Filling 50-Minute Hours Since 1992

In the Fall of 2001, shortly after 9/11, I was living, writing, and painting in a Tenderloin apartment. I paid a stupid amount of money to a landlord who had some savvy marketing skills and knew how to tell a girl like me that I was "four blocks from Macy's" in "Lower Nob Hill" and that, yes, there was a concentration of stubbly faced "women" in the area. It's another time I had a terrible case of Insomnia. When 9/11 happened and I had freshly escaped the streets of New York City, all because a random psychic chased after me on a Sunday afternoon and INSISTED that I do so. She mapped out my life in a way that creeped me out. I was admittedly niave then, and believed in every possible sign. Now I see crazy people where signs once were.

My old job was just blocks away from the World Trade Center on Exchange Place near the World Stock Exchange. I remember going to happy hours and meeting up at bars more or less underneath the World Trade Center. I remember looking up at how totally massive that building was and feeling so small. (If you only knew how big I was at the time, you would know how funny that really is.) But seriously, sometimes when I think about 9/11, I don't think about planes or terrorists or our shitty president. I see a room of loose-tied, laughing, fresh-faced men, and smiling women with manicured fingernails carrying pints of ale to overcrowded booths. I think about how, as difficult as it all was then, it was so easy and given that there was, for all of us, at the very least, gonna be a tomorrow.

Just because I am sleep deprived it is no reason to get all depressing on you, my two cherished readers. I know for a cerifiable fact that at least two of the two of you are currently in therapy, so I will not take up any of the fifty minutes in your therapy hour. I got on the 9/11 track because I was thinking about a painting I did in the fall of 2001 about insomnia for none other than Ms. Kim Cattrall of Sex and The City fame. It was a San Francisco cityscape that I called, "San Francisco: The city that never sleeps for the girl who has insomnia." Kim (with her then husband) let out this punctuated laugh. I told her that I was dating a couple of SF weirdos, and she said, "So you're the San Francisco Samantha?" I wasn't quite sure how I felt about that, but before I could have an opinion my friend Dave overheard and it was nothing but "San Francisco Samantha" jokes and CD compilations after that. If he had the money to make personalized t-shirts for the neighborhood, I'm sure he would have done it.


And you wanna know something else? Like something else totally off subject something else, ready to lose your mind something else? Well, okay then. So guess who is going to see an American Idol LIVE concert this summer? I mean, nevermind that I have tickets to a Giants/Yankees series game and that they haven't played in San Francisco since 1962, and nevermind that I have two tickets to see Feist at the Fillmore in June and there are NO tickets available. Noooo...throw all that and everything else you know and love about the entertainment business out the window. This is American Idol, and I'm gonna see Blake Lewis beatbox, and Sanjaya Malikar get his hairdo on, and LaKisha kiss Simon on the lips, and just one time I hope I see Melinda Doolittle pretend like she is a wide-eyed deer caught in headlights, "What, me? Know how to sing?" That will really crack me up!

And you really wanna know something else? okay, well. This American Idol gig is going down in Indiana. As in Indianapolis. Territory of all things Adam. The place I'll be after school in Iowa. Like a fish out of water, wondering where the palm trees grow.

Actually I hate to admit it, but I kind of caught myself smiling over my bento box lunch with a friend today. It was pretty inappropriate being as we were talking about the breakup of her eight year relationship. But I couldn't help myself: American Idols LIVE! I couldn't shake how awesome it would be if Kelli Clarkson made an appearance. And how I should really take it down a notch and get over my unnatural excitement over these no-name, mostly no-talent singers before I come off a little nuts. (Too late.)

Since I've ruined any credibility I may have had with you, my two dear readers, I may as well blow the lid off things. I secretly kind of hope one of the perks of being a California fish in Midwestern water is that I can finallly get me some Olive Garden and no one can say anything about it.