Lopaka Lounge

Last Sunday, I was going through some stuff in my office and came across the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly.  I turned to Ray and told him next time it came to subscribe, he could just throw away the notice.  Since we don’t watch TV anymore and most all movies that come out today suck, we have no connection to who’s who in EW.  Later that night, I remembered the ACADEMY AWARDS® were on and for the first time ever in my life…I didn’t watch them.  I didn’t care.

I have watched the OSCARS® all my life and dreamed of someday winning for best actor, director, screenplay and at one point–best special effects.  Over time–after more than a decade in the business–I grew weary of the whole OSCAR® thing.  It’s a shitty industry with shitty fucked up people–and probably why my language is unappologetically peppered with vulgarities.  The more famous someone is, the more they are in need of Thorazine.  I have been back stabbed, screamed at and mentally manipulated by messed up insecure people (and I use the term people loosely).  Some of my industry friends thought I was crazy to leave LA.  Hell, all of them did.  It wasn’t until a few years of living in Chicago–a real city–until I realized how messed up LA really was.  Chicago is great but cold and when Ray’s bank offered a move back to LA or a layoff package deal, we settled on the latter and decided to move to Bisbee, Arizona which is about as close to Lost Angeles as we wanted to be.

When we first moved here to Bisbee, a film company came into town to film Stephen King’s Desperation.  I was filling up my car at the gas station when I recognized a guy I had worked with many years before.  I said hi and he looked at me for a second, his face searching for some connection as to why he recognized me and then he said, “Bob! (my first name)  Oh my god!  It’s been years.  Hey, are you here on the production?” and I said, “No! I live here and work for the county!”

The look on his face was priceless.

He was…cordial to say the least.  I’m sure he was laughing inside, but when I think of how I no longer live out of a hotel room for months or have 15 hour days or deal with headcase movie people and stress levels like you’ve never felt before–I was the one laughing.   Yeah, I’m the loser who’s no longer in the Business.  I now have a steady creative/technical job I love in my chosen field.  I share a beautiful custom home with a pool on 16 acres and 360 degree views with an amazingly handsome man that I’m madly in love with.  I get off work every day at 5:30 and have every other Friday off (and I’m allowed to telecommute from home on occasion).  Did I mention that I look better than ever, have great sex on a regular basis and have enough free time to work on my own personal creative projects?  Oh yeah…it sucks not being a part of the Business anymore.  What misery…not.

I didn’t feel weird about not watching the ACADEMY AWARDS® this year, I felt weird because I just didn’t care.  Actually, I just didn’t feel anything.  There was no love lost.  The only thing in the movies this past year that had my interest was…

Daniel Day-Lewis with a stache!

And he won!  Of course he won.  He puts the ME in method actor.  I know because I worked on the film The Crucible.  Daniel doesn’t know it but, he’s in love with me. 

There were three highlights to working on The Crucible. 

1. Finding out that Winona Ryder is a total FREAK.
2. Meeting playwright extraordinaire Arthur Miller (His son Bob produced the film and Mr. Miller wrote the screenplay adaptation).
3. Meeting Daniel Day-Lewis and seeing him every day (BTW, he’s one of the very few I have worked with who’s actually quite nice).  Sigh…

I had a very bad experience working on that film.  It was to be my last film before I moved to Chicago to be with Ray.  They hired me on a “Five or six day workweek” contract but because the stupid producers made a huge scheduling mistake, I ended up working seven days a week with no compensation for the seventh day.  I quit the show two weeks before we wrapped and they gave my replacement, “Brian Albushies” full credit as the payroll accountant but that’s OK, the film tanked at the box office and Winona Ryder got busted shoplifting which ruined what was left of her career.  Can we say, “Schadenfreude”?

You never quit a show in Hollywood.  That’s bad mojo.  Years later, after the dot com bust, I went back to work in film production.  I was working on The Weather Man.  Long, freak-show story short, my boss Ramona <<insert whatever her current last name is based on her marital status>>, the complete C. U. Next. Tuesday production accountant who was a vampire–she fell and sliced her arm open and it didn’t bleed–was a horrible manipulative bitch and it just so happened that our house sold and we could move to paradise in Arizona whenever we wanted.  So I quit.  I quit a show twice.  He he he…

Goodbye OSCAR® and fuck you Hollywood.  Fuck. You.

This is me.  Aged 19 (around 1986).  Still had the blond hair.  Note my Dumbo left ear–had it tucked back about ten years ago.  It hurt like a mother but was worth it.  I’m not smiling either.  I hated to smile.  I could have still been wearing braces, I don’t remember.  I was a moody fellow back then.  Very moody.  The whole world sucked and nothing ever went my way. 

I hated myself, hated my ear, hated my pouty face and most of all, I hated that I looked like a little boy (not a hair on my chest).  Rich fat ugly sugar daddy types loved that about me and I had several repeated offers to get whatever I wanted as long as I–yuck, I can’t even think about it.  All the guys that I thought were hot were not into me at all–so I drank copious amounts of alcohol, did lots of drugs and engaged in risky sex.  I’m lucky to be alive.

My childhood and young adult years sucked big time.  You can see the way I look in the photo that there was way too much going on in my head for a young naive guy like me.  I was very lonely.  I love the way I look and feel now.  Nothing sucks and everything goes my way! 

I have no idea why I posted this photo.  I just happened upon it the other day and had a laugh.  Just a reminder of how things can change drastically if you set your mind to it (like, take a look at the “Your Host” photo on the right of this page)

Ray got home last night at around midnight.  Poor guy is out of it.  I’m not even making coffee as not to disturb him. 

I have the software technician here for two more days and my temp is in and I have rehearsal tonight for the play.  I just want to crawl back in bed. 

Hey!  I want to give Brian a special thanks for donating to the Mule Mountian Relay For Life.  Thanks Brian.  You’re the best and a hell of a designer too!

I was supposed to go to Chicago this past weekend.  The whole family was going to rummage through Leona’s stuff before the house get’s put up for sale.  Ray called at the last minute and suggested I stay home because there was some bad weather expected for my Monday return date and I absolutely had to be at work for the week to work with the consultant coming from our CMS software company.  He didn’t want me to get stuck in Chicago.

He had been there since Thursday and by Sunday it seems everyone had come down with the flu.

I’m sorry I missed that.

I would have been traveling with the flu and had to deal with a big project all week–and I would have been totally infectious.  Typhoid Cobban!

I felt so bad for Ray.  He sounded terrible.  He had the whole, “My skin hurts.” kind of flu where you can’t get out of bed.  He seems to be on the mend and will be coming home tonight.  Poor boo-boo.

This week, we have the software consultant here to assist in the set up of our web software.  Ohhhh…wish me luck.  This is the part where I need to make sure I have set everything up correctly.  At least I have this Friday off!

4:15…at least I made it past the 2:00 AM point so I won’t be quite so tired all day.  Even though my boss reassures that he’s got my back, even though everything is going well, even though we hired a temp for the project, even though the company we bought our web CMS software is coming next week to assist in the server configuration…

I still can’t sleep.

Who can really?  Redoing the web site for my County is a huge task.  My mind is going a million miles an hour.  The most unfortunate part is the fact that I agreed to perform in this play which has its five shows the week of going live with the site.  My brain has no room for script memorization. 

I know in the long run, the web site will be a hit and I shouldn’t get too wound up, but at the core of my being is a person who wants to do his best and doing his best means fixating on all the little details and that means getting all nutted up over everything.  It’s so funny…actually, it’s not funny, its kind of fucked up that every night when I’m going to bed, I’m so tired I decide not to take a Valium because I know I’m going to sleep like a baby.  Then I wake up at 2:30.

Usually, a project like a web redesign for an organization with a thousand-plus employees requires a team of people–at least that’s how it was when I worked for an Internet consulting company.  There was a project manager, designer, front & back end developers, etc.  I am wearing many hats on this one.  I just wish I had a head for each one of them.  It’s not that I can’t handle it and even though I’m tired and cranky, I’m not complaining.  So far, everything is going right on schedule.  I’m just frazzled.

I have to train an employee from each department to use the software and they are responsible for transferring their own content from the old site.  Yesterday I held classes for sixteen people and today I have a class for eight.  I still have some stragglers to train but we’ll get there.  Since my deadline is a bit tight (who am I kidding, it’s insane), we all have to learn as we go and hope for the best.  I am fortunate to have people who are committed to doing a good job and I think my hyper-enthusiasm is infectious. 

Whenever I do get kind of stressed about the whole thing, I shut my eyes and fantasize about how awesome the final product is going to be.  It really does kick some major ass if I do say so myself.  Besides, our current site is so monumentally bad, anything is going to be a marked improvement. 

Uh oh…it’s time to wake up and get to work. 

(Eyes closed) “You can do this Cobban.  You are doing it.  It’s already done and it kicks ass.”

UNRELATED NOTE: I am completely humbled by the kind words, emails and donations to the Mule Mountain Relay For Life for my friend David and the other people I have lost to cancer.  ThankYouThankYouThankYouThankYou!!