Cruising & musing.

"Not Venice," I'd said. "Nowhere with too many people." He had agreed. That was why Sunday morning saw me, the kid and his brother piling into the Mitsubishi (his, not mine) and blasting both the air conditioning and the "Book of Mormon" soundtrack as we wound through Malibu Canyon on our way to Zuma Beach. Zuma, not Venice, because we specifically did not want to default to Venice on this day. We would soon learn that, a mere handful of miles down the coast from where we were at the moment it happened, 14 people were struck by lightning in a freak storm on Venice Beach. The odds of lightning striking a person on the California coast are 1 in 7.5 million. The 14 people on Venice Beach on Sunday afternoon were caught on the business end of a 105,000,000-to-1 set of circumstances. It happened while the boys and I were on the beach, but it didn't happen to us because we didn't want to go where there were too many people.

The astounding splits and cartwheels life does for the seemingly most arbitrary reasons are hard to get my head around sometimes.

We didn't know all that was happening while we were at the beach. We slathered our translucent bodies with pools of sunscreen and stripped off our outer layers and set about absorbing the coast. I ran right away into the brine, followed shortly by kiddo, who was a good sport about all the varieties of kelp I decked him out in.

(He didn't have much choice; I'm his best friend.)

I love swimming in the ocean, as long as I'm close enough to shore to touch the sandy bottom with my toes when I stretch my legs out. I'm a good swimmer, but I haven't figured out how to actually turn into a mermaid and breathe underwater (despite my best efforts since the days circa 1990 when I would sit on top of my parents' car, pretending it was a rock in the sea, and wistfully sing "Part Of Your World"), so "undertow" is one of the many, many items on my mental list of things I'm convinced might kill me.

"Lightning" is on there somewhere, but I love thunderstorms too much to let it rule my decisions frequently. Not a bit did I realize that lightning was a much greater threat to my person that day, and that later, after we'd glutted ourselves on barbecue salmon tacos at Gladstone's and le bestie's cool bro said, "Whoa... I just felt a raindrop," the dark cloud I pointed out had already assaulted 14 people on the beach-- one of them fatally so.

And all I did was play in the ocean and eat fish tacos.

Sometimes it's a coin toss, brothers and sisters.

Way, way beyond the valley of the dolls

My current profile picture is a panel from the Edward Gorey book (more on Gorey-- one of my favorites ever-- at a later date) "The Hapless Child." It depicts the titular character in one of the more hapless moments of her hapless life and is captioned, "She soon lost consciousness and sank to the pavement." This is precisely the predicament I would find myself in at this moment, were I not chained to my work desk in every manner except physically. Among myriad pursuits, the one that actually puts gluten-free bread on the table is my peculiarly specialized job of doing background research for film and TV. One of the shows I've rather recently begun working on attempts to slay me on a daily basis and is more or less successful in, again, every manner except physically. This show may eventually succeed in stealing life from my body, but as it is, I simply slave 8-10 hours a day, except for the days when I stay at this computer completing script reports until 1 a.m., at which point I wander out into the darkened alleyway behind this building and throw myself around, screaming to the heavens, "I'M NEELY O'HARA!" until the authorities are alerted and a psychological evaluation is administered.

I'd write more, but a flaming coal is being pressed to my fingers by a major television studio and I'm being commanded to rush through a list of alternate names for an insignificant character who is seen onscreen not once and only mentioned in dialogue a single time.

Hooray for Hollywood!

I must not tell lies

Remember how, about once a year for the past few years, I've been promising to write more and update my blog more, and then I never do? That's so lame, right? It's so lame.

I lied so bad, but it wasn't on purpose. I really INTENDED to update more frequently, but here's the crux of the problem:

I'm terrible at maintaining more than 1 social media platform at once, and I'm also terrible at tying up loose ends in more than 1 creative writing outlet at once. As it stands, I have Facebook (where I bless the Land of Web with my snarky observations and passably clever witticisms on a near-daily basis), I have my own paper journal (which I write in using my actual hand and an actual pen, medieval-style), and I have my weekly creative writing class with Miss Pamela Des Barres (groupie, bestselling author, rock 'n' roll legend, my fake mom). This blog makes 4 separate arenas in which I have to think of things worth expressing and interesting ways to express them.

Can I do it? CAN I POSSIBLY BE CLEVER AND ENDEARING 4 DIFFERENT WAYS AT ONCE?

Oh, Internet-Land, you flatter me. Fine, I'll try.

I'm going to try to update my blog at LEAST once weekly, and hopefully more frequently than that. And then you can read it and go "LOL!" or "LMAO!" or "ROFL!" or "ROFLMAO!" or at least "WTF?" and you can share it with your friends and they can read it and their friends can read it and before long I will be really cool and popular.*

Here's where I need your help, because of course I need your help: BUG ME ABOUT THIS. If I'm getting lazy and haven't blogged in a long time, needle me to write something. I will likely respond that nothing interesting has happened, or I'm feeling too misanthropic to say anything nice about anything in my life, or I'd rather think about cats and clip my toenails. This is your cue to respond with, "Nichole, certainly you have SOME worthwhile observation to make about SOMETHING. Have you eaten any snacks lately, for instance? Or thought about what completely untamable animal you wish was your friend? Or used public transportation? Or come to any conclusions about the thing where boys seem not to know how to buy an ideal pair of fitted pants?" The answer to any of the above is sure to be "Yes."

So don't let me off the hook, unless I am on an actual hook, in which case, definitely do everything your power to help me get off of it.

K thx g2g by c-ya.

*(LOL OMG u wish Nichole srsly)