Thomas Prior

I'm super into photographer Thomas Prior's series on dangerous recreation. I just bought a print of this image, which was taken at Blackrock diving tower in Salthill, Ireland. At low tide you can climb up inside, but during high tide, the water swirls up the staircase. Scary!

I think I like it because it reminds me of that scene in The Rescuers when Penny gets lowered into the black hole via bucket, and then the water comes rushing in, and she has to pry open the pirate's skull with a big sword to get the Devil's Eye diamond and Madame Medusa is all "Hurry Up!" and Snoops just jumps up and down looking like a big fat ginger pedophile.

Poor, Obscure, Plain, and Little

It's my niece's thirteenth birthday party today and I bought her a copy of one of my favorite books, Jane Eyre. This is a selfish present (wanting her to like the same things I like), so I also got her a gift card to Sephora and some Liberty of London journals, to soften the blow.

But hey, check out the timely coincidence! There's a new film version of JE coming out that not only looks as gothic and spooky as the book actually is, it even use a little bit of the score from Suspiria in it!

More trivia (and I've probably posted about this before): The movie I Walked With a Zombie is basically just a retelling of the Jane Eyre story. I tried to find a video of the scene where Betsy walks through the cornfields to the hounfort (look it up), but it's not out there. Despite its totally racist tones, it's one of the spookiest film sequences I've seen. Mainly because of the dead goat.

Art

Two things:
1) I think it's time I admit to myself that 80% of the joy I get from going to museums comes from looking at the people who are looking at art, rather than the art itself.
2) The Met's current show, "Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures" really only deals with one of those three things. And it's not the fun ones. Also - everyone in the 1400s looked like they had fetal alcohol syndrome.

Back from the Dead

I think I want to start posting here again. I went back on Suboxone around the time of that last post because I was getting nervous that I was going to relapse. There was a lot going on...the book was about to come out and a friend had just been murdered. I didn't trust myself.
But now that I'm almost 100% off of 'box, I feel like I'm awake to the world once more. It has its good and bad sides - I forgot about the constant blanket of crippling shame that I always feel when I'm completely myself, but my sense of ambition has returned.
Maybe one fuels the other.

New Life

I think I've come to the end of this blog. My new life awaits over at www.pillheadthebook.com, I'll be blogging in the news section there from now on. Thanks so much to everyone who has been following me here. It evolved a lot, and pretty much lost its original focus (didn't I start out anonymous??), but it's been a blast. xxxo

Done. Next...

I ended up writing that entire ghostwriting job in seven days after procrastinating for four months because I hadn't been paid. Now that it's over I don't have the same hateful feelings about my subject. We went over some edits on the phone tonight and then instead of just hanging up, we shit the shit for a while and I learned all sorts of crazy scandalous secrets about the show he's on. It's the type of stuff tabloids would have a field day with, but I'm going to take the high road and keep it to myself. Something tells me it's better to have that show on my side, and apparently right now they are. They all love the book, it's being passed around in between takes.

I found out yesterday that this guy who did heroin for the first time in my house after I gave him my old dealer's number has become a total junkie. I feel responsible and am going to try and help him get on a Suboxone program. He claims he wants to quit, and hopefully he means it. So few junkies really do, it's just something to say, like "I'm hungry," or "Where's my shoe?"

Come this this tomorrow. I'm not a judge this time around but it should still be fun. A writer that I've had a crush on is going to be there. I have no idea what he looks like but his writing style is super weird and funny and reminds me so much of my younger sister. Dear God: please make him cute and then make him have a crush on me.

I Guess Technically He's Right

I just came across this quote from my subject while combing through 268 pages of interview notes. He's talking to me after I asked him why he thought it was okay to not wear underwear to a job interview where he knew he would have to change clothes.

"You nasty little boy. I knew you were trash. I saw it in your eyes the first time we met. You pretend to be some innocent little country white boy. Yeah, right."

He also used up fifteen minutes of interview time yesterday to talk to me about fisting.
There's no emoticon for how I feel right now.