him. The irony, and now I’m not sure if that’s the correct usage of irony or the casual incorrect usage which eventually will become the correct usage since words are losing their distinct meanings and pretty soon we’ll all walk around “bemused” with “notorious” iPads that “literally” say “MLGHRF” on them and what was I saying? Oh yeah, the odd or unexpected thing here is that I can’t bring myself to buy a fish and yet I dream of having a puppy. You might be thinking, “Don’t you mean a dog? You know that puppies don’t stay puppies forever, right?” however I really just mean a puppy. I definitely don’t have time to deal with anything that’s losing cuteness and gaining size by the day. In fact, I fully intend to make any puppy I purchase sign a contract stating that either party may terminate the arrangement at any time.

I was thinking about attachment though because vronsfan2005 got his wisdom teeth out and tweeted about it and I got mine out some years ago and I was remembering that a few days before the procedure I was sitting in my chair at Time Out New York thinking, “These teeth will never be in this office again.”

I can also recall having trouble throwing away a sock many years ago, and Dustin (who is not my boyfriend! I realize that my blithe references to him may scare off potential suitors and I’m in  no position to scare off any potential suitors since my biological clock is ticking hard and I really want to get married and have babies immediately, in fact that’s what I tell guys I go on dates with when I explain that Dustin is not my boyfriend). Where was I? I really need to quit going on these long parenthetical tangents and then thinking I can get myself back on track. I’m a writer, so if anyone can I can, and yet it’s as if I’m driving a car and while trying to get back home I lose interest in retracing my steps and instead decide to just pull over and build a new different home. So my point was that Dustin is not my boyfriend, we’re just friends, but once  he busted me about my socks.

Anyway, I think maybe I’m a proto-hoarder. I have hoarding tendencies. Of course, I think probably everyone does which is why that show is so popular.

Oh and RSVP to my Ustream show on Wednesday, won’t you? It may or may not feature Jim Norton. It will definitely feature me talking about this whole online dating thing.

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This one's sad.

Twelve years ago someone close to me died. If you’d have known me at the time it was all I really talked about and I also wrote poetry about it and strange prose poems and short stories and marveled at the way the pain caused this preponderance of words, this spillage, really, and not the frozen numbed out wordlessness you’d expect. If I may be precious for a moment, you could say the pain existed in hypercolor, even though when I remember that period of time it’s usually in a smudgy grays. Pardon me, I think I made myself puke.

Anyway, and this is a tangent, but I still feel a bit sheepish about the fact that I so clearly allowed everyone around me to witness my mourning but perhaps even more sheepish that my mourning outfit consisted mostly of (more…)

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even MORE photos

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Here’s my friend Yami and me on July 4.

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Here’s Mike and me on July 4.

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Here’s Mike pretending to be passed out on the sidewalk while Brian takes a photo of him. (This is an ongoing photo series.)IMG00739

Here’s Bret playing a rusty trombone. (Get it?)

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Here’s me wearing a hat and glasses because when I see hats and glasses I have to put them on.

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Here’s me at the beach looking like I totally belong.

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Here’s my friend Brian wearing a stylish sweater.

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Here’s the Nagel poster that Mike hung on the outside of his recording studio.

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And here’s the Nagel when Mike and Brian attempted to set it on fire with firecrackers. I tried to stay inside but they made me come out and take a photo. (This whole adventure is recounted in this episode of The Daily Alison.)

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The Daily Alison (Wherein I play tag and then interview Anthony Pignataro)

Anthony Pignataro and I used to work at the OC Weekly. He always wore shorts, hence the invention of his alter ego, Tony LongPants, who wears pants. I think this amused the rest of us more than it amused Anthony, as you’ll see when I bring it up. Anthony lived in Maui for many years after Orange County and worked as the editor-in-chief of the Maui Time Weekly. He’s written a book called Remember The Technicolor Dreamboat: And Other Tales of Maui’s Misfits featuring some of those stories which you can buy here.

Related reading?

I briefly mentioned graffiti. This is the story I was referring to.

And the headache dance is referred to here.

And here’s Anthony’s account of the Rick Dees run-in.

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It's as if this was the pilot for "If I Drew Cartoons for The New Yorker"

If you’ve known me for any considerable period of time then you can attest to the way your life has been quite improved from the constant and steady influx of me, me, me. Wait, that wasn’t what I was intending to say.

Also, if you know me then you’re familiar with my recurring “If I Drew Cartoons for The New Yorker” which I do on Red Eye and also this blog.

While admiring the me of years ago on my old Myspace blog I found what I think was the first ever cartoon. I hired a team of archaeologists to dig it out of the tar. It’s a pretty big find for our team and I beg of you, please mind the railing.

Dec 20, 2006

SUBJECT: If I were a cartoonist

I would draw a picture of a CIA operative, or some kind of person who very clearly has a mysterious job, a kind of job where the mystery is necessary, and he would be drinking and confiding in a friend saying “I just feel like she has no idea what I do all day.” No idea might be ital’d.

It would be very funny, but not the kind of funny that causes people to laugh out loud, but instead the kind that causes them to smile and maybe chuckle very quietly to themselves, like when you see a snail falling in love with a tape dispenser.

I don’t mean to suggest my imaginary cartoon is as funny as the above, or that it’s New Yorker worthy, but… but… um…. huh? Exactly.

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My adolescent MySpace blog (of two years ago)

So I went delving into the annals of my old MySpace blog, which I kept warm in the lean years of this one which you are reading right this minute, because I was looking for a couple old lists I’d made of Things I Always Think Are Funny.

Whilst there though I came across the following overwrought bit of sad fluff which I’m reposting because it’s just so…. ANGST! And also, the subject is “this is very livejournal” which is funny because that’s what I was thinking as I was reading it which actually isn’t funny but instead just shows that brains are machines and a certain stimulus nearly always kicks up the same response. I’ll notice this if I ever listen to tapes of old interviews I did and even though years may have passed I’ll make a joke in my head, related to something the interviewee said, and then I’ll hear myself make the same joke on the tape. And then I’ll have a hearty laugh and toast myself. Anyway, behold the gothiness:

SUBJ: This is very livejournal

I think I must be mourning something, though I don’t quite know what, because suddenly the math of human connection seems, well it seems like math, like a page of equations, instead of something effortless. For some reason I am unable to be “in it” for any sustained period of time, and I’m not speaking solely about relationships. The last time I felt this was when I truly was in mourning 10 years ago. Not to get all French existentialist but I felt like a clown after that, like life was this weird charade/parade and I was stuck and nothing made sense and everything was tragic. That feeling abated in time, but I’m experiencing faint echoes again. Anyway, not to be all super deep and heavy but I’m transcribing an interview I did with Alan Ball and we’re talking about grief and it got me thinking.

Also, I’m not ruling out the idea that what I’m mourning is the cancellation of The O.C.

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Photos I found on my mom's computer

More photos of me? If you insist. I was on my mom’s computer looking for porn (note: not looking for porn) when I found these photos that I must have put on there when they were emailed to me and I was using her computer and etcetera. Plus, since Anna David posted on the Activity Pit that she wasn’t afraid to trot out some Alison Rosen material and then Joe asked for some baby pictures I thought I might beat them to the punch. Not that they actually have access to my baby photos, but you know. So, shall we?


Here I am taking a nap before the dawn of color photography. This actually is a daguerreotype.


And here I am wearing a bandanna on my head after a hard day of child labor. Also, my older brothers enjoyed dressing me up in ridiculous get ups and I’m thinking this was one of them.


Here I am hanging out with my older brother Josh. He’s so totally imitating me here but that’s Josh, always trying to do what I do.


Here I am many years later playing in The Angoras. Yes, I know my legs look fat here.


Here I am being tuff with the band, hanging out on a car. That’s the kind of outlaw shit we did in OC. We didn’t even play instruments, just hung out on fully-hotrodded titz rides. In fact, I’m surprised there aren’t any flames on the side of this vehicle. There’s very unusual.


Here we are on tour after I’d clearly made some kind of hugely embarrassing admission.

See how tuff we were? By the way, if you own this cassette it’s totally worth the cost of a used cassette right now.


Here I am holding a baby. Come and get it quick men, I think I just ovulated. Oh and if you happen to click on this photo let me say right now that I don’t know what’s up with my eyebrow. I must have shaved it like that in prison. [update: maybe this isn’t the photo but there’s a photo of me like this where it looks like there’s a Vanilla Ice-style notch missing from my eyebrow, hence the explanation. The unnecessary explanation.]


And here’s my sister and me just hanging out. This was probably the last time I had a tan and wore a tank top. Actually, I’ll have you know that’s not just any tank top, it’s Wonder Woman Underoos.

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