2/22/03: 3:15 AM Sorry, forgot a couple of things.

Michael Jackson: I saw some of the "Footage You Were Never Meant To See" thing on Fox, and admittedly, it goes a long way to exonerate MJ from being a child-humping goober. It does nothing to avoid the fact that, despite being a weird but ultimately tolerable father, Mike is abso-barking mad. A different kind of crazy than many believe, but crazy nonetheless. Yowza.

The stupidity of the world: I'm up late (as always) and I see Ashanti on Last Call with Carson Daly, and she has a book of poetry. Some of it is songs that missed the album, some of it is "reflections" she had. She reads two pieces, using rhyming couplets and meter that borders on infantile. I wanted to claw my eyes out. I gotta get on the stick and finish Born Beneath An Angry Star, which is largely just layout work now. Argh.

More on writing: I picked up the first two issues of Danny Fingeroth's WriteNow! magazine, which had some good tips and some good pokes in the ribs. I have to write something everyday, especially now when I have the time. I have to be able to do it and keep up on NBA scores and the world at large. Mmm. Maybe less sleeping?

Comic books: I've now read the Marvel dot-comic previews of Human Torch, Sentinel, Runaways and Mystique, and they're pretty much universally boring. I am really rather tired of picking on Marvel, kicking Marvel, cursing out Marvel, but they simply keep providing more and more instances that seem to scream for that kind of attention. I await Priest's The Crew (which is very ironic, since I've had a Jim Rhodes-helmed team book sitting on my Powerbook for two years) only because it's a Priest book. With Geoff Johns jumping ship for three exclusive years at DC, my Marvel pull list now includes ... uh ... Black Panther of course ... Thunderbolts is gone ... um ... oh, Captain Marvel. That's about all I'll pay for from the "House of Ideas." Mmm.

Must ... write ... more ... material ... gaaaaah!

2/21/03 7:30 PM PST: Been a zany time ...

Writing: I've now included the eleventh chapter of my online work of serial fiction, The Crown, which is turning out really well and will serve as a very solid foundation for the overarching metastory I intend to tell.

I got the last lettered page back from my second draft of my comic book proposal to Image, and now I'm just waiting on a green light from my homeboy who works there to get it all prettied up. I'll admit, collaborative art can be very frustrating, as I can't literally force people to work within my concepts of time and schedule. To be honest, it's got me yearning for the good old days of prose fiction, and I think that's where I'm gonna lean more actively.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't waste the last two years of making contacts and building a kind of a rep in comics -- I still wanna do that. I just believe that I'll write more satisfying works in prose, as I won't have to compromise as much, I won't have to worry about the limitations of 22-page "pamphlet" comics, and I won't have to be driven to Dave Sim-esque insanity trying to GDI it all the way.

I'm gonna finish the first arc of The Crown and take a break from it, getting started on its opposite number at the other end of the meta story. I'll do it that way -- bounce back and forth in time, and get the whole thing done in prose. I normally write out a long prose piece for everything I do anyway, then pare it down to whatever needs I have (comic script, sitcom script, et cetera).

That's the focus of the whole Tabu lifestyle for now.

Karaoke: I am becoming a real karaoke junkie.

I was already becoming a Thursday night regular at Britannia in Santa Monica. Then the vertically-challenged Alana (sp?) starts getting people all jazzed about Boardwalk 11, another more regular karaoke bar in Culver City (closer to the house). After the strip club debacle on Monday (see below), we ended up there and had a blast -- it's next to empty, that early in the week, and we got to sing almost at will. As I noted from the first time I went to Boardwalk, I liked the energy of the place, and (as is so common with me) I liked it even better with fewer people there. I forgot to ask how to open that #@$% water bottle, but oh well.

So now we're going ("we" being the slowly gelling karaoke crew of me, Elliot, Mandy, Al, her guy, their pal Brett, Diane, sometimes John and sometimes Stephen, photos of most of them available upon request or when I feel like telling a specific story about 'em) to Boardwalk on Mondays, largely trying new material and all, and doing Britannia on Thursdays. The singing is OK, it's the "breakfast" afterwards, which often goes until almost 4AM, that's a killer.

Oh, on that note -- never, ever go to the Denny's at Overland and Jefferson. Every time I get there, half the restaurant's closed and they say it's a half hour or more wait for a table.

At Denny's.

In the middle of the night.

Right.

So that crazytalk notwithstanding, I'm having a blast, really enjoying being unemployed, and doing tons of writing (as noted above).

Strip Clubs: I'm done with them. Period. Forever.

In my thirty years of life, I have been in three strip clubs, and never for longer than a half hour. The first time I was taking a girl I was dating for a job interview (a story not worth telling). The second time was for my homebody Daniel's bachelor party. Neither of those times were so bad -- I just kind of stood around and waited for people to finish whatever the hell they were doing at the time.

No, Monday night closed the deal for me. My cycloptic companion Elliot and I went to see Daredevil (it's fairly entertaining) and then were supposed to see this girl Mandy strip at a Sunset club called The Body Shop. We know Mandy from singing karaoke around town -- she's a Latina/Native American/Asian mix who loves to flirt and act crazy. Anyhoo, the idea of her shaking her groove thing sounded pretty entertaining, so we hopped in El's convertible and hit the strip.

First of all, it's $10 a person to get in. OK. El said, "I got you," and I ended up hitting him back with the $10 in singles. Then there's a 2 drink minimum. I ordered two virgin Bay Breezes (cranberry and pineapple juice) and Elliot got a pair of Cokes. Another ten a piece, and they don't accept plastic. Right. The waitress makes a big deal about how she works for tips, and gets pretty damned aggressive about me tipping her. I've just walked in the door, so I'm like "what?" I normally believe "tip" means "gratuity," as in "for services rendered at an excellent level." I dunno how the service is, except pushy thus far, so I'm torqued.

I'm cashless, so I hit the ATM machine. There's a $4 service fee, the largest I've ever seen (at Fox Hills Mall it's $2.75, which I found steep). So I'm out $24 in less than five minutes in this place, and I have yet to see a single woman that I consider attractive.

The hostess/waitress angles us towards some stageside seats, mine blessedly near the door. Our stage, at first, is empty, and a huge crowd of mostly fat white and Asian guys are crowded around the other one. A girl comes out on our stage and dances. She leans over near me and says, "Hi, how's it going?" I respond, "Hangin' in there," which is a lot funnier considering how she hung off the pole in the next couple of seconds. Again, not attractive, so I'm sitting facing the door, watching who comes in and out, because I'm just that kinda paranoid type of brother.

I finally see a girl that is attractive -- six feet in heels, dark skin, probably enhanced attributes -- and I'm distracted by the idea my drinks are moving, which I see in my peripheral vision. I turn to see a blonde skinny girl with what I can only describe as "flapjack" breasts leaning in towards me. Before I can protest or even comment, she rubs these rubbery, limp things over my head (thank God I'd put my fedora in the chair next to me). Ewww. I mean, I'm sure there's somebody who would find her flaccid charms riveting, but it sure as hell wasn't me.

This made me a little queasy. I almost don't notice as she moves Elliot's drinks and puts her legs around his neck, then proceeds to hump the air in the direction of his face. Luckily she seemed like she'd showered recently, so she didn't smell bad, but she was just staggeringly boring physically (to me), and Elliot seemed to not have much interest in her either. She wanders off and El's cell phone rings -- Mandy got bumped from the rotation. We drink up and get the hell out of Dodge.

Adding the three in tips I left for the dancers (if they bothered to come over, I was told, it was only polite to tip 'em), I was out almost $30 and instead of aroused, I was kind of woozy and sick to my stomach. Not the intended affect, I'd have to guess. Strip clubs are like a license to print money, but I for one and done with them for the duration.

Good pals: I mentioned last time that my high school homeboy Carnell Greer reached out for me. He's since peppered my email box with photos of his truck, the view from the front of his house, and his dogs. Finally he shot a photo of himself, and you can see the results here. He made a big deal about how he'd blown up from when I last saw him, putting on the poundage. I responded, "We're men -- what do we care? As long as the woman in your life still gives up the sweet, sweet lovin' you can need grease to get in the bathroom, doesn't matter." Of course, when I thought about my homeboy Bill "Bigga B" Operin, who had a heart attack in his mid thirties, or Big Pun, or so on, I rethought that a bit. Then again, I'm a lot less likely to tell anybody how to live their life. I don't really know where I'm going with all that.

Then there's Elliot, professional computer animator and practicing magician (his first complaint walking out of Daredevil wasn't the jerky animation, but Colin Farrell's "slow" magic trick). I've told Elliot several times that if I were into white girls and I looked like he does, I'd cut a swath through this city like a freakin' chainsaw. Elliot, however, is stricken with a dual yoke -- the desire to be a nice guy and a less-than-robust sense of self-esteem. It's a killer, because lots of women around him could conceivably be bent to his will, if he was willing to apply it. It's funny because I've met maybe ten guys in the same boat -- girls like 'em, they're great guys, but they just don't have a killer instinct -- throughout my life. I think El made a play last night which I approve of, but I hope he got somewhere. Don't really know where this is going either, so let's move on.

Finally Daniel, one of the most together cats I know and simultaneously one of the most irritating people in all of spacetime. Daniel cast a monkeywrench in my fantasy basketball league by first dominating, then declaring his victory months before the end of the season, then trading away most of his good players, then retaining the lead for two weeks, based on the buffer of points he'd built up, then making false statements about my comments and my play. Ooooh, he makes me so mad!

On the other hand, as noted, he's one of the most together people I know, someone I respect a great deal and enjoy spending time with. He's hooked me up with work, cash, stuff, and been a great running buddy for a variety of nefarious purposes. I'm not sure why we have such an edge to our friendship, or where any of this section is going, but that's kind of life all around.

The personal life: I can't say it's had a stunning breakthrough, but I've downgraded my status from "continually furious" to "mildly concerned," which is like the coming of glastnost around here.

Last Soapbox, I talked about how crappy my Valentine's Day was (among other things), and that fallout led to some ... strange conversations. Most of it's work product, but I believe Dr. Christopher Turk of Scrubs said it best when he intoned, "If you love somebody, you've gotta be willing to break their spirit." I believe that's where I'm at, and that's allegedly OK for now. We'll see if I turn around and see an avelanche coming down the hill at me. I'd say more, but this is one area of my life I'm uncharacteristically secretive about. Those who know won't say and those who say probably don't know.

My mom is recuperating from a shoulder surgery and maxing out at the house, my brother is wending his way into teenager-dom, and while I acknowledge all is certainly not right with the world, at least it's starting not to spin so fast.