that's what i did to my hand yesterday. it involved a broken microwave and a bowl of soup in the office breakroom. it was ugly. it's actually pretty gross. the picture doesn't do it justice. it was painful for about six hours and then it just turned into a mild sting. or maybe it still hurt deep down inside somewhere and it was the percoset that took the pain away. either way, a day later it feels pretty crummy but for the most part is okay.

i both wanted and needed to clean my house in a big way. at the very least i needed to put all of the random, caseless dvds that have been piling up around my television into their proper homes in boxes and on shelves. none of that is getting done. having a burned up hand has turned me into an even bigger klutz than i normally am. i'm dulling the pain by watching "girls just want to have fun". because teen movies starring sarah jessica parker trying to win the big dance competition while helen hunt outcools everyone else on screen makes me warm all over. good vs. evil, 80s fashions from the mall, dance tv, jonathan silverman, lots of ugly dance tights and camel toes...what's not to love?

i was pretty much sick all weekend. it sucked, but i've gotten used to it. the allergies are kicking my ass and i was all crampy and icky and i basically just stayed in bed most of the time. saturday night i was asleep by 9pm. it was sad. i don't know if it was the allergy medication, the allergies themselves or just the fact that i'd just gotten too *much* sleep, but early sunday morning i dreamed the following:

i was working at target, part time on weekends, and sandra bullock was my manager. i think she might have owned the store. and, even stranger, george lopez apparently worked in payroll. seriously...george lopez came by on saturday (which was apparently the only day i worked at the store) and delivered our paychecks. it was messed up.

*last* night i dreamed that i was in los angeles (though i'm pretty sure i was actually in macon even though it was *supposed* to be LA). i was in a dark shopping center, i was semi-mugged, my car was stolen and i met betty white. except that i think i actually *knew* betty white because i was being very familiar with her and telling her about how we (i have no idea who "we" was supposed to be) were going to come down and visit the "ugly betty" set. yeah, i have no idea. it was a weird weekend.

because i rudely forgot to include this in the last entry, xm recap:

rico suave by gerardo (again, completely shocked that this was in the 90s.)

nobody's fool by kenny loggins (i totally love this song, btw and even own the "caddyshack 2" soundtrack on vinyl. i bought it at starship records in macon, georgia. i don't know why i remember this.)

i'd do anything by natural selection (another one i totally forgot existed but knew pretty much all of the words anyway.)

no more lies by michel'le (another 90s song that should have been, like, 1985. i heard this song really recently on the actual radio.)

and on to paley. this was really the night of paley i most wanted to go to and the fact that it was bookended by "pushing daisies" and "chuck" was just total fate at work. seriously. i consider this *fate*. because i don't have high expectations or aspirations.

i got to the dome around the same time i did the previous day and was surprised that there were only two people there...and only one of them was holding a place for someone else. it was the weirdest thing. but, it was good because the thing was sold out and i was happy to be so close to the front. i was glad i brought my kevin smith book with me. i don't think i mentioned this in previous entries, but i'd gotten totally into "my boring ass life" after starting it on the plane. i don't know why, but the thing is completely addictive. you'd think it would get boring very quickly what with the whole monotony of it ("oh, kevin's buying dvds again", "oh, kevin's fucking his wife again") but no...it doesn't. i'd been there for just a couple of minutes when super cute hipster boy came up to scope out the crowd. the crowd of three. he didn't have tickets for apatow, but he had them for buffy which, really, as we now know was nothing like anything else during this particular festival and, apparently, had people camping out for it. he chit chatted for awhile and gushed over my book. he'd finished it awhile ago and told me that i should skip ahead to the "me and my shadow" parts about mewes. i told him i would, but went right back to the page i was on. i can't skip. even though i've already read some of this online (i sporadically read the journals and blogs and such) i still can't skip around. but, i have no problem lying to cute hipster boys if it makes them smile.

the line quickly grew and just as quickly they let us in. i plopped myself down in the fifth row (the first four were for premium ticket holders which i would have been one of if i hadn't gotten frustrated with the ticket buying experience and/or had the confidence to buy one of those 700$ packages and scalped the buffy ticket on ebay to pay for the whole trip) and settled in. the girls next to me were super sweet and held my seat when i got up to go get much needed popcorn. i was on the worst eating schedule ever while i was out there and popcorn was the only thing at the concession counter that i could see keeping me conscious for the three hours. so, yeah...popcorn, water and then the waiting.

the girl behind me (i had no choice but to eavesdrop because even though she seemed perfectly nice and wasn't at all obnoxious she was *loud* and i couldn't have ignored her if i wanted to) apparently knows someone who knows andy dick's kid and, apparently, that someone was there on the other side of the room with said kid. she called him. i never actually saw anyone who looked like andy dick's kid, but i later saw a pic of tom arnold and what was, apparently, a schwarzenegger kid. that's the closest i'll ever get to arnold. at least i'm assuming as much.

as they do every night of every festival, they began the evening with a video highlighting the festival "honorees" and the museum in general. there were different reactions to different things all three nights, but it sort of surprised me that the most consistent reaction was to simon cowell in a clip from a previous panel. his matter of fact "i couldn't care less what people think of idol" was met with genuine laughs. cowell was a hit. not a hit? "dancing with the stars" which was the reality panel of this season's fest. i was actually kind of surprised because, really, what else were they going to shoehorn in there. nevermind that i don't really have any issues with DWTS, but it seems randomly snobby to roll your eyes at that after you've kind of given the "hell yeah" to simon cowell. but, whatever.

pat mitchell was giving her little intro when i glanced over and saw the most genuinely happy surprise of the night: garry shandling. seriously. garry fucking shandling. i was pretty much in heaven at that point and couldn't really care less who else was on the panel. i heart garry shandling so hard and have since i was eleven years old and used to stay up late on weekends watching showtime and hbo with the sound really low so my parents wouldn't know that i was watching standup comics that were a bit beyond my alleged maturity level. some kids sneak porn, i snuck comedy. again...whatever. so, yeah, garry shandling is pretty much one of my favorite people ever and the fact that i was in the same room with him sort of knocked the air out of me a bit.

and then i saw judd. i discovered him a couple of years after garry thanks to mtv. i owe mtv for a lot: judd, ben stiller, janeane garofalo, jon stewart, the state, anthony clark (whose standup i loved when i was in ninth grade) and even lisa edelstein. awhile back i was going through some tapes and found some old half hour comedy hours. on one of them was judd, dl hughley, janeane, greg proops and rick rockwell. yeah...rick rockwell. the "who wants to marry a millionaire" guy. or was he a multi-millionaire? i can't remember, but it was funny to see him stuck in the middle of people who went on to be huge stars.

so, garry and judd were there. and, the rest of the panel was very distractingly seated on the opposite side of the room. judd, we found out almost immediately, was acting as his own moderator for the evening which was both weird and kind of perfect. the clip he was introduced with, btw, was the leno audition from "the ben stiller show". not the best. janeane's sinead o'connor impression and the random appearance from todd bridges got bigger laughs than judd's performance. even he pointed out that it wasn't funny and they should have used the jim carrey bit from "the larry sanders show" that they played later and got a much better response.

there are probably much better, more coherent, less rambling recaps of the night out there, so i'll try to keep it basic from this point forward, just listing out the highlights.

the panel was, in order of introduction (they were brought out at different times, chronologically to judd's career highlights): judd, garry, tom arnold, seth rogen, jason segel, busy phillips, paul feig, jonah hill, paul rudd and andy dick. actually, i say they were brought out chronologically, but i've just realized that that's a lie. they were brought out *basically* chronologically and i'm just going to guess that andy was left for last because he's andy and it was probably better to restrict his time on the stage to roughly the last ten minutes. my notes, btw, aren't anywhere close to chronological.

*wtf is up with tom arnold? there's something wrong with him. he didn't seem like he was necessarily drunk and he didn't seem like he was necessarily high. and he was basically coherent, it was just taking him a half hour to get out one sentence. something was definitely going on, but i can't pinpoint what that something was. it was almost like watching someone who's had a mild stroke. factor in how weird he is in general and it made for a few awkward moments. garry compared trying to comprehend what he was saying to "listening to nicholson". at one point when it was just garry, judd and tom on stage and tom said something particularly out of left field, garry got up and moved a seat over to distance himself. i wish i had a transcript or a full video or, you know, the time to get to the museum and watch the panel over and over again for the rest of eternity, because i'd like to remember the various inappropriate dick jokes like, iirc, the one that made garry move and then do his own dick joke.

*the first gig judd had working for garry was writing jokes for the grammys the year of the infamous sinatra moment. and maybe this was common knowledge to some, but it was my first time hearing it in spite of the fact that i'm told that this story was shared on two different things that i have copies of and should have seen: sinatra's people are the ones that cut him off, not cbs. and this information wasn't really made available at the time. for that matter, cbs told garry specifically not to mention it, which obviously he did. it's pretty amazing that they took the heat for so long. or maybe they didn't and i just wasn't been paying attention to that part either. either way, that night did give the great billy joel "valuable advertising time going by" dead air moment, which i still count as one of my favorite tv moments ever.

*apparently judd was trying to get garry to use his status as grammy host to recruit musicians to be on "the larry sanders show". he convinced him to approach michael stipe in an exchange that went something to the effect of this:

garry: michael, you should be on my show.

stipe: (blank stare before walking away)

garry: OR, I COULD GO FUCK MYSELF!

*screened the naked breakup scene from "forgetting sarah marshall". i sort of think segel thought judd was kidding for the moment before the lights went down and that scene came up on the screen. it's very weird watching a scene of a naked guy while the naked guy is sitting on the stage right in front of the screen where his nakedness is being projected.

*paul feig used to be mistaken for andy dick. i can't really see that. i had a little crush on paul when he was on "the jackie thomas show". i never had anything resembling a crush on andy. just sayin'. incidentally, that was an awesome show.

*andy was making notes while he was sitting in the audience. when he arrived on stage he tried to read off, couldn't follow his own thought process and asked paul rudd to read it. i'm not sure i've seen too many things funnier than seeing rudd try to figure out what andy wrote and then having to admit that he couldn't "make heads or tails" of it. evidently it was something about sarah marshall. who knows.

*"the andy dick show", unfortunately, will never be on dvd because of all of the music issues.

*saw a clip from "the pineapple express" that has me totally stoked to see it even though it pretty much gave away a huge chunk of the plot. then again, does it matter if you already know the plot to a stoner action movie? probably not.

*jonah totally lost his voice during his big SNL weekend and was relying mostly on a legal pad and a sharpie to contribute to the discussion. i didn't actually make a note of it for some reason, so i'm unclear on exactly what he said, but there was a sweet moment at the end where he wrote down something along the lines of "it's an honor to be sitting on the stage with you guys".

*showed the extended cut of the "knocked up" abortion debate. funny, but i'm only mentioning it as an excuse to mention what i think is the absolute funniest cut scene in the film: the bit with jonah climbing into bed with ben and explaining to him that he thinks all babies are out to kill him. that is one of the funniest things i've ever seen and it's pretty close to the chair scene as far as my favorite things they filmed for that movie.

*garry shandling is a big fan of the "knocked up" chair scene. rudd seemed genuinely touched that he was heaping so much praise on him. they talked about the scene for a bit (judd told the story about his pot smoking girlfriend who used to say things like "the atmosphere is so much better over here" when she'd get high) and then showed it and, honestly, there's something really exciting about seeing something like that with a few hundred people who all love it and appreciate it in the exact same way that you do. it was awesome.

*busy hated "dawson's creek" so much that when she had to go back after doing "undeclared" she *cried*.

*garry seems really proud of judd and that is kind of touching.

afterwards it was a total rush and a bigger clusterfuck than saturday because this event was being immediately followed by a reception where people with far more money than me (or, again, the confidence to shell out the big bucks with the guarantee that it'd all pay for itself with that buffy ebay money) got to mingle with the guests. it's actually best that i was nowhere near that because my fangirly behaviour would have been kicked up to a seriously obnoxious degree. i imagine that i'd be a cross between chris farley meeting paul mccartney and lisa simpson with a crush. it wouldn't be pretty and i'd most likely be asked to leave. but, that's okay.

in the middle of all the craziness, i did manage to get segel to sign my program and, completely by luck as i was leaving the theater, got busy to sign it too.i got nowhere near judd (and there were so many people around him that i couldn't even get a picture of him in focus) and getting near seth and rudd was something that i didn't even have the energy to try to do. luck had me right in the front of the stage where segel was and thankfully, even though he was literally being dragged away, he was nice enough to sign things as he walked across the stage to the exit.

there is not a single moment of the event that didn't have me squeeing in my head. and there are about fiteen billion awesome moments that i didn't even get to here.

now for some pictures:

so, i'm going to spare you the lengthy mariah carey nonsense that i had started to type up and, many paragraphs in, realized made no sense. and that's on top of being a completely boring, even more self indulgent than usual rant. but, i will say this: i like mariah carey. i don't *want* to, but i do. in spite of evidence to the contrary, i don't think she's stupid or insane, just kind of fragile, way too pampered and a little weird. and ultimately, there's nothing wrong with that. so, i'm saying it right now: i *like* mariah.

mariah, in case anyone's still reading and wonders about the relevance, was the musical guest on jonah hill's episode of SNL that aired the saturday that i was in LA. i didn't make it back to the hotel in time to see any of it (and unfortunately tivo died when i returned before i got a chance to watch any of it), so i don't know how it went other than that jonah seems to have gotten good reviews and the couple of times he contributed at paley that monday night he had to have a legal pad handy to write on what with his having lost his voice as a result of the show and, i'm guessing, the afterparty. anyway, that's mariah's first moment of relevance. monday morning, on my way to visit the la brea tarpits (which i'd never been to in spite of having always been interested in), i listened to seacrest interview her. and there was much apatow talk from her. she loves her some judd. at least she says she does. if you take jonah's comments about her inability to get basic, stupid jokes during the SNL promo tapings, there's no way she actually understands any of judd's movies, but it's possible that i took his comments way harsher than he intended them. which would be ironic, i guess. so, yeah...somehow i've managed to go off on a tangent that makes my mariah love even more questionable than it was before, so i'll stop. i really need to go to sleep. i think that's making itself clearer with every word i type. so, we'll just leave the above alone, ignore the fact that it most likely makes very little sense and i'll post some pics from the super cool tar pits.

oh, but first, here's the E! van that was parked across the street from the park. did i not mention that E! was conveniently located right across the street from the tar pits and that that's where seacrest's morning show is broadcast? really? i left that out, did i...

i still maintain that it's not stalking if you can't find the guy.



and here be the tarpits and the page museum. apatow panel pics to come, along with more coherent journalling about the subject that i'm genuinely excited about and probably would have written about much sooner if i weren't so OCD that i had to do this in order.

two posts in one day! blow me down!!

march 16th.

1. melrose swap meet...

i've always wanted to go to the melrose swap meet. it just always looks like so much fun and it's totally the kind of thing i enjoy and, yet, something always happens. last time i wanted to go was the trip where i had the flat tire that had to be dealt with and it was zoo day and i just wound up driving by as it was winding down feeling bummed that i was missing it. not this time, though. that was my sunday morning plan. and it worked out well for me as i had a nice morning of casual "window shopping", picked up a couple of records, chatted with random people that i'll never see again and enjoyed the swap meet atmosphere. swap meets always have that "thing", no matter where they are. whether you're in LA, NY, atlanta...a flea market/swap meet/bigass yard sale always makes you happy.

2. only low point of the morning: some old dude who took my "yeah, it sucks" response to his "this weather is crazy" comment as an opening for him to explain how cold wind can give you bell's palsy. i have no idea if this is true but even if it is, i don't really care. i never know how to get away from people like that. i suppose i'm an adult and i can do what i want to and if i don't want to talk to you i can just walk off and be done with it, but while that's nice in theory it's really rude. i have terrible social skills anyway, but i'm just not equipped to get away from random boring strangers. fortunately he got distracted by pastries, so i was off the hook and scurried away. my annoyance was soon completely gone when a completely beautiful though most likely gay man complimented my purse. he was so beautiful and so complimentary and so charismatic that it's a wonder i didn't just blindly give it to him. he'll make a great cult leader some day, i'm sure.

3. after leaving the swap meet, i looped around the block and came back out on fairfax so i could head in the general direction of food. in the time that it took me to get from the fairfax side of the parking lot to my car and back around the block to that same place a fire hydrant had busted and was flooding the street. it was really cool and, fortunately, was just far enough away that it wasn't raining water down on the vendors. it was the strangest site. not at all what i was expecting and, of course, i had to take pictures. it was kind of awesome.





4. xm radio...

regina's "baby love", a song i forgot existed. and i have no idea how i so quickly associated regina with it. i'm not even entirely sure who regina is, but i knew she sang that song.

5. seacrest content...

in spite of it being on here every saturday (or sunday?), i have never listened to his AT 40 countdown. i gave it five minutes before the novelty wore off. besides, why listen to that when i had casey's version on xm radio. yeah...i don't know which is wearing thinner: the seacrest devotionals or the obsession with xm radio.

6. a migraine (or the beginning of one) temporarily sidelined me for the afternoon, so i went back to the hotel and loaded up on excedrin to knock it out of me. i was supposed to call a friend and maybe hook up to see a movie that night and even though i was very tired and i'm sure she wouldn't have been the least bit bummed if i didn't even bother calling her, i still kind of wanted to. so, i went all lazy and watched half of "the cutting edge" and some of "tombstone" and amazingly the flashes stopped and the headache subsided and all was good.

7. one thing to note: the electrical outlets in my room were totally hit or miss. they'd just go in and out and the clock would go off or the fridge would stop running and, basically, i wouldn't be surprised to turn on the news one day in the future and see that the place had burned to the ground. it was very strange. and the tv...it was a nightmare. my last experience in that hotel was great, but this one...weird.

8. wound up meeting friend at the grove to see "vantage point". i mention this specifically because i urge you all *not* to see "vantage point". i'm sure it's probably not even in theaters anymore, but even on video...avoid it unless you have some particular devotion to one of the actors. i generally get annoyed when people say they "felt sorry" for someone in a movie because i pretty much think that's a stupid thing to say. i can't help myself, though...i felt *bad* for dennis quaid. i mean, wtf? and even though forest whitaker was great and kind of adorable i wanted to slap him for the most part because nobody's that good. it was just a mess. and most of the audience seemed to think it was a mess. really...don't see it. if i even get a hint that you're planning on seeing it, i'm totally going to tell you how it ends. seriously. except, given that it's not hard to call the "bad guy" out approximately three minutes in, that's probably a hollow threat.

really. don't see this movie. that is all. and now for pictures...and because there aren't a lot for this day, i'm including some of the "forgetting sarah marshall" photos i took. because i couldn't resist (it's an awesome marketing campaign, imo) and because it'll take my mind off of "vantage point" and because it's a good prelude to the coming post about the apatow panel.

so, where was i?

march 15th. yummy crepes at the farmers market. absolutely no farmers market/grove celebrity sightings, which is a bummer since the last time i was there i saw ileana douglas and fred stoller. an emergency trip to kmart for batteries and something that i've already forgotten followed my yummy crepe breakfast.

xm radio good times: nkotb's "step by step" which totally freaked me out by being on the NINETIES channel. that was the nineties? really? also: martika's "toy soldiers" which i actually still kind of love and reminds me of the jukebox at pizza hut which really shouldn't be a good memory, but is. long story short: we totally got dissed at the pizza hut once by amanda akins who didn't want us there because she thought my mom was gonna come (wtf?) and she was on a "date" (i hate to break it to her, but...) and she basically wound up telling a friend that i could go fuck myself. actually, she didn't "basically" say that, she out and out said that, quote unquote. she didn't know she was on the speaker phone and that i was listening. and my mom was listening. and, oops. wasn't junior high fun? yeah, i know.

just a note: people who park hummers in spots specifically designated for compact cars should be shot in the balls repeatedly. if you are not a man and/or do not have balls then i'm okay with you just being socked in the face a few times. not enough to kill you, karate kid style, but enough to make you cry.

and now, "pushing daisies" at paleyfest 2008...

i'll spare you a full recap because there are plenty of websites and livejournals and blogs out there that have already done it and, in all honesty, i only really wrote the highlights in my journal anyway. and because it's been a month and my memory tends to reboot itself after about a week (sometimes hours), there are parts that i simply don't remember.

because jenny had an emergency, i was left with a ticket which was snapped up by a nice girl who i wound up sitting with but parted ways with during the crazy mad rush of people towards the stage at the end. she showed up in a picture of people trying to get lee pace's attention that i saw posted somewhere, so i'm guessing that she had a good time. it looked like it, anyway.

there was some sort of war protest happening on sunset near the arclight earlier in the day, which completely fucked up traffic and had me getting back to my hotel late and, you know, just forced me into one of those rushes that i don't like being in. still, i managed to make it back to the arclight with plenty of time to spare and to find that the line actually wasn't that long. i was only about ten people back (in the gen/ad line). that shocked me a little bit, since this was one of only two panels that immediately sold out when tickets went onsale. being an hour early and having a good spot in line really didn't do much good once it started raining, though. seriously, it was freezing cold and/or raining for most of the time i was in LA. i'm still not sure what was up with that, but the weather wound up following me home and now i'm sitting in georgia in the middle of april wearing a sweater, heavy coat and running a space heater at my desk. it's insane. anyway, it rained and we got cold and took matters into our own hands and relocated the line but, basically, the whole "lining up outside" thing was pretty much the only part of the new location that i didn't like. beyond that, good job paley. the dome is the perfect place for the festival.

inside: good seats, cool people, lots of nice folks there because they enjoy the show. i'm sure that the PD fandom has their share of sociopaths (all fandoms do), but i didn't see any. obviously some of that is because i don't know the heirarchy of the PD fandom or where the "cool kids" hang out or who would stab who if it meant getting closer to lee pace. where i was standing it was a shiny happy little world of fans. i don't want to get all hippie on you, but i loved them all. oh, except for the one chick who felt the need to stand in an aisle for about twenty minutes very loudly making sure that people knew she had some sort of personal relationship with kristen chenoweth. you know the kind of person i'm talking about. there's always at least one and they usually have good seats and they stand up with their back to the stage making sure that everyone sees just how good their seats are. i generally love that person because they bring me much enjoyment with their douchebag behaviour and it's always entertaining trying to figure out which of their friends and aquaintances are sitting there seething with jealousy and which ones are debating the best way to ditch them at the end of the night. awesome.

the panel itself was fab. lee pace was yummy, anna friel was lovely and funny and kind of serious at times (though very warm towards both lee and chi, who sat on either side of her), ellen greene laughs like a donkey and is made of awesome, kristen chenoweth was just as hilarious as always and chi mcbride is pretty much the greatest thing ever. i sort of forget that i'm actually a big fan of his. it's easy to take him for granted and when you see things like the cookie cutter performance on "house" or that awful "killer instinct" show, you forget that he's capable of so much more. i loved him on "the john larroquette show" and in "the frighteners" and on "the nine" and i just forget sometimes how awesome and funny he is. or i did forget. i doubt i'll forget again. he's a total ham, but it's not annoying or off putting. he pulls it off.

and here's my real revelation: i kind of grew to love kristen dos santos. i enjoyed her so much that i've actually begun using her correct name. as i told someone elsewhere, she appears to be one of those people whom i find completely obnoxious in small doses, but actually wind up enjoying in larger doses. it's bizarre. but, she did a great job moderating the panel, she's clearly a fan (and not just a suckup friend of bryan fuller's) and she was *funny*. i know, wtf? i liked her so much that i almost approached her after the apatow panel a couple of nights later to tell her that. i didn't only because she was already talking to someone and i didn't feel like standing around to make small talk with someone i don't know and, up until that week, didn't even really care for. plus, you know, diarrhea of the mouth probably would have resulted in me accidentally insulting her. it happens more often than not.

post panel: there was a serious rush to the stage. i wound up pushed up against it on the side that ellen and kristen hung out on. they were super nice to everyone. beyond that, there's not much to say. it was a little uncomfortable where i was stuck (and i kept having to apologize to people and/or accept apologies for the tight fit), but it was interesting seeing fans of the show (many who were clearly much, much, much bigger fans than me) interact with the stars. young ned and chuck were there (they weren't a part of the actual panel) and were completely adorable. i got nowhere near lee or anna, as was expected. they were totally mobbed. i didn't think i was going to get near chi either, which was sort of disappointing. i decided to try to escape the madness and head out, but after going to the bathroom i decided to duck back into the theater to see what was going on. amazingly, most of the actors were still there. i moved back to the front and somehow wound up getting chi to sign my program just before he left. so, you know, yay!!

after that i really did leave, called a friend and wound up meeting for drinks which i desperately needed. it was nice to hang out and wind down even if it was in a super loud club and we were surrounded by people i didn't know. still, it was nice and fun and jesus, i'm totally boring myself. this is possibly the worst thing i've ever written in my life. and i've written more than my share of term papers the night before they were due. i'm just going to stop now and leave you with my fairly decent but still plagued with red eye pictures. that is, if you haven't passed out from boredom by now. or, you know, you went all tl;dr and didn't see the pictures at the bottom. and why the fuck am i still typing? stop it. jeez.

i took matters into my own hands. it's poor quality, but what can you do? that's what happens when all that's out there are vhs tapes, sometime dubbed into nearly total blurriness. if only they had the time to put together a comprehensive dvd set with all the episodes and extra sketches and commentaries and such. OH, WAIT! THEY HAVE! so, release it already, mtv. god.

anyway, here is "asides", written by showalter. there is so much about this that kills me every time.

i interrupt the already interrupted trip journal to whine a little bit about something that is actually related to the events in the trip journal, but only as something that *could* have happened, but didn't.

dear members of the state:

please reuinte for more live shows. please. because i thought i was okay missing the ones in LA at the UCB and for a little while i was and then, suddenly, i'm not anymore. it hit me yesterday. hard. i had watched some of the WHAS extras the day before and i had been in the mood for michael ian black's cd on the drive in to work. midway through it i realized that i am absolutely not, in any way at all, okay with missing those shows. i recognize that even though tickets sold out in negative time and i was already going to the "pushing daisies" panel at paleyfest (which was happening the same night and would have conflicted) and to even hope to catch a glimpse of any of you i would have had to wait outside and hope for one available ticket to be doled out to someone on the standby line and it really wouldn't have worked out well for me in the end and blah, blah, blah...i still feel like i should have been there. just the simple fact that i was in town when it was happening, when i live all the way across the country is a sign that i should have been in the audience. it's weird, right? i feel a sense of loss for something that i logically could not have attended unless fifty different things had alligned at just the right moment and even then, no guarantees. and, honestly...it's just a comedy show, right? and not even a full reunion what with the mikes being out on the road. but, whatever. i don't care. i'm selfish and petulant, like a kid who got fifty presents for their birthday, but still wants more. i am a brat. and i'm okay with that.

that's why i'm begging you to do a small tour. or play a bigger venue. i would probably break my newly instated, so far completely enforced rule about limiting my travel to places that are within driving distance from my house. though, really...what is driving distance anyway? i'd say it's as far as the car will go and my car's been doing all right lately, so bring it.

i hope you will take my request into consideration.

sincerely,

amysusanne

i really do love the state. very much. i love sketch comedy. i love certain periods of snl and i love monty python. and i love sctv and the kids in the hall. and fry and laurie. and the crew from the ben stiller show. and the world around amy sedaris, paul dinello and stephen colbert. and even though there are times when i love various parts of the above more than i love the state, the state tends to be one of the more special groups in my mind. i think it's because the state was for *me*. it was for people exactly my age who were graduating from high school at exactly the time i was and who were watching mtv at the exact moment that i was watching mtv. it didn't last long (as a show, at least) and it was barely a blip on the radar of most people, but they were perfect to me. they were sonic youth. they were 120 minutes. they were sassy magazine. they were absolutely, 100% for me and as much as i love "wet hot american summer" and stella and seeing michael ian black on "ed" for all those years, i still love the state as a unit more than any of that.

i searched the internet high and low for "asides", one of my very favorite sketches, but i can't find it. if it's out there, it's hidden pretty deep. i've only ever been on the outskirts of the state/stella/VV/whatever fandoms, so i don't know how popular that sketch even is, really, but i love it. i love the line "rick's a trumpet" and pretty much anything tom lennon says is golden.

interestingly (or predictably), viacom, in spite of sitting on the dvd set of "the state" and refusing (at least as far as i'm concerned they're refusing) to release it to the public, has had most of the sketches removed from youtube. fuckers. i'm sure if i dug and dug i could find louie at the last supper or some stuff with doug and dad, but right now i can't. so, i leave you with the weird and absurd "porcupine racetrack" and will return shortly with "pushing daisies" pictures, an evening with apatow that *seriously* ties in with this post and some pictures of the broken fire hydrant that sent a huge gyser into the air that flooded fairfax *and* gave my rental car a great wash.

1. first off, i am a liar. i did not watch "the return of jezebel james" after returning from the pier, i watched it after returning from the zoo. so, how can you trust a single word i say here as fact, huh? if i'm going to lie about things like that then for all you know i bypassed a nice hotel in favor of a sleeping bag and night vision goggles outside of hugh laurie's house, right? well, you'd be wrong for many reasons, the biggest of which is that if i were going to sleep outside of a celebrity's house everyone knows it would be zachary levi, the very handsome star of "chuck" and my current crush. so, suck it people who think they understand my brain! what was i saying? oh....how do you know i'm not a liar. because i actually write this shit down. i just misread my own margin doodle which was a bunch of sunflowers around the words "this show blows!!" and the correct date on which it blew. so, yeah...i don't know why i'm spending so much time on a show that was cancelled after an hour and a half either.

2. i used to listen to ryan seacrest's show every morning. i'd flip back and forth (on the computer) between him and kevin and bean, which is what i would turn on after the east coast morning radio shows ended. because at that point, none of them sucked. nowadays, save for the bert show (which is not my taste, but really the only one that doesn't make me want to kick small children just to get my frustration out), all morning radio in atlanta sucks. and nowadays i don't have a sound card on my work computer, which means that i have no alternatives other than dragging in cds (which i do). i still really enjoy kevin and bean a lot and, fortunately, they offer full show podcasts. yay, kevin and bean. ryan seacrest, otoh, only offers fawning, starfucking celebrity interviews and that bullshit "ryan's roses" nonsense (which, incidentally, minus the "ryan" part, we also have here and i hate it no matter what city it's broadcast in) which caused me to incorrectly determine that i hated his radio show. keep in mind that there is a wide gap between "not hating" and actually liking something, but i was reminded of why i ever listened in the first place. i like the people. i like the back and forth when it's not all about bullshit. i also enjoy the lack of screaming laughter at things that aren't funny and random buzzers and whistles and that nonsense you hear on other "all the hits" morning drive shows. given the ease with which i can download K&B, i chose ryan. you hear that seacrest? i chose you. and what did you give me? paris hilton. way to say thanks.

3. i actually wrote little notes about the above while i was eating lunch at the zoo because i am a loser.

4. on the drive to san diego (i left around 7 and traffic was perfectly pleasant) i stopped off at the viewpoint to look at the ocean and steamships and little possibly rabid squirrel creatures and evil birds. and tourists. and a couple of truck drivers. until this trip i hadn't been to san diego in 18 years. since i don't know when i'll get back, i figured i should enjoy it. and i did. those little possibly rabid squirrel creatures are way more polite than the evil birds. sure, they beg for food, but they beg *nicely* and when you give it to them they don't try to take your hand off like, say, my cats do. my indoor, domestic cats who have never lived in the wild and have never been forced to hunt down their food will gnaw off one of my fingers if i'm not quick enough with the snacks, but these little guys knew begging etiquette. so i fed them the remainder of the pineapple cup that i brought along with me. in spite of my incessant whining and griping (a lot of which i've done today) it actually doesn't take much to make me smile.

5. to be one of the most famous zoos in the world you would think san diego could do a little something about the lack of signage. i'm just sayin', that place was a bitch to find.

6. i got momentarily lost and passed by that red room bar place that might have something about a fox in the name? i can't remember, but i knew the picture and i know it was in "top gun" and i'm pretty sure that when i went with my parents all those years ago we *might* have gotten turned around at that same spot. or maybe that was just a dream i had. either way, i love "top gun". seriously.

7. it was cold as all get out that day. and it rained a little bit, though not much. the socal weather, the entire time i was there, was completely bizarre, though obviously not as bizarre as atlanta, which had the shit beat out of it by a tornado around the same time i was arriving back in LA. there's nothing that isn't weird about that.

8. i love monkeys. a lot. and elephants. and koalas. and cheetahs whose companions are dogs. and pandas, though the panda guides/trainers/people wranglers were a bit like angry kindergarten teachers who learned their people skills from the nazis in old films. the pandas were cute. the woman yelling, "take a picture and move on" really wasn't so much.

9. the monkeys are still my favorite, but if i were going to steal anything at the san diego zoo it would be the loud and bratty singing dog. that dog *rocked*. that dog had things to *say*. i would very much enjoy hanging out with that dog.

10. overall, the zoo was awesome. i was there for hours and hours and still didn't see it all. in fact, i got lost once and i'm sure i missed something good by doubling back. i was so exhausted by the end of the day that i was very close to faking a sprained ankle just to get a park employee to drive me to my car.

11. that crispy fish taco? gross. and then kind of good. and then gross again. and then awesome. i have no idea why i bought it other than that it was easier to eat in the car than anything else and the del taco was right next to the gas station i stopped at. we have del taco here, though not many and it's kind of a bitch to get to, so i never go. i'm actually glad because i would probably eat a lot of these and i imagine that whatever is in that isn't something you should be ingesting on a regular basis.

12. still loving the XM radio: "love child" by sweet sensation, "saving all my love" by linear. it scares me that i know all the words to songs that not only did i barely remember existed but really shouldn't have been listening to in the first place. there is zero reason that i should know who linear is, much less know their songs. i blame all of that "dance party USA" that i used to watch after school.

coming up tomorrow (hopefully): "pushing daisies" at palyefest, yummy strawberry crepes, some sarah marshall billboards, a little bit of alcohol and absolutely no ryan seacrest!!! never fear, he'll soon return...

on with the pictures...

pictures from the viewpoint and the zoo. animals in cages should not be restricted by livejournal cuts!!! hooray, animals!!

i was initially going to post a trip diary. then i was going to post a little highlight "reel". then i was going to picspam the hell out of this place. and now i'm just so meh that i don't want to do any of it. but, i did get some good pictures on my recent vacation and i did do some fun stuff and i figured that it's not as if anything else is happening in this lj, so even though my vacay has officially been over for 12 long and painful days, since i still haven't completely unpacked and there's work sitting on my desk that's been there since before i left, there's no reason i can't write about it like it happened yesterday. right?

whatever.

so, part one. day one. travel day, arrival day, "grab some random food at ralph's and go to sleep early so you can get up and go to the zoo the next morning" day. i was supposed to hang out with jenny on this here trip, but a personal emergency made that go bye bye. which was completely understandable and ultimately okay, but left me with much time to fill on my own. fortunately, i hooked up with another friend, made new friends (of the temporary "we're bonding because we're standing in line together" variety) and completely enjoyed my solitary time in a way that makes me realize that if not for my addiction to the internet and my need to have a television on 24/7, i could go completely off the grid and live the life of a hermit.

1. watched "dan in real life" on the plane. an impulse buy the day before while grabbing some last minute necessities at walmart. a perfectly pleasant, though slightly disappointing film. go in with your expectations low and a willingness to accept the fact that dane cook does not suck total ass in the film and you'll enjoy it fine. carell is top notch perfect and, like i said, dane cook does not suck. in fact, he's quite good. which is painful for me, but i have to be fair. there was a lot missing and even though there were sparks at the beginning and end, carell and juliette binoche never quite clicked. i wish it had been a movie about him and his daughters. still...if you like steve carell, watch it. he won't disappoint.

2. the woman sitting behind me on the plane checked her messages the second we landed and found out that someone close to her had died. what a horrible thing to happen. it made me want to immediately call my mother and make sure my family was okay. i did. they were.

3. arrived early afternoon, got food, checked into the hotel, rested and then decided to go for a drive. i wound up at the santa monica pier because, a) i like the pier and b) i figured i wouldn't have much time during the rest of my trip to head out there at night and what's the point of flying all that way if you don't even see the lovely that is the coast at night?

4. i find myself addicted to XM radio when on vacation. the 80s and 90s stations are crack to me. and the "limited edition" thriller/mj station got a lot of play even though i completely object to that new version of "the girl is mine".

songs heard and enjoyed for various reasons:

november rain by guns n roses
could've been (aka "the dead flowers song") by tiffany
together forever by rick astley (which was also playing over the PA at the pier)

5. the boardwalk itself was closed off for a private grade school carnival event, but the pier and arcade were open to the public. i wasn't there to ride the ferris wheel anyway, so i was okay with that. i was not okay with the fact that the taco stand was closed because i was craving, in a bad way, a steak taco. dammit. there are three junky fast food items in LA that i love because they are yummy and i cannot get them here: pinks, those gross monster tacos from jack in the box and steak tacos from the stand at the pier. i got two out of three on the trip, so i guess that's a success story.

6. i went to ralph's to grab some staples for the room (and some grocery store california rolls) and went back to crash for the night. i watched the very awful first episode of "the return of jezebel james" which, as i type this, has already been cancelled and went to sleep. and as i end #6 on this list, i realize that day one could have been skipped entirely and all three of you reading this have already lapsed into a coma and, thus, won't be able to see the super cute pictures from the zoo that will accompany he next entry. bummer.

coming up in the future: the san diego zoo, the tar pits, various random sites i like, some of those sarah marshall billboards and lots of paleyfest goodness.

*note to seacrest: should your people get a note on this, it's a joke. it's intended to be a humorous comment. a joke at my own expense. a mockery of my already much mocked fascination with you. do not take it seriously and, while you're at it please remember, if happy fun ball begins to smoke, get away immediately. seek shelter and cover head. happy fun ball is not a toy.

for those still awake, here are a few pics to stimulate the brain. note: i was playing with the lights and shutter speeds a bit and, thus, some of these may only be interesting to me. as usual, cuts are for suckers.