This Afternoon In Drama

In The Words Of Wilson Phillips, "Hold On"

will be back soon.

(This is the envelope in which the Bed & Breakfast delivered my room key and the most interesting written interpretation of my name I've seen in years.  By now I'm used to people finding "Siegel" a more intuitive spelling than "Seigel," which is mildly bewildering because "Sie" looks as if it rhymes with pie, and many of these people have heard my name spoken out loud.   A contract that came to my andreaseigel.com email address last week pulled the well-worn flip-flop, and the nice ladies of the Brandeis University National Women's Committee put the more German looking version of me on a bookplate inside one of the Learned Research Journals acquired by their libraries.

Somewhere in the stacks a young, dilligent student thinks this kind appreciation is going out to:

Andrea Siegel, clothing and fashion theorist (caption on the photo came with the photo- I wholeheartedly question the cut of the pants):

Andrea Siegel, Massachusetts real estate agent, who recently donated her hair to "Locks of Love"?

 

Andrea Siegel, Immunology & Molecular Pathogenesis grad student at Emory, who is obviously wayyyyy better at science than I am?

Or any of a number of my evil near-twins with the wonky i's.  I have very few regrets in my life, but one of them is that I never made the effort to collect all of my Starbucks cups, which have featured more creative manglings of my first name than belonged in the trash.  I know I mumble and I know I have a monotone that camoflauges my speech inside the pillowy hum of the air conditioner, but there are versions so fantastical, so dreamy I can't properly recall them, far better than the "Delawndra's" and "Handree's" that I can.

Anyway, my time at the Bed & Breakfast helped me to finally put together why I loathe Bed & Breakfasts-- because who wants to feel like a personal guest?

And now I need some time to pull things back together in L.A.

New Author Photo?

Kim took this when we went out to brunch at the Fairmont Hotel for her birthday this past weekend.  Christmas and I both had red meat.  Previously, I was accused by an Amazon.com forum poster of appearing naked on the back of my last book; in this photo even the dog's nipples are tastefully covered, no?

And this would be Christmas' publicity shot (my head cropped out, of course).  Look at the intensity in that gaze.  It says, "I pee on you, Darconville's Cat.  I pee on you!"

The Minimalistic Spring Cleaning Of Oh-Eight

My Dog Is Ahead Of Her Time

About a month and a third ahead.

Out on my deck I've created a little patch of lawn for her.  Once she's peed that patch to death, I go to Home Depot and buy some new sod, which is exactly what I was up to today.  Home Depot keeps their sod in the front of the nursery in a big pile, and it's very possible that somewhere around this pile was the warning that this sod had been artificially treated to be prettier, but often I stumble around stores, lost in my own head, so I didn't take notice.

And sure, as I hoisted the strips of sod and the nearby day laborers shouted, "Lady!  Lady!  Lady!" and I mused to myself, "I am no lady," I might have noticed that the grass looked especially green.  Not unlike the color of the plastic grass at the bottom of the Easter baskets my parents used to give me and my brother, despite our familial indifference toward the purported resurrection of Jesus (we practiced the same indifference toward the Yom Kippur fast).  But I just thought, "Spring?" 

Today was the first warm day L.A. has had in awhile, and the world did seem to be amping up its hues.  I saw a picture of Paris Hilton at the premiere of her new movie and she looked oranger than ever.  On the style section of People magazine's website, they were trying to convince readers that sky blue eyeshadow-- swept across the entire lid-- was making a comeback, trotting out Beyonce and Rihanna as proof.  When Christmas and I took our walk this morning, there were gardeners in front of every other house, depositing red and pink flowers in their frothy beds. 

So, "A trick of the light," I shrugged.   "The turning of the seasons."  From there my mind similarly turned to the coral sundresses hanging on the left side of my closet and the Daisy Dukes I cut from a pair of corduroys and the idea of cutting bangs, which, for whatever reason, is an idea that resurrects every year (like Jesus) but is usually followed by the realization that bangs will totally fuck me up during summer and the awareness that I will regret the decision all the way until the following spring.  (These mental safety mechanisms fail about once every four to five years.)  I never claimed that when I'm lost in my own head that well is particularly deep.

Upon returning home, I unfurled the new sod and was happy as Christmas danced happily upon it.   I went indoors to catch the tail end of One Life To Live as she christened the grass with her holy water, and five minutes later she ran into the house and climbed into my lap, flipping over so I could play drums on her stomach.  And that's when I saw that the pads of her paws were a green that veered into teal territory, and I said, "Ohhhhhhh shit, Christmas.  I've always hated people who dye their dogs and look what I've done to you!"  I tried buffing her paws with a towel, but the color wouldn't lift.  Water and puppy shampoo took the green somewhere closer to the seafoam of my childhood bedroom, but as you can see from the pictures, the effect is still pretty noticeable.  So, like bangs, we're simply going to wait the look out.  In the meantime Christmas just barks a close approximation of "Irish pride" whenever anyone gives her lip.

In The Red Of The Night, Part II

In the beginning I was convinced that Rachel had to be either drunk or on painkillers.  Whereas Kelly's smile was paper thin, Rachel's was so saturated with giddiness that I couldn't see past it.  It was a brick wall standing in front of her psyche.  If there was irony, if there was disillusion, if there was malice, if there was sadness, if there was anything other than a meadow of singing bluebirds under her skin, I couldn't even find a nook, a chink, a crack for a view.  She'd often mention that in her previous, pre-HSN life she'd been a middle school French teacher somewhere in the midwest, and out loud I said, "Of course!"  I saw her breezing into the room, snapping up the shades, spreading her arms to the glorious, snow-kissed morning and chirping to her corn-fed kids, "Bonjour, bonjour, bonjour!  Je t'aime mes étudiants!"  The persona: astonishingly happy. 

Still, it was a drunk kind of happy.  Wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt, I thought, "Hey, mayyyyybe punch-drunk."  After all, she was on-air at 3 a.m. and trying to sell the enormous, animal print caftan her producer had thrown on her tiny frame.  It was less a garment than yardage straight off the bolt.  And she was not only radiant in it, but also radiant on the subject of it.

By the time summer started I'd begun to wonder, "I'm two months into this with her-- hasn't she caught up on her sleep yet?"  She was as consistently loopy as ever, and I knew this because I was an extremely loyal viewer, if not customer.  If anyone could make me want a caftan (perhaps to sleep in the next time I got the flu?), it would be Rachel, and that I continued not to want a caftan told me that I really did not want a caftan.  I wanted Rachel never to leave the red eye time slot.

When my energy and joy were depleted, Rachel had surplus.  Late night home shopping customers are a notoriously depressing crowd.  It's the women who work the worst possible shifts and who are either just walking in the door, exhausted, or just getting up to a dark world outside.  It's the women who can't sleep.  It's the women who talk about how they shouldn't be shopping because they don't have the money, but they turned on the TV and couldn't resist.  It's the women who are lonely.  It's the women who are sick, obese, and handicapped.  It just is.

While hardcore pushing the Tignanello pebble leather convertible shoulder bag with wristlet as if it were that hideous, limited edition Vuitton Beyonce was carrying awhile back, Rachel decided to go to the phones.  More often than not, the phones are a psychological black hole.

"What made you want to pick up this bag?" Rachel asked, caressing the pebbled leather and smiling like HSN was paying her by the tooth.

"Well," a voice croaked over the speaker system (this is not out of the norm, as the voices usually croak; are sometimes so froggy that I think, "Oh my god!  It's a man calling in!" (But this is never the case.  The men call in during the coin, sword, and power washer shows).  "If I understand-- because I'm basically blind-- that bag drops to twenty-three inches?"  A glowing review of the design if I've ever heard one.

No matter what was said, no matter what ailment revealed, no matter what type of diabetes suffered by the caller, Rachel was unflappably ebullient.  Or-- possibly drunk.  In some way, on something.  On many nights she'd dissolve into uncontrollable giggles, claiming that her producer had just said something hysterical into her ear.  Her head would bobble as if it had become difficult to hold up.  Veins would pop out of her blushing forehead.  She greeted a caller, "Hello Lauren!  Did they warn you about me?" with the same cadence Nic Cage used in so much of Leaving Las Vegas.

Trying to sell a questionable Moonlight Markdown, she suggested that the piece might be something worn when "ladies go out together."  Then, gaze going fuzzy, she asked the camera, "Go clubbing?  Is that what they say now?"  And then, digging even deeper for her answer, she began to run through the kinds of dances one might engage in when she went out clubbing.  "Sock hop?  Charleston?  The Charleston?  The Twist!"  The mention of The Twist seemed to excite her very much.  But within seconds her smile, while still pure, was itself twisted with some confusion.  "The Swiss?" she asked.  "I don't know The Swiss."

The sun dipped for just a moment behind her eyes.  And then it came back up, brighter than before, and she was laughing, "Ohhhhhh!   The Swim!"  Supposedly, "the producer" in her ear again.

Selling a digital camera, she showed us pictures of her cats, which she had so religiously referred to as "my babies" throughout the show that I never considered I wasn't going to see fingers.  We looked at those cats for a good, long time.  Or, rather, we looked at the suggestion of cats because Rachel kept trying to angle the display so that the video camera could pick up her babies' faces, except they appeared to be very dark and perhaps captured without flash, so it was kind of like looking at the Tribbles.  (Her profile on the HSN website says, "Rachel is 'mommy' to three cats, aptly named Monet, Mia, and Paris.")

I couldn't relate to Rachel in the least, just like I can't relate to Bindi Irwin.  But whereas Bindi's unreal cheer just freaks my shit out, Rachel's was a lighthouse and I was a dinky ship, bobbing in my depression.  In fact, this depression probably should have driven me to become one of her callers (though mine didn't really have a concrete story behind it, as the other women's depressions seemed to), and I could have been one of those croaking voices heavy-breathing on the line, talking about how much I loved getting things in the mail-- which I do-- but there was nothing tangible I wanted.  The customers were buying into the illusion of the Absolute™ rings ("The very finest diamond simulant!" Rachel would beam), but I was content buying into the illusion that there was someone out there in the world who was really that regularly, effortlessly happy.

In The Red Of The Night, Part I

In the beginning there was Kelly, and she was good. 

Upon graduating college and moving back to L.A., I quickly began experiencing a crushing, melancholic stress, due to a number of factors, amongst them: working at a talent agency, my ex-boyfriend's new, earthy girlfriend he'd moved into his grad student dorm after I turned down his offer to live there and communally shower with excessively hairy engineering students, and my first-floor apartment, which was driving me fucking crazy because it offered pedestrians on the sidewalk a clear view of me, crying into my rabbit's fur.

Trying to calm myself down-- and give my rabbit time to dry off-- very late one night, I maniacally flipped through my hundreds of TV channels, searching for an image of instantaneous solace.  I came upon Kelly, redheaded overnight HSN host.  She was selling strands of pearls.  She was describing all the tens of things you could do with this strand (a scene which I originally put in my second book, but I believe it either got shortened or cut).  I sat on the edge of my bed, mouth maybe open a little.  Nerves remarkably soothed.  Sharp edges dulled.  Kelly had the voice of butterfly wings tied to little bells.  She had a spunky elfin buzz cut.  But what was best about her was that she had a vulnerability she made no attempt to hide; she was, as they like to say, a big-boned girl.

Nearly every time she sold clothing, even the Storybook sweaters (if you don't know the line: shapeless cardigans more shamelessly themed than a Newport Beach Bat Mitzvah.  For example, the "Rock-a-Bye Baby" design features a stork, carriage, stuffed bear, toy blocks, rocking horse, crib mobile, stars, and other embellishments I can't make out in the photo.  Interestingly, the brand has the nerve to call only some of their offerings "novelty" sweaters.), she would bring up her size, which was often attached to a mention of her desire or recent failure to lose weight.  She reminded me of my weight-struggling sixth grade teacher who, while sitting and opening holiday presents, wearing an apron that had been gifted earlier, was secretly tied to her chair with the aforementioned apron's strings by some, uh, bad kids. 

Kelly had that same chipper surface that never convinced. And when selling shoes, Kelly would talk about how shoes always fit, no matter what you ate.    And when selling jewelry, she would talk about how maybe you should buy yourself a ring, even if maybe you weren't bikini material, because you're beautiful and you should love yourself no matter what.  The mouth smiled; the eyes didn't. 

Her free-floating melancholy kind of saved my life during that time, and when my life needed saving again earlier this year, I turned out all of my lights and turned to HSN, long unwatched.  But the channel gives it overnight shifts to newer hosts, still training, then moves them out to more wakeful hours once they establish technique and a following.  I discovered that Kelly had been lost to the day.

But then there was Rachel, and Rachel was better.

(to be continued.)

Wrapping Up

That's Christmas giving you Ye Eye of Personal Fulfillment, warning you to make the most of yourself in 2008 or before you know it, you'll merely be an old bag of bones.  Not Nylabones either, just the ordinary, chalky, shitty kind.

Also, author Tod Goldberg asked some of us to suggest our favorite unsung books of 2007 over at E! online.  My recommendation is the book that inspired me to make my next novel officially young adult.

And I'm really, really tired.  I have never been witness to dawn so many days in a row in my life.  From my deck there's a clear view of the 405 South, and this week I've seen it completely empty pre-sunrise for seconds at a time.  My brain, not working that well at six in the morning, has said, "This must be what Will Smith felt like." 

Peace out.

You've Been Warned

My puppy, Christmas, came home today.  And listen-- she's so fucking cute, she's kind of hard to take.  Like I've had to jog in place after looking at her because the cuteness is all up in my bones, putting unnatural pressure on them, and I just got to shake it out.  I'm pasting the first pictures of Christmas below because maybe you want some sort of visual reference for future posts that may include mention of said puppy, but I'm going to leave a big space, so that if you're a person whose system has difficulty processing things like THE CUTEST FUCKING PUPPY I'VE EVER SEEN, then you can close your browser window and go check out less cute things, like baby seals.

Just One Day Out Of Life/ It Would Be, It Would Be So Nice

Every year I choose a holiday wrapping theme and as 2007 was a particularly dark year for me, marked by increased psychological struggle, I decided reflect this darkness in this year's theme, "Black Christmas.......................(/Hanukah).

Yet the ".......................(/Hanukah)" addendum to the blackness strikes me as somewhat redundant because I've always felt that Hanukah carries a certain darkness within its heart anyway.  It's a holiday that evolved from an originally pessimistic state, from the Jewish peoples not believing the oil would last all of those eight days.  Somehow blue became the official holiday color, only a few shifts from black on the spectrum but carrying with it its own melancholy associations.  And if you've ever paid any attention to the lyrics of the popular Hanukah songs-- which are all a collection of dirge-like chords-- you'll notice that they build upon a root philosophy which can be scrunched down to, "Well, shit happens."  In the "I Have a Little Dreidel" song, the dreidel in question is one that doesn't really exist at the time of the singing.  The child self-deceives that, "When its dry and ready/then dreidel I shall play," but in my experience of the song, the rounds repeat and repeat and repeat (in fact, much like a spinning top), and unlike "99 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall," there is no final point of achievement, of release.  Even at the end of "I Have..," the dreidel isn't yet in play.  The fun never begins.  The singer sings about the desire to begin but never actually enjoy the fruits of her clay-manipulating labor within the boundaries of the lyrics themselves.  And if you've ever heard "Rock of Ages," then you know that it's the musical equivalent of the Sisyphean task.  It's a heavy song, man, and I don't mean heavy in the sense that you'll light your menorah and sit in the dark wondering what you've done with your life all year, but in the sense that the song feels like you went to the gym and decided to flirt with pumping the three-hundred pound dumbbell.  It ends on even more of an explicitly downbeat note than the dreidel song, reminding us that while perhaps God's "word broke their sword...our own strength failed us."  We couldn't lift that dumbbell.  Jews, not known for their athleticism.

Happy holidays, everyone.

So today I put a deposit on an eight-week-old puppy who can't come home for another week, and I've named her Christmas.

Using My Powers For Good

So maybe sometimes I am briefly-- briefly-- under the impression that my mind is leading the physical world in a short-- short!-- game of Simon Says (just this past Sunday at the gym I was staring intently at a guy's knee brace until I caused it to fall down to his ankle), but when you are sitting in the doctor's office, flipping through a magazine, and you come to an ad which formerly contained diction you took gentle issue with, and the ad has since (in a very short period of time) switched out that diction, you might almost feel as if the physical world is encouraging these types of impressions.  And then you've really come full magical-thinking circle.

Now let's see if my brain can do it again with this ad that is so, so close to perfection (who wouldn't want in her armpit the cool, drying sensation of a refurbished chateau, a joust-ready king on a horse, Lance Armstrong's French nemesis, bakers hurriedly pedaling over fresh baguettes, a personal portraitist in a beret, a mime!, and two well-oiled fireman from the fourth and seventh arrondissements who literally blow liquid love from their hose?) with the exception of the Dalmatian in the red bandanna that's pawing at the deodorant.  The dog strikes me as too American.  I'd like to see a French Bulldog in a scarf. 

At the very least, a Papillon in a striped shirt.

Oops, and where's Jerry Lewis?