new year's eves past

this time, last year

spike marathon again

pretty sure i've watched more episodes of gangland than anybody i know

embrace, be humble

how do people live alone? mrs. tuckersman left yesterday afternoon for her holidays in Bordeaux and i have been going crazy in an empty apartment. i ate carl's jr. i ate yoshinoya. i phoned buca - she says there's snow in ny. i listened to that new nelly song. i tried to unlearn the russian phonetic keyboard layout and become a proficient of the default keyboard instead. this made my head hurt so i remedied by watching toddlers and tiaras, extreme couponing, my strange addiction, and moscow doesn't believe in tears. i went out into the silver lake night and bought a hand-packed pint of gelato (european yogurt pumpkin swirl, toffee, and almond fig) and shivered all the way back to my car as the container pressed its cold to my body through my purse. my life shouldn't be any different because i'm living, thankfully temporarily, alone, but it makes me agitated and i hardly know what to do with myself. we festively wrapped our air conditioning unit with wrapping paper for christmas 2009 and it has been loudly breathing in and out crinkled breaths all night like a monster.

cocoanut grove

i miss the ambassador hotel, which i never actually knew, and resent the green-glowing monstrosity that has taken its place. i wish there could have been a revival, where i would spend all my nights, steps from my apartment, in the restored cocoanut grove, where judy garland at the grove was recorded.

щелкунчик

last night mrs. tuckersman and i went to see the LA ballet's performance of the nutcracker. in it there was a russian dancer who moved and posed with swagger because he knew he was clearly the best dancer in the company. i suspect that the long beach staging was better than the one we attended. flying sleigh!

612

wild times at the printing press

i like the added meaning

the ecstasy of unbridled avarice

i just found seven hundred dollars of chinese new year's money in my room that i must have squirreled away god knows when. i think i'll do something wild with it, like pay my rent.

merry christmas from the los angeles eccentrics

the david house

two feet down a wolf's gullet

the history of one tough motherfucker

and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, look
at this!"

but they don't understand, they say something like,"you
say you've been influenced by Celine?"

"no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!"

jay bells

i went to a people-who-ride-bicycles party last night in silver lake. i had the shock of my life when i saw a skunk wander out of someone's front yard and cross the street. never seen a skunk before. i didn't know that skunks lived in los angeles. i didn't know that los angeles could support wildlife.

this was my first holiday party where there were hired strippers, a trio of audacious, curvaceous women. i always thought that strippers just sort of pranced around, giving suggestive lap dances and collecting dollar bills, but the performance was much much more outrageous than that, falling only a few steps short of an amsterdam-esque live sex show. even more awesome than the skunk sighting.

ny excuse

booked my january tickets to new york. i don't really understand how to dress in cold weather so i'm just going to pack my whiny voice and trademark scowl.

угу

at some point during my ~nine hour bus ride today, i realized that at some point in my life i really want to shoe a horse.

the best thing about the chinese buffet in el paso is that there is HORCHATA and FLAN. yess. i feel so incredibly fat from going to chinese buffets for the past three days and am disgusted with my body.

the carlsbad caverns were amazing. highly recommend. i kept imagining this enormous drippy cave as my house. though as with every trip, however nice, i find myself homesick and quite eager to return to the angels.

tucson

my parents spontaneously decided to take a four-day bus tour to arizona through a chinese travel company. every time i've gone on one of these trips, with the flag-waving tour guide and matching stickers on our shirts, i've sworn, this is the last time i'm going to do this. yet here i am in a holiday inn in tucson. we spent around twelve hours on a bus today to get here. horrible movies were played en route, things like the bucket list and knight and day (so awful, the sound of cameron diaz's screaming.) ma kept pinching my nose and telling me i should really get rhinoplasty. i tried to learn some words, which i'll never use, out of a russian dictionary and had dreams of kid rock coming to my trailer, topless and wasted, and projectile vomiting all over a baby. for tucson dinner we went to a chinese buffet, because chinese bus tours will do everything within their power to suss out every lone chinese buffet in the southwest, middle america, etc. what was funny was that there was not a single asian person dining in said buffet, and then a bus-load of real chinese people flooded the place. it was as if you were in santa's village, ill-fated christmas theme park of 1955-1998 san bernadino yore, and a sleigh set free fifty elves to run amok.

hot air balloon ride review

Next, we didn't go very high at all. the whole time we were bumping into trees and talking to people in there back yards.

cute people

i hope taylor swift goes and buys herself something pretty with the money i paid fer her cd. i'm sorry to report that, in my professional opinion, the music on it is no good.

rumdiddlyumptious

we went to a bar last night where you first enter a ramshackle bedroom and then, pushing clothes and hangers aside, actually climb into the bedroom armoire, à la the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. on the other side, you find yourself in cuba, à la guys and dolls or dirty dancing havana nights, with bottles of rum stacked to the ceiling and burlesque girls sashaying in fringe on the hour.

when i was a child i once had a nightmare of being in a haunted house where i opened the armoire and all the clothes came flying out at me.

juju

recently various unrelated people have tried to convince me of the veracity of astrology. after briefly reviewing the signages of people i love and hate, i maintain that there is no pattern / y'all crazy.

a more important revelation: they sell my peche lambic at trader joe's

good morning

covering the sleep on my face with make-up

last night we went out a-drinkin' to celebrate mrs. tuckersman's last day of teaching munchkins ever. like a bunch of old folk we four, a writer, a dancer, a model, and a me, were irreparably exhausted by 1:30 am and more than happy when the bartender called last call.

bad sign

my memory is completely failing me in the names of places and people department

presidio

sleepy, tired feet hello from a two-star motel in san francisco

maggie milly molly and may

yesterday anders took mrs. tuckersman and me to see all manner of wildlife in monterey. at the harbor there were medusas, seals, sea lions, sea gulls, and sea otters. never seen wild otters before. we spent last evening drinking with graduate students of monterey peninsula, many of whom are studying to be professional language translators. most of them hate living in monterey but are good-natured about it.

anderssimon

hello from a fold-out bed in monterey

gchat

Sergey: I see

no, I mean

you people here

like to feel guilty

or at least say you didn't want to black out

I mean

back home

we don't care

смотрим сквозь пальцы

traveling with charley

we are journeying north to salinas, monterey, san francisco.

we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

annual weather miracles

on: Every December I Move to New York

filming is now outside the chalfonte. lots of magic rain. it looks like it's new york again. this is cool, but not as good as last year, when i woke up in the morning and the entire street was lined with new york taxis and covered in snow.

sparks fly

wilshire was all traffic today. the road was narrowed off because a movie was being shot at the old church near the hms bounty. in the scene there must have been a hundred people dressed as vintage policemen and holding black umbrellas. it was very cool, like looking through a time machine.

my taylor swift cd is traveling through the mail to me

gainfully partfully employed

buca, after i told her on the phone about my new job,

"Asians are really into hair removal and it makes no sense."

shell

the hispanic man at the shell gas station told me, "kamsamnida," when he gave me my change at the register. awesome. i love living in koreatown.

scandiknavery

we are going to the swedish christmas fair today. there will be glögg, coffee, pastries, crafts, and that choir girl in white with the wreath and candles on her head. yay yay yay