Category Archives: this might be a stupid post

Missing Holden Caulfield.

new york city pop art billboard ad underwear

Holden Caulfield, via J.D. Salinger once said,

Don’t ever tell anybody anything.  If you do, you start missing everybody.

This has always stuck with me.

You know how certain songs cause you to time travel? You hear a song and your mind takes you back to where you were where you heard it and what you felt and who was there. When I hear “Thirteen” by Big Star I remember this incredible date this sweet guy took me on in New York. I didn’t have a lot of time and I warned him, trying to convince him that we couldn’t go out because even though I wanted to, I knew it wouldn’t work out. I was just too busy. But he was persistent, and not in a creepy way. In a way that was so sincere that I let my smile take up my entire face. I told him I had, “like, two minutes” — and he took it to heart. He hailed a cab and we went to an Italian restaurant…down the street. We went through three courses in about one minute. Literally. He planned this ahead. We took our leftovers over to a movie…on the sidewalk. He set up a TV to play Manos: Hands Of Fate, the best of the worst films ever made. It’s such a bad film that he was able to condense the entire thing into twenty seconds. Then he asked if we had time for coffee. Well, we had about thirty seconds. We went back to the Italian place that suddenly had coffee and desert set up on the table. It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me. And somewhere, “Thirteen” by Big Star was playing. And I will forever tie that song to that incredible memory. It didn’t work out between us. I eventually went back to my ex.

Also, none of this happened to me, this happened on How I Met Your Mother.

Ha ha. Got you.

Sorry. I don’t know why I did that.

I got terribly astray from what I was saying, which was that if you let it, anything can remind you of everything. As humans we try to find connections in our lives, where there are none. For example, you’ll tell your friend over lunch about someone you went to high school with, and hours later, you’ll run into that very person on the street. And you’ll say, “My God, what are the odds?!” But if you really thought about it, you’d realize that the odds weren’t that extreme; maybe you were in an area where your former classmate lived, or you only noticed your classmate walking down the street because you had just mentioned them, or your classmate mentioned on Facebook a place they went to for lunch and that’s why you went there; you simply disassociated your classmate from the entire experience because it’s more meaningful to believe that it all happened by some delightful wink of the universe.

don draper wink

Okay, look, I’ll finally get what I’ve been trying to get to. And that is, it’s nearly impossible to forget anybody or anything you’ve ever done that ever meant something, even if it was only slightly. I’ll see a girl wearing fingerless gloves and I’ll think of 14th street in NYC. I’ll hear a Bob Dylan song and have a sudden and brief fervent passion for a boy I had a crush on in college. I’ll smell a certain shampoo and remember my staying with my ex-boyfriend at his house in Rochester. And I do these things — we all do these things — because we want to. Even though it hurts. Because unless you’re a psychopath, you can’t but feel emotion, even if it’s people you think you don’t give a monkey about. It creeps in, but you don’t notice it. To you, it’s like, “Why the hell am I missing Stephanie from elementary school? I haven’t thought about her in years.” It rains and I think about my apartment in New York City. And I think about what a hassel it was — but a great hassel — to move in. I thought about how it would be a ragtag group of me and my friends dragging a couch up a staircase like in Friends. Asking them, hey, can you move for free? I’ll treat you guys to coffee. And then I’m nostalgic for a moment that never even happened.

And that’s why I understand Holden Caulfield, that beloved outcast, so beloved by our generation it’s become cliche. Because nostalgia will fucking kill you if you let it. It’s like alcohol or drugs. Some people can enjoy nostalgia recreationally. Others let it ruin them. The worst thing is that sometimes you don’t even need to talk to someone from your past. All you have to do is see their photo or time travel via a song or memory and you’re right there and by the time you come back, you’re completely hungover with nostalgia.

God, imagine how i’m going to feel when I’m forty.

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I does what I does.

david bowie ziggy stardust

Why is it so hard for me to do this? Is it depression? Laziness? Is it a desire to seem deep and mysterious, sitting my dark apartment with wine and this melancholy mix (or something) as my soundtrack? And please feel free to suggest songs that I can add to it, because I welcome everything now.

I do not understand why I choose to not do things and choose to do others. The easiest way to fail is to do what you have always done. Unless of course you have been doing well. Soaring over our heads. If you are doing well, and I hope that you are, you should tell me how you are doing it. But in a way that is not a lecture. In school when I had to sit in lectures I would draw cartoons of pigs in my notebook. Ask Dave, he will tell you that it is true. I do not know if Dave is even reading this. But if he is, he will vouch for me. My pig doodles are what started our friendship. I did not know this until years later.

Any great writer, artist, musician, even some actors, reached the levels we dream of because of talent, hard work, and discipline. I used to have all of those things. I believe that I still have talent, in the way that people believe in The Secret. There is a strange comfort in sitting here, thinking about wasting my talent in this dark old apartment, staring at the mess that is on this table I am typing on. I wish that computer keyboards clacked louder. That would be an improvement for struggling writers everywhere. It’s hearing the click of those keys that convinces us that we are working. The “CLICK CLICK FUCK YOU CLICK CLICK CLANG FUCK OFF CLACK CLACK” that comes with the hard press and release of old keyboard keys of Fitzgerald typewriters and 90’s computers.

I want to be Fiona Apple.

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Mirror Error.

I hate my stupid face.

I am not fishing for compliments. The point of this post is not to get comments like, “BUT OMG YOU’RE SO PRETTY!!!” or “LOL YEAH U R UGLY” or anything in between. The point is that you’re floating along in a cloudland where everything is great and you feel good about your cloudlife and then you see yourself on cloudfilm and you’re horrified and then it rains.

If it’s not one thing it’s another, right?

I’ve struggled with my looks my entire life. No wait, that’s not really true. I loved my looks up until puberty. Then my body said, “Hey this was fun, but LOL BYE” and then I got into an accident that messed up my nose and then everything just got worse. I fixed my nose but I realized a few days ago that I will never, ever be happy with it. I will never be happy with my body and I will wish for the days when I had the rail thin figure I had when I was twelve. And that’s sick. And I know that. One thing I’ve learned to like are my freckles on the bridge of my nose. I used to cover them with foundation until they disappeared. I thought that made me look older. But really it just made me look less interesting. (And for the rude person on twitter who commented that it looks like I have sun damage, I’ll have you know that some of those are blackheads.)

It’s not terrible. It’s not like I can’t look in mirrors. It’s not like I think I am a horrendous looking thing. But something happened to my face. It’s just different now. With every day I get closer and closer to looking like Mick Jagger. Sometimes my face gets so full and round that once when I uploaded a video to YouTube one of their suggested tags was “chipmunk.” Which, actually, is pretty hilarious.

I found a photo of how I looked my first year in college and I felt like I looked so much prettier and I got really sad but then something good was on the Internet so I got distracted. I think it was an article on Cracked.

Me, left, back in the days when people said I looked like Scarlett Johansson.

Look, I know. “Wah wah Almie/Apocalypstick, this is a stupid post and you’re an idiot and there are people dying around the world and you should focus on more important things” to which I say, you must be new. But hey, I’m allowed to feel down on myself. We all are. How can we not? We have images of celebrities that are so photoshopped that when we see candid photos of them we think, “Wow they’re so fat/short/etc.” No, they’re not. Everything is fucked up. That’s the problem. It’s like everyone is wearing a different pair of prescription lenses. Which, uh, I guess people are, because not everyone has perfect vision. But you get my point.

What do you think are your flaws? What don’t you like about your appearance and if money weren’t an issue, would you change it?

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You Gotta Walk And Don’t Look Back.

Lately I’ve been doing this odd thing where I show up for events 1-2 weeks early.

My friend/coworker had an art show out in Valenica or something that I dragged my poor friend Dave to and when we got there I called her, asking, “Hey where are you?” and she called back, worried with, “My show is next Thursday, oh my gosh, I’m sorry, are you OK?”

Then a few weeks later Dave had a screening for his indie film (stupid talented fuck) and I frantically told him I wasn’t able to make it because I was sick (with strep for like the 6th time this year) and he told me, “It’s next week :)” and I said, “Oh I have to work that day anyway” which I did. Also, I should point out this all occurred via text messaging. Dave doesn’t just say things and then smile. He’s not Benjamin Linus.

Tonight I canceled plans because I thought my friend Katie was in town from San Francisco. I was psyched to see her but I hadn’t heard from her so I texted,”Hey dude are we still meeting up tonight?”  because, apparently, I am a Beastie Boy, to which she responded, “Shoot, sorry if there was any miscommunication…I’m in LA next weekend.” I just laughed. I don’t know what is wrong with me.

If I were still seeing my therapist, who has a vaguely New York accent and an Elaine Bennes wardrobe and hairstyle, she would probably tell me that I’m doing this on purpose. That I am purposefully, subconsciously choosing not to go to these events. She said a lot of things. Eventually I stopped going to therapy because I found it so, so very boring. I felt like I never had anything to say. It got to the point where I was going to therapy solely to gossip. I’d say hello to her, sit down on the couch, and launch in with something like, “So Jonna dumped Jack and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I thought you guys just moved in together?’ and she said, ‘We did, but we got into this huge argument, he kept saying, ‘We have to go back, Kate’ and I’m like, ‘Who’s Kate?’ and so I moved out.’ I mean I couldn’t believe it, she and Jack were the perfect couple!”

My therapist would just stare at me and ask me how that made me feel. I would make something up. I didn’t want to tell her, “Don’t you understand the value of this gossip?” She decided it would be a good idea to put me in group therapy. Once I got into group therapy I found myself surrounded by 40-50 year olds with serious problems, like alcoholism and abusive ex-spouses and children who were assholes. And they would talk about their problems and then say, “So Apocalypstick…

(I mean they wouldn’t actually say that, but I kind of love referring to myself as that, and this is America so please, please, please let me get what I want, happy bday Morrissey!)

“…what’s going on in your life?” I would say something like, “Oh, uh, I didn’t get a callback for that Chili’s commercial and I tore the hem off of my favorite vintage dress.” And then feel like an overprivileged twit. So I guess in a strange way group therapy worked for me, because it made me realize that I had no real problems.

Look, we all have problems. There are times when we stare at our mountains of problems and you want to freak out. That’s totally fine to feel that way. Just because you’re not homeless doesn’t mean you don’t have real problems. Depression is a very real thing. But sometimes what you have is a minor inconvenience that you’re turning into a dramatic situation. I have this inside joke with myself (because, contrary to what Facebook tells me, I have maybe 5 real friends) where whenever something even vaguely annoying happens I say out loud, “Why does everything bad happen to me??!!” Right away, I feel better. Or what I’ll do is vent my problems on this blog, like in the post “Let’s All Just Feel Badly For Ourselves” which you can find in the link to your left, under “Tales As Old As Time.”

But if you’re finding that even the smallest annoyances get you down, really down, then don’t feel badly about getting help! I don’t care if it sounds cliche for a young 20-something writer girl to be on antidepressants, but I am, and I’m grateful that they exist. Depression is real. If you don’t take care of it, it will take over your life. You’ll wake up in the late afternoon and not get out of bed. You’ll feel like your days just don’t end and that all you have to look forward to is ordering comfort food for dinner and then feeling terrible about eating it. But you won’t care, because you already feel terrible. You’ll want to cry, scream, and hurt the people you love, just because you don’t know what else to do. I’m sorry, I hate to get “all political” and anti-Tom “You don’t know the history of psychiatry, I do” Cruise or whatever, but listen: people will go on and on about how America and especially American youth are overmedicated but when it comes to your physical and mental health, you have to do what is going to get you out of bed. Maybe it’s medication, maybe therapy, probably both. But it’s your life and you don’t want to look back one day when you’re healthy and think, “I wish I hadn’t wasted all of that time feeling terrible.” And I want you to look back healthy!! Insert 3rd Lost reference here!

Sometimes, you just gotta dance. Here’s some iamamiwhoami. I think she/it/they is the most exciting thing to happen to music since Gaga (and excuse you I was listening to Gaga back when she was a guilty pleasure few people knew about, thanks to Laura, and I’ve kinda moved on) and I can’t get enough.

O — iamamiwhoami

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Strut.

I’m a girl who writes a blog so you knew it would come to this: the body post.

A few days ago I was taking inventory at work and my boss wanted to know more about me so I said, “Hm, I love to cook and eat” and she said, “How do you stay so thin?” and I thought, “Damn are you crazy? I’m not thin, I’m normal.” At best I can hope for skinny-fat. Look, I live in LA and I’m a struggling actress. I’ve seen thin. I’m not thin. I have friends who are models for Draper’s sake! Hells bells!

But I guess if I were in any other profession or lived in any another city (except for maybe New York. Or Paris. Or Milan. Or basically anywhere in Europe?) I would be happy with my figure and might even think of myself as thin. This doesn’t bum me out. I’m OK with it. I chose this. But what bums me out is seeing my friends who agonize over their bodies. Women can see a photo of a thin actress/model/or even one of their friends and actually let it depress them. Somehow just looking at someone else with an ideal figure makes them feel badly about their own figure. Even though a photo of someone else has no reflection on you or your body or who you are. But it can still make you feel badly. I’m not going to tell you to stop feeling badly because it’s not that easy.

But what I will tell you is that photos. lie. all. the. freaking. time. It’s all about angles and lighting. People are paid to make other people not look fat. Seriously.

The flip side to this though is that some actresses look super, super thin in person and look “normal” on the screen, because the camera adds ten pounds, or whatever. I saw Julianne Moore in person (that night that I ate something weird and then vomited all over a 7-11 parking lot, such good times) and she looked like a freaking child from behind!! Seriously she looked like a teenager and she’s a 40-something year old woman! That’s insane!!

Why is it so much easier to hate our bodies than to love them? Why is it so hard for us to accept compliments? Why do we always want to deflect them? (Yes I’m aware that I’m making generalizations and that not all women are like this, GWYNETH PALTROW). Why is it that I always hope that when I see my friends they’ll ask, “Did you lose weight?” And then why is it that when they actually do ask that I can’t even enjoy the compliment? Why is that even a compliment?

I don’t know. I don’t have any answers here or even anything earth shattering to add. Except that if you’re not being paid for it then why are you so worried about having a Kate Beckinsale waist? Or Kate Bosworth legs? Or Cate Blanchett cheekbones? Or a Kate Moss everything? (See what I’m doing here?) BTW did you hear that Cate Blanchett suffered a head injury while on stage doing A Streetcar Named Desire and for a while she kept going, trying to act through it? That is such a Kate Hepburn thing to do. I think Kate Winslet would also be impressed. Kate Capshaw was in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

There has to be something about your body that you love. Maybe you haven’t found it yet. Maybe you need to blast your favorite music and do a sexy photoshoot. Then you should delete those photos because you never know when they will come back to haunt you. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be proud of them I’m just saying that you may need a job one day. Or not! Do whatever you want! It’s your body and you should love it because it’s the only one you’re going to have. You could get thousands of dollars worth of plastic surgery and it’s STILL going to be the body you’re stuck with. And the ironic thing about plastic surgery is that it isn’t even permanent! Things sag, rupture, heal oddly, shift, etc. I’VE SEEN IT HAPPEN.

I can see both sides of why actresses need to look thin/toned/whatever. One the one hand they’re being paid millions of dollars to have a certain image. It’s the image that sells tickets. But on the other hand shouldn’t it be about the acting? The art? Should it matter that their thighs don’t touch?

One great thing about exercise is the endorphins; just the act of working out can make you feel better, even without seeing the results. So go for a walk! Maybe not, if you live in SoCal, not right now, the smoke/air is really bad for you. Maybe just stay inside. For a little bit.

I don’t know. I just want us to (insert Mean Girls quote here about sunshine and rainbows and being happy).

I Ran (So Far Away) — A Flock Of Seagulls

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