Oh, I forgot...

I've also started reading Chelsea Handler's hilariously titled bestselling memoir, "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea." Probably another source of inspiration for our book.

Although I myself have kicked alcohol out of my life for the foreseeable future. It was like a guest that had overstayed its welcome.

Now I suppose I have to get locks for all the doors.

End-of-year doldrums

“Exanimate” would be a good word for my mood right now. Actually, “frustrated and pissed off” would be better. When I stop drinking a lot of emotion comes to the surface that I’ve been repressing. I am pissed at one friend for having a fucking video camera and not using it for film projects, so I have to check out all the equipment from the fucking media center, lug it to where we’re filming without a vehicle, then return it on time. I am pissed at another friend – whose family I am pretty sure now is independently wealthy, though she never talks about money – for sitting on an EMPTY HOUSE that she OWNS here in Portland rather than letting a friend who is leaving Portland in three months live there and PAY HER RENT, or at the very least, store some stuff in her house FOR A STORAGE FEE, until I can have it shipped to San Francisco. And these two friends are also the ones who I’m supposed to be doing “Moonshine Boulevard” with, but I can tell neither of them is as into it as I am, and I’m just not going to put all that work into a project only to have it not come to fruition. And I am pissed at mySELF, too, for having insomnia last night, not being able to sleep, and consequently sleeping through the meeting I was supposed to have with my cast for “Art Police” this morning. So now that project fell through. Well, actually, just that cast fell through. I’m already working on another arrangement so I can still get this film made in January. I hope so. I am so artistically blue-balled right now. I don’t have sex – have been celibate for six years, going on seven! – creative projects ARE my sex, and realizing one is akin to a glorious orgasm, while this is like....the opposite of that.

Fuck. Maybe it’s just end-of-the-year doldrums. Let’s hope so. In that case things should start to look up in a couple days.

By the way, as a couple people may know, I had a blog on Today.com called “The Intellectual Homosexual” for a little while, but it fizzled pretty quickly, mainly because there was no incentive – they never paid me, though they were supposed to pay a small amount – but also because I just don’t think Today.com is the right venue for me. So that’s why I started at www.tonyletigre.com – to have my own forum and be completely independent, to post as often or as seldom as I like, and as much or as little as I like, on ANY TOPIC I desire to write about! Well, “completely independent” isn’t quite true since my blogs are still provided through Livejournal and Blogger.com, but it’s a step in the right direction.

For anyone interested, I think you can still find the remains of the old blog here.

The fish who drowned in moonshine

Somebody left this Care Bear outside the Taco Bell by my house. That's kind of sad, right? I guess that makes it a Nobody Cares Bear.

I just got off the phone after about an hour with dear mum, wishing her a happy birthday – FOUR TIMES, since my cell still drops calls continuously when I’m at home and it’s using the wifi connection. She sounded in great spirits, although she’s afraid she’s going to have to move to a smaller room since her rent went up $40, but when I asked how much her income also went up (it does every January) the figure she gave me came out to $39, so I don’t get how it really makes a difference. I told her to crunch the numbers and talk to her people and get back to me and if she needs me to I’ll send her a check each month to cover the difference so she can keep her big beautiful room that she loves. I called and left Anthony a message about how much I love Little Britain and there’s a sketch in it where the queen or some other aristocratic fat bewigged lady is lying on a couch dictating a memoir to her assistant who sits there typing it, and every so often she stops and asks, “How many pages is that?” and the assistant checks and says, “Twelve,” and the silver haired lady utters an exclamation of disappointment and goes back to recounting more anecdotes. I watched it with my roommates the other day and said, “That’s me and my cousin writing his memoir on Hana!”

A friend of mine (I'm not sure whether to use peoples' names in a public forum, some people are shy and sensitive about that, while others are like me and don't care) said the original title of my book made her think I sounded like a trustafarian. If she meant "Live Through Me" it is (intentionally) a bit grandiose sounding, yes, but it also references the fact that people who absorb other peoples' journals and diaries are in a way living vicariously through them, just as I used to absorb Virginia Woolf's life through her diary back in my freshman-in-college days (I'm with the Indigo Girls on that one). It also relates to my mother, who is disabled and living in a nursing home in Minnesota, telling me every time I talk with her on the phone that she nows lives vicariously through me and my sister. (Naturally, she's excited about me going to Maui in the spring.) And lastly, it is (also intentionally) a reference to Hole's album "Live Through This," which although I don't really listen to it any more (just as I don't read Marvel comics any more), defined a certain era of my life and is probably one of my 10 favorite albums of all time.

If she meant the title "Como me llamo" made me sound trustafarian, I'm not sure why, unless just because I'm a white American using a Spanish title - but I'm studying Spanish in school, I genuinely find it to be a beautiful language, and learning a second language is good! Maybe she meant the translation of that title, "What is My Name," but I'm not sure why that would be either. It certainly has a personal resonance for me, since I've been changing my name to one thing or another practically my entire life, as my family can well attest. I was born with the first name Joseph, called "Joe" throughout my childhood (my sister, mother and cousin still have that name in their phones and address books for me). At one point I was toying with the first name Simon, at another J.D. At another (now highly embarrassing) point when I was a teenager, it was going to be Gary Glamdring! (Good God.) So when I legally changed it to Anthony LeTigre in May 07 it was only the culmination of a long history of wondering, more or less, "What is my name?" I still have a poem with that title in the booklet I'm publishing in January and I'm going to work this whole question of names into it as a theme.

Nonetheless, the final title I'm going with is "The Fish Who Drowned." Unless I think of a REALLY KILLER new one within the next week or two.

What are you doing for New Years? I get invited to parties (of course!), but I'm really kind of over getting drunk, and how much fun will a New Year's Eve party be without booze? I guess I'll find out.

I'm meeting with my three cast members tomorrow afternoon to discuss a script I wrote called "The Art Police" which they're going to help me film in January! And the neo-noir reimagining of Sunset Boulevard that I'm conceiving with Kirk and Melanie is starting to look really promising, and I've bestowed upon it a working title - "Moonshine Boulevard."