thoughts of a son of a bitch


There aren't enough drugs to make me feel better.

	5/14/01 The time slips away. I don't mind. I'm just amazed that I'm still here. That no one has taken away my house. That I've paid my bills. I'm at what we might call a low point. I guess. Perhaps I've forgotten what low really is. Or maybe I haven't been there yet. But why the hell am I qualifying this? I'm low. My body aches. Yesterday, at my big sunday night dinner at Koo Koo Roo's, my hands were shaking. I kept feeling like someone was going to notice. The cop at the next table. The guy with his wife and loud kid. But maybe it was because all I'd eaten all day was a cheese danish. Seems like the whole day slips away between getting up and eleven thirty at night. And by the time I turn out the light, it's four thirty a.m. I have made some progress. I have seen several movies, all of which were excellent. "Eureka," about a bus driver and two kids who survive a violent attack on a bus. "With Friends Like Harry," about a guy who's obsessed with a writer and kills everyone in the writer's way. The French antidote to writer's block. "Center of the World," about a guy who sits at his computer all day who pays a woman to go with him to Vegas for a weekend. He's a software millionaire, and she's not a hooker. And I can never remember the fourth. I can remember any three of the four. But not the fourth. Oh. Thank you memory. It was a week ago, maybe. "The day I became a woman." Three stories about the plight of women in Iran. Now, these may seem like the wrong kind of movies for me to be seeing. But what should I see? Crap like "The Mummy Returns?" That stupid ass game show with the English (t)wit? Maybe instead of telling them to leave the show (with some sitcom joke kind of lines), she should chop off one of their fingers. Answer incorrectly, lose your head. Now, that would be a game show. I must have been feeling defensive or protective a few weeks ago. There had been an LA Weekly cover article (and several other articles inside) about Padua Hills. Once again, no mention was made of Jack Woodruff. He had come up with the idea with Murray Mednick. But Jack was old, and he didn't use heroin, so the second year, he was out. Jack had just been interested in theater. In the idea of playwrights leading workshops for young writers. I e-mailed an editorial to the Weekly. Defending Jack's name. Not slamming anyone else. My experience there had been great. But somehow, with my Dad sick and all, I couldn't let this just pass. The letter came out in the Weekly last Thursday. I'd been sort of fearing some backlash from Murray or one of the others. Instead, I got a call from Jack Woodruff. Thanking me. And so, I am going out to his place this weekend. He's 91 (or so) and still directing. He's got the retired people at the Clarement Manor doing a staged reading of "The Gin Game." He was one of my mentors. He still is, even if I have strayed from the theater. An ambulance siren wailed the other day as I was driving down Beverly. I pulled over and pissed off the guy behind me. Nobody stopped. Not until the ambulance was right on top of them and forced them out of the way. Jesus Christ. What if somebody was dying?
		or trying not to

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