I Lost My Horrible Job, Went to Hawaii, and Lady Ga-Ga Is Weird

          

I became aware of her when she performed last summer on an episode of "So You Think You Can Dance."  She had these enormous video-screen shades on, her little mic mouthpiece glowed blue, and her choreography involved flinging her legs side-to-side like squid tentacles.

I questioned whether or not she was for real.  She looked like a futuristic alien-woman, so was it a joke?  When she's not singing does she speak or make alien screeches?  After that show, I completely forgot about her.  But a few months later, as our economy fell to pieces, that song she performed, "Just Dance," became a hit single.  As life grew serious people weren't embracing the Bob Dylans and Bruce Springsteens like they used to.  They wanted to blow the last few bucks they had on glamour, excess, ugly fake-blond hair and bizarre "clothes." Then in January my employers filed for bankruptcy.  I was cut down from full-time to part-time employee.  The song became even more popular, along with "Poker Face."  They recently began closing down what will be a total of 400 stores this year.  Right now its corporate image is that of a smiling, waving, homeless person.  And Lady GaGa's image is Madonna, Grace Jones, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Katie Perry, and Devo rolled, squished, chopped, boiled and served as one very bizarre, very 21st century, very international-looking package.  I'd rather embrace someone who made sense, but it seems making sense is currently out of fashion, which is why I'm writing this entry this particular way.  I think I'm getting to my point.

So last week, the day before I left for a Hawaiian vacation, my boss told me I was being laid off and that would be my last day.  As he told me this a smile crept like an alien lizard across my usually somber face.  I'd been wanting to leave that job for over a year.

The next day I went to Oahu with the family and we partied for six days at waterfalls, beaches, pools, grocery stores, pineapple farms, polynesian culture centers, giant rocks by the ocean, and restaurants that allowed birds to fly in and walk around.  And at some point Lady GaGa comes on the radio and my sister-n-law Meghan says she's great, and I do not protest, because insanity is fun, and I suppose preferable to the predictable, mundane, status quo.  Take me away to your spaceship Mistress GaGa.

CAUTION: this post contains information iPhone users will be bored to tears with

I recently went mobile.

No, I'm not hitting the road, which is unfortunate

because it sounds much cooler than just getting a

pocket computer, which sounds more like goin' nerd.

This nerd got the iPod Touch, the less expensive brother of the iPhone, and I say this because it can do everything the iPhone can do EXCEPT be a phone and take pictures.  Oh yeah, and the iPhone has bluetooth — so what!  So what!  You gotta pay $600 for it, plus many pay $100/month for all the wireless services it can take advantage of.  For a cell phone I have a $20 Nokia 2610 powered with AT&T's Go-Phone service.  It's $1 for every day it's used, plus 10cents/minute.  I don't download anything to it cuz they charge a penny/kilobyte, and when you download only a couple megabytes, that's a serious rip-off.  Digital novices beware:  a megabyte = 1,024 kilobytes = $10.24

Are the airwaves the new Oil?  YES.

So anyway, in one pocket sits my go-phone, and in the other is my iPod Touch, which was $300, holds 16 GB, and that can be music, videos, photos, apps (which include some awesome games), calendar and contact info, text notes, PDFs, e-books, blah, blah.  And it receives wi-fi.  Best thing about that?  The Google Maps app.  It's been difficult so far to connect to a wi-fi network while driving, but once you do you can pinpoint your exact location on a satellite-image map, type in an address or business you want to find, pinpoint it on the map, and the iPod connects the two pins and gives you directions.  Or you can navigate through an area by zooming in on the screen so close you're looking at a single streetcorner, and slide the map around with your finger to explore the neighborhood as you're driving it.  The first time I saw this I was a passenger watching the driver steer with one hand and play with the pod's touchscreen with the other,  dragging his finger over the map like he was playing a maze game, finding out what street was coming up next just barely before our eyes could see it, all the way to our destination.  Dangerous, yes, illegal in California, yes, cool, oh yes.

You have a talking GPS system in your car?  Waste of money.

You have a Nintendo DS?  Waste of money.

You have a Kindle?  Don't make me laugh.

You have a Go-Phone?  Good for you.

You have an iPhone?  Well, you just have more money than me.

Good for you.

Hi, this is my first blog.  Let's see how it goes.

So I was just at the California Theatre on First Street in San Jose to see screenwriter/memoir author Diablo Cody talk about her rise to fame, answer questions, and accept the Cinequest Film Festival's Maverick Award.

One big problem, however:    the discussion moderator was UCLA's "screenwriter emeritus" professor Lew Hunter, and this dude was toasted like bread.  Never before in my life had I wanted to see James Lipton suddenly pop out of nowhere and take over.

Hunter was first to take the stage, and did so with wobbly legs, pushing a suitcase on wheels, inside which a tiny chihuahua stuck its head out.  As he walked toward his chair center stage with mic in hand, he engaged himself in a private conversation with, I think, his wife sitting in front row, saying something like:   "Pat!  Pat!  She's nervous!  She wants to go home. Ehhhh..... you wanna take her for me Pat?  Ohhh, I think she's afraid!"

I immediately got a bad feeling.  I'd only spent 15 bucks for this show, but if I'd seen this guy on the street I wouldn't have even given him a quarter.  At least street performers use lively monkeys, and all this guy had was a frightened chihuahua.

Performer he was, though.  Before calling Diablo out he discussed his own life and career a little like some legendary poet on his deathbed, probably imagining naked women laying onstage, hanging on every word.  OK, a slight exaggeration, but this guy seemed really off and wasn't taking his job seriously.  He introduced Cody, she walked onstage looking very modest in inexpensive skirt and buttoned sweater (for days before I was wondering how she would look because she was once a stripper), and to sum her up as briefly as possible, she was gracious, polite, honest, and I liked her.  I don't really care that she was a stripper, and actually never considered myself a fan of hers, but was intrigued when I saw the ad that this recent Oscar-winner (for writing Juno) who's about the same age as me was coming to San Jose to make us feel special, and strangely enough I did feel special.

Lew Hunter, from the beginning of his questions, was attempting to interrupt her and find connections between her writing and his own so he could tell us about himself, and it yielded bizarre results (I'm quoting as best I can from memory but man I wish I brought a tape recorder!):   "...you wrote something about being naked, and it reminded me of writing once about being naked in the rain, and (jibberish) and (more jibberish) and it was very exciting."

Diablo responds:  "Wow, our lives have so much in common."  Audience laughs.

You could see from her facial expressions throughout how much she wanted to say "what the hell are you talking about?!" and start laughing.  But she was a trooper.  In fact at one point he asked if her experiences had taught her to suffer fools.  She said "I guess.  I guess you could say I have the patience of a saint."  Audience laughs and claps hard.

A very good thing came out of this.  Years ago, the first book on screenwriting I read was Lew Hunter's own Screenwriting 434.  At the time I thought 'hey, maybe I should go to UCLA and take his classes.'  But I ended up going to SJSU and paid many thousands of dollars less in tuition.  I now realize I probably got just as good an education there as I could have at UCLA.