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Nicole and Hollywood Sign,
originally uploaded by nicdthomas.

All the furniture is gone. I’m sitting on the floor listing to Josh Rouse and later I will sleep on the floor. Last night in this apartment I have lived in for eight years. Final moments of my last weekend in this city that I love and hate.

Now that all the big projects are done, I am starting to enjoy the prospect of leaving more than I have.

Friday night my friend Ben’s band, Soul Traffic had a gig and the wearing of costumes was encouraged. I didn’t want to deal with a real costume so I decided to be a Hollywood vampire. Crimped my hair, wore more makeup than I did at my wedding, painted bite marks on my neck, wore a shirt that said “bite me” and the ubiquitous leather jacket.

Luckily Jolie was the voice of reason that evening because with the assistance of three margaritas and two beers, I hit one of my “I can stay up all night! I don’t care that I have things to do and that my parents are arriving this evening!” patches. She got me in bed by 12:30 which was good because my parents arrived at 3:00 AM.

Saturday we donated everything they were not keeping to Goodwill, drank some beer, went to Dia De Muertos at the cemetery, then Mexican food at Lucy’s El Adobe where I discovered that the feeling of not being able to breathe when I drink margaritas probably means that I am allergic to tequila.

I have no intention of giving up tequila. I don’t do it that often and so what that my face turns bright red and I feel like I am asphyxiating when I drink it. I can work through it. . .

Sunday after the parents left with my furniture, I hung out with Doug, Jamie and Amelia and in preparation for the big move we had fish and chips at a great little place, Malibu Seafood- out on the PCH just past Pepperdine, On the way home we swung by the Hollywood Reservoir were you can see the Hollywood sign up close.

There are so many places that I wanted to go to in LA before I left and I let the time just get away from me. I am so happy and excited to finally be back with S but I am a little sad to be leaving.

I know I will get over it.

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It’s beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas!

So nice that something that has been one of my standard soap box bitches about the current evil doers in American government finally is getting some air time.

Poor Irvie. On crutches and indicted on five (five!) felony charges. Thats gotta suck.

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I like to glance at my tracking every so often and see what corners of the world my traffic has come from. Other bloggers I read have noted the weird things people search on when the stumble upon their ramblings.

Mine have been fairly innocuous although when I posted about my tit top there were some interesting searches.

Today I got a hit from a search on ‘photo young girl naked “third world” tribes’. It took him to my post of the Zinn article on the genocide Columbus perpetrated on the Arawak Indians that the US wraps up in a pretty red bow and calls “discovery”.

The individual doing the search for young naked third world girls lived in El Paso, Texas. I wonder if he learned anything? My guess is no since he only stayed on for, oh let’s see- zero seconds.

I have no issues with porn. Not one of those women that freaks out about it. (Stop reading Mom.) I actually enjoy watching it once in a while as long as the cast does not include Ron Jeremy– but someone wanting a picture of a naked third world girl is a wee bit disturbing.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he doesn’t want a picture of young girls for porn. Maybe he is working on an anthropology project and he needs the visual aid.

Yeah, right. . . not so much. . .

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I am sad that I don’t have my cats anymore because if I did, I would start putting stuff on my cat.

What is it about doing evil things to cats that is just so funny?

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Sold my car.

I am sad, yet relieved that it is done and I didn’t get in an accident before I handed the keys in. I kept having visions of a ten car pile up with me at the bottom.

The dealer and Carmax both offered my 13K so I had to come up with the difference for the loan, which sucks- but what can you do. . . at least it’s done.

Janelle’s father took this photo not long after I got the car. Janelle was in town for the first time since she moved to London and had a gathering at what I think is my favorite Mexican restaurant, El Conquistador.

When Janelle went to London, her father gave me her car - cute little early 90’s Nissan. I had been living in LA for six years at this point and had been getting around on public transportation. (Yes. Really.) I think some people at work thought I had a DUI and had my license revoked. Who would choose to take the bus???

When I lived in Seattle there was no need for a car and when I moved here I was a broke graduate student and the American Film Institute was a ten-minute walk from my apartment. Then the grown-up persons job I somehow managed to trick them into giving me was just a 45-minute bus ride away and by the point I was actually making enough money to buy a car, I had a really healthy phobia about driving in LA built up.

I liked public transportation because it gave me time to read. On average, I read a book a week. (One Hundred Years of Solitude tripped me up. That one took two weeks.) I liked saving money ($42.00 verses paying for insurance, car payment and gas). Sadly the money I saved went into my sushi budget and not into my savings. I never had to be the designated driver so I could get as drunk as I wanted and not worry about killing others or myself. The crazy people were fabulous for anecdotes.

What is interesting about the bus and subway in LA is you do not see many young professionals using it. You see poor people. That is why more people in LA don’t use the bus. It has nothing to do with it being inconvenient because there are a lot of routes that are easy breezy Cover Girl. It does have to do with Angelinos not wanting to be near or associating with poor people. Add to that that a high percentage of folks on the bus are brown people– well forgetaboutit.

Public transportation sucked when I needed to go to the doctor. Instead of taking a few hours off from work I would need to take the entire day. It sucked when there was a party and I had to beg for a ride. I wasn’t able to do a lot of errands in different spots in town because there would simply not be time.

The bus really sucked when there was a strike. It was during the second strike since I have been living here that Janelle’s dad gave me her car.

Once I broke my phobia, I decided I wanted something new so that February I got my baby.

And it has now been sold. . . I still have a couple of the parking tickets- but the car no more. . .

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Anna Quindlen’s essay in the October 31 Newsweek

We’ve Been Here Before

What was the cause, the point, the strategy? Suddenly many Americans started to realize that there was no good answer.

By Anna Quindlen
Newsweek

Oct. 31, 2005 issue - The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a tapering wall of black granite cut into the grass of Constitution Gardens. Maya Lin envisioned a scar when she designed it, a scar on this land, which is exactly right. Maybe someday his security detail could drive George W. Bush over to take a look. He’ll be able to see himself in the reflective surface.

The list of names etched into the wall begins with a soldier who died in 1959 and ends with one who died in 1975. Nearly 60,000 dead are commemorated here. It is the most personal of war memorials. You can touch the cold names with your warm fingers.

The president never wanted the war in Iraq to be personal. His people forbade photographs of coffins arriving home. They refused to keep track of how many Iraqis had been killed and wounded. When “Nightline” devoted a show to the faces of soldiers who had died, one conservative broadcast outlet even pulled the program from its lineup.

The president wanted this to be about policy, not about people. Even that did not go well. The policy became a moving target. First there were weapons of mass destruction that were not there and direct links to the terrorists who attacked on September 11 that didn’t exist. The removal of Saddam Hussein was given as the greatest good; it has been done. Then it became the amorphous goal of bringing freedom to the Iraqi people, as though liberty were flowers and we were FTD. The elections, the constitution, the rubble, the dead. Once again we were destroying the village in order to save it.

This all took an unfortunate turn for the administration during the president’s vacation in August, when Cindy Sheehan showed up at his ranch. Say what you would about her politics or tactics, there was no doubt that she was a mother whose soldier son was now dead, and who wanted to know why. What was the cause, the point, the strategy? And suddenly many Americans started to realize that there was no good answer.

The Vietnam Memorial stands, in part, as a monument to blind incrementalism, to men who refused to stop, not because of wisdom but because of ego, because of the fear of looking weak. Not enough troops, not enough planning, no real understanding of the people or the power of the insurgency, dwindling public support. The war in Iraq is a disaster in the image and likeness of its predecessor.

During each election cycle, we ponder the question of whether character matters. Of course it does. Does anyone doubt that the continued prosecution of this war has to do with the personality of the commander in chief, a man who is stubborn and calls it strength, who wears blinders and calls it vision? When he vowed to invade Iraq, the advisers he heeded were those who, like him, had never seen combat. The one who had was marginalized and is now gone. The investigation of who leaked what to whom, of what the reporter knew and how she knew it, may be about national security and journalistic ethics, but at its base it is about something more important: the Nixonian lengths to which these people will go to shore up a bankrupt policy and destroy those who cross them on it.

The most unattractive trait of the American empire is American arrogance, which the president embodies and which this war elevated. It is not simply that we have a good system. It is the system everyone else should have. It is the best system, and we are the best people. We can mend rivalries so ancient that they not only predate our nation but the birth of Christ. We will install the leaders we like in a country we scarcely understand, leaders who will either be seen as puppets by their people or who will eventually turn against us. We have been here before.

“In Vietnam we didn’t have the lessons of Vietnam to guide us,” says David Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of that war. “In Iraq we did have those lessons. The tragedy is that we didn’t pay attention to them.” Or maybe only our leaders did not. The polls show the American people have turned on this war much more quickly than they did on the war in Vietnam. Of course, they are the ones who pay the price.

Perhaps the leaders of the Democratic Party should take time off from their fund-raisers and visit the Vietnam Memorial, too. They should remember one of the most powerful men the party ever produced, Lyndon B. Johnson, and how he was destroyed by opposition to the war in Vietnam and bested by those brave enough to speak against it.

At least Johnson had the good sense to be heartbroken by the body bags. Bush appears merely peevish at being criticized. Someone with a trumpet should play taps outside the White House for the edification of a president who has not attended a single funeral for the Iraqi war dead. As I am writing this, the number of American soldiers killed is 1, 992. By the time you read it, it may have topped 2,000. Will I be writing these same things when the number is 3,000, 5,000, 10,000? If we are such a great nation, why are we utterly incapable of learning from our mistakes? America’s sons and daughters are dying to protect the egos of those whose own children are safe at home. Again.

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

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You know that one picture of you? On the beach?

The one where my breasts look enormous?

That’s my favorite picture of you.

Oh God.

It’s my wallpaper on my computer.

Oh God!

When I lock the computer the gray box covers your head and it looks like porn.

Oh God. . .

I told you I am not a nice person. I was bored and I photo shopped it. Now you’re naked. Not your real breasts of course.

Of course.

Ones that I found online. Yours are much nicer.

Thank you. You haven’t put that photo as your wallpaper?

No! You muppet.

(laughs) Well. . . Everything is falling into place. I’m getting excited about coming.

I should hope so. And if you’re not– it doesn’t matter, because I am waiting for you.

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Artegall (who is actually often rather clever, don’t judge him by this post) recently blogged about a certain lack of skill, interest and “oral incompetence” with the women that he hangs out with. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more.

I mention it only because Mel’s Diner posted a funny little blurb about a Brazilian woman who is suing her lover because he is selfish in bed.

A 31-year-old woman from Brazil is asserting her right for satisfaction during sex by resorting to Justice. According to the newspaper Terra Noticias Populares, the disgruntled woman filed a complaint against her partner at Chacar Urbana Police station in Jundiai, claiming that her 38-year-old lover was very selfish in bed. Specifically, the 31-year-old complained that her partner simply stopped sexual intercourse as soon as he reached orgasm, without paying any attention to her needs. “We will look into it, we will treat it as an ordinary complaint and let the judge decide,” declared Police chief Jose Roberto Ferraz, answering to all those who laughed their hearts out when they found out about the complaint.

Now, why didn’t I think of that?

Talk about litigious. If we all start suing because our lovers suck (or don’t), lawyers will get no rest. It would be a whole new type of law, Intercourse Relational Quality And Disbursement.

Maybe it would be better for people to have classes. Adult Continuing Education if you will. How To Give A Blowjob Without Drawing Blood, How To Do Foreplay Properly-Yes You Have To Do It- No That Isn’t Good Enough and Spanking 101.

Advanced Classes might be- What Do You Do When Your Lover Pulls a M Butterfly or What Do You Do When Your Lover Likes To Wear Big Furry Stuffed Animal Suits And Have Sex With Other People Wearing Big Furry Stuffed Animal Suits.

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This is a bit more serious that surreptitious BJs and games with cigars.

Ah, (singing) “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!”

I think I will start referring to Scooter by his given name, Irv. I think we all should. It is a sin for a grown man to walk around with a name like Scooter.

From the NY Times

October 25, 2005
Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report

By DAVID JOHNSTON, RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.

It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government’s deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry.

White House officials did not respond to requests for comment, and Mr. Libby’s lawyer, Joseph Tate, would not comment on Mr. Libby’s legal status. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, declined to comment on the case.

Mr. Fitzgerald is expected to decide whether to bring charges in the case by Friday, when the term of the grand jury expires. Mr. Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior adviser, both face the possibility of indictment, lawyers involved in the case have said. It is not publicly known whether other officials also face indictment.

The notes help explain the legal difficulties facing Mr. Libby. Lawyers in the case said Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that he had first heard from journalists that Ms. Wilson may have had a role in dispatching her husband on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission to Africa in 2002 in search of evidence that Iraq had acquired nuclear material there for its weapons program.

But the notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald’s possession, also indicate that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson - who is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame - from Mr. Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Mr. Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.

It is not clear why Mr. Libby would have suggested to the grand jury that he might have learned about Ms. Wilson from journalists if he was aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had obtained the notes of the conversation with Mr. Cheney or might do so. At the beginning of the investigation, Mr. Bush pledged the White House’s full cooperation and instructed aides to provide Mr. Fitzgerald with any information he sought.

The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney knew the name of Mr. Wilson’s wife. But they do show that Mr. Cheney did know and told Mr. Libby that Ms. Wilson was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and that she may have helped arrange her husband’s trip.

Some lawyers in the case have said Mr. Fitzgerald may face obstacles in bringing a false-statement charge against Mr. Libby. They said it could be difficult to prove that he intentionally sought to mislead the grand jury.

Lawyers involved in the case said they had no indication that Mr. Fitzgerald was considering charging Mr. Cheney with wrongdoing. Mr. Cheney was interviewed under oath by Mr. Fitzgerald last year. It is not known what the vice president told Mr. Fitzgerald about the conversation with Mr. Libby or when Mr. Fitzgerald first learned of it.

But the evidence of Mr. Cheney’s direct involvement in the effort to learn more about Mr. Wilson is sure to intensify the political pressure on the White House in a week of high anxiety among Republicans about the potential for the case to deal a sharp blow to Mr. Bush’s presidency.

Mr. Tenet was not available for comment Monday night. But another former senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet had been interviewed by the special prosecutor and his staff in early 2004, and never appeared before the grand jury. Mr. Tenet has not talked since then to the prosecutors, the former official said.

The former official said he strongly doubted that the White House learned about Ms. Wilson from Mr. Tenet.

On Monday, Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby both attended a cabinet meeting with Mr. Bush as the White House continued trying to portray business as usual. But the assumption among White House officials is that anyone who is indicted will step aside.

On June 12, 2003, the day of the conversation between Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby, The Washington Post published a front-page article reporting that the C.I.A. had sent a retired American diplomat to Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had been seeking to buy uranium there. The article did not name the diplomat, who turned out to be Mr. Wilson, but it reported that his mission had not corroborated a claim about Iraq’s pursuit of nuclear material that the White House had subsequently used in Mr. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address.

An earlier anonymous reference to Mr. Wilson and his mission to Africa had appeared in a column by Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times on May 6, 2003. Mr. Wilson went public with his conclusion that the White House had “twisted” the intelligence about Iraq’s pursuit of nuclear material on July 6, 2003, in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times.

The note written by Mr. Libby will be a crucial piece of evidence in a false-statement case against him if Mr. Fitzgerald decides to pursue it, lawyers in the case said. It also explains why Mr. Fitzgerald waged a long legal battle to obtain the testimony of reporters who were known to have talked to Mr. Libby.

The reporters involved have said that they did not supply Mr. Libby with details about Mr. Wilson and his wife. Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, in his account of a deposition on the subject, wrote that he asked Mr. Libby whether he had even heard that Ms. Wilson had a role in sending her husband to Africa. Mr. Cooper said that Mr. Libby did not use Ms. Wilson’s name but replied, “Yeah, I’ve heard that too.”

In her testimony to the grand jury, Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, said Mr. Libby sought from the start of her three conversations with him to “insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson’s charges.”

Mr. Fitzgerald asked questions about Mr. Cheney, Ms. Miller said. “He asked, for example, if Mr. Libby ever indicated whether Mr. Cheney had approved of his interview with me or was aware of them,” Ms. Miller said. “The answer was no.”

In addition to Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller, Mr. Fitzgerald is known to have interviewed three other journalists who spoke to Mr. Libby during June and July 2003. They were Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post and Tim Russert of NBC News.

Mr. Pincus and Mr. Kessler have said that Mr. Libby did not discuss Mr. Wilson’s wife with them in their conversations during the period. Mr. Russert, in a statement, declined to say exactly what he discussed with Mr. Libby, but said he first learned the identity of Mr. Wilson’s wife in the column by Mr. Novak.

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I saw Good Night, And Good Luck a few weeks ago and I wasn’t disappointed. So nice when a movie you are excited to see doesn’t suck ass. Go see it. Great performances. Music is lovely. Important story.

One of my favorite places here in LA is the revival movie house, The New Beverly Cinema. Seven dollars for a double feature. Sometimes the theme is the director. Today they are showing 2001 and Clockwork Orange. Sometimes it is the actress (Sabrina and Breakfast at Tiffany’s). Sometimes it is theme- earlier this month they showed Somewhere in Time and Time After Time. (Former is pure le formage, but a guilty pleasure. The latter is one of my favorite movies when I was a kid. Do you find yourself not watching films you liked as a child because you are afraid you won’t like them anymore?)

Anyway- I think The New Beverly should show Good Night, And Good Luck with Network.

Saw Capote yesterday. Zowie. What a performance. What a script.

They capture his charisma and inate solipsism. There is this moment where the killers are about to be hung and Capote is crying and Perry Smith, the killer that he formed the bond with is consoling him. . .

Some reviewers have said that Catherine Keener’s performance as Harper Lee is lackluster, but I think they are completely off track. Okay, yes. She is one of my favorite actresses, so maybe I am biased- but she does her job. No, she isn’t as flashy as Capote- she shouldn’t be. But if you watch her eyes, there is all the subtext in the world in them. There is a moment at the screening of the film adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird and she goes over to Capote, her childhood friend and he can’t even offer the smallest of congratulations.

So go see that too.

They had a preview for the next movie I am excited about, the adaptation of Jarhead. (Is it wrong that I am excited that the film will make my signed first edition that much more valuable?)

Was a smart preview- Didn’t give anything away. (Thank God. I fucking hate previews that give me every plot point in every act. Why do I need to see the movie then??) Fantasic cast- Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard (another favorite actor), Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper. Directed by Sam Mendes. Shot by Roger Deakins (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, The Hudsucker Proxy, Barton Fink, Shawshank Redemption. . . among others) so it will look really, really pretty. Well, as pretty as Desert Storm could have looked.

It is not going to suck unless they really screw it up and I don’t see that happening.

Jake (Is it wrong to think someone who is ten years younger than I am is so dreamy) is also in my favorite directors next flick, the adaptation of E. Annie Proulx’s novel Brokeback Mountain (The Gay Cowboy Movie).

Ah, I love the fall. Good movies all crammed into a few months.

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