Or as I refer to him – to his face – LDP. (He’s my buddy, I can get by with that.)

It all started some time last year. I was at a storytelling show in my neighborhood and got invited to sit at a table with a bunch of people I didn’t know. I said hello to my new friends and the natural course of conversation shifted to where I live.

“I’m just around the corner,” I said.

Andrea, the girl across from me said, “Uh huh, go on, go on . . . where?”

“Westminster.”

“Really? Me too!” Andrea said. “Which end?”

“At the corner of 6th.”

Andrea’s eyes got huge. “Oh my god!!” she squealed. “Do you know who your neighbor is?”

“Yeah . . .” I said, confused as to why she’d be so excited. “Which one? I know all of my neighbors . . .”

“LOU DIAMOND PHILLIPS!” she screams.  ”He lives in that new modern house just up on 6th. Drives a white Volvo, I’ve seen him.”

That’s when I realized I was about to break my new neighbor-friend’s blissful star gazing bubble. For alas, I do know this Volvo driving dude and as good looking as he is, he’s not LDP. At least I’m pretty sure.

“I hate to break it to you,” I said. “He may look like Lou Diamond Phillips, but that’s just my neighbor Tommy. You’ve probably seen him walking his three gay dogs, too.”

Andrea, obviously a bit disappointed, “Yeah, I thought it might be weird for Lou Diamond Phillips to have three little dogs. But hey, what does your neighbor do for a living anyway??”

“I don’t know.”

I could almost see Andrea’s bubble re-inflate.  ”You don’t know??! How could you not know?”

“I don’t make it a habit to ask my friends and neighbors what they do for a living,” I said.

“Well . . . then. Ma-a-aybe it IS Lou Diamond Phillips! Maybe he just says his name is Tommy, you know, for like, a cover.”

She refuses to believe that my neighbor is anyone other than Lou Diamond Phillips. I think it’s a  fine rumor to perpetuate in the neighborhood. I told Tommy about his doppelganger.

And ever since then, Tommy has taken to wearing shades and ditching papparazzi. So, who knows? Maybe my neighbor is LDP. Except for those dogs . . . what kind of dogs do you think LDP would have around? Who’s your celebrity doppelganger?

Happy Hump Day!

I used to hate the politics of show business.

But, the older I get and the longer I live in LA, working in the Hollywood system, the less I care about what people think of me – (big sigh) and it sure does feel good. Here’s how I remember it, after several glasses of cabernet.

Picture it – the grand ballroom at Hollywood & Highland – right across from the El Capitan theatre. About 1000+ motion picture accountants and studio finance people – happens once a year. I’ve been to about 11 of them now. Hollywood’s a small, small world . . . at every single one of these gatherings, I know I’m gonna see people I adore and people I want to desperately avoid . . . people who’ve fired me or annoyed me. Add one open bar. Stir. Mingle.

So, last night, wandering the ballroom alone in the massive crowd, I spotted two accountants I worked with back in 2003, when I worked on the movie The Italian Job. I got fired from that show. In years past, I probably would have  scuttled by, hoping they didn’t see me. Not this time. I walked right up, plopped my plate down and ate dinner with them. It was civil; lots of smiles all around. That was nice.

Later, I ran into my old friend James from film school, who’s also in the biz. We talked for a long time, I told him about my dinner companions. A few minutes later, James grabbed a colleague of his who was walking by and said, “Anna, I want you to meet . . .” but I didn’t hear the name because the room was loud.

“Anna worked on The Italian Job,” said James.

I shook the colleague’s hand, rolled my eyes and said dismissively, “Yeah, I got fired from that show.”

“Oh really?” he said. “Why’d you get fired?”

“Because,” I said. “That show was crazy, the whole department was crazy, and they were basically afraid I was going to go to the studio and rat them out to ‘Daddy Mike,’ the head of studio finance.” I laughed.

*Side note here – ‘Daddy Mike’ was my personal nickname/inside joke only I was party to for the head of studio finance. I always made sure I wore a cute skirt when I took an envelope of checks over for him to sign. Eh, why not, right?

That’s when the James’ colleague throws his head back in laughter, whips out his business card, tosses it down on the table for me and says, “I’m ‘Daddy Mike!’”

Now that I’m older, wiser and accepting of my big mouth, I love the politics of show business.

A few years ago, my sister fell in love with a brash Boston-ite. So, snow be damned, she decided to pack up her brood of three young boys and high-tailed it to Massachusetts to start a new life.

I had helped them move and stayed for a week in hopes to help everyone adjust to the new place. My nephews weren’t so excited about the move and had become prone to bouts of silence, temper tantrums and general moodiness. I took them to Salem one grey, half-rainy afternoon.

We explored the outskirts of town, walking the side of a lonely highway and tried to ignore the mist that collected on our jackets. My oldest nephew Josh ran ahead of all of us and began to kick rocks as hard and fast as he could. The littlest one, Jason, lagged behind with sad shoulders. And the middle one, Jake, just looked up at me with big eyes and said, “I don’t have any friends here, Aunt Banana.”

It was then that I knew what I must do. I yelled for Josh and Jason and gathered everyone around in a huddle. “OK, guys,” I said. “No matter where you are in the whole entire world, even if you don’t know a single soul, there is ONE sure-fire way to find your people.”

Their eyes were huge. “How?” said Josh suspiciously.

“Easy,” I said. “The disco call.” I did it for them. “O-wah! O-wah!” They looked at me like I was crazy. “Just practice it,” I said. “You’ll see.”

We kept walking. There was nothing around except an old run down gas station with an attached mechanic’s garage. A coin operated bait machine out front read “Live Worms and Crickets.”

Josh resumed his post ahead of the pack and as he kicked another rock down the shoulder of the muddy road, it seemed like he didn’t kick so hard, or with as much anger. Instead he practiced his disco call. “Owah! Owah!” he said softly at first a few times. Then as he got the hang of the vocalizations, he became more brave until finally, he belted the Disco Call out perfectly and LOUD! It echoed off the gas station and the surrounding trees.

Josh stopped and turned to look at me, his toe digging the ground. “See – nothing happened,” he said. His younger brothers looked up at me out of the hoods of their rain jackets as if to say, “See?”

I stood there looking back at them as mist caught me right in the eye, not knowing what to say. I just wanted my nephews to not be sad anymore . . . when the magic happened. I looked up just in time to see a mechanic clad in greasy overalls, giant wrench in hand, come running out of the garage, looking frantically all around . . . for someone . . . he looked right at us and wailed . . .

“O-wah! O-wah!”

I smiled and waved back. The mechanic shook his wrench twice at us and disappeared back into the garage, as if part of a mirage, while my nephews caught rain water in their open, disbelieving mouths.

I came back to visit a couple of years later. I took them to a museum. Jason, the youngest, got separated from us. I asked Jake to help me find him. “Easy,” he said. “O-wah! O-wah!”

And from faraway, I hear my youngest nephew’s muffled disco call in reply.

I used to be married . . . . a very long time ago . . .  in a lifetime far, far away. So far away, in fact, that when I refer to my wonderful, perfect-for-me fiance as “My 2nd and LAST,” the overwhelming response I hear is “Wha-a-a-a-at?! You were married before???”

Yep, I was married before. I know, it’s hard even for me to believe. I also lived in Tennessee at the time and had a job as a traveling sex toy saleslady. (See, told you – whole other lifetime far, far away . . .)

I’m not here today to talk about my ex-husband per se . . . instead, the few striking similarities between my ex-husband and my ’2nd and last’ are pretty frickin’ amazing. They both:

• play bass guitar – but wait, it gets better . .
• . . . in a cover band
• were born and raised in the deep South (in cities approximately 75 miles apart)

Isn’t that wierd???

At first, these likenesses kinda tripped me out. What in the world did my unconscious choice in bass-guitar-playing Southern men from the Central Savannah River Valley area mean, anyway?? And did it mean that I was destined to have the same outcome as the first time? I didn’t think so, but to find out for sure, I asked Matt, my fiance, my beloved ’2nd and LAST’ a question that I knew would put the matter to rest once and for all:

“Honey, do you have a name for your bass guitar?”

He just shrugged and said, “Neh, why would I do that?”

Whewwwww! With Matt’s casual shrug, I knew that these very few, but extremely precise similarities were no cause for alarm because these two individuals have only those three things in common, nothing else.

My ex-husband had a name for his bass guitar. It was a rare Fender Jazz bass guitar that he’d acquired by suspicious means. He’d done a crappy job refinishing it himself and named it “The Alien Burn Patient.” He was also a professional musician, which meant that most of the time, he was getting fired from his latest bar-tending gig.

Nope, Matt doesn’t care enough about music to want to name his guitar. For him, music is only for fun, definitely not for profit or dream of profit. He’s got a career. And we’ve got something special. I won’t over-think the similarities and let them mind-fuck me into reading something into them that’s not there.

Well, they DO have one more thing in common and it stems from their Southern upbringing: their love for BBQ, fried chicken and biscuits. Good thing I’m not vegetarian, then, eh?

A lot of you have never stopped by before – so THANKS for checking out what I’ve got to say. Here are a few of my favorite stories from the past few years, all in one convenient post.

1. How I Finally Snagged Matt
http://www.artistadventurer.com/cms/archives/179

2. Near Bus Crash
http://www.artistadventurer.com/cms/archives/349

3. Bomb Diggity, The Beloved Jalopy
http://www.artistadventurer.com/cms/archives/520

4. Macho Man
http://www.artistadventurer.com/cms/archives/380

5. Black Friday Pimp N Ho Action
http://www.artistadventurer.com/cms/archives/273

6. Roadside Pissing
http://www.artistadventurer.com/cms/archives/164

7. More Venice Action
http://www.artistadventurer.com/cms/archives/152

8. What is an Artist Adventurer anyway?
http://www.artistadventurer.com/cms/archives/3

9. Camel-Sexy!!!
http://www.artistadventurer.com/cms/archives/33

10. Some Insight as to My Family Drama
http://www.artistadventurer.com/cms/archives/56

Finally – today . . . it hit me, like really for real hit me. It’s time.

One day almost three years ago (almost hard to believe it was that long ago) I woke up in Huanchaco Peru and had just kind of hit a wall. I was done blogging. And today, as I stood there at my desk at work, I thought, “How come I don’t blog any more?! That’s bullshit!”

Indeed. So, here I am, I’m back and it’s about friggin’ time.

While I’ve been away from the blogging world, I’ve been real busy getting addicted to CNN, MSNBC and Facebook. No wonder I was so depressed for so long.

Today, I thought of my step-mom, Betty. She’s such a great woman. I love her dearly. She told me that in her high school days, she was a champion hurdler. And then one day, for no explicable reason, she ran full force toward a hurdle – and she came to a dead stop right in front of it. She just couldn’t jump it. She didn’t know why, but she was like a donkey, balking at the obstacle. Her legs knew how to clear the hurdle in front of her, but some disconnect had happened in her brain and she simply could not make her body go through the motions.

And she never jumped another hurdle again. I didn’t want that to happen to me, so here I am.

What kinds of metaphorical hurdles do you face in daily life? Have you ever been like that donkey and just stopped short, not really knowing why? For me, the longer I didn’t blog, the more my brain spun, giving me more and more reasons why my obstacle was just too far out of my reach.

It might take awhile before I’m doing this:

But that’s okay. Today I came upon my hurdle and somehow patched the disconnect. Juggling while flying through the air takes some practice. Today, I’m going to cut myself some fucking slack and cheer the small victories. Tallyho!

Last night, when I left the house, my hair was long. I had no solid plans to change that. And then we went to The Cozy Inn Bar …

A guy wearing a beer distributor’s t-shirt walks into the bar. He’d been tryin’ to chat my friend Liz up for nearly a half hour. Finally he gets her attention, kind of joins our little group. Turns out he’s a nice guy. Turns out – aside from being a beer distributor with crazy punked out blue and pink hair – that he also likes to cut hair.

 “Let me cut your hair,” he says to me.

 “OK,” I said. And we all went back to his place down the street.

“That is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Matt. “I can’t believe you brought that home.”

“Yeah, me either.” I said.

*    *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Ten years ago I made a solemn vow to never be in debt again, especially for a car. I wasn’t playing around, I meant that shit.

Then, a couple of years ago, having just returned from South America flat busted broke and in need of a job, my car threw a rod. In LA, to work, you gotta have a car, right? I mean, how else could I shlep the hour and a half drive each way to get ’over the hill,’ every single day to Burbank?

I could hardly wait to march down to a car dealership and sign the next four years or more of my life away so I could be a slave to a car payment. And never be able to save money to travel. And be stuck in an endless cycle of working and driving long distances to get there, all to pay for a car. Fuck that, I drew a line in my west side Venice beach sand.

I was lucky enough to find a freelance job in Santa Monica and I rode my bike to work for the next three months, and saved all my money. I like having money in the bank. It’s much nicer than not having money in the bank. I didn’t want to blow my whole load of meager savings on a car, a thing that always depreciates in value. So, I started going every Tuesday morning to an LAPD car auction in Marina Del Rey.

One Tuesday morn, I walked into the tow yard with $1500 in cash. I’d learned a lot after a month of car auction investigation, mostly that there is a whole industry of greasy, sleezy car dudes who scour these auctions looking for great deals on cars to flip. I watched them quietly, took notes, asked a few regulars some well thought out questions, avoided the people who muttered to themselves, and now I was ready.

No car stood out above the rest that day. During the pre-inspection, I noted several cars with potential. I laughed at the plaid seats  of a high-mileage, early 80′s rusted out Toyota hatchback full of car maintenance supplies. The auction started and when they got to the plaid-seated car, the auctioneer smiled and said, “She’s a runner!” and sure enough, they produced a key and cranked that old car right up.

You have to act fast at these auctions. I didn’t really have time to think about it. The only people bidding on this little car were the junk yard guys and I couldn’t let them take it away. I raised my hand to bid and five seconds later, for $350, I was the owner of a dirty, old-man car filled with lotto tickets and cigarette butts. We named her Bomb Diggity. Diggity for short.

I never expected it to last more than two months. Here it is, a year and a half later still going. I’ve cleaned her up – no, I didn’t check all the lotto tickets to see if there was a winner. (So many people ask me about that, I don’t get it.) But last week, I let artist Isabelle Alford-Lago paint blonde gorillas on it. Why?

Why not?

Armed with nothing except the pithy beam of a dying headlamp, ill-fitting cheap plastic flip-flops and the will to NOT pay for a taxi cab, Matt and I tromp unwittingly into danger in the complete darkness on the road leading out of Santa Teresa in hopes of finding Shangri-La. We heard that the hot springs on the edge of town were amazing . . . and open late . . . and sparsely populated after the 8 o´clock hour.

Rudely awakened from my pre-hot springs nap by the cry of, ¨Ultimo combi para los aguas calientes!¨ or Last combi to the hot springs, I  wipe the drool off my face, grab a sarong and get out the door, but the combi is long gone. A cab offers to drive us there, wait for a couple of hours and drive us back, but the charge is steep and I don´t want to be locked into a finite amount of time at the hot springs.

So, we decide to walk it. As soon as we leave the sparse light of the boomtown of Santa Teresa, the sharp rocks in the dark road begin to poke through our flip-flops. ¨Have I mentioned how much I fucking HATE flip-flops??!¨ Matt says over and over, laughing. Turns out that we were like babes in the woods. We had no clue how dangerous that boulder filled road was. Sure, I had an inkling . . .  after all, we were walking down a steep grade.

I ponder for a moment how we are going to get back up the mountain after a few hours of relaxing in the hot springs, but then dismiss it. I find that these types of details usually just take care of themselves. I also have no bathing suit with me, but I don´t care about that either . . . We have no cares in the world . . . well, except the rocks that are tattering our lilly white  toes . . . but we are laughing about that too.

We stumble down the dark road for nearly forty minutes. We know we are getting close because we see the lights to the hot springs looming in the distance. I see a car above us, twisting and turning slowly on the road, and can hear the crunch of rock beneath the tires. ¨Hey,¨ I say to Matt. ¨Watch out, there´s a car coming . . . it´s far away, though.¨ And on we walk.

Suddenly, the car comes around a tight curve and is very close. ¨Here it comes!¨ I said as I point my weak head lamp light toward the edge of the road so we can find a spot to wait as the car passes. Unfortunately, we are walking on the right-hand edge of the road, the side facing the wide open canyon. Obviously, we weren´t thinking . . . otherwise we would have been walking on the left-hand side of the road, the safe side of the road, the side built up against the mountain.

It all happened so fast. The car swings around the curve. We are in the head lights and a split second later as the headlights speed past . . . Matt disappears. I hear him grunt and in the last second of the car´s light, I see his head disappear right off the edge of the road. I have no idea how far he fell . . .

I scream as the car passes us in a flurry of dust and red tail lights. ¨Matt!¨ I yell. I am shaking. I am scared. The car grinds to a halt. The doors fly open and silhouettes of people run toward me. By the time the people get to me, Matt is up, on the road and has only one flip-flop on his foot.

¨Todo bien?¨ the people ask over and over again. Someone retrieves the lost flip-flop. Matt wasn´t even aware that he was standing in the road with only one shoe. Someone points to a cut on his toe, but he´s not aware of that either. Other than a bit groggy, thankfully, he seems OK.

But then he says, ¨Shine the light here,¨ and lifts up his shirt to reveal an already dark purple mass on his ribcage about 6¨ wide.

He escaped with no broken ribs, only a deep tissue bruise. Good thing we were on our way to the hot springs . . . he thinks that´s what saved him from what should have been really painful. It all turned out OK. The family who stopped to help us gave us a lift to the hot springs and took us home later too. I am conviced they are the nicest people in Santa Teresa – and the mom runs a kickin´ juice stand during the day.

¨What were you thinking?¨I ask Matt later. ¨Why did you run ahead, out of the beam of the flashlight?¨

¨Well,¨ he replied. ¨I was just trying to get out of the way, so I stepped into the darkest spot on the side of the road.¨

We went back to the springs the next day while it was still daylight. Let´s just say it´s a good thing that he didn´t fall when we were high up on the mountain road, because there was nothing but sheer cliff edge for most of the way to the springs. He fell off the lowest part of the road, the part nearly level with the valley floor. The hole he fell in was the only hole in the entire stretch of  road – a 6´ square man-made hole of layered rock probably used for water drainage.

The next day as we slurped freshly blended juice, the kind juice lady asked, ¨What are you all doing today . . . he´s probably hurting bad.¨

¨Going on a hike, ¨I said. ¨I can´t believe it either, but he wants to go climb a mountain.¨

¨Ooooh,¨ the juice lady smiled, ¨A macho man.¨