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I can’t stop making out in public with my new non-boyfriend, because I am wildly attracted to him, especially his complete lack of interest in having any sort of relationship with me. I’m no psychiatrist but it’s possible I’m familiar with this feeling of neglect and coldness: my Mom used to call me Number Five because I was her fifth child and once she left me sitting in front of the library for eight hours because she forgot to pick me up. She also left me overnight at my friend Heather’s house, and at a gas station in Florida for half a day when we were on a family road trip. I guess I had it better than the sister who is one year older than me: when she was only two, she plopped right out of our car one day when we were turning a corner and sat there on the curb waiting for us to come back and get her for hours. It’s hard to keep track of eight children, and it’s equally as hard for the Computer Guy to balance all the girls he is apparently sleeping with – although I can’t imagine a nineteen year old GoGo dancer who still lives with her Mom is that hard to pin down.
At work my Boss decided to put my internet column onto our Development Slate as a potential television show. There has been no talk of money thus far, but I have it on good authority that people get paid for this sort of thing, so I’m hoping someone drops by a paper bag full of cash to my little apartment in Korea Town and all of my problems will be solved. I can’t imagine how nice it would be to get paid to write any more than I can imagine liking a guy who likes me back and who doesn’t call me dude and constantly send me texts meant for other girls.
Read the full-on… D-Girl Diary tomorrow!
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
I’m the definition of a false advertisement, and I feel badly that the guy I met last night doesn’t know this. I come across cool, all loosey-goosey and full of trashy talk and innuendoes, and the quiet, serious computer technician I met at a cheesy Los Angeles bar last night thinks he hit the dating lottery. Little does he know I am not laid-back at all: I’m complicated, demanding, impossible to please, and if you date me long enough my keen sense of humor will be twisted back so that the only joke I’m really telling is the one on you. I bought him a drink and I kissed him before sending him off with the cute girl I talked up at the bar for him, and he texted this morning that he got lucky with the girl, and it was really great meeting me. It’s the classic bait and switch, he will likely never see that other girl again, but I give great text so I’m sure the next girl he gets lucky with will be me. Unfortunately for him, lucky isn’t really the word I would use to describe getting involved with me: this poor guy has no idea what he’s getting himself into. A good friend should tell him, if it seems to be good to be true, it probably is.
It’s all sales, the dating world, and I’m terrible at sales so I try and stay out of it, I don’t internet date or have my friends set me up, I just sleep with guys I know sometimes and every once in a while fall headlong into love and it’s like a bad car accident with casualties and broken parts scattered all over the road; it’s an unfortunate circumstance for everyone involved, and the computer guy from last night is just standing in the middle of a wet road staring into the headlights of a car without brakes. But that doesn’t stop me from sending him flirty texts all day, like mini-advertisements for a great new product on the market. I think I’m ready for a new bad relationship, it’s been a while since I really fucked up someone’s life.
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Read the full-on… D-Girl Diary tomorrow!
(d girls image artist Tashina Suzuki)
For the first time since moving back to Los Angeles from NYC, I feel like a real Development Girl again. With Lorna McSlutchen breathing down my neck, I suddenly feel tremendous pressure to be successful. This week I scheduled drinks with agents and writers, tracked spec scripts and read until my eyes bled. And with my freakish ability to whip through a script in twenty minutes or less, I feel I’m finally caught up on the time I missed when I was checking into Mental Hospitals and gallivanting around New York with the gorgeous but broken East Coast Sarah. My boss the quirky Director is not as impressed with my recent efforts though, and calls me into his office during one of his rare visits to our bungalow, and wants to have a talk.
He’s strumming a guitar as he talks to me, which is mildly aggravating. “You have two sides to your personality,” he says, “the outgoing life-of-the-party who knows everyone in town, and the serious intellectual who writes amazing notes.” He pauses for effect and I’m feeling less chastised than complimented. “I don’t like the party girl side,” he says bluntly, and our meeting is over. I’m not going to clear my calendar, my boss clearly doesn’t know how this town works; it’s not just my ability to recognize good material, its obtaining the material before anyone else, and that only comes from lots and lots of scheduled drinks.
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Tomorrow read the full-on… D-Girl Diary.
The worst thing about moving back to L.A. from N.Y.C is running into old nemeses at the Coffee Bean. I was anonymous in New York, and now today I’m standing three people behind Lorna McSlutchen, whose boobs are so big she’s taking up more than her allotted room in this crowded coffee shop. At first she doesn’t recognize me, I’m disguised by my Sarah Palin black glasses and faux-snakeskin Uggs that take up half my little legs, but then she catches my eye and hollers out a phony “Hey there! I know YOU…” and I’m instantly transported back to the day she asked me to lunch on the studio lot just to tell me she was dating my two-night stand. Her hair is darker, but I would know those humungous boobs anywhere, and she wants to know where I’m working, and where I went for a few years, and it takes her 3.5 seconds to bring up the guy who looks like an Alien who she thinks she stole from me. They aren’t dating anymore, apparently they dated for two years but he dumped her after she made the trek to Alaska to meet his family. I never met his family, I barely met him, I slept with him twice and he met Lorna at a party we went to and I never heard from him again. Her voice is too loud for this early morning coffee run and its giving me a headache. I express fake concern over her breakup and drop the Famous Actress’ name in her lap where it lands with a thump – “So that’s what I’ve been doing… just kind of hanging with her…” It’s half true and I think it conveys to her that I have not, contrary to her belief, spent the last two years pining over her short Alien-looking boyfriend who I slept with twice. I have become far too cool for that.
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(IMAGE BY Tashina Suzuki)
Tomorrow read the full-on… D-Girl Diary.
I should have sold those pictures of the Famous Actress and her new boyfriend, she made me go to the photo shop and take them off the machine herself because the guy was married, and after a very public breakup, the tabloids were dying to see who she would date next. If I had sold them, I wouldn’t have to work and could just sit home all day contemplating life and pinning butterflies to cardboard. And since I ended up leaving her company under duress anyway, it wouldn’t have made a difference. But I didn’t sell them, so I sit in my little office on the Universal Lot, listening to the Studio Tour tram go by my window. At least this tour is in English, when I worked for the Comedy Director the tour that passed by my window was in Spanish so I had to listen to “Es la Cabesa de Mary Tyler Moore” every fifteen minutes because apparently my office was in Mary’s old dressing room.
This time I can hear the tour guide talking about Will Smith, whose company is next door, and it’s distractingly soothing. We are actually busy right now because my boss is prepping a new movie to direct, and he has assigned me the illustrious task of researching the main character, a chef. I know a little bit about chefs because my best friend the East Coast Sarah used to date a very famous and very hot chef; she was a waitress in his restaurant in NYC and they had an illicit and seedy affair, which culminated in East Coast Sarah getting drunk one night, dressing up like a schoolgirl for him, and passing out on Third Avenue in crotchless panties, much to the dismay of her family who had to pick her up from the Emergency Room that way. I only met the guy once, he was alarmingly attractive but it’s hard for a girl to get excited about a guy when he has to use a pseudonym to call your best friend.
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Tomorrow read the full-on… D-Girl Diary.
d-girls image by artist Tashina Suzuki
When I was a Creative Executive for the Big Comedy Director, two writers scammed their way into my office. They said they were writers for The Simpsons, and since they were going to be on the Fox Lot anyway, would it be okay if they stopped in to introduce themselves? When they arrived they told me in fact they had never really written anything at all. They had a bunch of treatments, ideas for movies, but hadn’t gotten around to writing any of them out. They seemed like nice fellows, and they were funny, so I chatted with them for a while. As is often the case, the conversation turned to me, and I told them stories from my childhood: how I had grown up on a farm in Massachusetts with no heat in our house and seven brothers and sisters, and how I was sure Henry the Black Sheep was out to get me as he had opened the front door to our big farmhouse one day and was making his way up the stairs to where I was cowering on the top bed of the bunk beds I shared with my little sister. They agreed with me that it would have been hard to imagine my inauspicious beginnings could have led to a job in Hollywood, by way of New York City, and when they left the meeting they promised to send me a finished script so I could try and help them become real writers.
A few weeks later, I got a script from the two guys in the mail. They had been faxing me treatments non-stop, and some of their ideas were hysterical – I liked Jack Astronaut the best, but I had been insisting they write a full script – there’s a big difference between good ideas and proper execution. When I opened the script and started reading, it all felt eerily familiar. It was a story about a screwed-up little farm girl who went to New York City to become a theater director and ended up in Hollywood pushing paper around for Big Wigs. They had written a screenplay about my life. I have to say, although it had its moments, it needed a lot of work.
READ ON tomorrow @ D-Girl Diary.
d-girls image by artist Tashina Suzuki.
When I used to work at Houlihan’s in Times Square, every year during the Rockefeller Center Christmas Spectacular all the Little People from the show would frequent my bar. We had a bouncer named Bruno and at the end of the night he would shout up and down the bar, “Suck Em Up, Yamos,” and he would put the drunk little folks under his arms and carry them to their hotel next door with their feet poking out and their eyes blurry from the colossal amounts of alcohol they would consume. One of the little guys was in a few movies, and he’s the first famous person I ever met. Well, half a famous person I guess. It was exciting to be around people with stature, and so I moved to Hollywood to work in the movies.
My first job was as a part-time receptionist at a very posh management company and I worked with a girl who is the hostess for Dancing With the Stars now. She seemed okay with just answering phones, but I quickly wrangled myself a promotion. I was hired as second assistant to the President of the Company, and the first assistant was a high maintenance girl named Lenny with the most annoying voice. My boss’ clients were hugely famous – most of the Saturday Night Live Alumni, and a big Action Star — and we spent most of our days buying them things like can openers. One day I came into work and there was a death threat on the voicemail. Lenny was sure it was meant for her, but my boss was pretty sure it was for the Action Star who was a bad actor, because he was our most famous client. I kept quiet because I was new, but there is a slight possibility the death threat was for me as I kept company with lots of seedy, nefarious types at that time in my life.
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I feel super good on Wednesdays, seriously. I circle my day in red sharpie ink, which stains the page. It’s great. Today’s Teaser is tomorrow’s full throttle on D-Girl Diary. READ ON…I’m fortunate enough just to get an inkling.
There are a few authors who write as I wish to write. One such writer is William Gibson whose earlier works rang true cyber Sci-Fi. Lucky (for me), he turned into the now-ish/recent past/near future in works such as Pattern Recognition (one of my all time favorites) but for now, I will talk about Spook Country, which is somewhat in the vein of PR. I’m not as razor sharp today, I read SC five or six months ago…still it resonates.
This fast paced piece features: bi-coastalness (LA + NY), surveillance, Union Square, former cult band singer turned investigative journalist, addictive pills, such reminders, “Secrets are the very root of cool”, Cuban Chinese criminals, ex-CIA figures. And yes, it makes me believe “the truth is out there.”
If you missed this, read it. Nothing will evolve until you do.
And, if you haven’t read Pattern Recognition, well, read that first. This little cheat sheet done by a cool site Not Good for Me lays out the principal character Cayce’s look. I like the look sans for the chick in the short black hair. I picture Cayce with long brown hair wrapped in a loose ponytail.
image via notgoodforme.
d-girls image by artist Tashina Suzuki.
This is the first time I’ve been out of my pajamas before noon in two years. I’ve been at my new job for a week now, and I have not alienated any of my new co-workers, which is a small accomplishment. Because I have to drive my new boss around, however, I’ve gotten lost about a hundred and fifty times. I’ll never get used to the sprawling nature of the streets of Los Angeles and I miss the smelly, crowded subways of NYC chauffeuring me around, although after 9/11 the Famous Actress didn’t make us take the subway, mostly due to the Famous Actor/Conspiracy Theorist who had a production deal with us. He brought in personalized gas masks after the Big Day and assured us that the bridges and tunnels into Manhattan were rigged to blow up. I was lost a long time before 9/11 though. I was born without an internal compass and no innate sense of direction, and come to think of it, I lack direction in my life, and I’m missing a moral compass. I feel like I deserve a Handicapped sign for my windshield for these maladies, and maybe if I had one of those I wouldn’t have gotten three parking tickets in a week. So far this job has cost me more money than I’ve made.
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Read more tomorrow when our friend takes us back to her place. Meet us @ D Girl Diary.
Officially licensed Wednesday teaser from the D GIRL.
d-girls image by artist Tashina Suzuki.
It’s not that I miss New York for its qualities, it’s more because I’m most comfortable when I’m suffering and it’s too sunny in Los Angeles. I think I would like it here a lot better if I had a job, so I’ve spent the last few days jumping through hoops for the Big Director in hopes that he’ll hire me. First, he asks for two scripts. Thinking he means some undiscovered, unsold masterpieces that he can set up and direct, I dig up two scripts written by friends of mine, a dark period drama and a big comedy. His email reads: “I hate these scripts, but I want to hire you. What should I do?” Realizing he doesn’t want me to discover his next project, he just wants to know we like the same things, I quickly send him two scripts that have already sold for half a million dollars each. Seems too easy, but Hollywood is all about trust, and I suppose trust is garnered in this case by stating the obvious. Next, I have an agent call as a reference, and he emails me again. “I hate these people. Why are you friends with them?” I can’t denounce my friends fast enough, I need this job.
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Gawd, this chick gets no rest…no rest for the wicked. Read it TOMORROW; D Girl Diary.
Many things have changed since I last lived in Los Angeles. Not the least of which is, I have Multiple Sclerosis now, and although I still can’t pronounce it correctly, it doesn’t slow me down as much as it should. I’m mildly regretting telling the whole town of Hollywood soon after I was diagnosed, three weeks after 9/11, when I still worked for the Famous Actress in New York City. Now that I’m job hunting, it has come up in some of my interviews and I’m quite certain nobody wants to hire the little MS girl. Hollywood is just like high school, full of gossip and cliques, and I’m still the weird girl who used to wear bows in her hair and sit alone at lunch. If only my potential employers could talk to Sarah, she would tell them I am too self-destructive to let an unpronounceable disease affect my life.
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I ♥ the D-Girl Diary. Read on her site tomorrow friends…read on. Guest Writer: D-Girl.
The pre-tip Wednesday adventures of D Girl Diary; New Yorker turned LA’er (add the launch of the new snap…douja).
image by artist Tashina Suzuki
There is a certain symmetry to my life that’s perversely comforting. As I bounce from coast to coast, job to job, and friend to friend, it seems I’m getting better at the hard landings. I expect chaos and instability. It’s part of being charming. I find it soothing that my apartment got robbed three weeks after moving back here, it means the Universe has not forgotten about me. A lack of drama would put me constantly on edge. My better friends teeter on the edge of sanity along with me, and one of them is coming to visit from New York to try and sell her screenplay. She has never been to L.A., as evidenced by her polite pearl necklace and eager grin. As I pull up to the airport curb, my heart sinks at the sight of her screenplay clutched in her hand along with her Gucci handbag. Her heels are too perfect, she will never make it out here.
Read on tomorrow on @ http://dgirldiary.blogspot.com/
