" ...I can't be shelling out that kind of money for one dime-sized spot, awkward centimeters from the front of my female area..."
Ideal Days A-Comin, May 29, 2001
Everyone wants a tape. The guy that books
Luna wants a tape. Sally, a security guard at my building whom I inadvertantly interviewed on the street for the Molly Dodd shoot, wants a tape of her blurbs (and she wants it every time I enter the building after midnite, during her shift). At least the guy from Luna doesn't have a night job at my home.
If this weekend is a sneak preview of my life as soon as my web projects end, I am anxious and excited. In fact, here is my ideal life, starting sometime in July, when I am in the city, not coding.
10:30 AM: wakeup. If Gennady hasn't already taken Pinky swimming in the Rambles in Central Park at 7am, then I'll rollerblade with her at Riverside Park, which is a paved area right on the East River and overlooks New Jersey. Or, I will hit the snooze button nine more times and wake us both up at around noon.
12:00 PM: If Pinky has been walked, she is probably passed out on our bed. Pinky sticks to a rigorous sleeping schedule. Her snores tick like a steady metronome throughout the day. When she
has pooped and pissed, I am free to pursue my dazzling career. If she hasn't been walked, she will be staring at me with a peculiar urgency. She will follow me all over the apartment (that would be ten feet one way, and ten feet the other) and she will start licking her crotch, which means she's trying to cork it up but I better get a move on before the dam bursts all over the new carpet.
12:45 PM: In both scenarios, Pinky has been emptied and I can create something wonderful, after I have returned my agent's call. Psyche! I gotcha! My agent doesn't call me. Oh, I am so funny.
1:00 PM: Time to write. What, you ask? Something award winning of course. Something that speaks for my generation. Something that helps me callback Dick Joke 16A during Dick Joke 23c. I'll be writing at a little independent coffeehouse here in the ungentrified Upper West Side called Starbucks. (It's near a darling clothing store called Baby Gap- I love my neighborhood!) When I get to the head of the line, I'll order my favorites: a venti skim latte and a seat next to a Xanaxed mother and her overstimulated triplets.
3:00 PM: I have read and re-read the New York Times and the USA Today. Although a Word doc stays blank on my Powerbook screen, I save it a few times anyway, just in case I get a burst of creativity. I'd hate to lose anything, even absolute whitespace, during a crash. The afternoon has not been wasted- I am well versed on current events. If someone were to heckle me tonight about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield's proposed Star Wars plan, I'd be effective in rebuttal. You can never be too prepared for the stage.
3:15 PM: The battery has run out on my Powerbook and I am no longer able to nearly write. Time to pack up my gum wrappers, pocket ten to fifteen Equal packets for tomorrow's cereal and hit the gym.
4:00 PM: I am passed at the gym's security desk by the Roid Rage Man who looks like he'd rather be marching through the Sudetenland in 1938. I lift some weights and look with scorn at the drones on the elliptical trainers. I rollerbladed in the sun with my dog for
my cardio workout, I will think to myself smugly if I have indeed done that.
5:00 PM: Marketing! I will plan my CD, book road work, put together a few promotional kits and send my stuff out to any gig in
Backstage that looks like its right for me. Or I will watch CNN, to catch up with any current events that have happened since my writing session at Starbucks.
7:00 PM: Pick out an outfit for the evening's spots. I start with my feet and work my way up. If I'm taking cabs, I can be extravagant with the shoes. If I'm taking public transportation, we're looking at boots. Boots means pants from the left half of the closet and shoes means pants or skirts from the right half, unless I'm wearing a skirt with boots, which gets confusing. If the pants are suede, they have a stain that must be covered. Each of my suede pants has one stain. My dry cleaning minimum is four stains, because it costs 35.00 dollars to dry clean suede no matter what and I can't be shelling out that kind of money for one dime-sized spot, even if it is two awkward centimeters from the front of my female area.
Stains can be covered with belts, long shirts, sweaters and by brushing the suede up, so it looks darker. I constantly have to brush up my caramel suede pants and an evening spent in them is five hours of vigorous self-massage. Mmmmmm.
8:00 PM: Leave for an night of comedy, loneliness, self-doubt and applause.
12:00- 1 AM: The night has ended, time for a swim at the 24 hour YMCA. Makeup and cares are washed away, and delusional attempts to make the 2004 Olympic team are planned.
2:30 AM: I am home, my man and dog are asleep and there's no time like 2:30 in the morning to lose two hours of a short life surfing the internet while teeth are bleached by goo-filled Rembrandt trays.
4:30 AM: Teeth gleaming, wrinkles deepening, I go to bed, ready to take on the world agian in eight to ten hours.
