Grrr.

Why “Grrr,” you ask?

“Grrr” because it’s 5:30am and I woke up about half an hour ago with my heart racing like I’d just run the 100-yard dash in world-record time and of course I can’t go back to sleep, so I’m up and I’m not going to get to sleep again ’till at least midnight, the thought of which exhausts me.

“Grrr” because I’ve been working on a film festival and the projectionist just came by yesterday to test out his equipment and as it turns out the projection area is about 1/2 the size it should be and now I’m left scrambling either to find a new lens for the 16mm projector (about as likely as finding a set of eight matching absinthe spoons in the “ear” pattern in mint condition lying in a Tiffany-blue bag on my doorstep this very morning) or to move some of the screenings to a smaller venue.

“Grrr” because there are two houseflies circling my computer and I keep trying to spray them with the compressed air I use to dust my keyboard, hoping it’ll freeze ’em just like that fly-nap stuff my friends used to use in biology class but of course, like most of my schemes, nothing interesting happens.

On the other hand…I finally located a scan of one of my favorite paintings. The one and only time I went to France, I was roaming the Musee d’Orsay (which hosts one of the world’s largest collections of Victorian art) and I stumbled (almost literally–Victorian art can be painfully boring at times) into a gallery completely dominated by Jean Delville’s The School of Plato, an outrageously lush painting of twelve scantily clad, sylphlike men, languidly lolling at the feet of an equally willowy Plato, who bore a striking resemblance to most modern depictions of Jesus Christ. It was weird because, like, (a) it was totally gay, (b) it was totally blasphemous, and (c) it was hanging in a major museum and was therefore validated as one of the premier pieces of Victorian art, like, ever. Which makes me pause and say, yo, Victoria, wassup wit’ you and your obliquely lovesexy regime? Women were closing their eyes and thinking of England, but men got to pierce their dicks and lollygag half-nekkid with other men? Y’all was some freaks, indeed….

Anyway, I didn’t have the chance to get a postcard of the piece, but I thought, no biggie, it’s a major painting in a major museum–I’ll find one eventually.

Wrong.

Either the painting’s proven really difficult to reproduce, or (my guess) the museum’s not quite ready to vaunt it as a prize collection piece, because it’s an impossible-to-find image. It’s not even featured in most of the Musee d’Orsay books and catalogues I’ve happened to come across. So when I found it the other day almost by accident, I was pleasantly surprised.

Around four o’clock this morning, Jonno and I parked my father’s butter-yellow 1972 Mustang on the upper floor of a parking garage. I turned around to look for the elevator, and when I turned back, I saw a police officer arresting my boyfriend.

To my surprise (and yours, too, if you know Jonno), he was handling it quite well, chatting and joking with the officer. When I asked Jonno what had happened, he said that the officer had simply asked him how things were going, but when Jonno responded with a quote from Allistair Crowley, the officer knew something was suspicious and searched the car. There he found a couple of stems from a bud my boyfriend had been smoking, and that, ladies and germs, was all she wrote. My boyfriend was in cuffs and I started scrambling for a lawyer.

What struck me as the most odd–aside from Jonno’s complacency–was the fact that a New Orleans Police Officer was abel to correctly identify a quote from Mr. Crowley. But before I had time to give it much thought, I awoke to find my boyfriend curled quietly beside me.

Then, at around 5:30, I found myself at my old elementary school, wandering the grounds and enjoying Mayday celebrations with my close personal friend Megan Mullally. We were discussing the school’s desperate need for a paint job and the capital campaign they must be running to maintain the building.

I’m dreaming of capital campaigns. I think I’ve been a fundraiser too long. Any suggestions for new career choices?

Strange Dreams, indeed, Ms. Anderson.

The more I think about it, the stranger it seems: why should scent have such an overwhelming influence on memory? Something I see might occasionally remind me of something else, or the sound of an old song might bring to mind the friends I had when it first played, but smells… The memories I associate with the scent of hairspray or musty corridors or night-blooming jasmine can be really overwhelming. Almost knocks me down, at times.

Like the other day: I came home and it was moderately hot outside and the air conditioner in the living room hadn’t been on and our house smelled exactly like my friend Ken’s house did when I was 12 years old. A warm smell, not completely clean, but not filthy either. Fried food permeating every porous surface. It smelled like home–not really my home, but someone’s.

Scarier than Satan is right. For all three of you out there who’ve never seen Kiki and Herb in concert, this’ll give you a taste of what to expect when you do (and you will, Mary).

The most interesting part for me is the fact that Justin’s apparently been asked to teach a course in my old department at NYU (Performance Studies, not Performance Art, as he’s quoted). I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that one: battle of the egomaniacal freaks is what that’ll be. Having seen both Justin and the profs at NYU first-hand, I’m not placing any bets on who’ll come out alive….

Our Director must have had really good sex this morning. She’s practically singing. Rock on, gold dust woman….

Wah! Mommy make it stop! Can someone please turn off this internal clock thing before I single-handedly put Westclox out of business?

Maybe I can get a prescription for sleeping pills and get addicted to them like Hollywood bimbos of the 1950s. Or my mom.

The worst part of it all was that I was actually having a fairly entertaining–if exceedingly faggoty–dream: I was working at a summer theatre camp for high school kids, and I was directing the camp’s production of Twelfth Night. All the kids who had auditioned for the play were really very good, but one of my old grad school profs (I guess he was running the camp, but I dunno) kept whining about how important it was for me to play the role of Orsino so I could “anchor” the show. (This prof, FYI, had a habit of casting himself in student productions, which irritated all of us to no end.) I adamantly refused.

So I had all these kids there and it was shaping up to be a great rehearsal and then I realized that two of my kids were kinda weird, but I couldn’t put my finger on the actual problem. Then I saw that they were actually pie plates–walking, talking pie plates, but pie plates nonetheless.

That’s when I woke up.

Sounds like the sort of scenario my boyfriend might whisper into my ear just to watch me squirm as I slept….

For those of you who know him, this’ll be funny: a snap of Eric Pelito in the NY Times. No, he’s not the focus of the story–in fact, he rarely is. But he always seems to be loitering convienently nearby….

As a child, I thought the worst possible career anyone could have was that of garbageman.

Then I grew older and I attended a liberal arts college, where it became apparent that garbagemen are doing really honest work, and that the worst possible career anyone could have is actually that of accountant.

But now I know several accountants–in fact, my fraternity big brother turned out to be a very good one–and I kinda like them. So I was left without a career to demonize.

Until today.

Today I decided that the worst possible career anyone can have is that of Halloween costume model. Don’t believe me? Next time you go to Wal-Mart or the seasonal Halloween superstore, take a good look at that Rocky and Bullwinkle Natasha dress and matching wig. Look closely at the woman modeling the costume on front of the $40 package. Look deep into her eyes. See what I mean?

I’ll bet if you held it to your ear, you could almost hear her whining in a thick, fresh-off-the-plane-from-Tennessee accent: “I thought this was supposed to be an A&F ad, y’all. They said I’d be working with the Brewer twins. Isn’t that Bryce Webber guy supposed to be taking the pictures? Hell, y’all–now I ain’t never gonna be famous like mama promised….”

Okay, so how do I turn off this internal alarm clock thingie?

Woo-hoooooo! Check the time stamp on this one, kids!

It’s not insomnia this time–I’ve actually got a load of stuff to do this morning. But the scary thing isn’t really the time of day; it’s that even though I went to sleep around midnight, I didn’t need an alarm clock to wake up at 5:30. It just happened. I guess it’s a genetic defect. I may not be responsible to a fault, but my body is.

Fuck Bubbles: I’m hardcore.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz………