I'm Crawling Out of my Skin

I'm having a few days here when I am not satisfied with anything and I feel like I want to crawl out of my skin. What would I do with the skinless body that I would be? I have no idea. Maybe walk around Hollywood Blvd and freak some people out. Although I'm not sure people would be all that freaked out by a skinless body walking around Hollywood. They don't seem too disturbed by the fact that a guy wearing a cotton costume plays Iron Man every day. I mean, it's IRON MAN! The Fruit of The Loom shit is unacceptable. At least spring for plastic that looks like it could possibly be metal.

See what I mean? I'm going nuts. I realistically know it's just my hormones or chemicals or whatever are out of whack, but logic plays only a marginal role in my thoughts right now. The Cotton Iron Man is about all the logic I can muster. And before people get all judgey, I'll say that my feminine mystique may have me thrown right now, but dudes have moody periods too. They just aren't able to know when they're coming as well.

I digress. Skin. Crawling. I am thankful that I have a plethora of things to do at work this week because then my jumping from one project to the next doesn't seem so schizophrenic. It seems necessary. And it is. But it's also helping me harness this bout of ADHD into something useful and productive. So there's that.

I hope tomorrow will be a more focused day. Because I've got a 4-hour client meeting and a charity concert to go to. So even if I'm not more focused, I'm gonna have to pretend.

Let's Play a Game: "Which of these DIDN'T Happen?"

Not the chamber from this particular city
council meeting, but they all mostly look alike.

Sometimes my job takes me to great places. Sometimes it takes me to city council meetings. If you've never been to a city council meeting, I suggest you go. It will make you extra sure that you vote for city council the next time an election rolls around.

If you really want to be entertained, go to a city council meeting in a small town. To say they are a little less formal is an understatement. They are simultaneously enthralling, wince-inducing, boring, and will leave you going "what the hell just happened here?".

As an example, you can play my game called "Which of these didn't happen at a recent city council meeting that Ashley attended?". Ready to try? Here goes:

• There was a reference to the mayor's recent perjury indictment.
• A man whose dog was shot by a police officer and it was put on YouTube spoke about getting the police officer fired
• Aforementioned man spoke on the day he was arraigned on six charges related to the incident that had him in handcuffs and caused his dog to charge the aforementioned police officer
• Animal rights groups brought a petition with 100,000 signatures on it demanding the firing of the aforementioned police officer
• A small urn of dog's ashes were set on the lectern while someone who did not own the dog spoke
• An executive with the airport authority spoke about his encounter with a councilwoman who threatened him with harassment charges
• Aforementioned councilwoman and airport executive got into a heated exchange during the middle of public comment portion of the meeting
• The mayor stopped the meeting to have the group sing happy birthday to a 95 year old resident who regaled the crowd with details of her family's trip to San Diego as their celebration of her birthday
• Aforementioned 95 year old resident was at the microphone to complain that children ride their bikes too quickly through her driveway and she is afraid she will hit them with her car without some police intervention. 
• Horrible grammatical errors on protest signs including the spelling of vagrants as "vegrants."
• A candidate for mayor announcing his candidacy during his time at the podium for public commentary. 

Did you guess? If you said they ALL happened, you'd be correct. And those weren't even the issues why I was attending. CRAZY!!! Cheaper than a movie with all of the drama.

Although there was no smoking in the city council meeting I went to. Not so much of an issue in Vicco, Ky. Check this out:

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First there was a Shooter. Then a Helicopter Crash.

Just a typical Monday in Hollywood. Except instead of those things being in a movie, they were happening all around our office building.

Yesterday around 4 p.m., I was getting ready to go take a walk around the neighborhood. I had eaten my lunch in the lunch room and needed a bit of sunshine on my face to power through the late afternoon. As soon as I had my walking shoes on (because everyone knows that I was wearing some fierce heels to work),    a co-worker said " There's been a shooting over on Sunset and Seward. The block is blocked off and police are looking for the shooter."  It was then I decided that since we were about 2 blocks away from that, I should probably just skip my walk.

So, I stayed in and a few hours later, our office cleaning lady started pointing through the board room windows (big beautiful windows that look onto the Hollywood sign). She told some co-workers that she'd seen a trail of smoke coming from a helicopter. So, we went to the place where everyone finds news quickly: twitter. It was a news chopper that was covering the search for the shooter and it had indeed gone down.



So, it was a little nuts in Hollywood yesterday. And with the hundreds of small earthquakes having people freaked out, it could be an interesting week. However, the best of everything happened. No one was hurt in the shooting and the police caught the guy who had shot a single shotgun shell out his window (not sure if it was on purpose or by accident). And the news helicopter found an empty parking lot...in Hollywood.. .during rush hour. (Anyone who lives here knows how rare that is).

Wonder what tomorrow will bring. Maybe I shouldn't ask.

Charlie Sheen is Batshit Crazy

On Friday, Chef sent me the file of Charlie Sheen's radio interview. It was flipping crazy as hell. Clearly it was crazy enough to halt production on one of the most popular shows on TV. Not a show I like, per se, but it is--or was--very popular.

So, Charlie Sheen goes on air to talk about how sober he is and with that sobriety comes a challenge to the show creator. A crazy rant. The fast-talking, the slurring of the words. It's some clear signs of some kind of mental break. I know the words "Charlie Sheen" and "mental break" aren't that much of a stretch. I mean, the dude has acted like a whack-a-doo for a long time.

But the rant includes some killer sound bites. One of them that I like is his peppering of the word "winning" when trying to compare his career with that of others. But when you think about it, the only "winning" Charlie Sheen really did was the winning of that of the genetic lottery. Without his dad, there would be no career or "winning" for Charlie Sheen. It's just his own damn fault he's frittered it away.

What I love about it is that Charlie's wrecking of his show makes Alec Baldwin's horrible phone message to his daughter look like telemarketing.

It takes a special kind of madness to completely sabotage your own success.

When You're Young, You're Crazy

It's true. When I was between 18-20, I was a loose cannon. At least, relative to how I am now. I think we all are at that age. No matter how mature we seem to be, there's always that part of us that is a complete whack job.

Luckily for any of the guys that I had a crush on, I did not have access to a gun. Not saying that I would've used it, mostly because I had a really big fear of guns (still not a big fan), but it could've made any situation that much worse.

However, none of that excuses a girl from shooting her boyfriend and then herself. It does, however, act as warning for all those guys who see a pretty young girl and think "that looks like a good idea." Because from all outward appearances, it does. Young, naive, willing to believe a lot and usually willing to overlook flaws like being married. Girls that age also haven't been faced with the biggest learning curve of all: "You can't change people." People can change themselves, but it's best to just love as is or not at all.

But guys, no matter how appealing it looks to date a girl barely legal, it's just not worth it. It is if you, as a guy, are also young and crazy. It's not if you are nearly twice the girl's age and infintely more rich. And if you're married or in a long term relationship that would take legal action to unbind you from, take the advice that my uncle says he lives by: "There's no sex worth half my belongings." He didn't say sex and was a little more direct, but the statement is true either way. And just good advice.