Friends

moroccomole knew about this thing that I didn't. And what he knew was that if you send Michel Gondry some money and a jpeg he will paint a little watercolor version of that picture.

So MM sent Michel Gondry a picture of us from the day we got married last summer.

The wedding happened at the La Brea Tar Pits and the reception at the Farmer's Market in front of Bob's Coffee & Doughnuts. This is a picture that was snapped of us then, turned into a bizarre little painting by Mr. Gondry.

I appear to be the hulk-bodied, peanut-headed, red lady-lipped outcome of the time when the guy from "The Hills Have Eyes" put a baby into Sloth from "The Goonies." MM has had his head squeezed in a vise, stolen the cat-eyes glasses from Lynda Barry's cartoon mother and traded in his teeth for four white fangs.

In other words, I LOVE IT A LOT. LIKE A LOT A LOT. Thanks, Michel Gondry.

Oh and also this:

http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid97136.asp

It's my latest Advocate.com TV column. This week I get real deep into real human truths about "NYC PREP" AND "MIAMI SOCIAL" Y'ALL!

And regarding my title of this post: I am coming to New York the last week of July for a book launch. A book I'm in. So while I don't want any actual customized trail mix, I do want delicious treats. Begin pointing me in their direction now, please. More details about this trip later...

*moroccomole has this thing where he wants me to actually accompany him out to events. This conflicts with my own disinterest in going to these events. So occasionally we compromise and I go with him. Last night we went to the opening night of Outfest, which is the Los Angeles queer film festival. He was one of the film programmers this year so his job is to go to the opening night and closing night and the parties and to introduce screenings and whatnot.

So I went. But it was noisy and I couldn't ever really hear what anyone was saying to me because big crowd sounds are sufficient enough to make me deaf. Normal voice decibels are just drowned out. So I nod and go "Oh, hey, it is so good to see you again" and then I just look around and notice things like how insane the light sconces and giant chandeliers are at the Orpheum Theater. And complain about the seats in the balcony, which were designed when people were not so large. And I'm not even talking about fatness. I mean they had shorter legs. And smaller thighs and butts. Those seats must have fit someone back then. Just not me, not now.

One good thing about giant crowds: If you have to fart you can do it and nobody will know it was you. You can just make a face like, "Eww, who did that?" and walk away. Not that I did that. I'm too polite.

Other topic: I had my first appointment with the new therapist to help me get over my fear of flying. If you're new to reading this journal, I am terrified to fly. I do it but I freak out hard and need drugs to get through it. I went to a therapist for this in 2002, then to a horrible phobia group that didn't help me. Then I decided to tough it out for the next seven years. But MM made me promise I'd go back to try to deal with it again.

I found a good guy. His office is in my neighborhood so I can just walk there. He's all quiet and gentle like therapists are. You sit on the couch and bark out your anxieties and they just nod and then softly tell you shit you don't want to hear. Shit like, "You have to decide that you're going to be a different person regarding your fear of flying. No one can take that step for you. You have to be the one to start this in your own mind. You could very well die in a plane crash. Or in a car accident. Or by falling down the stairs. Or by having a heart attack. Short of taking your own life or learning that you have exactly five months to live from a brain tumor, you don't get to control when you're going to die. But you will die. And part of getting over this fear is coming to accept that fact. See you next Wednesday."

So I'll see him next Wednesday.

There may already be a winner in the nursing home competition now called "Which Los Angeles Facility Gets to Enjoy My Mother?"

The one I went to yesterday afternoon has just undergone a fancy renovation. Everything looks fresh and new. It's the largest place I've seen so far, about 140 beds. Lots of activities, people were up and out of bed, I was greeted by smiling staff several times, greeted by smiling residents too. I know that sounds silly, but I've learned that it really matters. If both the staff and the residents feel like they're in some kind of prison it shows on their faces.

No crazy smells, two large activity/dining rooms, two patio areas. A large physical/occupational/speech therapy room with full time therapists. Some group brings in animals for people to pet every week. The admissions lady told me that sometimes they bring pigs. I think that's kind of rad.

The only drawbacks I could see are:

1. It's not walking distance from our house like the first place I went to. To see her would always be a drive.
2. The neighborhood, while nice and mostly residential, has nothing to do once you leave the front door. Every trip out would involve a car instead of just a roll around the neighborhood. The first place has a great neighborhood with a lot of stuff for her to see and do.
3. The atmosphere is somewhat less "warm" than the first place.
4. Almost all the rooms are three beds. She can get on a waiting list for their limited number of 2-bed rooms. She will absolutely want a 2-bed room. She likes her space.

Anyone with any experience or expertise or opinions?

Once upon a time there was this guy in San Francisco named funtarded and he had only enough muscles to do things like walk and sit and move a fork and put out this zine that one time. Then, because he's a gross pervert, he started going to an S&M fetish dungeon he calls "the gym" and the muscles got so big that they began crushing his lungs and making him cough.

Now he is dying of this. Yes, it's his own fault. He called it a lifestyle when it fact it was a deathstyle.

But you can help.

He is video-blogging his descent into the grave and he has to have 20 comments on each of them and a lot more Brokencyde videos to look at or else he's going to die. Or maybe he will keep on making video-blogs. Neither of these options are good to think about. Some of these videos are shirtless and maybe you have a thing for sick guys and their nude shoulders. Why not go be his LJ friend and give him the support he needs.

We've already lost so many people, people who are so much more important than him but that's not the issue. We can save him with internet comments. If you don't do this we'll be losing a person who've given absolutely nothing to the community. But if you save him then he might start tomorrow. He already has big plans to turn Prop 8 into a light saber.

Artist named Tala Madani. The images I posted are small, but if you go looking for more you can find them bigger. And clicking the link will show you larger images too...

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/tala_madani.htm

What happened yesterday, in order:

*Went to Jinky's for breakfast with moroccomole and Gary Cotti. I had corn flake-encrusted french toast with blueberries and chicken apple sausage. The trick to eating Sunday breakfast out is to go really early before the people who refer to it as "brunch" show up.

*Dropped MM off at the house. Gary Cotti and I were on a Michael Mission. I was assigned a piece about tomorrow's memorial at Staples Center and, in the anticipation of being one of the 18,000 people to actually get a ticket (out of the 1.6 million who signed up for one) I felt I needed to go see the mini-shrine erected outside the Jackson family house in Encino.

*GC had the big idea of going to MJ's star on Hollywood Boulevard first. We did that. Along with the flowers, homemade signs and balloons, here is a list of things left at the star:

1. homemade four-foot-tall raffia-constructed giraffe
2. a globe, like the kind that sits on a table in an elementary school classroom
3. a balloon animal, variety of animal undetermined
4. a "Little Mermaid" activity book
5. some Matchbox cars
6. a face made out of Play-Doh
7. several dirty stuffed animals

* Drove out to Sherman Oaks to bang on e_ticket's door. We'd tried calling him from Jinky's but he didn't pick up. GC had keys to their place so we let ourselves in the gate and knocked on the door. No answer.
We knocked louder. No answer.

I had to pee so we just let ourselves in. That's where we found Dave C. snoring away in the bedroom. I went to the bathroom while GC said, "DAVE!... DAVE!... DAVE!" over and over. I finished peeing and then I began saying "DAVE!... DAVE!... DAVE!..."

THIS CAT DOES NOT WAKE UP EVER.

So then we left. Then we drove around the block debating the merits of leaving him to sleep or returning to jump on his bed, wake him up and force him to come to Encino (five minutes away) with us. We returned and jumped on the bed. And here is the lesson I learned about e_ticket: when awakened by unexpected guests, he does not startle at all. He sleepily bats his eyes and says, "What are you faggots doing here?" Then he feigns anger. Then he gets up and takes over and runs the show and puts us in his convertible and makes us listen to "Captain EO" songs while driving us to the house.

*You can't even turn onto the street where they live. It's all blocked off. We had to park behind the Barnes & Noble, got some Jamba Juice so that we could say we shopped at the plaza (I got green tea with pomegranate and lemonade, heavy on the lemonade), then we walked past the bootleg t-shirt vendors and the one million TV crews lounging under tents surrounded by one other million cops.

*The outside wall of the home was covered in flowers and balloons and signs. This location was free of the bizarre objects that dotted the Hollywood Blvd star. Instead it was very peaceful. No antics going on. There was a sweet child's drawing of MJ with E.T. and Peter Pan. There was an angry sign about Martin Bashir and "that evil child and his whore mother." I don't know to which evil child and which whore mother the sign was referring. But that person was pissed off and threatened "consequences" to all anti-MJ forces in the world. On the ground there was a sympathy card being trampled. So I picked it up and read it.

Click here for a video e_ticket made of our short visit:

http://web.mac.com/davecobb/davecobb.com/Videos/Entries/2009/7/5_MICHAEL_JACKSON_MEMORIAL.html

I got home and found out that I did not get a ticket to tomorrow's thing. So no Advocate piece about it. Except for the TV column of course. I mean, I assume it'll all be on TV.

First of all, it's Friday and now all my reviews of the week are up at:

http://www.movies.com/

Then, I just saw this on Towleroad

The Campana Brothers are the same men responsible for this stuff:

http://www.mossonline.com/product-exec/product_id/31681

and

http://www.mossonline.com/product-exec/product_id/38790

They also made chairs out of stuffed animals like pandas and, yes, alligators. I like them.

Which means that my reviews of "Public Enemies" and "Ice Age 3: Dawn of The Dinosaurs" are up at Movies.com

Click my face.

http://www.movies.com/

When you are looking for a nursing home for your wheelchair-bound stroke-patient parent and you accidentally stumble upon the website of a fancy care facility that doesn't deal with Medicaid (Medi-Cal in this state), you realize what an annoyance it is not to be rich.

I just found a place nearby that looks like a paradise of happy old people. And it's expensive. I emailed them just now because I wanted to satisfy my curiosity about what's out there. I'm sure I'll be even grumpier when I find out exactly what it's going to cost.

My family was never financially stable as I was growing up. This is not me whining. It's just a fact. My parents weren't... what's the right way to say this... good with money and jobs and the things you have to do to make a secure life. We were never even what I'd call middle class. Alcoholism and Amway were some of the highlights of that era. At the time of my mother's stroke she was, in fact, unemployed, with no real assets or savings, and Medicaid has paid for basically everything. That's the kind of place I've been looking for here, a facility that deals with MediCal. I'm going to visit one such Medi-Cal place tomorrow over in Hancock Park. But now that I've seen what money can buy, I WANT THAT FOR HER.

Goal: Find one or more rich people from which to get an ongoing stream of cash. Or a winning Lotto ticket. Or quickly get my book onto the bestseller list and TV or film rights sold in a bidding war.

Note to commenters: All sex-related suggestions for making money will be laughed at and deleted. I got family reading this so behave.

My mother is the subject of a DynaVox commercial shooting tomorrow. She's already pulling diva behavior and on Sunday became adamant that her hair be cut and colored for the occasion. She was talked out of the color. Gray is the expected hair in a nursing home, really. And her auburn reddish-brown has met more than a couple dye accidents in her life that I've witnessed. I'm of the opinion that a 66 year-old woman with flaming orange on top is the last thing the DynaVox people want when they show up.

I reminded her to chill out when the cameras roll. Sometimes she gets confused using the machine. She knows what word or phrase she wants to say but occasionally has trouble finding the right icon to touch, especially when she's excited. I know that her speech therapist Stephanie will be on hand to coach her and so will my sister-in-law. Obviously I won't, but I can't wait to see the finished spot, which I assume will probably wind up on the DynaVox website.

Meanwhile I have to call her head nurse and talk about her ability to travel on a plane when the time comes for her to come out here. And I have to line up some more nursing home visits in the area.

My DJ sets have resumed, but things have changed. Customers want me to be less heavy and harsh. I don't care. I'll be a human jukebox. It's my job to keep them drinking and enjoying their party moments. I no longer spin all rock and roll sets. I play some of that but nothing that will bother anyone. I hope. So yeah, no more Morbid Angel or Mercyful Fate. I will enjoy that stuff in the privacy of my own home. It was me and like a dozen other guys who liked that stuff. The rest were tolerating it and the others were apparently actively hating it.

And last night I crossed a sort of aesthetic boundary by playing Lady GaGa. I was reluctant. Very reluctant. But after three requests I decided I would stop trying to pretend I didn't have it with me. So I played that song about "boys boys boys buy us drinks in bars." I think it's just called "Boys." Or maybe it's called "Boys Boys Boys." Not sure. Anyway, I expect I'll be playing it regularly now because when I did you'd have thought I'd opened up a trap door in the ceiling and rained money down on those gays. That's how excited they were.

There were also six requests--SIX--for a variety of Britney Spears songs. I seriously do not own one Britney Spears song except for "...Baby One More Time," which is great because it's from the early Swedish era of her pop career. And it's a law that everyone in Sweden must write hit bubblegum pop songs or face banishment to Estonia.

I didn't make a list but here are the bands/artists I played last night in no particular order...

cut copy
basement jaxx
air france
the prodigy
underworld
lily allen
daft punk
hercules & love affair
bedrock
sonic youth
mgmt
pat benatar
dinosaur jr
the cars
mika miko
new order
ladyhawke
hot chip
passion pit
royksopp w/robyn
kylie
phoenix
black meteoric star
the jam
the runaways
the gossip
autokratz
the used
mew
health
discovery
dead or alive
devo
white rose movement
we are wolves
scheer
paramore
lady gaga
yeah yeah yeahs
echo and the bunnymen
madonna
stevie nicks
animotion
kmfdm
depeche mode
david bowie
jay reatard
annie
the stooges
wavves
eurythmics
elastica
the smiths
ministry
rise against
erase errata
talk talk
the horrors