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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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Yes, fine, I won ANOTHER award.

winners

Cookie party prize winners (L to R: Natali, honorable mention for her snickerdoodles; Jill, best looking for her ice cream cookie sandwiches; Seven, most creative for her cookie hamburgers; Ann, best tasting for her peanut butter cookies; me, tackiest for my sugar cookie disasters)

Over the weekend I won another award. I swear to God you guys, the accolades are coming fast and furious which is just the risk you take when you’re extraordinarily gifted, I suppose. (more…)

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My famous friend is making me look bad

So I’ve been bragging high and low, hither and thither, near and far, up and down, inside and out, spaghetti and fettuccine, flip flop and sandal, fork and knife, spoon and spork, turtle and yak, lagoon and lanai, swiffer and wet jet that I’m friends with Rhett Reese who co-wrote and  co-produced Zombieland.

So imagine my What The Fuckness when I find out that he might be in town for the junket and I was unawares? It’s as if we aren’t as buddyroo as my incessant twittering would suggest. I hate when the truth leaks out! So I had to send him the following email, which is so lame I think it’s kind of cool but then I think it doubles back on itself and ends up to be lame but then it flips and is cool and then lands on the lame side of lame.

Hey! Are you in NYC for the junket? I’m totally bragging that I know you and the fact that you might be here and I didn’t know is NOT making me look cool. [emoticon here]

I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: he just wrote back before I had a chance to post this. Apparently he’s not here and wants to know if I’m seeing the movie. God, how demanding.

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About the scriptwriting

As many of you know, I am trying to write a screenplay. A screenplay for television. No one says teleplay anymore according to a book I read called Read This Book If You Want To Feel Like You’re Actually Doing Something Productive on the Screenwriting Front However You Still Haven’t Written Shit, Asshole. When I saw it on the shelf I was like, “Now that’s a saucy title I can really get behind!” Then I gave myself a high five and tightened my side pony (it’s a side ponytail, not some other kind of adjunct equine creature or appliance or dance move. Although actually you could work on tightening your side pony and mean the dance move, I suppose. Maybe I’ll put that into one of my scripts!)

So but how is the script writing going, you ask, because you care. I’ll tell you, I respond, because I’m procrastinating.

NOT SO WELL!

Turns out I’m experiencing all those things that amateur writers—ones I scoff and roll my eyes at and look down upon and use to mop my brow from the sweat that builds up while I toil away on real writing assignments and whose fingers I often borrow to open the envelopes containing checks I receive from actual published magazine articles—experience. Or at least I think they experience it since it seems there’s a lot of literature out there about the fear of the blank page and blah blah blah writer’s room blah blah retreat blah discipline blah get up early blah I havent’ showered in three weeks.

I showered today actually, but spiritually I have dreadlocks.

Um, so where was I? Oh yes. Granted I’ve felt writer’s block before and there’s always a point when I’m facing a deadline where I want to cry and feel that life is unfair and feel that I’m probably the only soul who is awake on the planet and feel lonely and woe is me-ish and stuff, but I’m used to that. And it sucks. And if you happen to be a professional writer I’m wondering if you also go through that? I exchanged a couple emails with Louis Menand of The New Yorker once because he went to my college many years before I and he wrote something in The New Yorker about having to reread old articles he’d written before starting a new one to remind himself that he knows how to do that. I related, since I often do the same thing. Anyway, what was my point? Oh yes. I once exchanged emails with someone from The New Yorker.

But the discomfort I’m feeling trying to write a script is something new and horrendous. And the self-doubt is beyond description. Yesterday I ate my hand just for fun, that’s how nervous I was. I’m typing this whole thing with one hand. Just tapping away at the keys, one by one, embarrassed that I ate my whole hand in one sitting. Not only impractical but SO unladylike!

So now I have myriad first pages of scripts sitting on my computer and I’m thinking I should just write a book instead since that’s something I’m more comfortable with. But who knows. But I thought I might regale you with the first line of each of my scripts. Won’t that be fun? I THINK SO! Here we go. No context or character names. Just first lines. And please note, these are all separate scripts:

Coochie coochie coo. Coochie coo.

Welcome back to Omyra.

How was the audition?

Hi, I’m Amanda.

You know what we need?

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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.

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It's possible I've even seen the Bacon Brothers perform

I used to have a real weakness for Kevin Bacon and just shut up because He Said, She Said was an excellent film, as was The Big Picture. The downside to any sort of Bacon preoccupation is that it’s impossible to think or talk about it without the Footloose theme song running through your head which is happening to me right now and I don’t like it.

Anyway, there’s this post on Defamer about Househusbands of Hollywood which is going to be like the male Real Housewives or something but all I could think was “Hey, that guy looks just like Kevin Bacon, I think that IS Kevin Bacon?!” and that I’ll probably have to watch the show now. Turns out it isn’t Kevin Bacon, it’s his doppelganger Danny Moder and I won’t have to watch the show.

Note the Bacon-likeness:

I should add two things. 1) This picture is via Gawker via Getty or something meaning I did not take it myself with my Le Clique camera. 2) My Kevin Bacon infatuation kind of died a little when I interviewed him years ago and he was super professional and just wanted to talk about his movie and his family. “Really?” I asked, tugging at the sleeve of my cable-knit sweater to reveal a half inch swatch of wrist. “That’s fascinating!” I murmured, slowly readjusting the neck of my Lands end turtleneck.  He was immune though.

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Delightfully dark picture of Anna, me and Natali


Brighter photos to come.

Oh and last night Natali got recognized by someone which I didn’t think much of because she’s all over the place but then it turned out he’d specifically recognized her from Red Eye and upon hearing this—or rather upon Anna telling me this was what was going on—I tried my best to dangle my very memorable and arguably exquisite face in his sight line. I mean, I all but sat in his lap. But Anna Who Could See The Conversation And Make Out What He Was Saying told me that evidently he’d only seen one episode… featuring Natali.

It’s cool though because I recognized myself and made a big to-do until finally I had to have one of my handlers tell me to cool it because I was freaking out “the talent,” which is how I refer to myself to myself.

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Shuffling/Riffling update

How’s it coming with the cards, you are likely wondering? Well yesterday I tried to shuffle and it’s as if the thing on the end of my arm has been replaced with a dishrag. My shuffling fingers don’t work. I merely kind of threw the cards into my other dish towel and then looked at my useless hand-type-thing and said “ouch!”

Maybe my hand needs to juice? I don’t care if my testicles shrink.

Anyway, I haven’t yet tried today because I’m afraid but I’m sure at some point I will. Okay, I’m impatient. That point is now:

I’m sorry, did someone replace this deck of 52 cards with 85 cards? That’s not very nice. Whoever slipped a deck of Old Maid into my regular deck better fess up.

Bad news: Today is worse than yesterday.

I need some kind of magic guardian angel to appear in my living room in a poof of smoke.

Now look out, because I’m going to drop a name: Harry Blackstone, Jr. He was my dad’s best friend and my family often spent the holidays with his and he was the first person who changed my diaper I’m told. And no, he didn’t do any magic tricks with it. His daughter is the one who told me it was called The Russian Shuffle. Once he brought out a deck of cards and showed me a few things. I can’t remember what they were, but I’m pretty sure I’m doing nothing similar. What was my point? Oh yes, I knew Harry Blackstone and you didn’t. Also, my hand is useless and smells like cards.

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When it comes to social interactions

When it comes to social interactions I prefer to have them with a mic in my hand or a camera in my face. Tonight I mixed with people unknown to me without all that though. Just me, my bongos and a bottle of Wild Turkey. Minus the bongos and Wild Turkey.

I went to a party with Red Eye pal John Roy where I met a guy (funny comedian Pete Holmes) who draws actual cartoons for the New Yorker. I got all excited and tried to explain that I draw fake cartoons for the New Yorker but I don’t draw them, I just think them up, and I never send them in because it’s not about that. I think he was suitably impressed. Then I mentioned that some of my fans have actually drawn them but what I really meant to say was, “Did I mention I have fans?”

And then I had a horribly awkward exchange with a woman by the crudite, but it’s late and I’m too tired to write it out. Perhaps tomorrow, my dears. It involves slippery bell peppers and tongs.

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