A bunch of you have been asking to see video from when I played in The Angoras so here you go. A few songs from a show we played at The Garage in Hollywood in 2001. I’m playing the sparkly silver Gretsch. Paula is in the middle and Yami is on bass. Tim was on drums. Paula and Tim still play music in bands. All three of my former band mates have been on my show. I miss them.
Archive | corona del mar
Time for a transformation
I woke up this morning feeling like I’m ready to make a change in my life—and by that I mean I woke up feeling… nay, KNOWING, that I want to change my ringtone. It’s time. I just don’t quite know what I want to change it to, and I’m trying to be okay with that emptiness.
In other news, last night I met up with someone I went to grade school with who contacted me on Facebook. I went to high school with him but have little recollection of it as he was on the football team and I was on pep squad and during rallies I was just concentrating really hard on splits and balancing and so there wasn’t much time to notice anything else. That was pretty much my whole high school experience: splits and balancing. But also I think I’ve blocked high school. I wasn’t really on the pep squad in case this is your first time reading my blog. What I do remember is that he and I were both in our 8th grade musical. Also he sat behind me in fifth grade. Now he’s married and has three children. I’ve been married three times and have nine children. The whole thing was fun but it made me feel old.
Then I saw Greg Wilson perform at a club in Times Square which was cool (he was really funny) except afterwards he kept trying to lick my face. I should have been wearing my bike helmet/man repellent.
More photos? Okay!
Know what time it is? It’s 7:42pm in California. Know what else? Time for another bunch of photos! Hooray!
Here is the Goldenrod Footbridge in Corona del Mar. I’m pretty sure I’ve blogged about it before. It’s my favorite footbridge and it doesn’t even smell like feet.
Here’s the beach.
More beach.
Stupid beautiful water and bullshit boats.
Another picture of the beach if you’re into that kind of thing.
Oh wait, this is a bundt cake that I baked for Yami’s housewarming party last night. Here are some photos of the time I made it (sans nuts) for my sister’s party.
And then here’s Yami and me at her party.
And here’s a description of Schindler’s List which I thought was funny.
The Daily Alison (Where my mom and I go to the beach again)
I'm not sure if I can hear you
My parents have begun speaking in a volume that I’d put somewhere between a prairie dog burp and a mouse fart. Which is to say, I can’t hear them. The exception to this is in the morning when my mom is having an argument with Tobey. “Tobey, NO!” she’ll scream, the windows rattling. “Tobey, I said NO!” she’ll thunder. Then Tobey will bark a tiny bit and then I’ll stumble into the room groggy and confused and she’ll apologize if Tobey woke me up. Other than this one time of day it’s all hushed tones. At first I thought it was me and that somehow my hearing had been compromised on the flight. “Something wrong with your ears?” my mom would say as I cupped the sides of my head. “No thanks, I don’t like beer,” I’d answer. I was upset about going deaf but getting drunk wasn’t going to solve anything.
And so it went for a few days: my parents carrying on in a way audible only to dolphins, me wondering if I should get a manicure before learning sign language, until I stepped out of the house and was commended on my incredible hearing.
Huh?
You see, all of my Costa Mesa friends used to play in bands and so their hearing is fairly terrible. “That alarm is going to drive me crazy,” I announced a couple days ago. “What alarm?” asked a friend in all seriousness. “Are you serious?” I asked, because I hadn’t read the previous sentence. He nodded and I shook my head in response. Then I clicked four times to indicate a boat on horizon. “There’s an alarm going off in the other room,” I explained. “It’s quiet but it’s been going off for about an hour.” He left to investigate. “Wow, that’s a frequency I no longer have,” he said upon returning. “That’s a shame… but you didn’t turn the alarm off,” I responded. Then I punched him. He never heard it coming.
And then I was at a party with two friends. “Wow, how can you hear that?” they asked when I said that one of the friend’s girlfriends was in the kitchen asking a question about guacamole. “I don’t know, I was convinced I was going deaf,” I said. Then they tried to claim that the reason I could hear and they couldn’t was because of angles and where I was sitting in proximity to the guacamole question versus where they were sitting. I’m not sure if they were right or not.
And… and now I can’t hear myself think because the paternal mouse farter is talking loudly on the phone. Do they just save up their volume for phone calls and yelling at Tobey? Or are they trying to gaslight me? I feel gaslit. Gaslighted? Gaslain?
Problems I've yet to solve
I don’t know if my IQ drops by about 20 points when I’m at my parent’s house in Orange County or if I’m just tired from all the lying around but I’ve been sitting in this chair staring straight ahead for a while now and I’ve yet to solve any of the world’s problems.
Problems I’ve yet to solve:
Why are ducklings so cute?
Why do I have a headache?
Why is everyone saying Entourage was so sucky? (I thought it was pretty good last night)
Why do I gain 45 pounds every time I come to CA?
How did I get to be so wonderful?
What’s up with that?
How’s it going?
Where do I come up with these things?
No really, where
Why did I first want to write that my IQ drops about 20 “degrees”?
Am I actually going to make the phone calls I need to make or just keep thinking that I need to make phone calls?
Should I wear a sombrero to the party I’m going to tonight because I’m not loving my hair right now?
Or should I paint a very small mural on my forehead to distract from the hair?
Should I get up from this chair?
If there was some kind of device that would push me out of this chair would it be a chair lift? But not the skiing kind of chair lift, just another chair lift? I could get behind that.
So you see, I’m getting a LOT of stuff accomplished over here.
In other news, I think I may have written two not-very-funny jokes last night. Although they’re obvious enough that I can’t believe I’m the first to think of them. Yet unfunny enough that I don’t think I’ve heard them before. Shall we?
Q: What did the drug dealer say to the junkie?
A: “You gotta get right back on the horse.”
Another one? Ok:
Q: Why was everyone mad at the junkie?
A: He kept talkin’ smack.
Get it? I don’t know why my jokes are heroin based, by the way. I didn’t even eat poppy seed muffins or anything!
I suppose I should take a shower since I have to be somewhere in many hours.
Ok then.
Also, I’m having that neither here nor there feeling I often get when I’m neither here nor there. Like, I could easily stay out here longer and that would be fun. And yet I know my life is in NYC and so I should go back. But it’s so easy here except for the way everyone’s always throwing avocados at you and trying to get you to have plastic surgery. “No more implants!” I yelled, as an avocado went whizzing past my new nose. It was scary and yet exhilarating. In New York they just throw metrocards at you. Also, before I came out here I was in a huge screaming rush and so I left my apartment in disarray. I’m not looking forward to going back to the way I left it although thankfully I filled the ground with a couple feet water, plugged the holes, and released a few Koi in there because I find tropical fish relaxing. I just hope my neighbor remembers to feed them through the window.
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.
Broccoli Spears
At the grocery store earlier, which was a certain kind of hell, I once again cracked up when I saw a box of broccoli spears in the frozen aisle. Have I already written about this? See, I see the broccoli spears and then I imagine a spoof of Britney Spears where a character says her name is Broccoli Spears and then I laugh. It gets me every time. Also, it’s why I’m single.
The Goldenrod Footbridge
I used to live in Corona del Mar, California. In fact, I called it home for untold millions of years, so it’s quite a surprise then that I’d never been acquainted with the quaint charms of the Goldenrod Footbridge, pictured here:
It dates back to 1928, cost a mere $10, 229 (or something like that) and it’s made entirely of feet. As such, the smell is, shall we say, intense, especially in the summer, but still, you don’t have to be some kind of bridge-o-philiac to realize that painting bloody feet stumps to make them look like concrete and flowers is pretty amazing. In fact, I first thought the bridge was made of just that—concrete and flowers—until I read the sign. Embarrassment City, Population: Me!
Now I’m pretty sure I know what you’re thinking: What did they do with all the shoes? (That’s what you were thinking, right?) They probably gave them to charity or used them to make footprints in the sand to fool people into thinking God was carrying them. That’s what I’d do, and one thing I’ve learned in my 21 years on God’s green earth is that I’m not that unusual or special and there’s nothing new under the sun. Even if you were to take all the legs from the stumps and toss in the shoelaces and make some kind of stew or goulash and then put it in cans and sell it? Already been thought of! (Probably)
But a bridge made of feet? I wouldn’t have thought of that. Guess that’s why I’m an astronaut and also a doctor of Western medicine but a practitioner of Eastern, and not a civil engineer.
I get invited to their functions often—I mean, we travel in the same circles and they rely on my findings and general analytical acuity for things like blueprinting, drafting and Friday night trivia.
But have I actually built bridges before or designed anything on CAD software? I’d have to say no.
I’d say it while assuming the lotus position and drinking green tea but also wearing a stethoscope under my spacesuit. It’s just how I roll.
Should you ever be lucky enough to visit me in the flesh–that is, if I’m not in outer space–I’d probably offer you freeze dried ice cream because we astronauts get it by the barrel full. Actually, it’s kind of inconvenient to try to get it out of the barrel in outer space because it just starts floating away and then your spaceship mom (each spaceship is assigned a ‘spaceship mom’ who acts as a den mother of sorts) gets mad at you for space littering. It’s like, get off my back, spaceship mom! Don’t tell me how to orbit!