all neuroses, all the time

well, of course i'm doing burn, baby burn, i signed up on monday.

haven't you?
posted by bruce at 1:14 PM

HELLO! HELLO!

as some of you may know, i was in dallas for a week and a half, working working working, and getting over a cold, and doing a little hobknobbing and socializing too.

well. now i'm back. i've been back since sunday, but haven't had a chance to blog at all. and i didn't blog in dallas because my friend's modem or something was acting funny- and let me tell you, i felt like a junkie in withdrawal, i was missing my email and blog so much. and you guys, especially! every day i'd turn on the computer, hoping, praying, that something would have magically fixed and i could get on the internet. but alas. and so when i got home i had a lot to catch up on, and lots to say. now, of course, i've had to time to settle down and not much to say after all. but here's a recap, just the same:

friday, march 8:
run errands, get cats taken care of, leave town. i had woken up with a little sore throat, but thought nothing of it. 4 hours later it's a cold. i'm woozy, and stopped up, and hacking. i go to a production meeting and leave early, as i have a fever. i get into bed, and tell my hosts i'll see them on saturday.

saturday, march 9:
i wake up, feeling like absolute shit. i'm hot, cold, shivery, sweaty, etc. etc. i sleep all day, and then go to a meeting at 3. i come straight home and get into bed. more sleep. some food. more sleep, lots of juice and various home remedies and medicines. the end.

sunday, march 10:
my birthday! and i actually blogged, so go read it below. it was a fine birthday, and i got some books, some gift certificates, and some new cds. perfect. and thanks to all of you who sent me well-wishes, or left comments, or stopped of at the wish list. i felt special and loved. so: great food and company, a trip to the park with all the dogs, and then a great dinner at one of my favorite south american places. yuca, plantains, and black beans for everyone... p.s. i still feel like hell.

monday, march 11:
i feel a lot better. i wake up and start sewing, as i need to have something constructed for the publicity shoot at 6:30. i work on this all day, cranking out little tunic-thingies so the boys will be showing some skin and we'll get the gay crowd in... i mean, whatever works. asses in seats. asses in seats. it's my mantra. i go to the photo shoot, and i've been told the wrong time, and the photographer is antsy and the business manager is pissed. nothing i do or say will not make this seem like my fault, so i just apologize profusely and get to work. it goes well, we do some neat war-paint shots, and it's over. i stay for rehearsal, and then go home at 11.

tuesday, march 12:
willy gets up and packs, he has to fly to north carolina for business. we say goodbyes and i go off to meet friends for lunch. we hang out, talk, shop a tad, and then i go looking at fabrics. i skip rehearsal, and sleep some more. i'm trying to get over this sickness quickly and without the help of a doctor or a prescription. so far, so good. it's really true: rest. just rest. a lot.

wednesday, march 13:
i'm up and feeling excellent. like magic! so off i go to discover the wholesale district in the a really seedy part of town. but oh, the finds! i can't believe the bolts of fabric i'm finding- linens for $2.00 a yard, all colors, weights, etc. etc. and all the warehouses are grouped together for my absolute convenience... so it's a good day of hunting and picking. i don't buy anything though, i'm just looking. i'm holding off purchasing fabric until i get a problem with my design ironed out. so to speak.
that night i cook dinner for my hosts and their neighbors, and this is what i made:

cumin and chili crusted chicken breasts, baked in a tomatillo/lime salsa
black beans flavored with orange juice, beer, and cilantro
cuban style white and yellow rice

oh my god, it was good. after dinner we drank some wine, went over to the neighbors and looked at their new add-on bedroom and bath, and then had some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. full bellies, and a good night's sleep.

thursday, march 14:
i had breakfast with my old roommate, and we laughed and laughed and had a great time. she and i were inseparable for 3 or 4 years, she has since married, and has a very successful theater company in dallas... and she tells me that she and the director i'm working with now are cooking up a plan to put something on this summer for the shakespeare society. this is totally a prestige job, and i'm disappointed to find that they want to use me for the show; because unfortunately, i'll be out of town for two months in june and july. i'll be in virginia at a theater festival, where i'll be asst. designing and helping run the costume shop. the money is fair, but the kicker is that they will pay for my lodgings... anything i make, i keep. i like this. so i won't be in texas for their show, and it's a pisser, because it is right up my alley: shakespeare done in a grand guignol late victorian style, and a show that is always played for tragedy done now very cleverly as a gross-out comedy. god, i wish i was staying. i could probably be in it too, that would rock. oh well. the bright spot: i'm coming to new york after virginia, as i'm a quick train ride away. NEW YORK BLOGGERS GET READY TO SQUIRE ME AROUND TOWN. hee hee hee.

rehearsal that evening was great, etc. etc. i like that cast so freaking much. so talented, and as a bonus, easy on the eyes. as they say.

friday, march 15:
i go shop some more, find some great stuff, but not enough. and i don't want to screw with my aesthetic vision of the show, where everyone is in the same basic costume, same fabric. if i throw in other textures it will stop being about the cast as a "unit machine." it makes sense to me, humor me. i drive out to the airport, get will, and we come back to our host's house. i go straight to a meeting at the theater, and then give a design presentation to the cast and crew. it goes well. that night we go have a good dinner
and then watch a movie about a couple of french homos called "adventures of felix." it's sweet, check it out.

saturday, march 16:
we wake up, friends come over, we go to a few garage sales and poke around back at the warehouses. and then it's time to pack and come back to austin. which we do, in record time. we fall back on the bed when we get home, and are thrilled to be back in our own place. we unpack, chill out, snuggle a little.

sunday, march 17:
as it is my name/patron saint day, we go out boozing. before this, however, i go to the austin record convention, which is one of the biggest record shows in the world and is also the unoffical end of SXSW. i pick up a few devo things i don't have, and come home to get will. he's sulky and broody because he hasn't made plans for the day and is looking to pin his lack of social skills on me. i won't have it. i make some calls, and soon we are meeting people at the irish pub downtown, which is naturally all pandemonium. we run into people we haven't seen in years, and have a blast. later we end up at the leather bar with a group of horny friends, and that's where the story ends. it gets too unseemly after that. suffice to say that i taught my class on monday with a slow throbbing hangover, and i was ache-y and sore in places. yep. places.

and that's where i've been. i'm starting to have the standard bad "i'll never get this show finished" dreams already, and that's unfortunate, because i think i have a hold on it. ah well. what would life be without a little neurotic anxiety? well, what would mine be like, i mean?

xoxo
pj

posted by bruce at 2:10 PM

well, i'm in dallas this whole week, working on that show i have talked about, and today just happens to be...

MY BIRTHDAY!

it's funny, but i'm surprisingly glad to be another year older. i don't know why. oh sure, i still obsess about wrinkles and stretch my face taut in the mirror like a washed up movie starlet... and the ever present aches and pains are always a reminder that i can't carouse like i used to. as my mother reassured me one birthday: "all those joint and bone problems? those mysterious aches? well, it's all downhill from here, let me tell you." amazingly, i didn't slash my throat with a steak knife right there.

i'm excited to age. maybe because i feel like the promise i showed in my twenties will manifest and grow in my thirties. you know? bonafide proof of my talents and abilities. and truly, the older you get the more you think about the clock ticking... i mean, you are one step closer and closer to your grave every minute that goes by. so why not do something extraordinary with the time you have? and fuck the fears and doubts and all the people that tell you that you can't? i'm giving it a shot.

my twenties were all about sex and drugs and drink. i've cleaned up considerably. so maybe my thirties will be about discovering who i am, really am, and what i'm capable of. i hope so. more later, we're going to the park to fly kites and drink wine and play with the dogs. what a fabulous birthday: my best friends, great books and cds, a sunny day, and time off from work to enjoy it all.

of course, i have a cold. but i'm all drugged up on dayquil and theraflu... whooopeee! bring on the brie and concord grapes!

xoxo
pj
posted by bruce at 2:50 PM

POP CULTURE GONE POST-MODERN INSANE!

i don't know what it means, but i love it!

(birthday countdown: 3 days. oh, my achin' joints. oh my prostate gland. eh? what's that, sonny? oh, my ticker!)
posted by bruce at 6:40 PM

well, the birthday countdown has begun.

6 days! 6 days until i'm 33!

i mean, until i'm 28.

aw, crap.

p.s.
HUNNY I KNOW YOU SECRETLY READ THIS WEBLOG AND I'VE TAKEN THE LIBERTY TO FILL UP MY WISH LIST AT THE LEFT. THIS WAY I DON'T HAVE TO ASK FOR ANYTHING AND YOU SEEM LIKE A GOOD AND ATTENTIVE LISTENER, OR A LOVE-STRUCK PSYCHIC. EITHER WAY. TAKE THE HINT.

hmm. subtle.
posted by bruce at 1:30 PM

what a great day:

up late after a night out on the town, a great breakfast at our new favorite sunday spot (waterloo ice house, burnet rd.), the final show of the project i just asst. designed, seeing friends, i made a quick and good dinner of artichoke hearts, olives, and mushrooms sauteed in white wine and tossed with basil pesto and spaghettini, then "six feet under" premiered and was excellent, then that monica lewinsky special premiered (ickiest moment: shifty-eyed smug guy asks monica how it feels to be the "blowjob queen of america"- an incredulous moan arises from the audience, and she appears to be blankly caught in headlights), and now i see matt likes my eurythmics compilation. and so he gets one. mail me, baby!

i know, i know, it's not the jet set. but it's simple and fine and good for me.

xoxo
pj

p.s. i love you monica!
posted by bruce at 10:48 PM

oh, and i freed up 3 gigs of hard drive yesterday by weeding through the gazillions of mp3s and burning a handful of cdrs... for the completist:

eurythmics b-sides
le sinistre/heartbeat heartbeat/home is where the heart is/step on the beast/invisible hands/dr. trash/monkey monkey/let's just close our eyes/i could give you a mirror(alt)/baby's gone blue/you take some lentils and you take some rice/abc freeform/satellite of love/grown up girl/tous les garcons/precious/rich girl/see no evil

violent femmes cd2
to the kill/please do not go/confessions/i hear the rain/never tell/sweet misery blues/it's gonna rain/old mother reagan/special/love and me make three/breaking hearts/no killing/candlelight song/two people/nightmares/lies/dating days/world we're living in/out the window/don't start me on the liquor/in the dark/no more heroes

dead or alive cd4
mighty mix one/mighty mix two/that's the way i like it (dub)/lover come back 7"/my heart goes bang (original ext. mix)/something in my house (flamenco)/come home with me baby 7"/love toy/beats 2 long/rebel rebel (hole mix)/nukleopatra (japan ext.)/you spin me (sugar pumpers radio mix)/why is it so hard?/pop life (!!)/the real thing

prince "high" (unreleased album)
vavoom/u make my sun shine/my medallion/when will we b paid?/supercute/underneath the cream/golden parachute/daisy chain/gamillah/high/when i lay my hands on you/(bonus tracks) judas kiss/jukebox with a heart beat/hypnoparadise/sadomasochistic groove

a hobby? or an affliction?
posted by bruce at 10:36 AM

everybody's favorite devo-loving weight-lifting intellectual painter/academic is sounding more and more beat poet these days, and i love it. like some sort of health-junkie burroughs, or a mid-western ferlinghetti, jimbo strings together phrases like:

"Anti-Freeze is to blue curacao as sugar is to polydextrose. Black ice everywhere, the interbelt littered with yesterday's CARcass"

or:

"Wrigley's gum was the first product to have a barcode and first to nail the term 'refreshing', the King of Hearts is the only king without a mustache, American car horns only beep in the key of F and oak trees take 50 years to produce one acorn. Notes on the Florentine Victory of the Milanese and Mr. Brunelleschi and countless other Piero Dellas and so on and so on next to book marks for porn"

or:

"Suck it FUCKER! Call it the winter blahs call it a 'funk' cause' last week, I had the fever for the flavaa of that funk"

or my favorite:

"The recombinant DNA yields one beautiful mutant. Only modestly hooky, Can't Get You Out of My Head/ No. 1 in 17 countries, makes good on its title with pointillist kraftwerk—every sonic element isolated, dipped in chrome, and aimed at a particular erogenous zone."

(all that about our little kylie? fabulous.)

of course, i also swoon a tad imagining the words "suck it fucker!" coming out of jim's smart little mouth, but that's a topic for a private email between he and i.

naturally i'm only kidding.

of course.

er...



posted by bruce at 10:20 AM

i've been out and about all day, so i'll post something tomorrow- but just so you can see that i wasn't being an unprovoked bitchy queen, here is a link to the outfit that natalie maines had on at the grammies.

the prosecution rests, your honor.
posted by bruce at 9:30 PM