"And I find it kind of funny. I find it kind of sad. The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had." Mad World (version by Tears for Fears).
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This world of ours is crazy. It is a mad world. Not mad in a Mad Max kind of way, but mad in a 1984 Orwellian kind of way or maybe Animal Farm.
We live in a caste ridden society. There are so many hierarchies in this world we call America. There is a peasant class. We just don't want to admit it.
This world is not fair. You can work your ass off and go nowhere. You can commit a fraud crime and end up in prison for ten years or if you're white collar you can end up a billionaire.
Many things make no sense to me. How I got lucky and others did not.
I see my clients in the jails and it amazes me how we can take a person's freedom away before trial because they do not have the money to post bail.
The fact that we let bail bondsmen determine who goes free pre-trial is outrageous. In the end, money or the lack thereof is the determining factor. And those who are incarcerated pre-trial plead guilty to defensible crimes at an alarming rate. We know this. Yet, we do nothing.
Why aren't people screaming in the streets? I suppose it is because we are used to seeing this as a society and think it can't happen to us. We think that we are above the long or short arm (depending where you are in society) of the law.
But no one is. We are just the lucky ones. Or maybe we are in a Mad Max world where only the strong (in this version the rich) survive.
Panorama of San Bernardino
Friday, September 27, 2013
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Hollywood (aka Hollyweird)
I am sitting in the Starbucks on Hollywood Boulevard and thinking back to the days long ago when I would come here in high school. To Hollywood I mean, not to Starbucks. There was no Starbucks back in the 1980's. People consoled themselves with a thermos of coffee from home or weak coffee in a styrofoam cup from a donut shop.
My best friends and I would come to Hollywood when we were supposed to be in class. By the time this tradition started, I had dyed my hair blue black, pierced my right nostril with a stud earring and wore black eyeliner Cleopatra style like Siouxsie Sioux. My uniform (and looking back it was a type of uniform for the misunderstood and depressed) consisted of a concert t-shirt paired with a man's vest from a thrift store and red thermals over my legs covered by men's (striped preferably) boxers. The cheery on top was a pair of scuffed red monkey boots purchased from Nana's on Melrose.
I would come to Hollywood with one or both of my two best friends, Melinda and Tracy. I didn't have a car so Melinda or Tracy would drive to Hollywood. Melinda had a 1964 white Covair and Tracy drove a small red Honda Civic, the back window of which was covered with stickers of our favorite punk bands.
I can't remember much details from the Hollywood trips, but I can recall excitement of those days. The feeling of freedom while in the car driving on the I-10 freeway west from Ontario those sixty miles to the Hollywood 101 freeway. We blasted the radio and leaned out the windows screaming like the teenagers we were.
It was as if the world was all ours. We owned the universe and we knew anything could happen. Miracles could occur. They already had for us. During our Hollywood trips, we met rock stars and had adventures and most importantly, bought cool clothes.
Driving here this morning (after dropping hubby off at a dental conference in Burbank), I felt none of that excitement. On the contrary, being in my old teenage playground has made me more meloncholy than merry. It reminds of of the Nirvana lyric, "Teenage angst has paid off well. Now I'm bored and old."
I am here in Hollywood (or Hollyweird as Melinda and Tracy and I used to call it) to buy some pseudo 1950's rockabilly style clothing at a store called Betty Page. The store sells reproductions of sexy dresses from the 1950's and the store has a punk feel. It is better than buying some monkey boots which my husband convinced me I am too old to wear.
Some say rockabilly is where the goth and punk girls go to die. I suppose this is my purgatory.
For now.
My best friends and I would come to Hollywood when we were supposed to be in class. By the time this tradition started, I had dyed my hair blue black, pierced my right nostril with a stud earring and wore black eyeliner Cleopatra style like Siouxsie Sioux. My uniform (and looking back it was a type of uniform for the misunderstood and depressed) consisted of a concert t-shirt paired with a man's vest from a thrift store and red thermals over my legs covered by men's (striped preferably) boxers. The cheery on top was a pair of scuffed red monkey boots purchased from Nana's on Melrose.
I would come to Hollywood with one or both of my two best friends, Melinda and Tracy. I didn't have a car so Melinda or Tracy would drive to Hollywood. Melinda had a 1964 white Covair and Tracy drove a small red Honda Civic, the back window of which was covered with stickers of our favorite punk bands.
I can't remember much details from the Hollywood trips, but I can recall excitement of those days. The feeling of freedom while in the car driving on the I-10 freeway west from Ontario those sixty miles to the Hollywood 101 freeway. We blasted the radio and leaned out the windows screaming like the teenagers we were.
It was as if the world was all ours. We owned the universe and we knew anything could happen. Miracles could occur. They already had for us. During our Hollywood trips, we met rock stars and had adventures and most importantly, bought cool clothes.
Driving here this morning (after dropping hubby off at a dental conference in Burbank), I felt none of that excitement. On the contrary, being in my old teenage playground has made me more meloncholy than merry. It reminds of of the Nirvana lyric, "Teenage angst has paid off well. Now I'm bored and old."
I am here in Hollywood (or Hollyweird as Melinda and Tracy and I used to call it) to buy some pseudo 1950's rockabilly style clothing at a store called Betty Page. The store sells reproductions of sexy dresses from the 1950's and the store has a punk feel. It is better than buying some monkey boots which my husband convinced me I am too old to wear.
Some say rockabilly is where the goth and punk girls go to die. I suppose this is my purgatory.
For now.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Rockin the Casbah
Just admit it. Life is hard. Being an adult sucks ass.
There are days I want to listen to my punk music (the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks to name a few) and post punk music (seminal bands like the Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Cure) and dance until my head hurts to escape the messiness and mundaneness of life.
If someone was brave enough to tell kids how hard life was, teens would never want to grow up so quick. When I was a teenager, I couldn't wait to be eighteen. My dreams of being in college and doing whatever I wanted fizzled out like diet coke left open in the sun when I dropped out of high school at seventeen.
By nineteen, I was waiting tables and struggling to make rent on a low income apartment in Upland.
Life seems better on paper now. I went to UCR for my English degree and graduated magna cum laude and then USC Law, I have the pedigree I always craved as a young child. Yet, there is something wrong. What is wrong with me? I know it is cliche to say life is getting me down, but it is. This thing we call life is so boring most days. Wake up, eat, walk dogs, drive to work, work, drive home, eat, go to sleep. Blah. Blah. Blah.
I have a bad case of the blahs.
The only things that help are music, writing, and television. Granted, television is more of a numbing agent which I admit I use frequently. Watching thirteen one hour episodes of a new series on Netflix in three days ("Orange is the New Black") is not healthy I know. I don't drink anymore so this is all I got.
It seems as if the universe is giving me sign after sign that I need to follow my passion for writing. Every TV show, every radio show, even commercials, keep reminding me that life is too short to waste.
Here is my goal, I am writing it down to visualize it. I will have an agent and my book will be published. People will read it. My memoir will rocket into the literary airspace and take the world by storm.
That is my dream. That will be my life.
Fuck the blahs. This IE girl wants to rock the casbah.
There are days I want to listen to my punk music (the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks to name a few) and post punk music (seminal bands like the Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Cure) and dance until my head hurts to escape the messiness and mundaneness of life.
If someone was brave enough to tell kids how hard life was, teens would never want to grow up so quick. When I was a teenager, I couldn't wait to be eighteen. My dreams of being in college and doing whatever I wanted fizzled out like diet coke left open in the sun when I dropped out of high school at seventeen.
By nineteen, I was waiting tables and struggling to make rent on a low income apartment in Upland.
Life seems better on paper now. I went to UCR for my English degree and graduated magna cum laude and then USC Law, I have the pedigree I always craved as a young child. Yet, there is something wrong. What is wrong with me? I know it is cliche to say life is getting me down, but it is. This thing we call life is so boring most days. Wake up, eat, walk dogs, drive to work, work, drive home, eat, go to sleep. Blah. Blah. Blah.
I have a bad case of the blahs.
The only things that help are music, writing, and television. Granted, television is more of a numbing agent which I admit I use frequently. Watching thirteen one hour episodes of a new series on Netflix in three days ("Orange is the New Black") is not healthy I know. I don't drink anymore so this is all I got.
It seems as if the universe is giving me sign after sign that I need to follow my passion for writing. Every TV show, every radio show, even commercials, keep reminding me that life is too short to waste.
Here is my goal, I am writing it down to visualize it. I will have an agent and my book will be published. People will read it. My memoir will rocket into the literary airspace and take the world by storm.
That is my dream. That will be my life.
Fuck the blahs. This IE girl wants to rock the casbah.
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