If you known me for a while, you know that sometimes I'll have blogs (like my last one) that end with me saying fatalistic things like: "I'm joining a cult!," then there is silence for a few days, and then the next entry will be something frivolous about a new haircut or something. With no mention of my previous freak out.

Anyway, I keep forgetting that these six weeks of relatively unstructured time in Los Angeles is for me to write, administrate, and do all those things that I need to do to keep working and make creative work. The trap is that unstructured time often gets wasted with freaking out about the meaning of life. The first few days back have been hard because I feel like when I get back to LA after long trips, especially in this economy, its like I'm trying to jump into some double dutch ropes that are moving too fast or not at all.

Lately, the city has felt really quiet. Like a long continuation of what it felt like over Christmas break. Is it just me? There's nothing really interesting going on as far as I can tell. It's gotten so uneventful here that my friend invited me to a picnic in the Valley in two weeks and I was like, "YES! I'm coming!!!"

Mike, the director and editor or our concert film reminded me that there is plenty of work left to do before I freak out and backpack across the country for eight years. And we're getting an editing schedule going so we can finish our wonderful Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Concert film. (Which is looking pretty marvelous I might say.) I'm also making a goal to apply for more grants and residencies and maybe pick up my novel again after having put it down after my residency in Florida last summer. Also, crank out a few spec scripts.

And so, I'm back on the saddle. I was panicked a bit the other night when I blogged about working on an organic farm-- something that I have been seriously considering if our economy collapses and art is obliterated in its wake. I found myself going through the community college course catalog looking for classes to keep me busy. For half a second I thought about taking a fabric basket making course. I wanted to take this tap dance class but alas, the carless life makes it impossible to get down there. (Anyone want to take this tap class in Culver City with me for five weeks? It starts tomorrow and is only $50!)

I often feel like a senior citizen in these stretches of unstructured time in Los Angeles. Like when I come home from touring, I have this semi "retirement savings" to live on while I enjoy the view and find things to keep my occupied so I don't let my mind wander too much. It's also a huge contrast from life on the road where I'm the belle of the ball in the cities I visit and integral to their culture. Here, I sometimes wonder if people even know or care that I'm back.

(I'm back! Where's my party!!!)

I signed up for a one day class in March to learn to make sushi. This was my drastic gesture to deal with the quiet. I was going to take an cross stitch class on Friday, but it's $60. That's a lot of dough when I can pretty much teach myself to do cross stitch. Yes, teach myself... cross stitch. I'm going to cross stitch portraits of me and my cat.

Oh god, what's happening?

I guess this is what people start to do at my age when they are unmarried with no kids... they start taking classes at the Learning Annex and play chess with homeless people on the beach.

Labels: cat lady, losing my mind in los angeles, marriage grown up crap

It keeps happening lately, especially now, in this economy, when I return to Los Angeles for a long stretch of time. But especially lately, now that Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is done and there are new shows to be made.

I am left atop an empty pocket of air. Wondering, what am I to do with this time on earth.

Yes, the meaning of life question.

I don't know what there is in this city anymore. I've been here a long long time. And I accomplished what a huge life goal was... to make a good living as an artist... doing art that would allow me to travel and was work that I could feel was meaningful and mine.

This question was partially sparked by my friend who just came by and said, "I have no family here, no partner, just a job, shouldn't I just move home and be with my family?"

And I was like: "Should I be doing the same thing?" Because actually... I'm in the same boat. If anything, I don't have a job here... technically. As with everyone in LA, I'm a freelancer, and right now, everyone is more "free" than "lancing."

We are all floating in this space of "is the sky falling?" and what will happen next in this great big blur called the recession?

I'm thinking of doing something drastic. Like living off the grid like this guy I met in Alaska is. Or teaching English abroad. Or working on organic farms in Europe.

What to do?

Labels: losing my mind in los angeles, saturn's return

No, this is not my mother when I told her that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. This is me at the Detroit airport two days ago.

Dear person who designed the Detroit Airport,

I am writing you this letter now from bed where I've been out of commission for two days. I have been hacking, blowing my nose (my laundry hamper full of wet mucus filled hankies), and sleeping in odd positions to clear my blocked nostril into the semi clear one. I am unproductive in my ailing which is not good because I am self-employed and every moment to work counts. I am very very sick and I find you somehow responsible for all this.

On February 16, I attempted to do a relatively routine flight from LaGuardia Airport in NY to my home in Los Angeles. With one stopover at your airport. ONE stopover. I was in good health, though a little underslept as I often am with the anticipation of morning flights.

My first flight was delayed by 45 minutes (weather or repairs, I don't know, don't care). Instantly, this becomes an issue because my connecting flight is in the next hour. The woman working the gate before my first flight assured me I had time to connect. Also, that the next flight to Los Angeles from Detroit was full. She said it was in my interest to catch my assigned flight to avoid stand-by. Why would she do this when it was so clear that I would not connect? Why didn't she just go ahead and give me an alternate flight? Because she was one of the devil's minons. YOUR minions.

I slept through the first flight and was groggy and so tired when I awoke when our flight landed at your foul creation-- the Detroit airport. Unfortunately, my connecting flight was not at the adjacent gate. We parked at A6 and I had to get to A66. It perhaps doesn't help that the stewardess on my first flight got our hopes up by saying to exiting passengers, "If you dash for it, you can still make it."

And so I did. I went from deep sleep to running for my life. And during this mile-long run (and it is one mile), I began to think of you and your intentions for the wayward construction of this airport.

Was it really necessary to build such impossibly long terminals? Seriously, a terminal that stretches for over a mile? Or at that, make the tram equally as unproductive to ride (go up an escalator, wait and wait, only to take a tram that cuts the walk time down by half?) And don't you think that most people are unable to travel at the speed of light?

You have built many points of mockery in your airport. The people movers for example are pointless. What is the philosophy here? Why walk, when you can move at walking speed without the walking? I could have run on them, but the people who use them tend to block the whole thing between their bags and their bodies.

As I snaked in and out of bodies, I began to feel like an action hero or the star of an antiperspirant commercial (minus the antiperspirant, of course) when they must quickly assess horrible situations under the gun.

You also have fancy lighted signs of your endless Terminal A that block my run space so that people can see for themselves how hopelessly far away they are from their terminal. It's a wonder you don't have a neon sign that says, "You are stupid for even trying to make your next flight" that flashes every five feet.

I finally arrived, out of breath, carrying a heap of jackets and scarf that I had stripped off under one arm (I was just in NY in February mind you), a purse and backpack in the other. I was sweating through my clothing, I had no bra on (I hadn't anticipated this strip down) so every detail of my silhouette became visible to the gatekeepers. The woman at the gate tells me she can put me on a connecting flight to Cincinatti, with a two hour layover, and then I can go to Los Angeles from there. She adds, "You are going to have to run all the way back and go to Terminal C-- and you need to run."

I'm covered in sweat, pulling my wet shirt off my body and fanning myself, holding my hands to my knees and I'm panting. My mouth is dry and I won't get a sip of water until I get on the plane and it's up in the air.

I say this not to arouse you, but to make a point of the sheer humiliation that the design of your airport brings someone trying to make a tight connecting flight in a hurry. You turn us into amateur athletes, refugees, and very desperate people.

Delirious, from having just been asleep 10 minutes prior, then having to break into a sweaty run. I decide to take the tram. I mean, obviously, this tram you have must hit all terminals, otherwise, it's pretty useless right? Because other airports make trams that go to all terminals, especially when they are so far apart.

Aah, yet another piece of your design mastery... the tram, which is effectively unmarked, only seems to exist in Terminal A. I managed to take it back and forth and back and forth across the same terminal before realizing I wasn't going further than Terminal A.

So, again, I get off, go down the escalator, and I run for it.

Your signage for finding Terminals B&C is confusing. You have a sign that points to the "terminals" but that is the baggage terminal. I had to ask a custodian where terminals B&C were
only to learn they were down several sets of escalators and more corridors.

And then there was more mockery. There is the wannabe Bill Viola light tunnel thing (which a people mover goes through) that plays "oohs and aahs" as the lights change over the metal tunnel. Is this supposed to be comforting? Am I supposed to enjoy this in my sickly run against time?

Of course, this flight to Cincinatti is at the end of another mile long terminal, down the very last escalator. And when I get there, panting and out of breath, more of your minions give me attitude for being out of breath and frantic about getting on the plane like there was something wrong with me for having run for a flight.

I get on. I smell. I'm wet from my hair down with sweat. The cold Detroit air hits me, as does the petri dish temperature of the plane.

It's a formula for a cold. This cold I have now.

I at least found kinship in the guy sitting next to me. I had spotted him with flailing arms, speeding through the airport too, having missed the same flight. On the shorter flight to Cincinatti, I was very uncomfortable. You see, all the running made my t-shirt wet and cold. We were able to bond in our misery and the lies we had been told that we had a fighting chance to catch it.

On my two hour layover in Cincinatti, I ate tremendously overpriced black bean roll-ups (oh god, I don't know what they are, but they were gross). For some reason the screens at the gate play CNN and they keep playing the above clip of the woman in Hong Kong who missed her flight. I feel her. I really feel her.

I slept on the way to Los Angeles. Feeling sick, stomach nauseous, and very achy. The flight hit some big turbulence because of the weather. I sat next to the same guy who was on the Cincinatti flight and we kept commiserating about how sick this was making us, watching the monitors and anxiously willing the flight to land already.

Here I am. Home. Sick. Unproductive with a lot of things I want to do but can't.

So how can you repay me for my troubles oh architect who built lame airport? Well, to start, you can add the features like a pedicab inside the airport to help transport folks who need to get from one gate to another in a pinch. I didn't see any of these when I ran through and wonder how seniors or disabled are expected to make connecting flights that I couldn't. You can ask your airline minions to be realistic about missed connecting flights instead of telling people to run for it, when it's not a realistic option. And finally, you can send me a wet nurse to take care of me in my final hours.

Yours in sickness and frustration,

Kristina Wong

Labels: uck you

Today I did stand-up at the Laugh Lounge in the Lower East Side. I'm quite cynical and don't believe that anyone goes to see stand-up anymore, especially in this economy, or when you can see it for free online, or when it is Valentine's Day and there are meals to be eaten and action to be had.

I am wrong. There were plenty of couples looking to laugh it out before getting their rocks off. In fact the show was so sold out that I gave up my seat at the comics' table to some audience members.

Tonight, in what would have otherwise been a small show of comics and their friends, was a packed show with a paying audience (mostly couples) and I don't know how, but I killed. I was kinda lost the whole time and felt like the people in eyeshot were blankfaced. But I rocked the crap out of my 7 minutes as evidenced by the overall reaction. The one Asian girl in the audience took a picture with me after like I was some kind of celebrity-- that's how much I rocked the shit out of that place.

So much so that the producer said he'd bring me back again for a full on guest spot (a longer set in a more highlighted place in the show.) I do have to say, I was the only girl (and Asian) in the show, and a lot of the comics might as well have shit on the mics their mouths were so dirty-- and so the audiences appreciated it when I came up and said first thing, "Nice to be the only girl on an all guy line-up" and started to wipe down the mic with a tissue.

Also, before the show started, some women came up to me and asked if I was the waitress, and I pointed out during my set how "they seemed confused that the nail lady was suddenly waitressing"-- it killed.

But in my (post-show celebratory) two long island iced tea haze I have a deep ass question for the world.... ready for this?

At what point it is that people give up on love and just choose to fake/benefit through the motions of it?

Having been as solo traveling as I've been the last few years, I've had a lot of time to witness people in different cities and the lives they lead in one place. I think about the "settled" down life that I only have with my cat... and at that, I haven't seen my cat for all of four weeks. My community is scattered across the country. My most stable community is me and my suitcase. It's me and my body and the conversations I have with myself in transit.

Watching all these couples in the subway, in the street, in the bars and comedy club tonight, I began to think about how many of them have really had the benefit of experiencing their partner in full unrestrained loving ways. How many of them really discover that emotion of pure love (not just lust) together. How many of them are faking it and are drawn to each other because of biology. How much of it is desperation... How much of it comes from full, open, and total pure love?

Which makes me consider love and lust and how different the two are. Lust comes from hunger. Love, from an open and giving spirit.

What fear sets in that prevents us from being ready to love from that open pure place? When do we decide to cave into that fear and become actors in the game of love just so we can be part of it, as much as we distance ourlselves from it?

Ok, that's enough deep crap for me, I'm turning in. Good night.

Labels: cat lady, marriage grown up crap, neediness.

Here I am. Did you miss me?

I am sitting in a cafe on Bedford Ave in Williamsburg where I am attempting to WRITE funny. I decided to extend my trip to Yale by nine days to get some funny written while staying in Williamsburg. So far I have a bunch of halfway decent "Top Ten Lists." And a lot of stray thoughts that aren't hitting the paper/screen right.

Perhaps people don't actually getting writing done as cafes, perhaps they just look like they are writing.

Because that's what I'm doing right now. I look like I am writing.

Labels: artist life

We buried my grandfather today. Now I am at the airport where 15 hours of travel to New Haven await. I can't believe I was in Alaska two days ago. I've been travelling quite well considering I'm going three nights and only had a real bed for one of them.

I've cried and cried. I read a eulogy. And I got to see a lot of my Chinese relatives from when I was a kid. So much of him remains with me. I learned a lot today about integrity and maybe, what life is about. I look at his life, how much he built from nothing and I want to do more too, for the world.

I miss and love you Yeh Yeh.