He was in that one where they escaped on a cello.

K. and I went to lunch at this tiny Thai place in a strip mall in Hollywood. We had soup that was delicious, but also SO HOT that we kept sneezing. At first the couple next to us were all (patronizing voice) “Too spicy for you?” but then their food came, and soon they were tearing up and coughing and sneezing. VINDICATION.

When we left, Timothy Dalton – Former James Bond, Current Silver Fox – was standing behind my car, chatting with a friend, holding a bag full of Thai leftovers, blocking us in. Something about it was very bizarre.

“It’s that Bond guy who isn’t Pierce Brosnan!” I said as soon as we’d left.

“I know!” K. said. “I saw him in the restaurant. I couldn’t remember who he was, but I immediately recognized that he was too good-looking to be a normal person. Also, he had that bit of craziness around the eyes!”

New culinary horizons.

Yesterday my friend H. and I went to have Chinese food in Rowland Heights. (Actually, we went to have pho in Rowland Heights, but she kept texting me from the pho place with things like “This is the sketchiest pho place I have ever seen!” and “Oh man, this really horrible smell just came out of the kitchen!” so by the time I got there, I was pretty much primed to leave.)

We fled to a nearby Chinese place. First of all, the restaurant was in a mini-mall that also contained a store that sold nothing but toilet seats. Second, H. kept claiming that there was a hilarious stall in this mini-mall that sold “something like pork butt”. I made the “Oh, sure!” face and reached for more Peking Shredded Fried Pie (I am something of a daredevil orderer of foods at new restaurants, and we agreed that surely “shredded fried pie” was going to be some awesomely bad translation. But actually, it was exactly what you’d picture: strips of wheat pastry. Fried. With some cabbage. It was okay. The waiter kept incredulously asking us if we liked it, to the point where we became mildly paranoid that we had committed a horrible faux pas, and ordered something only considered appropriate for the very young or feeble-minded.)

After dinner, H. showed me the hilarious stall that sold “pork butt”. What it actually sold – and I’m not making this up – was ”fried pork rectum”.

FRIED PORK RECTUM, YOU GUYS.

It was prominently featured on the menu. With pictures! I don’t know what fried pork rectum is supposed to look like, and so can’t vouch for its authenticity. But yup. There it was. Fried pork rectum. With a side of rice. Only $2.65.

Rain.

It’s raining quite a lot in LA these days. It rained yesterday morning, yesterday afternoon, most of yesterday night. And it’s raining again now.

Some people are all “Ugh! Is this why I moved to LA? NO IT IS NOT.” But not me. I love rain. LOVE IT.

I think it’s bred into me: PacNo and Holland (which is basically like PacNo with a lot of tall Dutch people) are both pretty rainy places, and rain just makes me feel all happy and cozy and tranquil. If I lived someplace rainier, I would have excellent floral rain boots and be out walking my dog RIGHT NOW.

(Also, I would have a dog.)

I don’t really mind getting wet, either. Even that is kind of cozy to me. When I was little, we lived on a hill, and a good rain made an AWESOME RIVER HAPPEN IN THE STREET. I’d go out and stomp around and get wet and muddy and hope cars would go by and splash tidal waves on me.

(This was in the early 80s, when children were still free range.)

SOME EXCELLENT THINGS ABOUT RAIN:

*You can go outside and get a little bit wet and then come in and get warm again. A cheap thrill!
*You can curl up on the couch and read and occasionally stare outside.
*The sound of fat raindrops going SPLAT when they roll off the roof.
*The soothing hiss of car tires on pavement.
*It is an ideal excuse to make soups and stews.
*How it smells just before it rains.
*Or after it rains (in the summer).
*The best thing about rain is when you get to go to bed and it’s raining. It’s like Nature’s white noise machine.

!!!

!!!

moar funny pictures

Oh, how I laughed.

(I laughed quite hard.)

Lightbulbs.

I have many brilliant ideas.

Well. I guess, to be ACCURATE (pfffft) I should say that I have many ideas that I briefly, for about three minutes, find pretty funny, and then later I tell other people about them and they go:

“…”

Recently, FOR INSTANCE, I tried to convince Naomi that what we should do was have a BEARD BLOG.

BEARDSIGHTINGS.BLOGSPOT.COM or something. And it would be all like The Sartorialist except instead of pictures of people in interesting outfits it would be pictures of (mostly, one assumes) men with beards. And then you could say “What inspires your beard?” and they would say “Sometimes I think about Steinbeck.” and you would say “Ah… interesting.” and they would nod, seriously.

OR. You could ask about beard maintenance. Some men with beards probably have a whole regimen. Involving botanical treatments. And COMBS.

(As an aside, there was a picketer fighting the power outside the studio recently, and he had a pretty awesome mustache. I had a delightful fantasy where he was standing around twirling his moustachios and going “MWAH HA HA!” to freak people out, but really he was just marching. Also, I stupidly told the person next to me about my fantasy, and she made the face people make not infrequently in my direction, the “Jesus! You’re retarded.” face.)

Anyway, when I told Naomi this, she said: “…” and then we talked about various subsets of beards, and how it would be very important to our imaginary blog to differentiate between “The Prospector” and “The Edwardian Granddad” and “The Lazy Guy”. Unfortunately, Naomi felt fairly strongly that it would be embarrassing to go up to a man with a beard and “take his picture for your beard blog”.

Other “great” (horrible) ideas I have had recently:

*A musical about my friend Kinan. It would contain extremely dramatic songs about things like “Did I Forget To Buy Coffee? Did I? Darn!” or “These Shoes, They Are Kind Of Uncomfortable”.

*A sitcom set at Medieval Times.

*Owning a honey badger as a pet. He could live in my yard! I could feed him tuna sandwiches. He’d look like this: And pound for pound, honey badgers are the most fearless animal going. So that’s pretty cool.

Just a steel town girl on a Saturday night

You know how non-fiction books have those sort of auto-blurbs? Like Concrete Jungle: Life And Love In Boston’s Reclusive Concrete-Making Community, or whatever.

This is a real book, according to NPR: Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes To The Streets.

(I know, this is a real person, the Rogue Sociologist. I read about him in Freakonomics. He’s the person who figured out why drug dealers live with their moms A: they don’t make much money. Also, their moms make terrific omelets.)

Clearly, Takin’ It To The Rogue Sociology Streets needs to be a movie. Paul Rudd as The Rogue Sociologist! Michael MacDonald soundtrack. Um, tons of rogue sociology action. A clear winner.

Another movie I think must be made: so I was watching clips of Solid Gold dancers (don’t ask) and realized that what would be AWESOME would be Will Ferrell as a steelworker with a dream who bands together with 70s women’s libbers to fight gender discrimination and become the first-ever male SOLID GOLD dancer. He could wear leotards! And headbands. And maybe some legwarmers.

Rhymes with Plaid Mitt

A Big Honking Movie Stah is doing reshoots outside our building today. People are remarkably uncool about this. There was SQUEALING. It’s like Beatlemania, but without the groovy tunes.

(By “people”, I am not secretly talking about myself. Just so this is clear.)

PEOPLE. BE COOL. YOU WORK ON A LOT, MAN.

Also, I was all “Sigh” because instead of entering into discussions about How Totally Dreamy The Movie Stah was– oh, see:

SQUEALY LADY
–like, oh my GOD, he totally looked in my direction!

ELANA
Wouldn’t it be great if he was all “Hey! You there! Uh, a little awkward, but… can I borrow twenty bucks? I sort of left my cash in my other pants, and– Listen, I’m good for it. I totally get paid on Thursday.”

SQUEALY LADY
…

Bacon, dogs, inadequacy.

I was recently strongarmed into joining a social networking site For Professionals. You can look at peoples’ networks, and of course the people I knew knew many other people that I also vaguely know, and everyone lists their occupation, etc.

Let me just come out and say it: I AM AN ASSISTANT. I answer peoples’ phones. Sometimes I walk across the lot to get the bosslady lunch. No one ever asks me to analyze or synergize ANYTHING. I have never been required to maximize revenue streams of any kind.

So I was looking at the jobs people I know vaguely have now that they’re adults. (Are you still with me? I AM ALL ABOUT RUN ON SENTENCES.) And many of these people are people I knew in college, and many of them were not, when I knew them, the kind of people I would imagine would grow up to be Responsible Working Professionals Whose Jobs Are Three Or Four Or More Words Long. These are people who could scarcely be relied upon to remember to wear pants to class! And now they’re all with the having of jobs like:

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WOMEN’S UNDERPANTS TAGS
KOALAPants Trading

SENIOR BRAND MANAGER, DAIRY AND DAIRY-AFFILIATED PRODUCTS, LIKE EGGS
The Cheese Factory

ANALYST AND STRATEGERY EXPERT AND WHATNOT
Some Huge Company That Made 90% Of The Products In Your House

The potential for feelings of inadequacy is almost unlimited here. ALMOST UNLIMITED.

But I have the answer: This clip of Jim Gaffigan talking about how great bacon is.

I even like the name Bacon. You can’t tell me the success of Kevin Bacon isn’t somehow tied to his name. You’re not going out to see a Kevin Hot Dog movie. “Who’s in this movie?” “Kevin Bacon.” “Sounds good.”

This morning, one of the writers striking outside had brought his dog with him. I feel like dogs turn me into Steve Carell’s character from Anchorman. Like suddenly I get happy and stupid and I just stare at them and smile and say things like “YOUR DOG! YOUR DOG HAS A REALLY BIG HEAD! THAT IS AWESOME.”

Reframing

Naomi and I wrote this script from which I stole the title of this blog: GIRL ON GIRL ACTION.

It’s about these two girls who join the lucrative world of underground female wrestling in order to get together the seed money for their dream hair salon. It’s a comedy. It’s a ridiculous comedy.

A handful of months ago, I was talking to this guy, and he asked what Naomi and I wrote, and I mention that as an example. And I left off the “it’s a comedy” part, because I thought that was abundantly apparent, but then he said:

“Ah, a female version of FIGHT CLUB? That sounds edgy and cool.”

Chester A Arthur fall down, go boom!

One of my favorite things is babies in snowsuits. You know, how they can’t move? They’re like plump little immobilized starfish, staring out at you grouchily.

I rarely get to see this – Los Angeles doesn’t have any weather that would require a snowsuit – but the internet just saved me:

This is a short video of a baby in a snowsuit falling over. The money shot occurs at :24. It is HIGHLARIOUS.

I have watched it five or six times and laughed each time.

(No babies were harmed. Those snowsuits are pretty good protective gear.)