I started this blog February 4th, 2005 when my awesome Mom started
hers. She wrote poetically about her daily struggles recovering from cancer, and I wrote about blundering through caregiving, dating, film school, and my own recovery post head injury from a car accident with a drunk driver in 1995.
You'll notice there are years of daily posts here. Then an attempt at being less confessional. Then a reincarnation as a lifestyle blog that points out impersonal trinkets. Followed by a sprawling capitalist mess shilling for you and the bizarro world of horror-lovers to view my poor misunderstood feature film that very few people grok. Outside of 70s-cinema lovin' Hollywood intellectual bohemians, the actual Masters of Horror, and some really nice fundamental Christians (When I go niche, I go DEEP NICHE baby. Oh wait, you're NOT supposed to go that niche? You're supposed to find 1000 True Fans, not 100 True Fans? Well fuck me with a chainsaw!).
No no, I swear I'm not doing one of those narcissistic posts where I say I'm never going to blog again as a Tinkerbell clap trap to make you all dance like monkeys to bring me back to life (Though *if* I were a Narcissist (which Dr. Olcese says I can't be since I'm capable of asking that question), you all know I came by it naturally through half my designer genes, n'est-ce pas?).
See??? THAT is why I need to start blogging again. The above paragraphs? CRAPTASTIC writing. I was the most productive and gooder at ze ol' clackety ckack when I was putting in my WGA-prescribed Stream of Consciousness Hour a Day right here at my stupid lil blog. And that discipline naturally overflowed into writing the (unproduced) feature screenplay PISTOLERAS that I still think could save thousands of kids from sex slavery. So that cause and effect alone is cause enough to pause and think deep thoughts with Jack Handey on a daily basis.
But the negatives are like whoa. Violent soul-ripping out of your body junk. Some of it from innocuous stuff that exposes your friends' neuroses. Some of it so deserved that I'll be coming back reincarnated as a snail next life (the first year of true confessional blogging has a steep learning curve that will cost you family members and lifetime friends).
Dealing with feeling the petty envy of watching blogging friends get book deals and paying jobs and Hollywood careers and big blog audiences that financially sustained them. Getting to a Taoist point of not caring about not having that and just focusing on the joy of creating. Wondering then if I'm talking to myself, why exactly am I bothering? The tree is still falling. For whom am I recording the fall? Alien ancestors? And why did I have so many pictures of myself up on my own blog? Ewwww. How desperate am I? You guys are right. I hate me, too.
Getting a readership and having that first high of validation and communication with peers. The fall when they turned. Followed by driving most of the readers away when the snarky wannabe screenwriters kept attacking the underdog, exhausted caregivers. Zeus I can't abide bullies.
Then there's the really evil stuff. My close friends would snort at me typing "I try to focus on the positive", but unfortunately guess what? When you open up a vein and publish your fucking diary on the web, your close friends aren't the ones who come daily to lap up the blood. Nope. It's the two stalkers with autoerotomania escalating towards violence. That cunt hiding behind the mask of feminism who actually has Narcissistic Personality Disorder and IS going to die alone and broke.
Meeting heroes in the film industry as colleagues and learning they really think women are only good for putting their dicks in. Not finding a place as a writer in the boys club of the comic world. Losing boyfriends by not writing or writing about them.
Or the biggest kick in the gut: discovering the pervasive Female on Female Violence that is the real reason women don't have equality in Hollywood, and by extension the world. My close friends REALLY want me to make a documentary about my interesting thoughts about mean girls and the Cavewoman inside us all and how we're the problem not the solution. To which I say, fuck you, YOU go make a documentary. I want to get PAID to do the Wild Thing. Grumble. I've got at least $250,000 I've invested in this hobby over the past 25 years. It would be nice to get ONE PAYCHECK. Just one. So my dead grandparents can stop thinking I'm an indulgent asshat.
Have I told you about how I stopped looking at the search words for how strangers found my blog because it made me want to throw up my spirit? Or how friends of mine have had their photos downloaded, then uploaded to the internet with cum on them? Or how my attempt to raise money for my lead actresses' prosthetic hand after a horrible accident turned into thousands of perverts coming HERE to jack off, then stealing her photos and posting them to a porn fetish website? I tried to buy her a hand and I broke her heart.
Like, what can I ever do to make up for any of that? Or forget it? And this is the nonpersonal stuff that's been going on in my life, not even getting into the "how'd I get so old and fat and yeah, I'm really really old and why am I still attracted to twenty-five year olds what's wrong with me" bullshit. No, this is the stuff I brought upon myself by trying to make a difference.
So yeah, I've been in a man-cave minus the man. There's definitely a feeling of "If I never TAKE a step, then I have a small carbon footprint...right??? It's not my childhood ambition of Avengers Assembling to save the world, but it also means I can't accidentally be on the VILLAINS' side, right??? I'm not fucking ULTRON'S pawn, at least. Right, universe? Hello? Universe, are you there...?
I didn't know what to do. So I threw down the gauntlet last week. I yelled at my mom. I'm not proud. The natural course of losing your way spiritually means I haven't been feeling her or talking to her. Ruminating on all the ways I could have been a better daughter. So last Friday I gave her the ol' "HEY. I know you're there. Why aren't you DOING anything? And what the fuck am I supposed to be doing, because I'm so far below the poverty line hitting it is my vision board GOAL for the year. And I don't know what the hell I'M supposed to be doing, and I think the universe is screaming give up and go live in the desert away from humans and stream Netflix movies all day. (Which is ALSO now evil and corporate; What The FUCK, Netflix??? Where's your indie street cred NOW, after you've singlehandedly brought down the film industry???).
So Barbara...Bitch TELL ME SOMETHING!"
And she did.
I got a Big Fishie. A big juicy undeniable one that involved my sister, my gradeschool best friend Jen, and some closeted activist Deep Throat old school Hollywood insiders. Barbara laid this Fishie in deep. There's personal nods going back twenty-seven years ago with Jen, twenty years ago with Brenda, and twelve years ago with Mom. A trio of ladies I couldn't love more, all of whom share a deep passion for the underdog. Each one of whom I shared memorable affinity moments with while watching the amazing film work by one person. A Hollywood figurehead who is the Fishie and may or may not have even been the fishmonger with the help of his awesome fishwife. Doesn't actually matter if I ever know how it went down or who delivered the fishie. I know there's someone out there trying to do good in this fucked up world who thinks I'm doing some good work and found me and my family because of this blog.
That is good enough for me.
I got the message. "BLOG, BITCH."
As you wish, mom.
Oh mom? I got your other message, too. The one that meant "Don't accept yesterday's high bid even though it could buy you groceries. You're keeping your last piece of Avengers art."
