I’m sitting next to a cup of urine. There are lots of cops here. And yet, this ER is like neither gray’s anatomy nor law and order SVU. I took a break and went to a store called PUPPIES! I looked around but I wasn’t hungry. I’m engaged in an unspoken war with my sister’s boyfriend over the one seat here. I’m winning right now seeing as my ass is being gently cradled by a vinyl cushion and his is left to graze the cheapo curtain separating us from the scary scary woman in the next bed over. Yeah that’s right, non-blood relative! I can outsit you so don’t get any fancy ideas. MY chair. MY sister. MY perch near the neglected cup of urine.
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Author Archive | Alison Rosen
There will be wooziness
My sister, while they’re drawing blood and starting an IV to give her medication in case she feels nauseous: ‘I don’t feel nauseous.’
Me, sitting in a chair watching them draw her blood: ‘I do!’
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In the waiting room
I should have brought a book to this waiting area where it looks like I’ll be spending my saturday. Instead I brought my blackberry and… Let’s check the contents of my pocket, shall we? A receipt, a bandaid, eleven dollars and 48 cents, two packets of equal, two earplugs, a banana and a myna bird.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, but the truth is that I just prefer equal to splenda. I find it to be a bit sweeter and it has less of a chemical aftertaste. As for the myna bird, I’m not going to lie, it’s somewhat annoying to have to watch what I say all the time for fear of it being parroted back to me. At the same time it’s been hugely illuminating to listen to the profound things that come out of his beak, which are obviously things he picked up from me. In bird years, he’s probably about 65. Just a really old soul. And so funny. Sometimes he does this thing where he just looks at me and stands still and I’m like, ‘yep, he’s got my number!’ This one time he ate a grape and, well, you just should have seen it. Also, he’s kept me from making what would have turned out to be a couple massively unwise real estate investments. I’m not going to lie though, he also told me to sell short when I should have hung on. I was mad, but I wrote out my feelings to him in a letter and I think he really got what I was saying. I felt heard, which is so important.
Actually, he and I have really gotten into it because he thinks it’s rude when I read when he’s right there so maybe it’s better I don’t have a book. Still, I wish he’d understand that it’s not personal, I just need some time with my thoughts and it doesn’t mean my feelings about him have changed.
Uh oh, it appears he’s eaten an earplug. Say that again? I can’t hear you! Use words! Enunciate please.
Well this is really frustrating. He does it just to annoy me.
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Captain Indigestion (nostalgia edition)
I’ve been feeling kind of nostalgic for Orange County lately, which is a problem about which I could say more, but I was sitting here thinking about an old friend of mine and all the adventures we used to have, many of which I wrote about in the OC Weekly, and something made me remember the night we nearly missed our plans because, well, you’ll see. Anyway, I went back to see if I could find the column. I found it. Hooray! (for you, of course)
This was from 2001 I think:
CAPTAIN INDIGESTION!
Goldenboy
Din Din at the Bamboo Terrace
Saturday, Feb. 24
Saturday night was heap-loads of fun! It got off to a rousing start when, instead of going out and having a good time as was the original plan, I instead sat around my friend’s house while he repeatedly emptied, into the toilet, the contents of a nutritious meal that didn’t agree with him. Correction—nutritious meals. I don’t know how many he ate, but based on the lengthy duration of his bathroom furlough, it had to have been more than just dinner that was starring, for a limited time, in his toilet. “You know what I wish?” he queried through the bathroom door. “I wish you were a guy because then I could show you what just came out of me!”
“Darn!” I yelled back, gagging. And that, if you must know, is why we were late arriving at Bamboo Terrace, having missed Lo-Fi Champion, who were dressed as Jehovah’s Witnesses. I mean, they weren’t really, but I defy you to tell the difference between the band members, who looked jaunty in white shirts and narrow blue ties, and Soldiers of Christ, who also look jaunty in white shirts and narrow blue ties.
My Weak-Stomached Pal (who has forbidden me to use his name, which is weird to me since he was more than ready to show me the contents of his colon; whence springs this sudden coyness?) and I got there in time to see an entire set by Goldenboy. The three-piece Diamond Bar band features the excellent Shon Sullivan (nicknamed “Goldenboy”), who plays cello, guitar and piano in Elliot Smith’s touring band, on vocals, guitar and keys. Before he got the Smith gig, he played in a melodic psychedelic-ish band I used to really like called Moonwash. Before that he played in melodic psych-edelic-ish band Moonwash Symphony, who performed at my college, so as far as I’m concerned, Sullivan and I go way back. We’re practically family. I think he felt the same way, after I reminded him who I was.
Goldenboy began to play one of their plaintive melodic numbers, made more soothing, plaintive and melodic by Sullivan’s gentle baritone. Actually, I’m not sure he’s a baritone, and sometimes he sings in a falsetto, but it’s all quite soft and syrupy in a good singer-songwriter way. He should do lullabies!
“They’re really soothing,” remarked Captain Indigestion. “I think I’m beginning to feel better.” At this point it gets confusing because I think I said, “Yeah, they make music for your butt,” but Captain Indigestion claims Roberto from Lo-Fi Champion said it and Roberto claims the Captain said it, which is stupid because I’m the one who said it. Regardless, I got all sorts of grief for the rest of the night from Baron Von Light-A-Match-Please for, according to him, trying to take credit for someone else’s phrase. Bite me, Toilet Boy!
Three songs in, Sullivan put down his guitar and began playing electric piano on a song called “Baby Doll,” which, at the beginning, sounds a tiny bit like the theme song from Cheers, which I actually, at the time, said, but Roberto and Toilet Duck probably want to take credit for that one, too.
At some point, Goldenboy played “Savior Pill,” a Moonwash song I remember from their album, which I used to own although I can’t find it or remember what it was called, but I was overjoyed to hear the song as, for a time, it made me forget my troubles with the Duke of Crappy Pants, so for that, I’m eternally grateful. (Alison M. Rosen)
You wanted to hear The Angoras?
After messing around so long on last.fm (and getting nowhere really) that I want to punch myself, I finally just uploaded the songs to my page on The Activity Pit. Kim, I hope you enjoy these page views. (that sounded really obnoxious didn’t it? in a cyber nerd kind of way? what has become of me?)
http://activitypit.ning.com/profile/Alison
And video does actually exist. Not of the reunion show but from years ago. In theory I could put this up but if I spend any more time dealing with putting band stuff on my blog I will scream. Not that my screaming isn’t felicitous, because it is. As is my warbling. Basically not one tone escapes my throat that isn’t dulcet. Frankly speaking, of course.
I need
a timely and newsy debate topic. Any ideas?
Also… I guess I actually don’t have anything more to say. I never don’t have more to say. Which is to say, I always have more to say. Say, that’s weird. Okay then.
I'm like a baby bird
in that I’m helpless and need you to regurgitate information into my mouth. So I have The Angoras CD here and I’d like to make it so you can hear it, since many of you asked to hear it, but I don’t know how. Anyone?
Want to read everything I ever wrote for the OC Weekly?
You can find it all here! At least, I think you can. I didn’t really scroll through all 248 or so stories but it seemed like it’s all there. Lucky you, obsessive fans!
Couple more shots (that I stole from Activity Pit)
Where will you be Tuesday at 6:30pm?
Wrong, you’ll be at the Apple Store in Soho where I’ll be moderating a live Q&A with David Schwimmer who you may know as Ross but who also directed Run Fatboy Run which is coming out next week. We’ll show clips and then talk about them. I’ll take questions from the audience. Michael Ian Black wrote the screenplay but he won’t be there as he’s in Vancouver apparently. God, just say you don’t want to go, don’t pretend to be in Canada I thought to myself as I dashed off an email that said “oh! have fun in Vancouver!”
Anyway, see you there unless you don’t live here in which case you should probably just do whatever you were planning on doing.