hectic and homeless...and happy

Im in Venice beach LA right now. I had no idea that there were parts of LA that were breezy and cool. I have been remiss in my entries as I am no longer stationed in front of the CNS of the dark village each weekend, prime writing time. So since last i wrote, I took the beauty bar, finished all my paperwork for school, moved out of my house completely and gave away about 80 percent of what was mine in this world, posessionally speaking.
The beauty bar was rediculous. It starts at 8 o clock, in Fife. So right off the bat it sucks. i had to get up at 6 30 to be sure i wasnt late and have enough time to get coffee. Nothing that has you starting at 6 30 can honestly be interested in seeing how well you do anything. I had to spend several hours in preceding days readying my kit. Everything you need has to be in "sterile looking" plastic bags, labeled and organized according to which service youll be using it for. So i had to go to school to get cholesterol, gloves, cotton, manicuring supplies (including the creepy, creepy fake hand that you have to use for tne manicure portion of the exam,)towels (20!Used them all!) and various and sundry other crap that you will never use that way again after the test. The test is administered by DL Roope administrations at a nondescript business park suite. You have to present your admission letter and WA state ID at three checkpoints within three feet of each other before being assigned your station. My identity has not been so thoroughly established since the indian airlines flight between Lahore and Delhi. Then you are issued your station number (after paying 25 bucks extra to find out your score that day, what a racket! I dont have 6 weeks to find out i didnt pass and have to reschedule) and have to stand there quietly until every station is filled. It was mostly young white women. THere were two men. One girl came in late and i couldnt exactly hear what she said but soon after arriving realized she forgot something major, like towels, and left. Every one was overly nervous. I wasnt. I just couldnt wait to be done and get the HELL out of there. It was so weird, white and mirrored. The women administering the test were wearing suits and had terrible hair. One helmet, one long perm and one long flat press. THey read the directions twice and then, for each service, you have two minutes to remove the supplies for that service from your kit. You have to sanitize your hands ceaselessly and the station between services. Its really stupid.
I PASSED. I passed with a 76%. I think that is the lowest score you can get and still pass. Fine by me!! So long as I dont have to do it again (until I get to NYC...) thats fine with me. Besides, thats the funniest score I could have gotten. Doing really well isnt funny, failing certainly wouldnt be funny but passing by one percent at something so easy and stupid is pretty hilarious. Now I have only to take the written part of the test and I am a WA state liscenced cosmetologist. Great.
I kept most of the memorabelia that we discussed last time. The rest of my posessions were either given to the St Vincent de Paul Charity or to family and friends. I have some boxes in my moms basement and the rest is en route as of today via the major blessing of Brian Quist, remember the one who bailed me out at the gas station when my car wouldnt start? well the day i was moving, as Trey, Mark Gibbs and I artfully loaded all my furniature into the cargo van I procured from enterprise (a la insurance from SIZZLA, who was proclaimed a total loss last week) Brian called ariel. He and TJ Martin, the other half of Global Griot productions are also moving to NYC and they wondered if maybe I wouldnt want to kick in some cash and theyd take my stuff. HELL YES I WANT TO KICK IN SOME CASH AND YOU CAN TAKE MY STUFF!!! i was about to have to move it twice here, then repack it, bring it downtown to greyhound then have it stored in Manhattan where i would have to shlep it by cab trip after cab trip out to brooklyn when I got there. Amazing blessing. Ive decided Brian is my guardian angel.
Thats all the time i have for today. Id say to be continued but... we all know it wont be!

PART II
Irealized last night as i fell asleep in the hollywood home of my friend Asa's parents that in the last two weeks ive slept in 9 different beds, versus only three in the last 2 years. perhaps not a very meaningful comparison, but it does provide a pretty accurate picture of what the last few weeks have been like. When I got to the seattle airport on the 19th, i realized i didnt know who was picking me up in LA and I had no where to stay for the two days before Fran and i ran for the border. I usually handle these sorts of things ahead of time but, the time ahead had never presented itself. As I waited in the wrong check in line, was told that i wasnt booked on any such flight and dragged my shit over to the united baggage check kiosk, I called my friend mollie who moved from woodstock to LA last year and whom I havent seen for years. As it turned out they lived only a few minutes from the airport. So she and her darling boyfriend Victor came and picked me up at LAX and i stayed with them for two nights. Venice is weird and cool. It has the transient and carefree feel of a beach town like santa cruz, but mixed with the outragous and eccentric affluence of West LA. Super upscale interior design houses blocks from beach vendors and around the corner from taco trucks. Asa and her husband are buliding a house there in venice right off the main drag, which is called abbot kinney. in my head i hear abbot kinney said with Asa's soft persian lilt, not even strong enough to be an accent.
then, after some fabulous cuban cuisine at versailles on pico and la cienega, dont leave LA without it, fran and i drove to the newport beach hotel in Rosarita BC (thats the other BC, baja california) about 45 mins north of Ensenada. We stayed there three nights . Watched dolphins, ate lobster (estaghfurillah,) visited the geyser la bufadora and lay in the hot southern sun. I did Fran's color on the deck of our hotel room looking out over the ocean, waching the pelicans wheel over the waves as the peroxide turned her hair red red orange orange gold... about the same shades as the sun turned the clear sky as it sank into the sea. No sky toner though. It was cool on its own after the lightner was rinsed out. i beleive thats called stretching an analogy...if its not a technical writing term then it should be. I digress.
At 12:30 on Wed, we left the hotel and headed north for the Santa Cruz mountains where Tambacounda Productions holds their annual West African Drum and Dance camp. We got to LA at 6, which is a real hurter as far as traffic is concerned. Stopped in east LA for gas...dont be fooled, its still mexico.
to avoid two hours of hot sitting we stopped at mareme faye's house in inglewood for dinner and to change clothes. It was wonderful to sit and chat with her, I havent seen her since the conference in october when she stayed at my house. She had just been to a funeral where the young woman who died had been cremated and she was hot about it. She made Fran and i promise that when we die, we wont be cremated. "You gotta take de case, de fiyah, das gonna hert. You gotta tek deh case. Deh case is deh good one" When frannie brought upsome very legitimate concerns about maggots mareme assured her that the case gonna tek a long time before it mess up so you not gonna know. Like the fire happened so fast after you die that you might feel the burning whereas you would have ample time to leave your body were you to go with the coffin option. It killed me, the CASE!!! i had to try to stifle my hysteria because she was serious as a heart attack.
We drove all night and got to the camp, which is ludicriously far from everything at 415 in the morning on thursday. i dont know how but fran drove the whole time and i stayed up navigating and laughing my stupid ass off about nothing. most;y about the case. and frans face in the truck stop when the pepper came out really fast on her eggs, and when she imitated al pacino in scent of a woman. a movie i really hated.
anyway, i was up and dancing by 1030 the next morning. the camp was so much fun. hot and sunny at night and cold as a witches tit in a cast iron bra at night. we danced about 6 hours a day and made new friends, and reestablished old ones. all the NYC drummers and teachers said theyd look for me and take care of me when i hit the town...that was reassuring. so many haters in NY.
We left camp, and drove to oakland on sat afternoon, ate lunch in oakland at the lake merritt cafe. I did franchesska's hair for the last time in the airport and watched them (ann and laurie met us there) till they dissappeared past the security check, the last time Id see Frannie, and the girls, who id seen on the min. 3 x week for five years, for who knows how long. I cried. It was a sad strange feeling. Its never the same when you dont live in the same city.
then, rather anticlimactically, I waited in the oakland airport for six hours for Ariel to get in at midnight. I read, talked on the phone, watched strangers carfully choose theor bags out of the fountain of luggage circling around on the baggage claim. Ariel and i went to ligayas house in a suburb of Oak and stayed there overnight. Ligaya lives in some subsidized Berkeley student housing....its called university village. We drove accross the dusty desert of CA on I5 S all the way to LA, up and over the grapevine in our stupid nissan sentra that looks good only compared to a ford focus. Weve been here in Bev hills planning errands and then running them for the last week. Its wonderful and overwhelming to be with the family. let's just say wed give larry david material for seasons to come.
Tonight we (me my mom, My bubbe's boyfriend bill, and bub herself) went to a dance night at the sky room. A "fancy" restraunt at the top of some big hotel in long beach. Imagine my suprise whe, without the aid of a time machine, we were escorted into the elevator by a young black gentleman in a tux with tails, a top hat, and WHITE GLOVES. thankfully, my mom and sister had been before and warned me of the minstrel element, which considerably lessend the shock, but it did nothing to stave off the horror that it was not an accident that the time they went a year ago that it was an african american gentleman at that time too. What the hell??? How can they be getting away with that!!!??? In LONG BEACH? The band was also all african american, and the crowd (which would have been non existant were it not for the large # of elderly danceing couples who turned out for my grandmother's birthday, was all caucasian. i had the ahi. It was very very pepppery. we drove past al jolson's grave on the way there. Its got a marble cupola and a bunch of steps leading up to it. hello my honey, hello my baby, hello my ragtime doll.
my grandmother is hilarious. we were talking about how great it is that Bill gave up drinking and she turns around from the passenger seat " Sure makes the wine go further!" Some friend of her told me she gets away with telling her things shed never let anyone say to her, like she said she had told her shed look better with more lipstick, and it wouldnt hurt to let her hair grow out. good lord, i thought she reserved that sort of candor for family but apparantly not.
Now I am in the trundle bed in my cousin's room, my sister is asleep in the bed next to me. She didnt come to dinner because she hurt her neck doing nothing and had to go to the chiropractor this morning. i was wandering venice beach eating tacos with Asa, sparing kmyself eight hours of neurotic planning and kreitzing. Tomorrow I am gonna drive to malibu and see my otehr grandmother who used to live in Palm springs but moved into a moblie home (which cost her upwards of 500 thousand, for a MOBILE HOME which needed lots of work no less,) in the TRAILER park overlooked by barbara streisand's compound. Weird wild stuff. oughta be a real kick in the pants. ill let you know how her dogs are doing, probably theyre fine but ill know more details very soon.
my sister my have to stay here and nurse her annoyingly frail neck back to health. lame.
im exhausted and im sure ill be up at 8 when the dog tonails and juicer motor sounds finally break through my fragile sleep caul. its an early rising situation down here. So im turning in.
See ya, ya dig?