* You’ll be glad to know my sunburn is now a gorgeous bronze tan… on the top half of my back. I have never really had a tan. I always avoided the sun, and in Nashville my stage billing was “The Porcelain Beauty.” I’ve noticed a gradual buildup of some golden color on my arms and shoulders (you can see it here) but this is the first time I’ve really seen my skin such a color. Looks nice, but I don’t plan on going all-over with it any time soon. I’ll just let it fade and get back to porcelain-ness…

* At first I was going to write, “Not much has happened recently...” and then I reviewed my week:
*Filmed a part in an indie movie
* Began prep for the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Leadership Awards
* Started gathering materials to launch my career as a professional public speaker
* Had about five “Hollywood style” meetings
* Cleaned up my room
* That last one was the hardest.
* And there have been the million incidental day to day business things as well, plus a tiny bit of a social life. Very tiny. So overall I would be wrong to say not much has happened in the last week or so. I guess I’m a bit of an “experience junkie,” getting numb to the routine things and needing new things to happen all the time. An odd trait for such a sleep-loving person to have… I guess in a perfect world, I would lay on a really comfortable bed with catered meals and have a carnival of new things parade by me all day. But that would be weird, wouldn’t it? Ha ha
* Speaking of weird, and our recent bee troubles, here is the story of a man who tried to get rid of a bee nest in the rafters by squirting it with a can of hairspray and a lighter. D’oh! 

* Well, today I got a bad sunburn on a private beach in Malibu while filming my small part in an upcoming indie film. I had to get up at 9:00am! Ugh! and jet down to the beach in my red convertible Aston-Martin (aka Chrysler Lebaron) with hair streaming and a rapidly disappearing king-size Snickers® candy bar in hand.
* Once there, I met a remarkable young man named Malcolm. He is studying to be a minister and had a similar upbringing to my own… except that his parents seemed to embrace the softer side of religious conviction, from what I understood. Malcolm is travelling cross-country and having conversations with various people about his inner journey as well as his outer, and I was his LA person. We sat and chatted over shrimp and oysters (on camera… I tried not to look too gruesome while eating) and then went to the gorgeous private beach to talk more while sitting on the rocks and walking in the surf with our jeans-legs rolled up.
* I always knew about the concept of “wealth” growing up… mainly because I did not have it. But the more I actually see wealth in places like NYC and LA and other places, the more I learn about what it means. Money isn’t just a big number in the bank account… for the people who lived on this private beach, money meant having the things that seem like things everyone should have, but in reality don’t. Like a big, comfortable house with a yard and a breathtaking view of the ocean - with the sand and sea right there in your yard. In real life here in LA, if you want some beach, you have to park your car along the road and elbow your way through scads of people and their sand-flea children… the whole time thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice if it was just a clear, clean beach like in the movies? With just me and my friend?” Well, these people have that.
* And the houses… in Nashville, some of these houses would be your general, everyday medium-large old farmhouse. Well kept but definitely old. Anybody who worked hard could have one. But because these houses were in LA, and right on the beach, they cost millions of dollars. I am not criticizing, or ranting about consumerism or greed or anything here. At the moment it just struck me how nice it would be to live in such a cozy, comfy, cool house right on a clean beach empty of people. I guess that is what “rich” is for me today. Tomorrow it will be someone disgusting like J. Lo buying gold toilet seats (true story), but today it is the image of being comfortable. 

* I finally figured out that if you click on the “Calendar” link to the left there, it shows everyone’s birthdays. Happy birthday, Hoochieboy!
* Hmm, things have been pretty slow here, news-wise. The car overheated over the weekend, and I had yet another repair adventure involving two Guatemalan boys chivalrously offering to help me fix it in the Autozone parking lot. I ended up riding with them to a Long Beach junkyard, chattering all the way about our lives, and then haggling a Mexican dealer out of the needed part. All in Spanish! Thank you Sra. Gibson! (my high-school Spanish teacher)
* Lots of work to do, though. I went out to breakfast, lunch and dinner with different entertainment people over the weekend and made some great new contacts. Updated the Deep Stealth site, took care of some work stuff…
* One new project that’s exciting to me is the audio version of Mark 947. I have started studio sessions recording myself reading my own life story, which is fun and interesting. Hopefully the Audio Book version will be ready to go in a few weeks. I’m keeping lots of hot green tea on hand for my throat.

* Yesterday a large hive of bees was discovered on the property. A man came out to “take care” of them. This care consisted of dousing them with poison… I am typically unsympathetic to insects and arachnids, but Andrea was quite philosophical about the pathos involved with the destruction of such an organized group of creatures. I have to agree that, among insects, I hold the bee in high regard. Right up there with ants. Social creatures that make things and work together toward a common goal… too bad bees come “armed.” Emily Dickinson had alot to say about bees… One good poem of many:

VI

IF you were coming in the fall,
I ’d brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly. 

If I could see you in a year,
I ’d wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls. 

If only centuries delayed,
I ’d count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen’s land. 

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I ’d toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity. 

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time’s uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

* Tonight Andrea and I went to see her cousin’s girlfriend’s band play. It was a cool punk scene at a funky space down Sunset Blvd. The music was rough and rockin, and we looked around at all the twenty-somethings and thought about the fact that we were kids when punk came around the first time. After the show, they played some kool 80’s music for everyone to dance to… it was like the teenager-hood I never had!
* Then the band came home to stay with us… it’s always something in Hollywood! They are very well behaved, and a little pizza + beer + “Waking Life” DVD has them quite happy. I’ll let you know if I wake up covered in shaving cream and my hand in a bowl of warm water.

* This evening we hopped into the Deep Stealth Lamborghini to check out Hollywood hotspot “Deep.” It was o.k. Lots of hottie clone-chicks but just about zero cute guys. And everyone was 5’8” and under… men and women! The club is kinda tiny, which made the dance area seem crowded, and overhead there is a glass tank in the ceiling that held a shirtless male model frolicing with two girls in fishnets. We had an o.k. time, but the spark just wasn’t there, so we headed over to our new fave watering hole (it’s a secret!) and within five minutes a nice Mormon boy was hitting on us. Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about! But it was soon closing time, and off to beddie-bye for the Deep Stealth Dollies. Another Saturday in Hollywood…

* Well, tonight I went out to dinner with some lovely lady friends of Andrea’s. Afterwards we went downstairs to a packed theater and saw a play called “Chico’s Angels.” It was a hilarious, campy send-up of “Charlie’s Angels” told with three very Latina leads played by local drag celebrities. The girls were tasked with investigating a series of murders at a beauty pageant, and of course had to go undercover as contestants and a snooping reporter. Lots of laughs… Pics to come shortly