The Life and Times of Bolshevik

I think today was my breaking point with fuckbook

2009-09-04T08:09:40Z

because every last goddam person wrote the same stupid message. something about how nobody should have to go broke if they are sick. well i disagree. if you bought yourself a goddam playstation and big screen tv you cant afford you SHOULD die. And of course with the onslaught of mass consensus I realized dissent would natually be unpopular. And even though I love being unpopular the application is such that if i happen to offend some potential contact in the industry with my political views it's all over for me. so here i am. I dont know if its been years or just months. when i saw jenn hudson a couple of weeks ago i felt that time was just something that warps faces and thoughts. thats a compliment. and now coming back to lj is like running back into the arms of your old lover who understood you all along and waited patiently while you tired of the young handsome number that was facebook and twitter and the likes. i concur with steve's friend...i would rather read a paragraph of three peoples' musings than a sentence from every person i know. its the difference between the small town where everyone knows you and the big city where sure the hustle and bustle is exciting but ultimately, superficial, unsatisfying. i was just down the street at the formosa cafe with a woman who enjoyed the sound of her own voice far too well. time slowed and i had a moment to contemplate a black and white photograph taken in the 1950s. it featured marilyn monroe in a skin tight black taffeta dress looking fairly sedated. how did the world not see her untimely death approaching? boredom and depression aside i felt a wave of sadness wash over me because i realized that as soon as i sat down with my companions i was simultaneously waiting to stand up and leave and that this phenomenon was increasingly common. I am not threatening to share the fate of the lovely Miss Monroe but I did understand for a moment her frusration at the public interpreting her fatigue with the world as perpetual sexual arousal...

In response to Lawrence White's article

2009-02-09T19:06:24Z

Here's this most enlightening article that the right is now using to point fingers at the left.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/html/bp110/bp110index.html

I have a few contentions.
His view is that government policy like the Community Reinvestment Act of 77 distorted financial housing markets.

Right off the bat the argues that that greed doesn't explain the crisis and that a market run amok doesn't explain it. Uhhh...no. Greed Drives financial markets. Greed is at the center of markets. How was lending money to subprime borrowers any more more insane than say the tech bubble syndrome of buying stock in a tiny unprofitable web-based tech company??? The longer securities performed the more demand, no?. So in the case of housing: stock market crash caused people to invest in housing, remember that? high demand, mortage issuers who by the way DONT deal with RISK but still MAKE THE FEES therefore dont care about the toxicity of their securities issue NINAS and all that shit. the problem is systemic. If it were the fault of programs like the CRA how do you explain that subprimes were made by independent mortgage companies fully outside CRA’s jurisdiction like a quarter century after the CRA was enacted?? These mortagage issuers were fell outside of the CRA jurisdiction and continued to make high priced loans at more than TWICE the rate of banks and thrifts. Bottom line: If government was FORCING lending institutions be unprofitable, which doesn't even make any fu***** sense to me, wouldnt these lending institutions have raised hell and also this whole conversation about the bailout wouldn't be "government bailout of irresponsible lending".

Who are these people with jobs teaching economics?

i went to paris for a night

2008-10-01T09:27:39Z

I was in Paris for one night last month. I only stopped in to buy cheese for my boyfriend which I knew I could get vacuum packed and sneak thoruhg cutoms with unscathed. This is worth it because imported cheese at whole foods is expensive. I decided to stay the night and have dinner with an old friend from college. Dragging my suitcase through teh subway, paying ten dollars for a lousy beer at some boring brasserie full of parisians dressed like clones, having what turned out to be the chewiest, worst steak of my life, i decided, paris no longer needs to be vistied by me. I will never waste another goddam second of my life there. the ultimate blow was going to the crocodile where i found i couldnt even smoke indoors any longer..whatever will be the point of their charming ashtray built into the table system now?

i'd park it

2008-10-01T08:51:48Z

temporary alcoholism

2008-06-24T20:52:58Z

while i wait to hear back from fx about the show presentation i turned in to them last week. i know youre not supposed to put your life on hold for these things because they never pan out but its a decent excuse to do nothing for a week.

if anyone knows anyone with lots of money ..

2008-05-30T17:47:02Z

pleae send them my dad's way so I can begin my life as an heiress:
http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=121200827670281700

bits

2008-04-24T22:19:51Z

Denise Takata’s father left her when she was 8 with no particular memories of him. Unlike most mothers raising a child alone, her mother, Michelle talked about him openly, comparing him to every boyfriend and lover that came after his abrupt departure for Japan. “He could never cope with America” Michelle told her daughter,defending him. “And I would never have been accepted by Kenji’s family, so I stayed.” Denise Takata would have been in ruins were she like most other girls abandoned by their fathers but Kenji had been neither affectionate nor particularly fatherly, so Denise suffered no great trauma and moved on with her life half pleased that the man who had forever seemed like a stranger in their house was permanently absent. Kenji did leave one mark on Denise because even twenty years later, she could never bring herself to be surprised at being left by a man. Her longtime boyfriend, Sal, a self described poet and co-editor of the local literary magazine “Devil’s Wine” told Denise he had no idea how a self possessed woman like Michelle could have raised a little girl with such little self esteem. “Self esteem is a joke, Sal. Propaganda promoted by the public school system. The only thing it ever achieves is self delusion like yours.” Denise said cooly as they sorted through their books on their shelves to determine who was the original owner of the paperback penguin classic, “A Heart of Darkness” before they went their separate ways “Fuck you Denise” Sal would say before he shut the door for the next to the last time. What great last words those would have been, Denise thought. But Sal came back three days later to retrieve his Taiwanese cappuccino maker and before he closed his car door in her face he looked at her through tear fiilled bovine eyes and said, “I hope you and Hero live happily ever after.”

Hero was the thorn in Sal’s side: The great friend who Denise Takata has known since they were working on their English degrees at the University of Chicago. He called, or she called every night, without fail and Denise would retreat into the patio, and sit for hours on the little upside down plastic bucket smoking cigarette after cigarette as she mentored her friend through his 15 year writer’s block.

“Why don’t you just commit to something.” Sal overheard her saying to him through the kitchen window. “Just stick to your story like your life depends on it.” Words Sal had uttered to Denise just three weeks prior in reference to Hero’s problem. “Don’t be condescending, Sal. He’s not writing poetry. He’s writing a novel. It‘s a bit tougher” she replied

“A screenplay.” Sal said disdainfully.

And here she was mothering Hero with his words, helping him. Sal fell out of love with Denise before he even really fell into it, But it was Denise’s sharp tongue and mind, diverging so profoundly from the warm all accepting embrace of his colleaues that drove him into a sort of obsessive frenzy with Denise Takata. By the fifth week of their acquaintance she was pointing out the thinness of his metaphor, his clichéd analogies, jumping on a lazily written phrase he had been so proud of. It was also quite easy for Sal to move into Denise’s Santa Monica loft, outfitted with the spareness of someone so critical and self aware they can barely commit to décor. So he came bounding into her life, like a stray cat into the arms of the lonely old woman, with a sense of unquestioned entitlement.

Sal’s poet friends hated Denise Takata because they knew she hated them right back. There was no explanation Denise could give for this when asked and she herself wondered at times if Kenji, with his starched shirts and briefcase didn’t have something to do with her opinion of the bourgeois bohemians that met on her living room floor once a month, refusing the couch, to be in touch with the “great earth herself“.

“They’re here again.” she whispered into the phone from her bucket

“The poets?” Hero asked

“They’re theme this month is Sojourns”

“You should poison them.” he laughs

“You should come over and help me. We could be partners in crime. And then we could drive off a cliff together”

Hero falls silent on the other end. He never knows what to say to Denise when she brings up spending eternity with her. She backpedals.

“How’s Lauren?” she asks in response to his silence.

She imagines Hero on the other end of the line, his face creasing at the sound of his wife’s name and it makes her smile.

(question: is this something you would want to keep reading? can't decide if I should keep writing this.)

bolshevik @ 2008-04-08T01:09:00

2008-04-08T08:11:45Z

i'm directing a play. i hate theater. i think when people are on a stage they cant act because they have to make sure the guy in the back hears them. so it forces them to talk loudly and then they start acting really badly. also plays tend to be super tedious to watch. even shakespare and he's like, the best one. it's like poetry and painting. kind of a pointless art at this point.

in my inbox

2008-04-08T07:53:23Z

Amazon.com recommends "The Return of Anti-Semitism" and more

bolshevik @ 2008-02-17T21:39:00

2008-02-18T06:28:36Z

Hello Friends (and future bored self reading own blog). I've been writing all day so I dont feel like being creative and constructing sentences. I will update you on my life in list form. Here are 11 things I have done in the past week.

1. Retrieved my car from an impound lot that was stolen by hooligans only to find the 6 cd changer had been stripped of my music and filled with Gangster Rap.

2. Asked my orthodox friend who just gave birth if her lactating tits turn her husband on.

3. Thought about bringing up recurring view of ass crack with roommate (his not mine) (his crack.my view of it).

4. Told a man his penis is pudgy.

5. Saw a film called "Two Days in Paris" with two actors I thought I liked but now hate. Julie Delpy's guffmanness made me remember why I hated France. I hope whoever financed this got at least one amazing blowjob from her in return. However, Adam Goldberg's facial hair shows much promise.

6. Wrote a thinly veiled satire about scientology, registered it with the WGA, and felt pretty, pretty pretty good about myself.

7. Tried to tweeze somewhere where I'm never going to try and tweeze again.

8. Bought the gross kind of Mochi instead of the good kind.

9. Thanked my hungarian grandmother for the weekly transatlantic sock shipment.

10. Asked a girl to be my valentine.

11. Changed 20 things I've done in the past week to 11.

bolshevik @ 2008-01-27T02:39:00

2008-01-27T10:53:39Z

I need to write something because I haven't blogged in a long while. So here goes. I'm just going to do an old fashioned update.

I've been really fucking sick for the past four days. So sick that at times I actually wondered whether there are ways to will oneself to death. Sick enough to spend over 36 hours in bed without masturbating. I realized that one day I'm going to get a head cold and I'll probably just die because by then some mutant virus resilient to all immune system magic will prevail. The illness forced much thinking. Most of it was circular rotating back to wondering if enough pressure in the human skull can cause permanent brain damage. While I lay dying I came across a short story about a man, a prisoner in a nazi death camp charged with burying the corpse of a horse under the close surveillance of an SS Guard. As the prisoner/professor K. digs, he makes idle conversation with the SS Guard:

professor K: Holderlin ist ihnen unbekkant?
-who's that -asks the guard
-he's the guy that wrote "Hyperion" says professor K-"he's one of the greatest figures of German Romanticism". And what about Heine? Do you know him?-
-who are these people?" asks the guard
-authors. what about schiller? know him?
-yea i know him, says the guard
-and Rilke?
-him too.- says the guard, growing red in the face. and with that he shoots professor K, who collapses next to the corpse of the horse.

I called my mother, excited. I found a story I felt I could adapt into a short film. She disagrees. She thinks it's not a good time to make this kind of statement. That it isn't timely. It is outdated. And politically unwise.

good lord.

2007-12-01T10:10:48Z

gives new meaning to the word octopussy.

Guess the Dumb War part II

2007-11-26T06:43:10Z

So a correction on my last post for Guess the Dumb War part II (thank you for pointing this out alexis and jacques) the empreor of the INVADED country not INVADING country was executed. And the answer was in fact the french mexican war/conflict.

Okay, so onto other silly wars:

This war was:

1) triggered by the shooting of a pig
2)The pig was the only intentional casualty of the war
3)the conflict ended in joint military occupation
4)a third party, kaiser wilhelm, was finally called in to decide the victor before a commission.

this one is a bit unfair but it is a war and it is dumb so it makes the cut on this week's edition of Guess the Dumb War.

Guess the Dumb War (part 1)

2007-11-21T18:12:55Z

I was reading about military history on wikipedia (yes i'm back at work). I thought it might be fun if we play Guess the dumb war. (and dont cheat. there's no point if you cheat)

-Started initially because of one country's lack of ability to pay interest payments to another.
-the invading country was pushing for reforms in the country it was invading to end institutionalized racism, child labor, and bring about strict labor laws to protect workers.
-the invading country had a policy of executing all prisoners of war upon capture.
-the emperor of the invading country was captured and executed.
-the war led to a seperation of church and state in the invaded country

okay one last clue:

-the war was incited by a disgruntled pastry chef.

no, really.

bolshevik @ 2007-11-20T22:55:00

2007-11-21T07:15:45Z

I just survived 2 weeks of line producing. it blew. line producing on a 50,000 dollar student film is like paying to give a blow job while riding a bicycle. It's acrobatics combined with thankless whoring around town to get deals and then getting yelled at when you fall off the bicycle and at the end you're even poorer than before because your cellphone bill is 1000 dollars. but i'm done and by next week i'll be drinking my weight in daquiris at a wrap party in the palisades. (some photos from the film shoot i took: www.flickr.com/photos/thirdactfilms and www.flickr.com/photos/uclamesme)

california fire

2007-10-24T18:11:03Z

So I know everyone is poor but whatever you would have maybe spent tonight on your overpriced cocktail, sushi or AIDS medicine, go here instead and give some money to the redcross so you can be badass like me:
https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?idb=444795434&df_id=2653&2653.donation=form1

bolshevik @ 2007-10-19T11:42:00

2007-10-19T19:23:39Z

I went to a psychologist because school pays for ten sessions and I thought why not. Never mind that unless you're actually suffering from something it's a complete waste of time. So a couple of things threw me off about UCLA Psychological Services.
1. running into people you know in the waiting room. . So I'm sitting in the waiting room and I see Jeff , the Assistant Director on the film I'm producing and teh first thing I think is "Fuck, He's crazy. We're Fucked."
Then: Fuck. he thinks i'm crazy. He knows we're fucked. It was awkward but couldnt be ignored so I said to him: " So youre crazy too. Haha." Unblinking, unsmiling he says: "No i get debilitating blinding headaches that are stress induced". Now teh only reason this causes me concern is because we're a few weeks away from a big stressful shoot involving 20+ extras, crew, horses, locations, costumes, and so on so you can see how this is not very good news.
2. Thing number two that threw me off was my therapist. Heather. Who is very hot. And young. And hot. With great breasts. If I were a man none of this would be a problem. Or if Heather were my "let's-go-out-and-party" girlfriend and not my therapist. I have a very hard time confiding my existential issues to a person who looks like she's about to audition for me. And sure enough, I did some research when I got home: Heather studied acting. For some reason I always picture Freud being my therapist. I picture the Platonic ideal of psychoanalysis: A 19th century European room with great big windows, lots of bookshelves packed with old-timey leather books, the black/brown leather bed, couch thing. Not, sitting in a windowless room the size of a closet with HEATHER. (I really feel the name doesn't help either...)
3.Third thing that throws me off is Heather's annoucement at the end of the first session. We do a thing here called "Brief Counseling" she says. Then Heather goes on to define it as if I've never heard the word "brief" before in my life. It means I get ten sessions she says. Ten sessions is plenty of time, I joke, for you to misdiagnose me with ADD and prescribe meth to me. Heather smiles in that creepy way psychologists smile when you tell a joke and you know they're actually analysing the joke, trying to figure out how it fits it with the fucked up picture that is your mental health.
4. heather wants me to keep a diary. To write down my feelings before I impulsively get in my car and drive for 4 hours drunk off my ass to see someone who treats me like yesterday's garbage. or before I open my mouth to say something denigrating and awful to that person. Who I drove to see. Who treats me like yesterday's garbage.
I haven't kept a diary since I was 13 but I have this problem with writing called embellishment. Otherwise called, "writing interesting"ly". In any case, I hardly see myself pausing before what I like to call my word vomiting to fetch my pad and pen and attempt to transcribe the words the tiny demon screams in my brain.

Redeeming thing with heather, her last name is Demeter. i.e. the greek earth goddess if my memory serves me...

details of life in my immediate surroundings at this moment

2007-10-04T08:41:05Z

so instead of writing i took some pictures with my new camera of my natural habitat.

location: dresser
these are flavored scented edible oils for sexy time. I feel like such a slut owning this.

location:bedroom doorway
this is so if the gestapo shows up they know which roommate to deport. i feel like such a slut owning this.

location: bedside
two gifts from aaron. he knows what i like: swords and bears.

location: on mattress
this stuff is incredible. it makes you just want to sleep forever. maybe my purchase of it just coincides with the onset of chronic depression and mono.

location: bathroom, next to sink.
I lost my toothbrush last weekend.

location: sink
no comment.

location: bathroom
i love that i have dressing room lighting.

location bedroom ceiling
why cant they make apartments in california without cottage cheese ceilings?

location: bedroom, bedside table

location: bedroom
this mirror is amazingly flattering stretching the viewer vertically like gumby. great ego boost before going out in that skin tight dress that makes me look like a tree stump.

location: kitchen
my dinner tonight. apparently i ate a portion of my toothbrush holder.

desert.

ahh the night sky in los angeles. it's like a perpetual doomsday.

i vow to wear this on new years eve.

what i like best about my bedroom is that it looks like a cheap motel room. i feel i can get away with a lot more in a room like this.

Master Q

2007-09-18T21:52:38Z

This guy cooked me some bbq at an amazing party this past weekend. De-licious.

bolshevik @ 2007-09-11T14:55:00

2007-09-11T21:56:41Z

It's finally stopped torturing me. I've been trying to figure out what song this is for something like 10 years and last night at Boardner's in Hollywood an amazing dj identified the oscure tun I had been humming to people for the past decade and popped it on. Enjoy.

24 goof

2007-08-28T18:39:54Z

i've been uploading episodes of 24 for fox and found a little goof in the framing. see if you can tell what it is :)

As the World Groans

2007-08-09T19:21:51Z

I just quit a job working on a low budget zombie movie about a grandfather that eats all his grandchildren. No amount of titties and blood could make me endure such abysmally bad pay.... That may technically be untrue. The optimist in me says I will use my new "unemployed" time well and write the screenplay I only half believe is worth it. The pesssimist in me is bound and gagged and tied to a chair in the closet. It's 92 degrees and the car I've been abusing for the past year (before it belonged to an 80 year old woman who drove it 4 times maybe in 10 years) finally gave me the big fuck you and now cant downshift without stalling out with a sputter. I wouldnt even care so much that she does this, only it's unnerving to be in the middle of an intersection, stalled out with 50 irrate angelinos honking maniacally behind you because they're in such a fucking hurry to go home and watch jack bauer save freedom from the camel fuckers. A light earthquake occurred at 12:58 am this morning in Chatsworth, the unofficial capital of the porn movie industry. The magnitude was 4.6 and awoke me from my shallow slumber just long enough to turn the tv off.

R.I.P.

2007-07-30T19:38:04Z

I'm not a huge Bergman fan. It is said he is the director for people who don't really like films. This said, the man made 50 films. 50. That's a lot.

bolshevik @ 2007-07-26T02:10:00

2007-07-26T09:29:13Z

work for the schreibster (aka boss man) has recommenced at full speed, all systems go. today i was hanging out in the department lounge with my camera idly talking to a fella when the 600 pound jew waddles past, stops in his tracks having sighted me (and most likely for the benefit of the person who was with him for he is a man who mostly performs for the happenstance audience) says to me: "gruber, you shooting or are you talking?" (this is his attempt to reprimand me in public for amusing myself on his dollar). "right now? I'm talking" and he kind of just stands there letting the saliva accumulate in his mouth then deciding he had been in control of the situation all along says "GOOD."

hasta la vista europe

2007-07-21T21:02:15Z

2 weeks in budapest, 1 week in geneva and and 1 week in belgium later i can safely say i've had the most socially efficient vacation of my life. i've managed to see nearly every single friend i have in europe. not that i have so many friends per se but there's an amount fair enough to qualify the quantity as "somewhat significant". i also managed to see several cousins, second cousins, and former colleagues and even managed to squeeze in quality time with both of my grandmothers. I don't know what quality means in this instance it just appears to be the thing to write. the only person i left out was grandpa but germany was financially out of the question by the time i got around to the western european end of things. I dont feel so terrible about this because i'm fairly sure my grandpa doesn't give a flying toss about seeing me and our affiliation feels just as coincidental to him as it does to me: 54 years ago he blew his seeds up my grandmother's muff before leaving her to get married two more times. so grandpa will have to wait until next year.
I was really glad I had heard so many bad things about Belgium because by the time I got there I was really pleasantly surprised.

My friend Edina lives in an Auberge Espagnole type situation with nearly one representative from each EU member country. The whole thing would have been very charming but, with the exception of one very enthusiastically mediterranean gentleman from sardignia who would make mojitos and squawk american and pop-rock classics such as knockin on heavens door on his acoustic guitar, everyone seemed a bit too old and square for the circumstances. My favorite moment at the auberge belge was when I insulted one Silvio or Giuseppi of Italy who, upon misunderstanding my ebonic greeting of "wassup motherfucker" left the room in a huff most likely thinking i had accused him of fucking his mother. (the photo by the way is us in brugges)
I had also forgotten how much fun it is to hang out with hot girlfriends. Having not one but three reasonably hot girlfriends has kind of an exponential hotness effect. I may not be hot for example, on my own I am reasonably young and fair, but with three other ladies we're like the power rangers and have some kind of an exponential effect. My grandmother always told me to make friends with less attractive girls--her theory is that with an ugly friend one cant help but look good. My grandmother also told me to take my dates to the pool so that I could check to see any irregularities before going to bed with them. She is a questionable source of wisdom. I think she thinks you can see if someone is HIV positive if they're in speedos. Anyways, I somehow thought, falsely, that the coagulation of four girls in a room would result in four gentleman callers, champagne and an evening of nudity and inebriation. This didn't happen and I have no idea why. I feel incredibly lame and I hope they do too.
I begin work on Monday thanks to drschwarz) who's leaving me his position as caretaker of Professor Schreibman's anal needs.

I just have to add that I bought a copy of the Economist at Relay. I never liked this publication in the past and I still dont like it. There's something phlegmatic and dumb about the style that gives me the distinct impression that the articles were written in 5 minuutes by someone who spent 10 minutes researching on Google and then felt they must commit themselves to a yay or nay opinion or some dumb chunk of advice for the flailing regime, economy, corporation. It's almost as if some high school guidance counselor had been asked to give his two cents on world matters. So advice from the economist this month: (the last sentences of articles form this month's issue) Pakistan: a free election would be awesome, you guys. Democrats: Stop with nitty gritty ecological reforms. think big. stop global warming. (we at the economist know this because we've done research on google)
America: (this is a really fresh new idea.. I've never heard this ANYWHERE) you guys need to stay in Iraq otherwise there will be a civil war mess. Europe: You should reform your economies because we're like getting globalised and shit. Sarkozy: Don't fuck with the EU, don't question it's monetary policy . It is a solid solid organization that stands on pillars of wrought iron legitimacy. Germany: Don't put exchange rates at the service of growth because then there will be run away inflation and then your bmws will turn back into pumpkins and you all will turn back into Nazis.
what a waste of 5 euros.