Horny Mermaids and More

I CRIED DURING THE PROJECT RUNWAY FINALE. there i was, sitting on my couch with a half eaten container of organic chocolate chip mint frozen yogurt with tears streaming down my face. it was enough to make me want to sign up for design school at Parson's. what's more, i can't help but notice the uncanny resemblence between Christian, the little gay Italian 21 year old designer who won the thing, and Dog Boy. The olive complexion, black hair, big nose, and hazel eyes peering through thick glasses--not to mention the slight afeminite build--were remarkaly similar. needless to say it explained a few things that were so totally obvious to everyone else. i've been threatening to tell that story of Dog Boy for years now but like bikram says, "save it for the right time."

and to think i almost started drinking this afternoon at 5 p.m. with shad and john. i had much more important things to do!

SPEAKING OF BIKRAM, after a three week hiatus, i am back in the hot room, teaching yoga and taking yoga. i am constantly questioning all of it, wondering if i was brainswashed into some cult or just become a pretty little dancer who has the discipline and focus to train day after day. there are times i wonder if bikram is having the last laugh, having fooled all these people into sweating like pigs all the livelong day in a 105 degree room. all i do know is it's the only reason i am not a whale after all the fried food and beer i shared with john in hawaii. and i do sort of love it.

LATELY I WANT TO GO TO ART SCHOOL. or design school. or take a class or buy a book that will teach me how to draw cartoons. john and i bought art supplies at this awesome art store in princeville on Kauai that also sells toys. it's probably the coolest store i've seen since i lived in San Francisco and often frequented The Toy Boat, a toy store/dessert bar in the Outer Richmond. in some ways, this place was even cooler. there's nothing that gets my creative boat afloat like a place that has shark puppets and stuffed dragons alongside colored pencils and cool magic markers.

anyway i found the coolest markers i've ever used, double tip with a rich flow of ink in bright colors. what's more, i even used them, drawing a few cartoon-like illustrations of sights around Hanalei Bay as well as turtles, hibiscus flowers and surfers on waves. there's something so surreal about hawaii--the colors alone are enough to make you feel like someone might have slipped some LSD into the mango smoothie you bought at Papaya's Health Food store in Hanalei or maybe those mushrooms in the salad bar were more magic than you thought.

i have these two new characters i can't stop thinking about, Count Makeoutula and Huf, loosely based on me and john. makeoutula is a mermaid i drew in john's sketch book one day when we were chilling out at Secret Beach. john sat at the water's edge for hours, just watching the waves as they broke on his lap while i laid in the sun to draw.

i drew Makeoutula with big red lips, fangs, and long flowing strawberry blonde hair. she wore a blue bikini and a pearl neclace (natch) with a J pendant on it. she sort of hisses when she talks and says things like "i want to KISSula" "i want to LICKula" and "i loveULA!"

Huf is this big bellied blonde who says nothing but, "uh huh" "uh uh" and "?" while Makeoutula is a sexually charged mermaid who escapes from the sea to seduce men on land where she can only survive on male saliva. few peeps are buying her disguise (what, with the fangs and fish tail being hard to swallow) but what's worse, she has a fin on her back and is often mistaken as a shark, driving people (including the men she hopes to snack on later) running and screaming from the sea before she even sets fin on land.

Huf, being the quiet, soft spoken sort of slow moving guy that he is, is the only human friend of Makeoutula and the two share many adventures together. at least in my head. i really want to learn to draw better so i can start doing story boards. i have no idea where this creative drive is coming from but it's there.

that said, i should probably go to bed. i've been dreaming about the beach every night and want to go back but don't know anyone with my cush lifestyle who could go with me. i had fun with john but he doesn't seem to want to hang out with me-ULA. i knew it would be different once we got home, but it seems like we're not hanging out much at all. love has always been an unlucky draw for me so i should probably go back to focusing on my career.

did someone say career? what? work? me? gross. shanti continues to save my ass by feeding me jobs like an old man who throws bread crumbs at pidgeons. the girl is just tossing off jobs left and right like it's nothing. she started her own company and is killing it. (check it www.sos-communications.com). everyone knows shanti and i are going to end up living out our 100s in some nursing home as roommates, throwing rocks at boys and eating too much salty food. she is like, with me for life. i can't really say that about many people.

oh yeah i met this fancy pants writer from new york named JULIAN RUBINSTEIN (www.julianrubinstein.com) who was referred to me by my former agent, Christy Fletcher. you can't even imagine how excited i was that she even remembers i'm alive, nevermind still has my email address. Julian took me to a nice dinner at matsu where i babbled incessantly because i was so excited to be talking to someone who actually had a lot to say. thank god i didn't look at his online portfolio before dinner--of course he's ivy league educated but my god -- people who live in new york do a lot of stuff.

me, i've been hanging out with a guy whose favorite word is "stuff."

goodnight then.
princess

No Such Thing As Happy Birthday

my fifth birthday party goes down in the family history books as the worst on record.

somehow my cake ended up having strawberry filling, which i hated. i liked chocolate. i could tolerate vanilla, but i hated strawberry. so as soon as i saw that blood red jam bleeding all over the inside of my cake, i cried. when i started to cry, all the other kids started to cry, too. i have a vivid memory of my mom scraping one plate after another into a garbage can overflowing with pieces of uneaten cake while also trying to coddle the wails of 15 kindergartners. there were enough snot and tears on that table to get the entire neighborhood sick.

the thing is, it never really got better. i vaguely remember my sixth birthday being a bit of a disaster also. i had a fit because i didn't win any of the games we played and threw a huge tantrum. you know, games like pin the tail on the donkey and ring around the rosey. my mom tried to appease me by giving me the prize that the winners got. there's a photo of me from that party in a red and white polka dotted dress with white tights and black patent leather mary janes. i have clip on pearl earrings and a plastic tiara and i'm sucking on a lollipop which i'm pretty sure means i got not just one prize, but every prize. thing is, i'm not sure if it worked because the following year, we had a similar problem.

growing up with two shrinks, you get solutions like "code words" to help alleviate embarassing scenes in public. it was the '70s, and Mork and Mindy was one of the most popular shows on television, so whenever i was showing signs of being a brat, my mom would say "na noo na noo" and give me the little Mork handshake signal.

too bad no one has any little code words for me now that i'm 38 and still throwing tantrums on my birthday because my parties will never be good enough.

i knew things were going to go badly when i got my first birthday wish of the day from john's creepy friend who is always trying to stir the pot with everyone. he's like the most provocative person i know and i'm almost positive that the only reason he texted me that early was because he knew john wouldn't and wanted to make him look bad. that pretty much set the tone for the entire day.

by 7 p.m. i started contemplating how upset i'd be if i just stayed in since no one had called. by the time the phone rang at 7:30 i was ready for a drink.

in the end it was fine, my usual posse showed up and those who are not really part of my inner circle didn't, which shouldn't surprise me. no one brought me a gift other than the miserable post card one friend had scribbled happy birthday on. it was all crinkled and it looked like she'd either dug it out of her desk or pulled it off her bulletin board after three years because she got sick of looking at it and didn't have anything better. hey, at least she didn't come empty handed.

it's almost embarrassing to think of the the lengths i've gone to on john's birhtday, driving to el jebel for cake and balloons so he would feel special. the poor guy just spent a gazillion dollars taking me to hawaii and yet it's never enough. that's why when he emailed me two days later and invited me to go shopping for my gift i told him he'd done enough already.

what i really should have told him is the truth: what i wanted was a birthday cake, just make sure it's not strawberry.

if i'm like this now, i can't even imagine what will happen when i turn 40.
better get that prescription filled ahead of time.

love
old lady princess

Paradise Found

just got back from another trip to kauai and continue to be blown away by the magic of hawaii. highlights include watching surfers tow-in to 20 foot waves right in front of our condo at Hideaways, a massive sea turtle that swam up on the beach in front of our bonfire (john actually touched it), humpback whales, a lunar eclipse, a hike through the rainforest to a waterfall and a visit to Waimea Canyon and the surreal fog enveloped adventure on the boardwalk swamp trail through the Kahalua valley.

john is an excellent travel companion though i fear i may have picked up some of his unsusual habits like burping loudly, watching tv naked, eating fried food, drinking beer from a can and breaking all kinds of records for how long i can last in the hot tub.

more about that later.

off to go snowboarding with my dad -- life is tough!

good to be back.
love
princess

Better Late Than Never

this seems to be a theme in my life, like, when i was talking to the nice man at the IRS and he was explaining to me that if i don't take care of my back taxes the federal government is going to shove their foot so far up my ass/bank account/credit history i won't forget it. he said i should probably start with 2006 and then deal with '05 and '04. good lord.

so here's a recent photo of me since returning from yoga camp, at john's office christmas party.

as you can see, i'm putting my yoga training to good use. and to think i skipped the day we went over drunk backward bending! i guess i have a natural talent for it.

seriously i love teaching and i do have an addiction to the yoga. i figure it's probably one of the healthier addictions i've had in awhile even if it does mean spending half my time in a small room heated to 105 degrees during the most epic ski season we've seen since the eighties. the fact that i'm doing more yoga than snowboarding powder is a cause for concern, i suppose. another little issue is the yoga hasn't cured my penchant for extra large, alcoholic, goy men (see photo), on a positive note, it does seem to have given me some "balance and flexibility" (as they say in the biz) that i didn't have before (see photo). and i still can't seem to say things like, "relax and breathe" and "just meet your own reflection in the front mirror" without thiking of my mother rolling her eyes at me.

in terms of my writing career, it's flatlining. it's on the operating table with no signs of life, a large group of men and women with masks over their faces trying to recuciate while a large audience watches from the galley, expressionless behind the glass wall. i can't seem to get an assignment to save my life. what's worse, i can't seem to get any attention from editors, either.

"ali, we'll pass on this idea. thanks, dana." was the response i got from the last pitch i sent to the new york times. not "ali, you are so talented and special, but we don't need this right now for all these reasons that have absolutley nothing to do with you or your ego. thanks."

speaking of my ego, i haven't even checked this site in awhile but was prompted to do so when i got an email from Lee Crane, a former editor of mine from back in the day at Transworld Snowboarding magazine. he is one of the very few people i actually liked in the action sports industry and has since retired from his post, but he mentioned that he'd stopped checking my blog when i'd stopped updating it.

so. it was an ego boost to see some of the posts i'd never even read, and i do plan to start updating the site more often.

hell, i've got nothing better to do.

smile, smile, smile!
alixo

Stranger Than Fiction

i just watched a really beautiful film starring will farrell called "stranger than fiction."

whenever i see a movie i love, it moves me to tears for no other reason than i wonder how it's possible that someone was clever enough to come up with such elaborate ideas, how they were able to create stories and characters and plot lines and weave them together in a way that's interesting enough to hold someone's attention.

it turns out i really don't know how to do that.

all i know is how to ramble on about my own life in a way that is often lazy and self indulgent. my ex-boyfriend went so far as to call it "tasteless, classless and slutty" but he was sort of drunk at the time. i wish he would admit that it wasn't the way i write, but what i wrote about that bothered him. that would actually mean a lot to me, but that is another story.

tomorrow is my 37th birthday. it happens to fall in 2007 because i was conveniently born in 1970 which makes it very easy to calculate how i old i was no matter what the year. it's especially convenient considering i'm a mathmatical idiot. it occured to me today that it's now three years ago that i was fired from the aspen skiing company and received enough publicity to court my agent, christy fletcher, who has ever-so-patiently been available to assist me in this notion that i'm working on a novel that she might actually be able to sell.

but that's not the case at all. what i've written is crap--it's nothing like my column, and the few people who are brave enough (or in some cases, cruel enough) to be honest with me told me that in so many words.

my dad said, "this is nothing like your column. your column is funny. you know how to write your column but a novel?"

tim said, "i can't read this" and threw it on the coffee table in disgust after reading one sentence.

emily said, "it's trite and self conscious," but only after she'd had about ten drinks.

steve meyer said, "thirteen year old girls are going to love this," and he was trying to be nice.

s. said, "this doesn't read like your column," and cited examples where he thought the writing was stiff. i was stupid enough to share the manuscript with him in november 2004, eleven months after i'd been "discovered" by christy and thought i was on the brink of making it huge. i bragged about how my star was rising and my career was about to take off. he said, "i hope it happens soon so i can ride this wave with you." i remember thinking my life was about to change, that all my dreams were about to come true.

by my 35th birthday s. had fallen madly in love with someone else and my book wasn't even close to being finished. i spent my birthday at the aspen club spa with sarah that year, a gift from my mother. we got massages and pedicures and i managed to enjoy the day even though i felt hollowed out, like a turkey or a chicken that's about to get stuffed.

somehow, someway, two more years have passed and still my book isn't finished. i figured out how to write pages, how to take scenes and paste them together in a semi-coherent way. with jordan's help, i mapped out a plot arch that has a few lame twists and surprises but would be better suited to a teenage novella or late-night TV movie than a book that anyone over 16--particularly men--would actually want to read.

that's because it isn't even close to what i want to write. those few courageous people were absolutely right and totally honest. i know i have a story to tell, i just don't know how to tell it. or maybe i don't know which story to tell or don't know how to make the story i'm trying to tell my own.

i just wish i did know. because the passage of time is getting in between me and my dreams and it scares me that another year has gone by. when i wake up tomorrow i'm going to be 37 and i'm going to have to tell people that, and i'm still going to have to tell them that no, the book is not done yet.

either that or i'm going to have to figure out a way to write it before i turn 38.

i just have to figure it out.

AB