Once again, I find myself in the last half of a year and with insane amounts of stuff going on in the months leading up ’till the end. What is this all about, anyway? Why is time going so fast and why is there so much going on all the time? Even when I’m not doing anything, it still exhausts me. Like tonight I am not doing anything really, just throwing some stuff on ebay and looking at websites about Malta. Pretty mellow stuff. To make things easier I am going to eat a baked potato. The ultimate low-stress meal. I can’t figure it out, this being tired when nothing is going on/being tired when there is too much going on thing. Maybe it is all the dreaming I do at night. Maybe my dreams are a parallel universe so really, I’m not getting any sleep at all. Maybe, I am suffering from sleep deprivation because there isn’t really a thing like sleep anymore, because the mind reels with dreams because the days are so insane that the mind can’t cope.

I dream about merry-go-rounds and ferris wheels spinning manically. Colors fly off of them. I simply don’t get any rest, this way. But I love my dreams, even if they are sick and twisted and full of sex and violence. (Except for the ones where people are trying to kill me. I hate those.) Maybe I am Quentin Tarantino in a parallel universe? Or maybe Todd Solondz. No, that is too suburban weirdo. I was never living in the suburbs. Was I? Hmm… maybe I did, in a dream once. I suppose my nighttime visions are all mine. Daytime seems pretty boring, when you get right down to it. All that barreling down freeways one second from death, threats of terrorism and disaster everywhere you look, disease, mean people, etc etc. It’s all pretty boring these days, since we get so much of it. But dreams! They are different every night! (Well, for me, but I’m not one of those people who dreams the same dream. Though I think it would be really cool if the dreams were good.)

Sometimes when I go to sleep I try to ask for a certain kind of dream, but I never get it. I read that in a dream book, that you could ask for the answer to a problem, and the dream would tell you the solution. Sadly I have never been that “in-tune” that I could figure out the symbolism. Plus, the symbolism is different, depending on what book you read. And really when you get right down to it, if you are trying to read all this shit into it, that takes the fun out of it. Then dreams become as severe and boring as being awake! Now that is a frightening thought.

OK I’ll stop now. Sorry.

It’s 10:15 PM on a Sunday night, and my neighbor Neil, who may or may not be gay, is having a party. I’ve never seen him entertain, but tonight he’s got some dudes in the back and they are all drumming on stuff. Man, it’s all primal and shit. Like, I am so thinking I am ready to die. Go back to the earth, as it were. The drumming is making me crazy.

I’m probably ready to die, not only from the drumming, but from the excess. Yesterday I excessed to the point of frenzy. It was only slightly out of control, though. The day left me wondering, in this order: What? Why? How? When? But in the end, the highest power redeemed everything.

I’ll leave it to ya’all to figure out the one thing that slays me. If you can’t figure it out well, you don’t really know me at all, also you haven’t been paying attention.

There are some questions that have been haunting me for the last fifteen minutes.

1) Is it just me or are the a) the drug experiences and b) the sex scenes in Six Feet Under totally contrived? Were they written by people who only write dialogue and who have never really smoked crack or screwed guys that work at Paintball fields?

2) Is it really necessary to crowd-surf at every single show, even to the slow songs? Doesn’t anyone remember why crowd-surfing started? Do I?

3) When my liver fails, will there be new technology that will rebuild it?

4) Why does everyone love the pizza at Pizza Port in Solana Beach? That pizza is nasty. It’s like white bread with sugar and tomato sauce on top. That shit is rank. And I am an expert, I swear.

5) Why are there drumming circles?

Maybe the answers to all these questions will come to me someday. In the meantime, I will probably sleep a little and have bizarre dreams of ex-husbands and murder and stuff.

If I were to think of my favorite Venice memory, I think it would be of a moment. One of many, of course, that I experienced in this most fantastic of places. I can think of several moments, but the one that most stands out, to me at this moment, is something that happened on October 3, 2000.

Now you might think that something crazy happened, like I fell off a motoscafo and was rescued by Val Kilmer who was there filming something or someother, or that perhaps there was a lightning storm and I ran out into Campo Santa Margherita from the bar Marguerite DuChamps and saved a small child from being hit from lightning. Or even, just sitting on the steps in front of Santa Lucia Train Station – this has slayed others, for sure. But my memory is a bit simpler, and comes back faster, because I am listening, right now, to the sounds that I listened to then.

I had come from Sicily. I’d spent ten days there and then flew to Venice for four, because I could not go to Italy and not go to Venice. My time in Sicily had been incredible, but when I boarded the plane for Venice it felt like I was going home. And really, I was going home.

The weather in those first days of October was warm and gray and humid, with some flooding. I stayed at the La Calcina on the Giudecca Canal in a tiny single room looking over a small canal that constantly overflowed onto the Calle. While I was there, Radiohead’s “Kid A” was released, and I bought it in the record store on Salizzada San Lio. I was with a friend, and went into the store inquiring, and when they had it I jumped up and down with joy. My friend said, “I wish I could still get excited about music like that.” Kid A went into my walkman, and I walked all over Venice listening to that record. I have a photo on my ‘fridge, of my walkman, the Kid A cover, a split of Prosecco, and my room key at the La Calcina, with the Giudecca canal in the background. I call it, “Still Life with Kid A and the Giudecca Canal.”

Anyway. Walking one afternoon, I was taking a shortcut to the Zattere that I know, a tiny, unnamed, unmapped, long and skinny calle that no one goes down because it looks too dark and poop-worthy. I love that calle because moss grows in it. I walked down it with the actual song Kid A, the title track, which no one knows what the hell means, blaring in my earphones. Out of nowhere, a little kid blasts past me on his bike. I could feel his spirit as he went by. I looked back, and his mom, a young, pretty Venetian, was walking behind me. She smiled, and I smiled. It was a beautiful moment, and a moment of truth. I decided right there I would make Venice my home, even if briefly.

And I did. Six months later I was living there. We all make things happen for ourselves, sometimes in odd and unproductive, even scary ways. It’s pretty insane what we are capable of when we really want something. But it is all part of being human, I guess.

Yesterday I had to go top my boyfriend’s family picnic and Bocce ball tournament. He has a big family – there are so many of them that it is common to ask, at the reunion, “who is that” and be answered with “hell if I know.” I come from a small contingent of loners. These large family things frighten me. In the morning before we had to go, I fortified myself with a little fino sherry, just to cope.

Once we got there, it was OK. The family, being so huge and all, sets up in little clusters of family-who-know-each-other, in a park by Mission Bay. I almost ate a Krispy Kreme Donut off another cluster’s table. Mark quickly told me, “that is not our table.” (Meaning, those are not our donuts.) It was only two feet away, but whateves, at least I didn’t eat the donut, which is good because if I had eaten it I would have wanted more donuts. Almost every cluster table had a box of Krispy Kreme Donuts on it.

After a couple of hours, the Bocce tournament started. Names were drawn and teammates paired. I was ecstatic to be paired with Mark’s sister Chris, who is the same age as me, and plays well, and also, there would be no stress about meeting someone new, talking to someone new, or getting paired with some freak, like I did last year at the reunion.

Last year my teammate had never played Bocce, which is fine. The scary thing was, he was skittish and withdrawn, and after a couple of rounds he told me his “ol’ lady was pissed, that he was playing with another woman.” He would often leave and go console her, leaving me to throw his balls. It was annoying and also, bizarre.

Chris and I won our first game. That is when we stopped winning. On our second game, we had to play Pete and Rich. Word on the street (or in the park) was, they were unbeatable. Two guys who somehow got paired up at random that were both insanely good.

Well, after watching them all day yesterday, I can tell you that is complete bullshit. Rich was good. Pete was a load of crap riding on Good?s coattails.

At any rate, I immediately hated both of them, just because of the way they treated Chris and I. Sort of like looking us up and down and you could just tell, they were muttering under their breath, “no contest, here.” While we played, if they scored a point, they practically would butt chests and emit caveman sounds. It was pretty disgusting.

They won, but mostly because we wanted to get away from them so bad we lost on purpose.

They went on to beat Mark and his teammate, and Mark’s sister Lisa and her teammate. I wanted Pete and Rich to lose SO BAD. Everything about them totally bugged. I had told Mark if he beat them, I would buy him a pizza and also, perform a sexual act he is not use to anymore (one that sort of stops just shy of month eight.) Mark still lost, despite the promise of, well, pepperoni and pleasure.

No one reckoned on Mark’s little brother Paul though. Paul and his teammate, Denise, made it all the way to the uber finals. They had to play Pete and Rich and everyone thought Pete and Rich had it made. We all sat on the perimeter, drinking the dregs of the day and watching the last game. I have never wanted someone to win so bad as yesterday, when I was desperate for Paul and Denise to beat those guys ass and bring home the trophy.

It was close all the way, but the cool thing was, everyone was screaming for Paul and Denise. No one did anything when Pete or Rich scored. The crowd was clearly on the side of the underdog.

At the end, the teams were tied at 12, and Paul and Denise scored two points to win, with Paul winning the scoring point. Everyone got up and hugged and kissed him, everyone was totally freaking out. I’m not an into-sports kind of person, but that was pretty cool, let me tell you.

It’s another year until another one of these things, and who knows where I will be then. Maybe far away from the family, maybe not part of them any more. But for one day, I felt like I was part of this huge thing, even though I fought it. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the disgust, maybe it was the pride I felt for my sort of brother-in-law. Maybe it was too much sun. Maybe I’ll beat Pete and Rich next year. Who knows?

It’s been a few days since I have written anything. Inevitably, in this situation, my mind swims. What should I write about? I can’t just write, well, whatever. It has to be at least sort of interesting. Here is what my blog would look like if I wrote about WHATEVER.

Today I got up at 8:00. I was tired since my asshole neighbor came home at 1:45 A.M. and woke me up, AGAIN. Must that bitch laugh like a hyena? Someone should teach her how to laugh in a way that she won’t chase people off within five minutes of talking to her, especially guys, which are rare in her realm. To get even for the sleep interruption, I blast the Avalanches “Frontier Psychiatry” on my stereo. Take that bass, you fat hyena. It’s the most insane bass, one note, the kind of sound that makes you feel either really happy, or sick to your stomach. It makes me happy. I turn the bass level up. A good way to wake up, I must say. Like being in a cavernous club full of sweaty bodies, instead of in my little bungalow about to go to work. Yeah, right. Like I really hang out in clubs anymore! Shit. I turn up the volume all the way to infinity just to pretend I still hang out in sweaty dance clubs, and to really make my point to my neighbor, the hyena.

After deliberately trying to make my neighbor’s hangover much, much worse, I go for my morning walk. I walk and walk. I walk up the hill, which is always hard, and then back down which is really great because I can look at the ocean then, plus, of course, it is downhill. My neighborhood is full of cool and interesting houses. Sometimes they are for sale, and I stop and grab a brochure out of the box attached to the For Sale sign. Then I choke and keep walking. I’ll never be able to buy a house here. It’s pretty frightening. Cottages with no foundations for 450K. Sheesh, I’ll move to, I don’t know, Malta? Romania? These thoughts accompany me down the hill.

After my walk I come home and make my coffee and get to work, if I am at home for the day, which, is most of the time, unless I am on the road, (which happens occasionally) run on sentences suck, don’t they?

I sit at my computer and do my thing until about 1:00 when it is time to go walk again, mostly to stretch. Then I come home and take a shower and eat a tortilla with lettuce and cheese in it. (Oh, also, during the day there is always music. Today it was P.J. Harvey, the Beta Band, and some burned CDs that someone gave me of bands that sound just like the Strokes, which makes me want to kill somebody. WHY, oh WHY, does everything good have to be copied and run into the ground? It makes me want to weep.)

As the afternoon goes on, it gets hotter, at least right now, since it is Summer, dummy. I might walk to the post office. Yesterday when I walked to the post office, some guy in an old VW asked me out! Just pulled up, and asked me out. I told him I had a boyfriend, of course. Then I saw a guy getting a ticket for skateboarding! It was one weird day, let me tell you.

Finally it is 5:00. Since I work at home, it might seem odd that I would make note of this, since at headquarters they really know fuck-all about what is going on down here. But, these people (my employers) have been very good to me, and since I am a hard worker and also Good at Guilt, I make sure to spend my allotted time in the spot they are paying me to be in.

Many, many things can happen at 5:00. Going to the cliffs and watching the sunset? spending too much time in front of my computer? but today I go and play Bocce Ball with my boyfriend. I play badly, and I know the reason why. On Sunday we have to go to his Family Reunion/Bocce Tournament. I am not a bad Bocce player, in fact I am pretty good. But the fact that I have to go to the Reunion is freaking me out. I’m always fine once I get there, it’s the thinking about going that bugs. At any rate I have a couple of moments of brilliance but mostly, I suck. Thank gosh I bring a bottle of Albarino. Let’s face it, it’s the wine that makes life liveable. The sun goes down, and I come home to face my blog.

WHATEVER.

I am going to cook for a friend’s party in Venice in September. We’ve been emailing back and forth about things to eat, what to do, etc. etc. It’s like jumping into a black hole, cooking for a party in Italy, especially since I have not been there in eighteen months. Mostly, because of Euro-inflation. What little surprises have I to look forward to? Chicken wings at 8 Euro a pound? A pound of pasta twice the price of what I remember?

It used to be cheaper, buying groceries in Italy. I think those days may be over. But even here in the States, where prices were never super low (unless you buy in mega-lots meant for restaurants or families of 10, or buy and throw half of what you bought in the garbage because there is no way you could consume all that, which sort of defeats the purpose of buying more to save money) food prices are rising even higher.

This is pretty frightening. Gas is going up, up, up. It’s easy to say, well fuck you big Escalade or Esplanade (or whatever that mammoth vehicle is) driver, you are well up it without a paddle now! It’s easy to see how the mammoth vehicle drivers have it REALLY bad. But the simple fact is, they probably are as “who gives a shit” to the fact that they are paying $158 more a week in gas as the rest of us are that butter costs a buck a pound more these days. Even worse, the grocery chains are training people to eat their own cheap label crap, squishy English muffins and poison injected yogurts, by offering it at a lower price.

It is 2004 and I am 39 years old. Somehow, this all sounds like 1974 when my mom was 29 years old. She went all health foody and co-opy. Me and my brothers grew up on dry wheat bread and peanut butter sandwiches that would glue your mouth shut. (Perhaps this was intentional?) I think it is time for another revolution, but this time a price revolution too. Everyone has got to make money, but also, childen need to eat, and something besides a four dollar peach on the one end, or a lifeless cheap bagel, on the other. There has got to be a middle ground, and one for everybody to stand on.

The other day, I bought a French cookbook at a yard sale, one of those Dorling-Kindersley glossy, colorful and hard-to-follow “you can do it” books popular with British yuppies. Now that I’ve perused such recipes as Artichoke and Sweetbread Salad and Salmon Sausage with Red Wine Sauce (I’ll spare you my typing of French) I think this book is probably going to end up on Ebay with that Jane’s Addiction “Strays” CD I’ve been trying to sell for a few months.

Anyhow, while perusing this previously owned book, a couple of Hallmark cards fell out into my lap. Lucky me, entertainment, for the low low price of one dollar! One was a Christmas card from some guy named Michael to his wife, Theresa, who I suppose sold me the book. Pretty boring…. “You make me happy in a thousand different ways” (Hallmark’s writing) and “I love you, and I am grateful to have such a wonderful little girl. Thank you!” (Michael’s writing. In other words, you are pretty cool, but more importantly, thanks for popping out a brat that looks like me and jumps on me when I come home from work.)

The other card is from Daddy Michael to his Little Girl, Rory, aged one. Looking at this card makes me wonder, once again, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Hmmmm. Or, was Michael this stupid before he had a kid? Did he ever see himself in RiteAid, in a fit of nostalgia, with no creativity whatsoever, buying a card shaped like a mouse with a Santa hat on that says (Hallmark writing:)

Merry 1st Christmas to a Sweet Little Girl! A baby girl’s first Christmas should be nice in every way, and when she’s sweet as you are, it’s a doubly special day!

Oh my god, please, I am going to vomit. She’s ONE. She won’t understand your card, your intent, or the reasoning behind a mouse with a red hat. She also won’t understand (Michael’s writing:)

Rory! YOU are MY Christmas! Thank You! Daddy.

These cards were meaningful enough that Mom stuck them into an unused cookbook and eventually, sold them at a garage sale. Those Hallmark moments. Only $2.50, yet priceless.

I am fairly sure I was one of the first people to discover Pink Martini. Pink Martini the band from Portland, Oregon. I’ve had my share of martinis colored with drops of blood, too. But that is another story.

Pink Martini are so unbelievably great. They’ve only got one record, Sympathique. But that record is played all over the world, and has been since it came out in 1998ish. Just last month, when I was in New York, it was being played in a trendy restaurant. “Hey!” I told my friends. “Pink Martini! Have I ever told you about my Pink Martini Where Have You Heard Them Played Around the World Website Idea?” Of course they looked at me like I was totally insane.

Seriously, I think this is an idea right up there with Bookcrossing.com. Because you are probably as likely to hear Pink Martini in a cafe in Budapest, Santa Monica, Rome or Copenhagen, as you are to find a book at a pre-destined location. It’s true! When I was in New York, I swear, we heard Pink Martini AGAIN at another place the very next day. And this is six years after the record came out!

The reason Pink Martini is still being played, and at cool and trendy places, not to mention at my house right now, is because they are a band of hot percussionists and horn players (well, you wouldn’t know they are hot, but I do because I have seen them five times and I am telling you, they are) and a beautiful, sensuous singer named China Forbes. Well actually these are not the reasons they are being played, but they are good reasons to go and see the band. The REAL reasons they are being played after all these years, is that the record is beautiful, and rhythmic, both familiar and foreign, and besides being easy on the mind, makes your ears perk up and your legs tense, because you might want to dance soon. Only heard Doris Day sing “Che Sera Sera?” Check Pink Martini’s and China’s “Sera” out. Do you get off on “Bolero?” Well, you have to get this record. And it doesn’t get much better than “Song of the Black Lizard,” where China’s voice seems to morph into a trumpet solo that can only be called one thing – killer. As in so beautiful it will kill you.

I’ve seen them in the Great American Music Hall, when I could lick China’s shoe. I’ve seen them at the Hollywood Bowl, where I had to look through binoculars. But I’ve heard them all over the place. Someday I will start that website, and I’ll get more hits than this thing does.

Once, about a year ago, I tried a no-carb diet. I made it about five days, but then I started to feel really awful. My body was doing something funky. It’s hard to explain, but it was sort of like wanting to jump out of your skin. An uncomfortable pressure. I think it might be sort of like coming off heroin, which I’ve never done but I’ve seen it happen in the movies. It was a horrible feeling and the next day I ate a sandwich and some rolled tacos.

Yesterday, I was feeling very depressed because, once again, my horrible luck proved to be, well, horrible. Even the promise of the upcoming meet at Del Mar Racetrack next week couldn’t ease my sadness. I was just totally glum.

The day picked up a bit when I played Bocce Ball with friends and went out for a pizza after. We ate a bunch of pizza and drank a bunch of wine. Walking home, since the weather was hot and balmy, I decided to nurse my broken spirit with an ice cream.

Got home, and that feeling came back again. The no-carb feeling. But, I had eaten mega-carbs. The only thing that was missing was a Big-Gulp. I couldn?t sleep in bed, I couldn’t sleep on the couch. Some weird chemicals were going off in my bloodstream.

I finally slept, but I want to know what causes this. Am I just getting to the point age-wise where pizza and ice cream will cause me great pain and anxiety? Because if it is, I might as well hang it up.

A few years ago, I worked for a time at the Williams Sonoma/Pottery Barn Call Center. I took orders for expensive cookware and rugs and sconces and things like that. The job didn’t pay much, but I got a 40% discount at Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn. At first I worked there because I needed money. Later I worked there because of the discount. I learned how to work the system, and after the cash crunch was over, worked one day a week or less. Really, the 40% discount didn’t do much for me, since I had little money to spend on hundred dollar salad bowls, even if they were almost half off. The discount came in very handy for my friends, however. It was always fun to go shopping with friends who wanted to buy full sets of All-Clad pans and Wustoff Knives. After they saved a few hundred dollars they were always ready to take me out to a Martini and Oyster lunch. There was one guy, not really a friend but one of those 90’s chubby tech guys who had a million dollars all of a sudden. I was sort of interested for a second until I took him to Williams Sonoma to outfit his new loft in South of Market. He bought thousands of dollars worth of stuff, from a $750 orange espresso maker to some green egg-cups with gold flecks. The guy was a buying machine. And after, he took me to a taco shop for lunch. Bitch! Needless to say that was the end of my interest. A taco shop? Dude, how about lunch at the Rotunda at Neiman Marcus? I just saved you Two Thousand Dollars! He ended up getting busted by the IRS for not sending in his payroll taxes and split town, but that was a few months after the burrito incident.

But I am way off track here. This is not what I meant to write about, at all. What I meant to write was, one day when I was working at the Call Center, I got a call from some dude who had all kinds of questions about furniture in the Pottery Barn catalog. He quizzed me down good, and I gave him all the info off the computer screens as best I could. He eventually thanked me and told me that he was actually the manufacturer of the furniture he was asking about. To me it seemed he was maybe a little anal, possibly psychotic, but mostly just wanted to sell some furniture. Whatever.

A few weeks later I got called into my supervisor’s office. SHE then proceeded to quiz me down (I was getting sick of being quizzed) and told me that one of their vendors had called in and talked to someone who was totally inefficient and lame and stupid, also worthless. That someone, according to the vendor, was ME.

Now, I was generally golden at Williams Sonoma – they loved me, and that is how I got away with hardly ever working and still getting a discount for so long. When they had reviews, I had the #1 review of anyone in the call center, and was told I could have a “big future” at Williams Sonoma. (“Does that mean I’ll get Seven Fifty an hour?” I said. “Eventually” they said.) So I was pretty shocked when I was interrogated about my dealings with the furniture freak.

It didn’t take me long in the interrogation before I sort of figured out what was going on. I remembered about the furniture, I remembered telling the guy my name. He had actually placed an order with whoever had pissed him off so bad, Supervisor told me. He hadn’t placed an order with me, he’d only quizzed me down.

“Well then.” I said. “Why don’t you look at the order and see who took it?”

This hadn’t occurred to the head honchos at Williams Sonoma before they called me in to the interrogation. And they looked at the order, on the computer, right there in front of me. Their faces got frownier than before.

“Well, uh, Shannon.” My supervisor said. “I guess it wasn?t you, because it says right here that Tatiana took his order.”

What a bunch of dumbshits. Even worse, was the guy who called and mixed me up with Tatiana. Furniture guy. Anal freak furniture guy.

What I’m really trying to get at here is, I have turned into anal freak furniture guy. My book is not selling very well right now, and I can’t figure out why. It was selling, before, but all of a sudden it stopped. I don?t know if it’s a normally slow time for travel books to be selling or what. But I am spending way too much time calling bookstores and looking at travel websites and trying to figure out ways to grovel.

I call a bookstore and ask whoever answers the phone if they have my book, and they either don’t care, or they don’t want to look, but mostly they say no. I have been known to go into bookstores and put my book on the shelf, for free. I can’t understand why Borders orders once, and sells the book, and doesn’t reorder. Don’t they want to have everything, all the time? I thought that was Borders thang. What person is insane enough to go to Venice without The Book? How come bookstores don?t know this? How did I become the anal furniture guy? Gradually, then suddenly. Just like the story ends.