Is it better to have loved and lost, then never loved at all? ... Sometimes I wonder ...

I just went on a magical trip to no where literally - the Salton Sea - a dead Zone, filled with dead fish, rotting trailers, drop out, Jesus cults, and beauty. I loved it.

We went in what is traditionally knows as the off season, any where else in the world the summer landscape would signal the onset of tourists thrill seekers, kids and general summer vacation types, here it's dead - it gets so hot out in the California desert that they actually close the place up for summer, but  for us it was perfect - no one was there - tranquil, silent, dead sea - not even any wind.

the Salton Sea is a curious place, once used for mining salt, then when the Colorado River burst in the early 1900's and flooded the area the actual Sea was formed - saltier than sea water, very little save for the odd Telapia can survive there. 

They tried to revive the place and turn it into Atlantic city, with casino's resports, and restaurants all along the "sea" coast - but slowly the water kept rising and eventually engulfed the Sodom and Gamora of the west, and left nothing but skeletal remains of trailers, and bars, sticking out from the sand.

The New River runs into the Salton Sea - and it is said to be one of the most polluted in the world. The saline keeps rising in the water, and so do the pollutants, until the place is a lifeless sea in the middle of the high desert, surrounded by small dying towns like the former Tomato Capitol of the world, now just a withering den of depravity for tweekers and the very old ... 

The only sign of life all around us was the occasional pelican, dipping into the salty water to retrieve a dying fish ... bliss ... very strange place but you could see the stars at night and that is a rare treat in LA - not that I was in LA anymore - but still.

Staring up at a cloudless sky filled with dead stars, standing by a dead sea, some how made me feel very alive - in the end we will all be dust, but for now, I'm here and it's a beautiful thing.

Tags: dead sea, salt, salton sea, trip, tweekers, vacation
Current Location: Salton Sea
Current Mood: calm

Hey World I just joined a secret club called a Union - weird - and they only took a pint of blood and several thousand dollars from me - this is going to be fun! I love to pay for things I don't need - oh yeah health insurance is good - and of course protection - my union will break your unions legs.

They did give me a pension ( apparently I have to wait for my gold watch) - and life insurence - as I signed my name to the hallowed document the lady wearing red rimmed cat eyed glasses and a beehive - stared down her nose at me and intoned - Oh and if you're going to croak - do it at work ... they pay double.

Thanks God for small blessings !

I think when you plan on meeting someone you don't know, it's always best to ascertain before hand if they speak English.
Also when you go to meet someone and the first thing they say - in barely audible English is "do you wish to go to McDonalds?; That is your cure to turn and run.

Also a lump by any other name is cancer right? Lets hope it's just my deodorant making my armpits angry.

Also had a funny LA moment this weekend. This guy called me up, and left a message to the affect of - Hey this is so and so, and you answered an add for writers I  put on Craig’s list ... I think the middle of last year ... yeah well I'd really like to meet with you and discuss ideas"

9 months later are you kidding me? So naturally I met with teh guy – Joan’s on 3rd on a Sunday morning bad idea – every person in there had just fallen out of the pages of French Vouge and not bothered to wipe the Merlot from their upper lips.

Besides the crime against nature that is the scene there - I love the food and the guy I was meeting was cute in a Hobbit looking, sweater vest, turquoise ring wearing kind of way.

We sat down (finally) to talk and he had me sign a non-disclosure form - veyr official his ideas are clearly state secrets and it was very likely I was going to make off with them at any minute. He informed me that many of these ideas were based on personal experiences   and very dear to his heart. I made a mental note not to laugh ... out lowed.

He started out by saying that he had a lot of interest from investors and these were really Hot ideas, I mean Hot.<br /><br />I nodded enthusiastically as he fingered his dog eared not page, clearly deciding which of the hot ideas to amaze me with first, and if I was in fact even worthy to contemplate the genius that he had come up with.

He finally got into it - and told me one story. OK it starts out in a little Italian hotel, there's this couple ...&nbsp; when he was finished I said and? And what? Oh that's it? I'm sorry I thought that was just the set up or the first act.

He shuffled his paper nervously and said yeah well that one's not so developed yet. He had also failed to mention that the idea sucked - probably for the best that it wasn't that developed. Ok so the next one ... OK well it starts out in a little Italian hotel and there's this couple. I sat back, and waited for him to finish, mercifully this one was less developed than the first ...

He then conceded that a lot of his ideas were based on available locations ... or places he had, fond memories of his youth ... I&nbsp;gritted my teeth and prayed the list of 17 ideas may be beyond my comprehension and he would spare me them. He looked at me then and said OK ... THESE are the really hot ideas - I&nbsp; laughed out lowed - broken rule number one. What are you laughing abotu? Nothing I was just think it's funny, that now your'e saying ... here are the hot ideas ... he looked at me like I was nuts. I had clearly offended him.  I had to smile and feigned interest. He earnestly rattled off the rest of his ideas, and I&nbsp;noded and wondered when I&nbsp; could leave. In the end, I told him I'd think about it. I felt bad he seemed smart and nice, and cool, and I&nbsp;wish I had liked his ideas better, but such is life. <br /><br />The one thing I did get out of the experience besides a really good ham and bri sandwich was his amazing ability to sell himself. This guy managed to get me to think his ideas were great, even sought after before I'd even read one of them. The fact that he couldn’t; deliver was immaterial ... he had moxy and I like that, I need to learn the fine art of making peopel think my stuff is brilliant no matter how good it really is.

This is a key part of the puzzle that I have yet to master but I respect those who have... More to come.Back to work now ... stupid work ... whoever invented this commerce business is an ass.

   
ATTENTION: Seekers I have your official horoscope, read on or forever live in doubt

Virgo - You need a hug. Suck it up. We all need hugs, but with the economy the way it is, there's just not enough to go round. Think of your 7th grade substitute Science teacher... yeah your life's not that bad. Now go out there and hug a stranger. Sometimes the best way to get a hug, is to give one, this does not go for promotions, your boss, will think it strange if you stride into her office, and announce in no uncertain tones "You are promoted". This is unadvisable. However dogs are actually your friends, no matter what they may think of you. Let them smell you first, it builds trust. This principle definitely applies to your boss. Smell my hand, come on do it, dogs love it. Good Luck.

Aquarius - Yeah... no I got nothing. Sorry.

Aries - There is definitely pie in your future Blueberry, or possibly Cheery, either way resist temptation, turn your back and you will see what you never thought possible... something truly beautiful. Luckily for you, no one else will see it, and you can convince your self it was a trick of the light, and we still live in a universe of eternal unknowns... but between you and me... you'll no.

Taurus - Yes.

Leo - You will slip and fall, and many people will laugh. This is a good thing, you need to learn humility. Oh and don't order the fish, it's off.

Gemini - It's your turn to listen, even if it's very boring, smile and nod, and really try to hear what that person is saying. Between the lines, lies a fine recipe for corn bread. If you can decipher the proportions correctly, you will understand why trains are always late - you will show up a minute or two later, catch the train right at the apex of it's journey, and you will meet someone who will give up their seat for you. This will have no significance, but the moment right after that, will reveal truths about your ex, that will shed light on your break up, and remind you that we are all human.

Scorpio - Return those pants they do make you look fat.

Cancer - That thing you thought that no one knew, they know! Let this be a lesson to you, never post naked pictures of your self on the Internet. This weekend you will meet someone who will tell you something very important. Make a note of it, lest you forget.

Sagittarius - A dark wind rises from the North, luckily you live in the South, and so you will not be affected. However there is the distinct possibility that someone close to you, will reveal a secret that you were hoping not to have to discus with them. You have to discuss it, the consequences could be dire. You like ice cream? Sushi? Well forget about it. It's over for you. This state may change but not without serious effort on your part. Your head is firmly entrenched in your ass, and we're worried about you. Fecal matter is not that pretty.  

Pisces - You are morally bankrupt and you know it. However there maybe a solution to your problem. BE A NICE PERSON. I know it's not going to be easy, but sometimes we all have to make sacrifices - throw out that stuff in your fridge - you know you're never going to eat it. The good stuff, won’t hang around forever waiting for you to choose to enjoy it. Seriously.

Capricorn - If you drive a car, take the bus, if you drive a bus, take the train, and if you drive a train, get a fucking life - you can do better.

Aquarius - You're back in the game, I was worried about you for a minute there, but something has materialized. That co-worker you think is cute, they're terrible in bed, no staying power, and no empathy - sex is never sex unless you're with an empath, if they can't feel you, then they can't feel you. You dig. Oh and seriously call your sister she misses you.

Libra - Forgive and forget, I know it hurt, but after a while the pain no longer belongs to the past, and it's only you, who chooses to let it belong to the present - forget about it, you're better than that. Oh and you have to do Karaoke with your co-workers it's going to suck, and you're going to make a fool of your self. No wait that can't be right... yeah, sorry that's it. But you may will learn something from it. If not, you will take home a Japanese tourist and make sweet love all night long. And don't worry it's normal to leave your sneakers on in bed.

Ok that's it! I've done my job, now you do yours. Forget everything I said, and go with your gut, it's wiser than you think. Oh but Leo's disregard this statement, you must listen to every word I say - otherwise... well it wont be pretty. Taurus's I'm sorry to be so cryptic, but I know you understand. I am one of you, and I'm just rolling with it. Yes! Embrace it; it's all you've got.

 

Love you all, good luck tomorrow it's Friday, and anything can happen. That is as long as you get up off your ass and make it happen.

 

Love you mean it.

Tags: horoscop, life, love, sex
Current Mood: jubilant

I love my new job, because I'm so good at it .. syke! I am probably the least suited person to be charged with my job requirements in the world!

Let me break down a little bit of it for you! Math, lists, double checking, budgets, did I mention math, legal something, Math equeations in Excell a program I only know how to use to make things pretty, and I am getting the peculiar sense that all of this is expected of me NOW, and there's more ... but a mysterious more that I have yet to be told about and probably wont be told about, and I'll only know I was supposed to do it, when someone is yelling at me for not doing it.

Good times with stuff ..

Oh the bright side I love my co-workers! So far so good, on that front, I hope they don't notice how woefully underqualified I am until it's too late!

xoxo me

Wowsers, so I now work for Warner Brothers! I know this may come as a shock to many of you, I myself am still looking around furtively trying to figure out, how I got here.

Apparently the system works and when I say system I mean cyber stalking. Let me go back to the beginning.

I want to be a writer/director, but I have found myself traipsing down the art department garden path, not unwillingly let me make clear, I have a love for the Art Dep, and all my Art Dogs, but truth be told I am an interloper, trespassing in another man’s world.

I am supposed to be writing and directing and there is very little I’m better at, so art department is like my starter wife. I’ve committed to it but in the back of my mind I know it’s just practice for the real thing … and one day it will take half my money and leave me for a real Production Designer … oh wait that’s already happening good old Unions. That being said, until I start to get paid to really write and direct, I would rather work in the art dept than anywhere else.

However I was beginning to get fed up with being over worked and underpaid, toiling in the sixth circle of hell affectionately known as the freelance, non union, indy, spec project, world.
    Coupled with the fact that the writers strike set us all back, then the looming SAG strike has been causing the breaks to screech on the indy machine, and everyone’s starting to sweat.

So I decided some how I had to get into the studio system, the problem with that is that I’m not Union, and have no idea how to become Union or what Union I’m supposed to be wishing I could be a part of. As I had always understood it, the Union world was a catch 22, you can’t work on a union show without being union, and you can’t get into a union without having worked on a union show. Where the hell does that leave me?

Where you ask? In the “I’m going to throw the rules out the window and do it my way “ place. So that’s what I did. I started cyber stalking, and I don’t mean for ass, or love, but for work. I just started roaming the internet searching for people who I admired, or could pretend to have heard of for the purposed of harassment, and then harassing them.

The cardinal rule in the film industry is DO NOT COLD CALL, or in this day and age email – so that’s what I did. I tracked down several production designers personal info or that of their agents, managers, or Canadian managers, and I just wrote them an email. And email saying I knew I was breaking all the rules, but I worth it, if they would just give me a shot I would prove that they had made the right choice.

I’m sure out of the 20 people I wrote to most threw out the mail or never saw it but two guys and one woman got back to me, and one of them said in the subject line of his email “You’re a Ballsy Chick” – and from then on I knew he was the guy for me.

However when I told him I was non union he told me he couldn’t help me. I was down trodden but I kept his email and tried to keep on his radar. And then it happened.

He emailed me on a Friday telling me to come in for an interview on a Monday. I went in met the guy, started driving home, and before I had even reached my garage, he had called me, said I was hired, and I was to start the next day.

Now here I am sitting at my own desk working on a TV show for Warner Brothers that is set to replace ER, one of the biggest shows of all time. I can’t give all the details out, but let me just say, the art budget alone is more than twice the entire budget of the biggest show I’ve worked on before!

Good times … of course now I’ve weaseled my way in, I have to figure out what hell I’m supposed to do here! I’ve never actually done the job I’ve been hired for before, so that will be a fabulous new challenge. I do have to report to an office which freaks me out and makes my skin crawl, I’m wearing high heels at work … there’s a first time for everything … and I’m expected to know things I’ve never even heard of but hey, it’s better than sitting at home watching Law and Order and wondering why no one will hire me! Careful what you wish for …  you may actually get it.

More to come in the adventures of Rebecca’s new life in the Studio system …

xme

In the summer of love a generation made wrote a manifesto and that that manifesto stated that “we have choices” … since the symbolic day, we've all been screwed. Before that time, the world ran on rules ... and one of those rules was ... you can rarely exceed your class/family/economic situation/gender ... then a collection of dreamers threw that on it's head.
Traditionally I would embrace such a concept, but something about it doesn’t sit right with me. Of course good things came of this mental shift, but if you look over the long term legacy of this phenomenon, I think it may be to blame for many of the social ills that cripple us now.
Once everything changed, and people stared getting rights and a cold war mentality of iron clad rules began to crumble a new ideology took shape, an ideology that’s crept into the conciseness  of every person born after 1965. The concept is simple ... we have choices ... we are not bound by the cultural expectations of our parents, or the political mores of the past ... we can do what ever we want ... but we have no idea how to.
I begin to think that we're scared ... we are taught (if you're born in the 80's particularly) ... that you can do what ever you want ... be what ever you want ... and this would be a good thing except in a strange way I think it's made us weak ... I think we've lost cultural imperative ... when you can do anything you can also do nothing. Among several of my points is that our generation and the one before it and after it is crushed under the weight of it's own potential.
Rarely in the history of human civilization have people been told they can do what they want ... and yet despite this lack of choice people have excelled look at the; Enlightenment, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution. Is this, this century’s contribution to the evolution of many kind? I Bloody hope not, because I feel we've taken a step back.
Let me make clear, I belief in this century, I believe in the 60's and the contribution it had to offer ... but now I feel like we've been given so many options, so much "faith"; in our selves ... that we've lost the ability to fight. If you don't have to fight to define your identity ... then why bother? Why not allow the simple things, the easy thing, the superficial, material things to define us ... because that's what we've inherited, ... we've inherited a culture of privilege, or expectation to grandeur ... we were told you can do it  ... but we don't want to have to “ do it”; we just want it to come to us ... because we didn't have to earn it, we were just told if we were “us”; enough that would be good enough ... and I for one don't agree. I believe in human potential ... but I begin to worry that if everyone is told they can be anything they want ... we loose our drive, we loose our sense of cultural imperative ... we lose our sense of survival.  The basic need to live, to define our identities by our achievements not our entitlements.
And this leads me to the thoughts that sparked this rant ... I think this sense of entitlement without earning it leads to a great deal of the past 30 years being inundated with addiction ... it's too bloody hard for a lot of people to face that, they are not being challenged by the obstacles of the past ... every generation of human life has worked hard to bring us to this point of enlightenment and now it's our job to act ... to be better ... to take all of these advantages that so many have died for ... and do something with them ... but we're too scared ... we're lost ... we missed something integral to any generation of thinkers ... the right of passage ... in which we become men or women ... the trek into the woods alone to fight the unknown ... we no longer do this ... we're born, coddled, told we can do anything ... then shoved out into the world with out ever having proven to ourselves that we have the metal to “do anything” So we turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, the internet, each other ... anything to save us from looking at ourselves ... anything to avoid growing up to be adults who never left childhood ... sadly I suspect this may be the largest contribution this generation gives to mans evolution ... if nothing else I hope our failure to grow up, will serve as a lesson to the youth of the future ... don't squander your opportunities ... no matter how freely they are given ... fight for them or these freedom's may be your undoing.

me

Really creative ... my new plan - go into private investigating ... I may not be blessed with patience, but I'm sure I can listen to NPR while on a stake out right?

I'm expecting a call any day, considering I got the application for the off shore surveliance gig from Craigs List I reckon they'll call. Also when I filled it out, they asked did I have any permits, or degress to qualify me ... I said of course ... I have a CPR certificate ... that may need ... that does need renewing.

I'm a shoe in.

This is barley a blog more of a random rambling ... but hey maybe one day I'll want to remember this day for some reason.

Sleepy Toby is the most adorable creature in the world. This is a side note, but worthy of mention as it's sucha  cute sight, and sometimes he squeaks and growls, these are also good contributions to any evening.

I went to a fabulous lunch at my parents house today, with both my sisters, and a gagel of Australians, rare to be with both my wee ones, but small fry flies off to Italy tomorrow, so it was a farewell lunch that lasted until five o'clock. Amazing smoked fish pie that my mother made, she is such a cuty with her cooking!  I love my sisters, they are adorable little creatures. Chloe and I had a good laugh.

Laura was rudley texting her boy friend at the lunch table, and I use the word rudley loosely as Chloe was doing it to!, however when she departed to change her laundry over, Chloe and I well mostly me, but Chloe picked up the slack pretty fast, picked up Laura's cell phone and started texting her boy friend Leonard with less than apprpirate texts! We laughed our asses off as Laura is such a delicate flower and so unlikely to text her man anything involving wet cats, and cyber sex! Either way the Australians were on to us, and insisted we text him appologetic text messages that they dictated, we had a good laugh, over that one.

Then I was assulted by more commercials for the snuggy an invention I find both horrifying, and well ... horifying. On other hand I made a lot of people laugh at the lunch so that was excellent.

Then we watched an amazing new well new to me British comedy, called "Gavin and Stacy" if you hear of it, or get a chance to watch it, I would highly recommend.

I'm also debating teaching myself to make pulled pork ..

I've been working my but off lately, trying to figure out how to break into screen writing, I've been very brave doing things I don't normally do, like approach strangers and tell them I'm good. It's exciting, but I bloody hope I get some feed back soon. I've actually written something I'm truly proud of and I'm just so ready, to be out there,  to be doing this everyday for a living. I know I'm ready now I just have to convince the world.

Last night i went to a lovely little party and had a fantastic laugh with my friend Stephanie Paris, who I love to pieces, then I met all kinds of people form my past. Not actual people from my past, but people who know people i went to high school with of lived in England at the same time as me, and we dissussed people and places we knew, it was super, plus they had parsnips as a Hors 'd oeuvre!

Plus I ran into this friend of mine, who I am convinced someday will produce one of my films, she may not know it yet but I've decided! I offered to photograph her I think she has bedroom eyes, I don't know if she was flattered or now thinks I'm creepy, I guess we'll see - I've been dying to photograph some people recently, so I do hope she takes me up on it!

I also had a super work out at the Y - going there on a Saturday evening is the best, there's barley anyone around and all the usual I'm at the gym, I look so fat why do I bother coming here anxiety is alleiveated. It's neato, plus this sweet friendly guy at the front desk actually chatted with me it was rare for the Hollywood Y! Rare but lovely.