I attended three high schools; G Holmes Braddock in Miami ( where I did most of my skipping school) , Garey High in Pomona, and last but not least, The Los Angeles County High School for the Arts ( or LACHSA for short). I have a serious laughing problem, you probably know this. I can laugh at pretty much anything. I swear to you, all the way til I graduated high school, nearly every teach wrote "Talks too much" under class conduct. Why? Because they couldn't find a statement equivalent to say "She laughs at all the god damn class clowns and I can't teach my fucking lesson" ... Because essentially, that's what I'd do.

In Garey High, I had this English professor, Mr. Prentice, a scraggly old black man who had a glass eye. He was one of my favorites because he would always put extra emphasis on our SAT vocabulary words, to kinda grill them in our minds. This worked for only one one that I can remember : ostracize. When he would scold some one, he would say, "Don't make me OSTRACIZE you!" , looking at one student while his glass eye would be "looking" somewhere else.... This would confuse so many kids, because they would turn and look at each other and question if he was talking to them or someone else. So, they would shut up and get back to their school work. I was always laughing at this because I knew on some level, he was just fucking with them to make his day go by in a better direction.

Then there was US History, with the very young, handsome, Russian, Mr. P, because no one, not even himself, could pronounce his name. I never learned a thing in that class ! I was goofing off, laughing with one class mate, while just constantly in awe with my hot teacher, who was a notorious chain smoker as well. This was all he seemed to talk about too. He actually called my class clown classmate & myself tweedle dee & tweedle dum. And he never separated us, however, he would yell at us from time to time, and we would have to snicker to ourselves the rest of the class. Never ask me anything about US History, I blame my hot, chain smoking teacher and that class clown. Alls I know is some document was signed , bills of rights, Louisiana was purchased, slaves were freed, and something about a cherry tree. Oh, and France gave us The Statue of Liberty. That's it. Epic fail.

In LACHSA,  there was Mr. Morotec, a very flamboyantly gay man who knew everything under Sun,.... Except how to teach fucking Algebra!! This man knew Latin, Music theory, and government like no other teacher out there. He was awesome. During our class, other students would come in and bug him for help ....on subjects that weren't Algebra. Some of us even began asking him questions on our music theory homework. But if you had one question for Algebra, he'd look at your problem, look at you & simply say " You need to work on your Arithmetic" . What? Are fucking kidding me? I cheated on all my exams. He would leave the class during the exams and go get a sandwich, talk to other professors, and THEN, pop his head in the class room and shout " I know you're all cheating !!!!" and walk away. Smart ass. He was fired the following year. In hindsight, maybe he knew this and didn't care to teach the syllabus.

High School was such a joke. I don't remember anything apart from laughing at all the constant absurdities from all these other humans. It still makes me lol, as we say now per #internetspeak.

Maybe I have had a bit of a Southern drawl or so I was once told when my cousin from New York visited me when I was little. The accent may have shifted to some degree, yet when I talk to my sister, the accent, may come out to visit. One thing that I have always kept with me from being a Southerner is always having a fan on. I've done my best over the last ten years to be conscious of this. The South is humid, all ...the ... time. You don't get a break from the humidity, not even at night. This is why I love LA because we have such nice cool evenings. Yet in the South, the nights are still sticky and humid, you just don't have the sun hanging out reminding you how hot it is.

As for the fan thing... I always have one on, especially when I sleep. The droning sound of it is what I need , not so much the circulation of the air, as pleasant as that is. You see, since the South is so humid, you have a fan on at night. I realized that the sound was missing when I moved with my roommate to West Hollywood in late 2002. I bought a very small fan and kept it on at night, even in the winter. She thought it was pretty strange, but so was her choice in choosing We Ho for us to move to, after leaving a disastrous roommate scenario in Park La Brea... To each their own .

May 23 2012

I woke up practically drunk. So I needed to do something about this self inflicted hangover. The Brite Spot is the only place that I know of where I can put Louisiana Hot links in my eggs Benedict. I decided to fulfill this desire. I drove over there, listening to Ziggy Stardust. Entering the Brite Spot, "Changes" was playing through their sound system. I chuckled to myself that the David Bowie soundtrack is continuous in my life. The waitress had me sit at the bar area. I had a front row seat to satiate my food voyeurism, watching the cook, the waitresses, & bus boys hold down the fort. One of the waitresses began speaking to me saying that it's slow for a Saturday & how they only have one cook, as the other cut his finger. They all seemed to be overwhelmed by this and did their best to smile. I began listening to the guys speak to each other in Spanish and I imagined how truly foreign this sounds to people who don't know it. A different waitress approached me and asked if I was a journalist, possibly afraid I might be a food critic. I laughed and said no, I'm enjoying watching everything. She said that it's the best theatre. The eggs Benedict were so good and this time, and I chose the fruit bowl in lieu of the usual potatoes. I realized I might have made things easier for the lone cook, in that he had one less thing to heat up. My waitress, possibly a mind reader, put a bottle of Chulula in front of me. I continued to watch all these people while eating my breakfast, hustling around the area, with plates of perfectly prepared food that flashed under camera ready lighting, moving trays filled with prepared scooped butter that looked a lot like mini vanilla ice creams, & laughing together when the cook dropped a plate. Before I knew it, I reached my full limit. I asked my waitress for a box for my fruit and she handed me a Chinese take out box. I laughed at this, and she sheepishly said "That's all we have!" but I was laughing as it just added to the experience. When I left, I told the waitress who assumed I was a journalist that this is the best place to come to for a hangover. She laughed and said that it is. I noticed she had a flower of life as a charm on her necklace. I love that place, it's pretty cool and quirky. May 19 2012