A Frothy Fun War Between Turks and Arabs

I'm a bit tired of all this heavy stuff, one-topic writerly posts, etc., so I'm going to take a page from my friend twinkly and do a stream-of-consciousness post.

1. I don't care about the debates. Matt's tried to explain to me why debates matter to voters, but I don't buy it.

2. I don't care about sports, either. Liveblogging football games on Facebook is the worst thing about fall.

3. Speaking of fall? There's no fall here. It took a headline on weather.com to remind me that other people are having seasons. I LOVE IT. California is the bestest.

It has been a little overly hot in the past week, but today it's quite pleasant.

4. Last night Matt and I attempted to see Lawrence of Arabia in the theater. My best buddies at Fathom Events made it happen (they also run the live RiffTrax events and the opera broadcasts). Matt and I made it to the intermission and then went home, because there were some (I can only presume) stoned loons behind us who mysteriously found nearly every bit of dialogue in the movie LOL-funny. A lot of what they laughed at was slightly witty, but some of it wasn't funny at all, was instead intended to be quite serious or even painful to appreciate. None of it was flat-out funny. (I don't know if you're aware, but Lawrence is hardly a light comedy.)

I'd seen the film years ago and failed to form an opinion of it, and this time around I found it very beautiful but not on the whole interesting. There. Boom. Admitted. I love David Lean and his instincts, but even if there hadn't been total idiots behind us ruining the experience, I'm not sure I would have stayed for another hour+. I'm glad I saw the 2/3 I saw in the theater, because it was BIG, but just because something's epic doesn't mean it's entertaining.

5. I'll be 31 next Saturday.

6. That day I was supposed to go to a class given by the UCLA Extension Writers' Program called MFA Boot Camp. It promised to give me some idea of what the experience of an MFA program was like. I can't stop wavering like mad over whether I want to go to grad school in the next few years and I hoped this would help. But the class got cancelled for lack of enrollment. So I guess I'll have to do something else for my birthday. And figure out the grad school thing on my own. (So far no amount of advice or expertise has been of any help.)

7. On Wednesday I went to the Annenberg Space for Photography to see their "Who Shot Rock & Roll?" exhibit. It was cool. Not what I expected, but cool. I've added another item to my time-machine wish-list: see Led Zeppelin live in the 1970s.

8. Frankly, being in that part of L.A. (Century City) was almost as interesting as the show. It was as clean as Duloc and full of such beautiful people that I felt like a toad. None of the cars in the parking garage looked like mine; they were all BMWs and Audis and Mercedii and such, all sparkly clean. And the streets were like a sort of chilly desert. There were people walking around and eating lunch and crossing the street and whatnot, but it felt...devoid. Heartless. Un-human. The whole place intimidated me and I was happy to get home to good old ordinary Chatsworth.

9. I never realized those little wooden people are all South Park Canadians.

8a. I wonder if I'd feel less intimidated visiting places like Century City if I had more money. I'd still be the same me, and wielding self-esteem with money seems like folly. No?

10. I really thought I wanted to get another tattoo and had all kinds of enthusiastic plans for it. Now that my artist friend has sent me initial sketches for the shoulder part of it, I suddenly find myself backing away in terror. I have no clue why. I was positive it was what I wanted and was impatient to get those sketches. ???

Happy Friday!