Sunday, April 16, 2006

Thank You For Showing Me Your Fuck Scowl.

My Dad, it has been reported to me, has purchased 5 new tiny koi fish for his backyard pond. 4 have been named so far, based on colorings: White Boy, Goldie, Orangey, & SpeckleOrange. One of the fish doesn't come out much from under its custom-made slate cave and is therefore yet to be named. Perhaps it's dead. My Dad thinks he should have just gotten the one fish, anyway, because only one- White Boy- is seen swimming up and about regularly. My Dad also custom-made a shirt for Yorktown, the aging family basset hound, which reads "Land Koi", so he wouldn't feel left out. Soon, my Dad plans on getting a turtle and a frog for the pond. Big things are going on at the Barber compound in California, people. Massive.

I saw Sweeney Todd last night and it was absolutely amazing. Michael Cerveris is not quite human, really- he can't be and sing the way he does. He is the fucking real deal. He was Tommy, he was Hedwig, he was John Wilkes Booth, and he sings with such Brandy-approved faves as Teenage Fanclub and my future husband Duncan Sheik here and there. He's the epitome of cool and I can't say enough how thrilled I was to see him live. Patti LuPone was no small potates, either. Overall, a totally non-Broadway Broadway show that redefines what should be celebrated in theater versus the jukebox crap that's there right now. Now I just have to try and get my hands on tickets to Threepenny Opera and all is well.

I realized recently that, in the way that many people are said to have an inability to commit to relationships, I am unable to commit to jobs. I spend so much time looking for one, and then I get one, and I'm elated for a day and then, all of a sudden, an instant feeling of being trapped hits me full on. Just like that story you hear about how so and so were going to move in together, and on moving day she freaked out and they broke up, by the end of my first day of training I'm wishing I was out the door, fantsizing about moving to Morrocco or some far-flung locale. I get uncomfortable at the thought of being at any place for longer than a few months, and I'm constantly looking for what's better out there. It's really pitiful because when I'm not working, it's not like I'm so godamned productive. In fact I do so little that it's scary- so I get a job to kick myself back into high gear (and also to pay my rent because, let's face it, that's part of the whole bargain). I'm getting that ansty feeling of, I have to go to the office tomorrow right now, which is so silly- why is that at all a bad thing? I'm fucking broke and all I have to do is sit there, drink coffee and get paid to write my own stuff all day while smiling vaguely at people as I pretend to look busy. This is not a bad thing. But, as is my contrary nature, I insist on sitting here in a Luscious Jackson T-Shirt and boy shorts, fretting about work as if that's going to make anything better. Because if I didn't go in to work at a job, I'd wake up in the aforementioned T-shirt with a pot hangover and do jack fucking shit all day but obsess over trivial garbage online. Why do I reject what's good for me? I don't know. Just like your ex-boyfriend didn't know why he couldn't ever picture getting married to you (because he was too busy eyeing some trampy troll with bad highlights over your shoulder when you were at the Sunday brunch you forced him to go to so you could look smugly in love while sharing the Times over lattes). It's a mystery, Jessica Fletcher.

LATER: Forgot to mention, speaking of job hunting- I told my Dad I was thinking about taking a swanky bartending job I was offered. He sighed deeply and said, "Do you really want to be a bar ho?" Terry Barber. My hero.

1 comment:

Brandy For Sale. said...

DeSmet, I like your style of thinking- kill two birs with one stone.

Yeah, for some reason my Dad thinks bars are "trashy". In the Barber household, our Southern roots are evident when something is deemed "trashy". This means it is dismissed as being "low class" (along with bumper stickers, public spitting and poor English). I could be working at a bar where we served a $20 martini and my Dad would disapprove. I think it would trouble him less if I was a phone sex operator than a bartender- no rhyme or reason to it, just a fact.