Join me in a sing-along!

In Treatment at the moment and in dire need of release.

My child-self needs some approval, people. My therapist said so.

The Bodies

"The Spanish have the right idea when it comes to talking about bodies: They say "the", not "my", distancing themselves. I am not my wattle."

-Carol K. Howell

ETA: Just noticed misoGYNy runs so deep they forgot to label that woman's pippi.

Pity Party!

So never heard the term until Jen Aniston's midlastdecade's Vanity Fair cover story, but I'm throwing meself one right now!

See, NO-ONE comments on my bog anymore. NO-ONE!!! NO-ONE!!!!!

(Except for the Mr, and that's only after x amounta days nagging (Misogynist Views of Wifey: ACTIVATE!)

So.

Feeling a tad neglected.

So now you have an opportunity to fill my comment sections, rejuvenate my self-disteem, and improve your own chances for a sainthood following a single click below.

Come on.

You know you want to.

Lost: One Mojo

"I have of late - but wherefore I know not - lost all my mirth"
Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2

So, understatement of the year - it's been an odd few months. And blogging - even from this quiet corner of the net - requires confidence; instinctively it seems to me that posts should leap from a position of, if not authority as such, at least the sense of being authored, from somewhere even marginally together, integrated. And I have felt neither together nor integrated for a while ...

But, onward/upward/jedward! Today is the first day of the rest of my wife! (Did I say 'wife'?! Oops, Freud! Your field day beckons ...) One of my mentors once admonished me for not writing, by saying that it was selfish that I was denying the world of my work (ego-boost much?) and one of my recent blog-crushes urged me to relocate my aforementioned MIA mojo and return to the plog. So it is with utmost tentativity (not a word, I realise, but it should be) that I dip my unlikeley (see previous parentheses) pedicured toe back into the www-world. In the process of trying to locate my outer adult, I have been forced into uncomfortable small talk with my inner child. It's time to welcome her back into the fold.

As I welcome you, dear patient reader. This could just be a temporary relapse, all sound and fury signifying nothing. Then again, maybe it won't ...

Thank you for your indulgence.

xxx

Emmy And Me

If you are an idiot box addict like myself, or just not immune from the barrage of light "infotainment" that has - without apparent opposition - replaced actual news of late, you may know that the Emmy Awards took place in Los Angeles last weekend.

Why is this award show different from all other award shows? Well, it is the only one that has personal resonance for me.

It is the only one I have ever attended.

See, I have always loved TV. I know that makes me way-less than cool. After all the idiot box is just that, requiring little imagination, agency, activism. It breeds that most dreaded of all root vegetables: the couch potato. But - thank you Dr. Freud! - I have just learnt that there is an actual psychological basis to my dependency. My mum told me only recently that from the age of three, I would wake up early in the mornings and instead of waking my parents, I'd switch on the tube, nestle in the couch and indulge. Games I played, stories I wrote as a child (and, yes, there is evidence): both integrated themes and characters from (in no particular order) Welcome Back Kotter, Gilligan's Island, The Love Boat, Diff'rent Strokes and Love Thy Neighbour, amongst others (don't worry,the last of the list left an impression about sex rather than race but that's another post altogether ...). I know every word to every theme song. I know the names of guest stars on particular episodes of shows which spun off from spin-offs. I am, in short, a receptacle of a lot of shit. But it is my shit: shit that makes me happy, shit that is far less problematic than a lot of my other shit.

Picture it: August 2003, Melbourne. A young girl, a tad depressed, had JUST discovered the internet (yes I was a latecomer, yes, it was deliberate at the time, no, I am not proud now). Up late one night, she googled "Emmy Nominees" to see who had been thusly honoured when an option popped up on the award show's website:

Would I like to be a seat-filler? (Definition #2 at the link)

Would I Fuck?! Me, with no plan to travel to the US (as every Australian knows, the land called Overseas is a massive undertaking, requiring months of forethought and planning, unlike the hop-skip-jump triathalon from the UK). I eagerly rang the number, began the registration process (loooooooove American customer service! It is I who is always right!) until I revealed I wasn't a US citizen.

"I'm sorry, ma'am."

"B-b-but" I spluttered, "I'm Australian. We're allies. We just followed you into a war!!!", which was only a teensy bit shameless seeing as I'd protested in tears against the fucking mess the day of the invasion.

"You can buy a ticket, ma'am".

What? The? ... Really?

So US$200 later I had a ticket to the ceremony. All I needed was a ticket to LA.

(CUE: lots of mishegas, but)

Reader, I Got There!

And clichedly, it was one of the

Bestest. Days. Of. My. Life.

Maybe if only just because it represented the realisation of the seemingly impossible. Like the first time I went to New York and my friend Nan wrote in an inscription in my notebook that she'd lose faith in humanity if I didn't meet Woody Allen. I have the photo and autograph and as far as I know she still has faith. I'll get back to you on that one.

Top Emmy Moments included: my subterfuge on the red carpet. They ferry in the plebs as quickly as possible, only I kept hiding amongst groups of press, wearing my disgustingly hot, heavy wrap to obscure the fact I had no press badge! I scribbled "notes" in a pad, basically a list of every person who passed by. The only ones who spring to mind now are the cast of CSI and Everybody Loves Raymond and Dakota Fanning. Odd dinner party potential. I only chatted to one celeb, though. He was LOVELY: David Hyde Pierce (Frasier's Niles). I was surprised he was gay. No-one else ever is.

Also, the Ego had landed and was gloriously fed! Some very glamorous girls overheard me talking, sussed the accent, and asked if I was wearing Colette Dinnigan! (I was not. Not even in the same stratosphere of price range.) Then I met the two girls seated next to me, who were both so unimpressed by the whole thing, having only found out that morning they'd be attending: they were the nannies of Lorne Michaels' kids (he's the creator/ producer of Saturday Night Live). They told me I looked liked Kristin Davis (Charlotte from Sex and the City)!!!!!!! I have never forgotten that. For the record: I don't. Not one iota. But since the last celeb I was compared to was Roseanne (ok, it was a little shit of a kid and I was in one of my heavier stages), I kind of really absolutely, thoroughly love that memory. Flattery will get you everywhere.

In short, superficiality aside (or is it maybe at the centre?), that Emmy week kicked off a new phase of Anythingissototallypossible that led to six months as a resident of West Hollywood which in turn brought me, here, to London. But that is so another story.

I now have to wait another entire year for that red carpet to unfurl.

Addiction. It's a bitch.

Dr Plog's One Hundredth Post

To my eleven followers and countless readers ("countless" in the literal sense of the word as I appear to have no way of gauging, or am I merely as uninternetty as I've long suspected?) - I THANK YOU! I have reached my century and now I must retire this experiment, this ill-advised ... folly!

Just kidding, folks!

It's actually been great doing this, being here: far, far less scaryintimidating than I'd imagined. I am not a Child of the Web (oooh, free horror film title for any would-be Wes Cravens amongst you) and although I've been known to exhibit exhibitionistic tendencies (wee early century swing phase), this is on a much larger, unpoliced scale. Less sexy too. Unless ... hmmm ...

(DOCTOR PLOG then bursts into Halle x Gwyneth-sized tears and runs up to the podium, the delicate fringe of her emerald-green, slit to the j-lo buttcheek dress swishing glamorously around those red-soled shoes that all those lemming-stars ponificate about - you don't see Tilda Swinton and Fiona Shaw waxing lyrical, just sayin'... )

DOCTOR PLOG: (Melodramatically, between tears, yet actually genuine, heartfelt. I just have impulse control issues) I'd like to thank Meg, without whom I wouldn't be here - no, really! Girlfriend bullied me into it! I'd like to thank the blogs that have inspired me and the commenters who bring the funny and the insightful. And I'd like to thank the LA City Bus Company for taking a chance on an unknown kid ...

END SCENE

Blogging has helped my confidence, given me an outlet for all that goes in (not a euphemism) and shaped the way I literally "see" things (Lady Camera accompanies me on a lot more adventures these days). I am having more adventures these days: being braver about approaching new people and seeking out different things, ostensibly for "the blog" but really for me. And finally, FINALLY - after years and years of the most painful writers' blockage caused by Theo (Mr P's name for my thesis = the root cause of my ph.depression, my ph.dystopia, my ph.dysfunction, helped along by my "frenemy" Mary J) - I am remembering how the act of writing itself is so deeply gratifying even if the end result is messy, misspelt, misshapen: full of tangents, full of non-sequitirs, full o' shite. In other words: all one hundred posts, present crapola included, which makes me even more appreciative of your indulgences. Mille grazie!

x x x

Last Night I Watched "27 Dresses" ...

... (the last hour of it, anyway) and realised why suicide is triggering for me.

I'm not sure how, or indeed if , the two are related.