Truckin'

Wow so all of a sudden it’s been two months and I’m getting ready to leave California and head back up to Montana. I obviously haven’t been great about updating this, I’ve just been so busy partying with all my celebrity friends and out tearing this state up!! Ok..so that’s a lie, I still really don’t know many people and most of my crazy activities have remained to be solo endeavors, I guess I just got lazier.
Anyway, I feel like a little recap is in order for all of you who have helplessly wasted the last two months awaiting my next blog post. July was someone uneventful in Ventura, hence the lack of posts, but I did manage to get some great travels in. My first trip brought me to Denver for the Mile High Music Festival and a reunion with people from nearly every stage of my adult life, one of my best friends from high school, Gonzaga friends and my Joe's Hoe's from Florence, Mason from Missoula, and my buddies from Fort Collins....OH and let's not forget my new friends, like Jed for instance, who found us during the Tool concert when he got separated from his friends, twisted on God only knows what, who with eyes half shut and a thick southern drawl kept saying.."Y'alls got great fuckin' attitoodes, yeaaa I really like y'alls attiitoodes" Unfortunately he left us before the Widespread Panic concert in search of his friends...or his shirt...we weren't really sure. Naturally this was an amazing time and drove my point home that music festivals are one of the only places where the majority of people are truly non-judgmental. Everybody exists and jams together as equals. Hippies pass joints with lawyers dancing next to punks sharing a flask with frat boys and sorority girls, and they are all (gasp) different races and religions...God forbid! It's nice to actually witness and not just hear people claim! Although I started the festival off by throwing up in a port-o-potty (I always jump the gun on the partying!) we all made it out alive. Good Times.

So as if my body had not been put through the ringer enough that weekend I returned to California just in time for Caitlin's visit. Luckily I opted to not make the drive to L.A. Thursday for the awkward mixer our friend Jason brought Caitlin and Allison to...which caused them to pound shots when they reached the bar....which caused them to end up at a strip club, with Caitlin yelling at people. Oddly typical actually. I did make it down for Friday however which was not all that different except substitute mixer for expensive dinner, pounding shots at bar with drinking vodka in a pizzeria bathroom, and strip club for gay district with a drag queen that Caitlin and Allison actually knew--all tied together by skinny dipping in Jason's very public pool in the middle of the night and you've got Friday! However, being the responsible intern I am...I actually got up for a shoot on Saturday...drove to Ventura with plenty of time...made it to my house and with my few precious extra minutes laid down to rest and fell asleep completely missing the event I was supposed to shoot! Well, the deed was done and I sure as hell wasn't going to let that get me down, so I did the only thing I could think of...got in my car and headed back to L.A (albeit a bit disgruntled after wasted the gas and the sleeping time) because after all I did have a party bus to sneak onto and a Snoop Dog concert to try and find a ticket for in San Diego. Both endeavors were successful and after awkward small talk with strangers on the bus Allison and I proceeded to tell everyone how much cooler the gorge was! I sort of felt bad, but fuck it, it's true so...whatever. The rest of the weekend went pretty much the same way, too much booze, me getting denied entrance to bars...me trying to get into bars anyway....all ending with late night pizza and a very expensive cab ride to the train station in the middle of the night. And then it happened....quite possibly the worst day of my life. I woke up about an hour into the train ride and was instantly nauseous. After excusing myself to the bathroom 4 or 5 times I made up a bullshit story to the CEO sitting next to me about how motion sickness runs in my family and it's been a really hard problem to cope with...yeah. The only way he probably would have believed this bullshit story was if he was drunk off the alcohol fumes seeping out my pores, or distracted by the greaseball knot posing as my hair. After throwing up in the back of a cab and a lengthy drive through terrible LA traffic I made it to work-wearing the same clothes I'd had on for days, having not showered after jumping in a pool and the ocean and having missed my weekend assignment-to a surprisingly jovial boss and not the pink slip I was expecting...Hmmm.....Sorry for Partying!

Shameless

Regardless of the amazing experience I'm gaining at my internship, the opportunity to live in a new place and the awesome fate that landed me in the chillest living arrangement ever my trip will be eternalized by one thing only......Seeing Garth Brooks.
No, he did not fly over or run through the crowd, and he definitely Went Down Before the Sun Came Up....but nonetheless, totally worth it!
So Friday was the opening night of the Hollywood Bowl in (you guessed it) Hollywood and our paper had a little feature on it, so immediately upon opening my browser and seeing Garth's name, I was on ticketmaster securing my place in Section K2 Seat 103. As I read the full story I came to find out that GB himself was only a presenter at this opening night that was actually a induction for Josh Groban and....uh...some other singer with a difficult name, to the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame. As you can imagine this news was a bit disappointing until I remembered that I had NOTHING better to do that night, and there was going to be fireworks!!
So after work I guzzled what remained of a bottle of wine, smoked a bowl and rocked a little Callin' Baton Rouge in the Sherman Oaks Park-n-Ride. I was so thankful I didn't drive because the bowl was a TOTAL clusterfuck and I just pictured myself deliberately ramming my car into another or just abandoned it in the traffic for the nearest bar. So while waiting in the ridiculously long line to get frisked I noticed EVERYONE around me with coolers or carrying like 4 bottles of champagne and realized how underprepared I was. Coming from the Gorge, where Mason and Mario had to literally shove bottles of booze down their pants to get it in, I wasn't expecting to be able to roll in with a mini bar, so I gave in and payed the outlandish $10 a pop for beers at a refreshment convenient store (yeah an entire fucking store of booze in the venue, fabulous and terrible all at the same time!) So I made it to my seat and acting the only way I know how to at an outdoor concert I drank as much as I could as quickly possible-much to the dismay of the overweight binoculars man to my left and the "trying to keep the flame alive by doing fun things together" middle aged couple to my right. (If only they knew in 20 minutes I'd be standing and screaming along with Roger Daltry to"Pinball Wizard".....poor bastards never saw it coming!)
Well the induction was interesting and despite being the person with the most alcohol in my system and the least amount of money in my bank account, I was completely content.
So after spending about an hour in my truck at the Park-n-Ride waiting to sober up I headed home. Upon my exhausted and hazy arrival home the proverbial cherry was placed on the top of my sweet Friday night as I found myself staring at Thor....a three feet tall marble torso with no arms sitting on our kitchen table......it doesn't get much better than that.

One down, ten to go.

So I've successfully completed the first week of my job without getting yelled at, fired or respectfully laid off. I must say I'm proud. Little victories. Naturally after such a momentous achievement one would yearn for a crazy night out on the town right? Right! Well unfortunately, in the words of two of the most accredited philosophical masterminds (Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of course!), you can't always get what you want. Since my roommate informed me that he is taking it easy for a bit after five straight months of hard partying in which he "ate ecstacy like coffee" (and even tbough you don't technically eat coffee I thought it best not to correct him), I opted for poaching a movie alone. I paid for a ticket to "The Hangover," which was a fun comedy that made me want to go to Vegas with Caitlin and give their scenario a run for its money, and then surprisingly found myself sneaking into "Star Trek." This was actually probably fourth or fifth on my list to poach but there were a few factors that landed me in that particular theater; the timing worked out perfectly so I didn't have to awkwardly linger too long while waiting for the ushers to clean the theaters; I wasn't especially thrilled to watch "Angels and Demons" by myself sipping wine in an empty theater (don't worry, same bottle..fits surprisingly well in my purse); and I feel like it's only respectful to be sufficiently stoned at a Disney/Pixar film, and since I'm oh so responsibly holding off on the pot just in case the 42 fucking bottles of detox didn't work..."Up" was out.
Ok ok...before you assholes start ridiculing me let me just get a few things straight. I'm not any sort of "trekie" or anything, I've actually never even seen an episode of Star Trek...in fact my only experience with the show at all is when it comes on Spike at 11 pm on Sunday nights signifying the end of CSI Sunday, which always gave me negative feelings towards it. (How dare they stop 12 straight hours of CSI even though they have been repeating for three hours? Bastards!) Anyway...I really enjoyed it, and the other three computer tech guys (also there by themselves) seemed to enjoy it as well. I definitely recommend it...although I'm sure everyone reading this has more important things to do than poach "Star Trek" alone on a Friday night...or probably read this blog....Shit.
Well I'm sure you don't have better things to do Monday morning while pretending to work, so you can read it then...in fact most of you probably are. Unless you're Caitlin and you quit your job working for the man so you could get wasted and buy tickets to Germany....in that case get wasted and by tickets to L.A. Actually get tickets to L.A. in time to go to the Electric Daisy Carnival (only like the biggest rave in the world) with my roommate who asked me to put roughly 8 tickets at $60 a pop on my credit card for him since he only deals in cash. Oh and Carla he is offering to buy you a ticket too. I don't know but I trust Fab when he says there's nothing in this world like seeing 20,000 ravers in one place.....I'm sure there isn't. Ok I'm off to do something productive with my day, like stop lying around my room and go lay around on the beach. Live long and prosper!

Let's Play Ball

Ciao le mie amici!! So everyone can exhale (since I know you've been holding your breath until you've heard from me) I've made it to California in one piece. This blog creation and inital post comes from a half inflated air mattress balancing oh so delicately on top of a few couch cushions in the corner of my new bedroom in Camarillo, CA. I was about 1/3 of the way through a bottle Pinot Grigio listening to my new roommate play techno music and make drug deals (yes, he is a drug dealer, but all in all a top notch guy-very kind-he just really likes ecstacy, we all have our habits...and no I'm actually NOT kidding) when I said to myself-Self I bet all of your friends want to hear about your thrilling new life you'd better start a blog pronto!
This must be the place huh. Yes. It is. Welcome to my head friends.
So after three days of anticipation, $105.67, and three gnarly de-tox drinks I've finally taken the final step in the decision of me keeping this job-the drug test. I must say between tropical, lemon-lime and mandarine de-tox flavor drinks.....the mandarine takes the cake. It reminded me vaguely of a melted otter pop, which sort of brought me back to my childhood. Who'd a thought that trying to clear the weed out of my system would bring me back to my days as a youngin'. Well I guess I did grow up in Rock Springs, WY...eh.
As far as actual work goes I'm totally diggin' it. My boss and co-workers are pretty laid back surprisingly and I've already edited a video that will be up on the Web site soon, and got to go along on another shoot today. The shoot today was a sort of promo type thing for the humane society- a little random-but I did get to play with kittens. I think it was good for me though since I've had a bad taste in my mouth (or odor in my olfactory I guess) for similar places since doing community service my junior year of high school for an M.I.P. This time around proved to be a much better experiece as I did NOT have to clean up cat poop or sort random piles of shit in the basement for the crazy lady that worked there to have a garage sale. Actually this lady was pretty cool. She reminded me of Kathy Bates a little bit. Not like a Misery Kathy Bates, like Titanic Kathy Bates. She restored my faith in the sanity of human society workers. Thanks Janine, I was worried there for a few years....oh and I put a kitten in my pocket....
Ok I'm now 1/2 through that Pinot and need to go to fucking sleep. Man it is WAY easier to smoke a joint than plow through a bottle of booze, but it's ok because I'm a champion.