Venti Agoraphobia Latte w/ a shot of Awesomeness!

Alright, I’ve decided to take a break from the mania of emailing the 60-page list of killer blogs I compiled with queries for review of my book The Voting Booth After Dark: Despicable, Embarrassing, Repulsive.

It’s truly been a blast revisiting their pages, and clicking on their recommended links through which I have discovered a whole nother’ slew of kick-arse blogs!  The author of the now closed Readerville blog put it best in 2009 when he said:

“It’s been an exceptional nine years. In June of 2000, the web was a very different place than it is today. Online resources for readers were comparatively few but pretty terrific, and Readerville was proud to be among them. Back then, if you told someone you talked to people on the Internet, they still looked at you funny, and most in the book industry couldn’t really grasp the idea of readers handselling books to each other in forums such as ours. These days, I’m thrilled at the vast assortment of tools for people to connect online—from blogs to Facebook and Twitter, to the many social book cataloging sites, and beyond. Readers have resources nobody could have imagined nine years ago, and it’s a joy to see books being talked about in every corner of the Internet.”

Not only books, but ALL the arts!  There are SO many AMAZING Art & Literary Blogs. Visual, Performance, Culinary, & Journalistic (Politics & News), Activism. The list goes on.  Finally, we the world’s citizens get, and give each other, choices. Yum.  I have to stop subscribing to all their RSS feeds though or I’ll never be able to clear my inbox! Gah! We live in some fabulous times — Tis’ truly the Information Age. I’m thrilled!!!

I’m also pooped and I have group therapy/meditation in an hour so I’m going to make this short.

From ages 18 – 23, I was one of the hugest party girls — in Gucci look-alike Payless Shoesource stilettos — to ever strut the planet .  At age 25, I’d partied the party out of my system.

Being an extremist by nature , I have since then grown to hate leaving the house unless it’s to go to a film festival, art showing, or performance (theatre, dance, etc).

Contrary to the V-Dawg of yesterday, I hate parties, clubs, and 99% of social engagements.  Not only do I dislike them.  I loathe them.  A panic runs from my toes up to my head and back down again from the phase of anticipation until I am out of the situation.

Me & Kim Basinger are apparently the only agoraphobics in entertainment, lol.  The anxiety doesn’t come from being “afraid” of people or what they’ll think of me or blah blah nah nah.  I rarely buy into that boring nonsense.

I think mainly it comes from feeling wildly out of place, like a train that’s been derailed.  All I want to do — ALL THE TIME — is work on my writing and films.  Or hang out with friends 1 or 2 at a time — go get dinz and catch a flick, save the world one convo at a time.  You know, I’m 80-years old.

From reckloose to recluse.  Yikes!

I must face and accept that I am a bona fide introvert.  I absolutely positively do not like “hanging out” and absolutely positively love staying home and working on my art.  GAH!  My party-girl inside never thought she’d have to embrace this day, but alas … so it is.  What a pain-in-my-arse I have become at 27-years old ;p

Ah vel, I must accept my newly mutated ways and stop telling people I’ll go to their parties so I don’t have a panic attack, cancel last minute, and then suffer the punches of guilt in my chest for the rest of the day 🙂

Gah!  Tis’ sort of duro. Oh vell …

Anyway, speaking of working on art.  In doing my book promotion email fest 5000 today, I came across some awesomeness I’d like to share with you before I jam out the door to group therapy/meditation a.k.a. therapeutic convos with other like-hearted cray crays ;p

Enjoy!!! :

Some of Today’s Fave Blog Discoveries:

1) Mind Hacks

2) Riley Dog

3) Fecal Face

Some of Today’s Fave Photo Discoveries from Awesome Blogs:

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The Penguin, The Ego, & OMG Celebrity Yahoo News

I really have to go to the bathroom … but I’ll wait until I REALLY really REALLY have to go to the bathroom.  That’s just how I am.  For now.  I’m working on becoming a person who goes to the toilette when she gets the first initial desire.

“Why mention such a low-brow topic as this?,” you may be asking yourself.  Because going to the bathroom is one of a handful of basic needs every living creature must experience in order to survive on this planet.

And yet, I hold it off … until I can’t any longer.  Although the bathroom is only a couple of steps away.  Doesn’t this strike you as strange?

Yes, we human beings stave off doing various essential things for reasons like: I’d rather write my blog.

So what, in fact, keeps my body sitting cross-legged in bed with a laptop draped over it even though it physically desires — more than anything at this moment — to relieve itself of digested no-longer-necessary fluids?

The Ego.  It’s always The Ego.  Or as my Ego is called “The Penguin.”

This brings me to the first topic at hand — I’ve identified my ego as The Penguin.

Horrifying sight isn’t it?  I agree.  This is why I’m at present working to own it, embrace it, and with loving kindness — kill it.

In doing so, I hope to cultivate my five favorite feelings and characteristics: 1) Humility 2) Gratitude 3) Compassion 4) Fearlessness 5) Peace

I’ve embarked on this quest for no altruistic reason.  Purely selfish: I want to be fulfilled and whole, connected to a power greater than myself, surrendered to the perfection of what is exactly as it is, and learn from the present moment all the glorious lessons possible … before I kick da’ bucket!

What I yearn to be: Free in all sense of the word.  To embody the concept of Liberated.  Nothing to prove, nothing expected to be proved.  A Purist — a seeker, a learner, a heartfelt doer — with little to no Ego coloring or guiding her feelings, motivations, and actions.

Yes, I have failed my Ideal Self and therefore have nothing left to lose.  I aim at transparency, vulnerability, and thorough sincerity/honesty in all of my affairs.

I’ve taken to heart the advice of these passages:

“Once we have a complete willingness to take inventory, and exert ourselves to do the job thoroughly, a wonderful light falls upon this foggy scene … that his character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of his failure at life; that unless he is now willing to work hard at the elimination of the worst of these defects, peace of mind will still elude him; that all the faulty foundation of his life will have to be torn out and built anew on bedrock.

…

Therefore, it seems plain that few of us can quickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual and moral perfection; we want to settle for only as much perfection as will get us by in life, according, of course, to our various and sundry ideas of what will get us by.  So the difference between ‘the boys and the men’ is the difference between striving for a self-determined objective and for the perfect objective which is of God.”

God: The name I give the unifying Life Force we all form part of —  The sum of all our parts.  The vast infinity of endless possibility fully realized.  Ya know!  I see it like this: We’re blood swimming through the veins of a whole body.  Others may call this body: “Wholeness,” “Perfection,” “Allah,” “My Higher Self,” “The Universe,” “Universal Order,” “Baby Jesus in Da Manger,” and “Rodney Dangerfield.”

I actually tend to call It “Baby Jesus in Da Manger” and “Rodney Dangerfield” most of the time.

Honestly, I tend to feel trepidatious about discussing my spiritual exploration because Atheists are a indisputable pain the arse.  They’re more overbearing with their opinions of what’s right! than the Catholics.

In my personal experience, The Religious and Non-Religious tend to be bossier than necessary.  Spiritualists and Agnostics — I enjoy.

That being said, a part of my quest for personal betterment is to stop reading OMG Yahoo Celebrity News Updates JUST because I’m bombarded by their headlines every time I go to sign into my Yahoo Account.

I spent 40 minutes this morning reading about Jesse James’ engagement to Kat Von D Teese or whatever her name is, which linked me to Sandra Bullock’s hidden potential lovey dovey-ness with Ryan Reynolds (whoever that dewd is).

GAH!  I felt TERRIBLY physically, psychologically, and spiritually sick at the end of that whole waste-of-time debacle.

I mean, really, I DON’T CARE!  But my lower nature: my ego: my penguin had its way once AGAIN! And after 40 minutes of reading through Yahoo’s “news,” I all-of-a-sudden felt like a big fat failure — at my career, in romance … actually in my complete entire life … WHILE simultaneously  feeling repulsion for the human race.

And why?!  Because of Jesse Bullock, Sandra Dot Teese, Ryan Reynolds, and Kat that Tattoo chick?!  Celebrity Culture-Watch is banal and yet I-keep-going-back-for-more.  Oh well … It’s progress not perfection! ;p

Thus, in order to cultivate 1) Humility 2) Gratitude 3) Compassion 4) Fearlessness 5) Peace, I must A) Finish my Whole Life Resentment Inventory Breakdown this weekend to read to Group Therapy Mentor on Tuesday 2) Stop clicking on the OMG Yahoo Celebrity News! Updates NO MATTER WHAT and 3) Work for a week or two as one of those “Liberty Insurance” Sign Dancing people because I’d hate doing that more than any other job on earth.  And since I want to KILL my penguin inside, I must face my fear head on …  I’m mortified.

I believe that Humility at its core is just additional levity and Baby Jesus in Da Manger knows I’d enjoy some more light-hearted livinz!

Making A Movie Day 4 — Francis Ford Coppola & My Whole Life Inventory

Alright, I’m taking a breath from breaking down my whole life’s written inventory (80 pages, 9 point font, for ages 0 – 26 written over the last year and a half) into specific resentments built up over those periods of time.  I am to read this to my group therapy mentor tomorrow from 2pm until we finish.

I probably won’t finish this assignment until right before we meet tomorrow at 2pm. Gah!!!  So, I’ll just discuss briefly with you some discourses swimming through mi brains.

Yesterday, I read an interview with Francis Ford Coppola that Baby Dewds e-mailed my way a week ago.

Francis Ford Copolla is, in my opinion and every award ceremony’s on earth, a creative mastermind.  His films make up an important part of why my favorite Cinematic Period takes place during the 60’s & 70’s — The New Hollywood Era. The New Hollywood Era — When the studio system fell to its knees and turned all its creative power over to inventive daring outsiders, like Coppola, for them to craft artistic quality films, which reflected society back to itself — in order to close the growing divide between audience and box office.

Yes, Francis Ford Coppola’s direction of the first 2 Godfathers, Apocalypse Now, The Outsiders, Peggy Sue Got Married, Dracula, Jack and all the AMAZING films he produced and executive produced — plus the exposing documentary Hearts of Darkness — makes him THA’ Jam.

When I read this article, I realized, yet again, how much I loved and respected Coppola as a filmmaker/artist and family man.  Who wouldn’t with quotes like these:

I just finished a film a few days ago, and I came home and said I learned so much today. So if I can come home from working on a little film after doing it for 45 years and say, “I learned so much today,” that shows something about the cinema.

…the cinema is very young. It’s only 100 years old…The cinema language happened by experimentation – by people not knowing what to do. But unfortunately, after 15-20 years, it became a commercial industry. People made money in the cinema, and then they began to say to the pioneers, “Don’t experiment. We want to make money. We don’t want to take chances.” An essential element of any art is risk. If you don’t take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn’t been seen before? I always like to say that cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby. You have to take a risk.

I was always a good adventurer. I was never afraid of risks. I always had a good philosophy about risks. The only risk is to waste your life, so that when you die, you say, “Oh, I wish I had done this.” I did everything I wanted to do, and I continue to.

When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In “The Godfather,” it was succession. In “The Conversation,” it was privacy. In “Apocalypse,” it was morality.

Always make your work be personal. And, you never have to lie. If you lie, you will only trip yourself up. You will always get caught in a lie. It is very important for an artist not to lie, and most important is not to lie to yourself. There are some questions that are inappropriate to ask, and rather than lie, I will not answer them because it’s not a question I accept. So many times we are asked things in our work or in life that you want to lie, and all you have to do is say, “No, that is an improper question.”

So when you get into a habit of not lying when you are writing, directing, or making a film, that will carry your personal conviction into your work. And, in a society where you say you are very free but you’re not entirely free, you have to try. There is something we know that’s connected with beauty and truth. There is something ancient. We know that art is about beauty, and therefore it has to be about truth.

Ahhh, yes!  Yet again, he couples his refreshing ideas into truly invigorating statements.

Still …

When you read his quote below — you realize how far removed financially successful people become, no matter how much they want to stop the distancing, from the realities of every day people. Upon reading it, I quickly remembered why I’ve never considered anyone “my hero” and I could never worship a person as a god — because their human flaws would break my spirit long before their attributes helped it grow. Read on:

How does an aspiring artist bridge the gap between distribution and commerce?
We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.

This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?

In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it.

It’s easy to say art should be free and an artist shouldn’t get paid for their work when you’re making royalties off of 2 Godfathers and countless box office hits, and you, your daughter, and your father all have Academy Awards.  Oh, and your nephew is $40 million per movie Nick Cage.

Sure, wine money is good, but wine money was started with films-are doing-AWESOME money.  All I mean to say is that when rich — and I mean RICH — and famous — and I mean FAMOUS — artists tell the poor artist in South Gate borderline Huntington park to spend the rest of their lives in the financial trenches in order to maintain artistic integrity that poor artist exhales a deep, sad, long sigh and accepts that Francis Ford Coppola is just a regular human being like me and you … No one has ALL the answers.

That being said, I completely agree with him on creative ethics — stay true to the truth of your vision, especially the risky bits big corporate investors often want to smother, and only take into consideration the opinions of collaborators who have the betterment of the project in mind such as actors, writers, etc.

But giving your work away for free/letting people steal it off the internet while accepting that as artists we’re just bad with money so there’s no point in fighting it?! … Hmmm. Not on board with that advice, Papa Coppola.

I may do that now, but not forever!  I am joining a money-management/business betterment group next week.  Dear Baby Jesus in Da Manger, please teach me how to value my artistic efforts and turn them into lucrative sums that I can invest into more artistic endeavors!  No more CASH 4 GOLD Sundays! ;p

Bankers, Politicians, and Wine Connoisseurs should NOT be the only members of society with mula to spare a.k.a invest.  In fact, I think that scenario extremely dangerous to the cultures they form part of.  Artists — those that reflect society back to itself with truth, heart, risk, and love — should be able to sustain themselves and invest in future projects a.k.a roll in the doe too.  The greater the artistic integrity, the higher the paycheck, I say!

Although in theory Coppola doesn’t agree with this mindset, in reality he sure does. The Coppolas — Francis, Sofia, Cage, Talia, & Jason Schwartzman (to name a few) are rolling in the royalty $$$$.

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with it!  I’m just saying — Artists should be paid for their work and art should be reasonably priced:  Free sometimes, affordable mostly always, and high cost only in business dealings.

You’re making royalties off my hard work?  I deserve some too.  Let’s negotiate.

While digesting what Papa Coppola has said, I realize that with everyone’s advice in life, you take what works for you and leave aside what your gut reaction/spirit doesn’t jive with …

Yes, even Francis Ford Coppola’s words of wisdom.

The perk of being raised by a social worker mama is that you’ve been brainwashed for years to truly fundamentally believe that — regardless of financial and social status — every human being is inherently equal.  Thus: Rich or no rich, famous or no famous, creative genius or no creative genius, if I agree with you I agree with you and if I don’t I don’t.

And just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I don’t think you still rock my socks off because you do.  For example, I’m barefoot right now because Francis Ford Coppola’s interview, including the comments I disagreed with, rocked my socks off. It made me “grapple.”  Grappling is good.  Grappling is growth.

Alright, back to the inner-work a.k.a finishing the resentment inventory for mentor sesh tomorrow!  Gah!!! ;p