Finally went and checked out The Edison in downtown Los Angeles.
A truly amazing place!
It's downstairs in the Higgins Building, this amazing old Art Deco building that housed the first privately owned power plant in the United States.
I knew about the Higgins Buliding before. Since that's where we had shot my film. They had an incredible website for the Higgins Building online not too long ago. But sadly for some reason it has been taken down. Yep yep. Sad sad sad.
But! The Edison!
You go downstairs to the bar and it still houses a lot of the old original power equipment. The lighting is dark, the feeling of the place is tech noir, the music pulsating, but still everything has a steampunk retro feel.
It reminded me so much of Thief: The Dark Project, Thief: Gold, Thief: The Metal Age and even the lackluster, but still cool, Thief III: Deadly Shadows.
I'm still pissed at the makers of the Thief series for taking away the main character's (Garrett) sword. And you just fight with a lame dagger. Bastards.
But back to The Edison bar. Amazing place.
Getting in was a breeze. I got asked for my ID at the door by the well dressed bouncer. I guess I'm looking younger than legal tender these days.
You go down the long winding staircase to the bar and it's like going into a whole other world. Steampunk Valhalla.
I paraphrase an Edison review I read...
A string of lights spiraled down the deep staircase, as you walked, jaws dropped, you almost tripped over yourself, so enamored with the place. The first thing you see was a huge wall of metal doors and handles with a walkway at the top. What is that? It was a furnace. Turn left, and a square center bar topped with the best light fixtures we've seen in ages was packed, but moving. Off to a corner, black-and-white movies flickered on a giant video screen. Beneath that, we could barely make out the huge black pumps stoicly sitting in a back room. It was a never-ending space of twists and turns, and each corner revealed a new secret.
Art Deco-style leather chairs were tucked under the low-ceiling generator room in one direction, Gothic thrones were secretly stowed behind that big metal wall in another. Between two large bar areas, leather banquettes, unobtrusive, yet perfect for seeing the scene. Oh look! A pool table! And steel...lots and lots of, you guess, iron pumps and industrial-looking things throughout. Beautifully painted frescoes on the walls look as if they melted into the cement canvas over time. Everyone touched everything throughout the night, no one believed it was real. Even the trash cans are cool...
But back to my first hand observations...
To drink I had a Hemmingway. A specialty drink of theirs. A mixture of champagne and absinthe. I remember hearing about absinthe being legal again after almost a century in the USA. It packs a wallop.
But I wanted it straight up. Much like in the remake of the movie Alfie with Jude Law. Alfie was one of the few remakes that truly kicked ass. Yes, it was a big ass budget Hollywood remake, but I loved it. There was a great absinthe scene with Law and Susan Saradon that was filmed just years before the green fairy was made legal again in the land of the red, white and navy blue.
I wanted my first time of consuming it myself to be just like they had drank it in the Alfie remake. I'm guessing it isn't the pure form of the green fairy like you get in Europe.
But alas, it seemed it could only come in a mixed drink. After one belt the stuff I was pretty hammered.
Old habits die hard...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elutCfvhmzE
After getting my watered down absinthe buzz on I wandered around the joint, checking out every nook, cranny, what have you.
I made a point to see every tucked away corner, the jukebox, the men's room, every place to sit, I even walked up the intimate stage where they have live music every week.
And I kept The Edison plastic stirrer the Hemmingway came with as a souvenir. I came home that night and rinsed it off and stored it away in a cabinet in my apartment. Might make for a nice memory in an otherwise sad and miserable life.
But back to what I did at The Edison after I finished my drink. What then?
I split...
I just wanted the one drink to say I'd officially been there. And I had.
I'd prepared online. Checking out the drinks and menu before hand.
When I was there I had thoughts about what my ex would think of the place. Even though I was pretty much bored to alligator tears with her on a sexual level I frequently appreciated her positive attitude and enthusiasm for trying new places and new things. As bored as I was by her I sometimes miss that. Peculiar.
But I fear I may be friendless and girlfriendless once again. I seem to have alienated the few friends and potential and ex-girlfriends in my life. All two or three of them...
I spoke to my new would-be girlfriend (the sexy Persian MILF slash cougar I mentioned before) the other day. I guess she got over being pissed at me. Maybe women are just hard to figure out. The Persian MILF slash cougar said she would be free to meet this evening for a drink. But an hour before countdown she called and said she had a splitting headache. One so bad she couldn't get out of bed to take a shower and meet me. I told her to pound down a few aspirin. She said she did but it had done no good. I told her okay and I'd speak to her later.
Man, I was disappointed. Did I screw it up again? Did I say the wrong thing? Did I come on too strong, too eager? Did I not seem aloof enough? I just can't figure out all these games men and women play with each other.
I contacted on a bored whim another ex of mine (well, a Romanian chick I banged a few times and took out once or twice and emailed a lot) this weekend via email. What I sent was a joking semi-risque poem. Well, it was an R-rated parody of the old Broadway song It's A Hard Knock Life.
She said for me to never contact her again. Since I had sent her a couple of supposedly offensive emails. Besides that one. I was just joking around but I guess she didn't see it that way. No loss. I guess.
But losing any sort of friendship with her is a bummer. Even though I knew beforehand I'd never see her again in person. She'd always make excuses not for us to get together. It seems she prefers loser types. Drug dealers, co-workers that she likes to screw and then get fired at her job. She banged one of the executives at the company she works at so I guess she is good at getting underlings she has nailed fired. What a sick twist. What a world. What am I getting upset about? She was not right for me. She was self-destructive and gets off on men who treat her like dirt, like, sadly, far too many women. Despite her own recent delusions about finding self-worth.
Just decided to drown my sorrows in Chimay tonight.
But who knows where her sick, sad, pathetic life will lead her now? I offered to give her a small role in my next film. She was thrilled. But that it seems is never to be.
I even offered to take her to The Edison. She thought the place looked great from the website. But she declinded. Said she could not find adequate child care for her daughter. If she truly wanted to find it she would have. She'd done it in the past when she had to scurry off to nail some loser guy she had deluded herself into being hot for.
But still, why was she offended? She gets off on men treating her like dirt. So maybe somehow this will endear her to me again. Uh, or not. I always end up being the guy who's bad behaviour really turns off women. Not the kind that ends up making them keep coming back for more.
I guess there is a fine line between bad behaviour that women dig. And bad behaviour they don't dig. Oh, sometimes I've used the right kind of piss poor behaviour, don't get me wrong. But sadly not often enough.
Why bother even thinking about it? Were are all just tiny humans on a rock in space called Earth. Nothing we do probably matters. It is all meaningless. So why should I care about any of this? I shouldn't really. But I'm just bored so what else is there to think about?
I swear I have such a sometime woman hating streak in me. Being rejected by them for so many years has affected me. Deep down I so want to women. But there is so much anger within me. I wish I could let it go like take a pill or flipping a switch. And take all my worries and fear of thw world and paranoia with it. I know I'm not a ladies man. I just wish I didn't have such a strong desire for them sometimes. Women that is. Wanting sex like crazy and not getting it can make a man go over the edge.
It's where characters like Travis Bickle come from. Those dark creative minds brought about by years of rejection from the world, from people, from women. And then they come bursting out in a dark explosion of creativity.
Or maybe I just need to chill the hell out and not read so much into this. I am still so damn moody many times. I hate myself and I hate my life. I just wish happiness came easier (still) as it does for most people.
God does not exist. It seems he (or she or it) is keeping me alive to torture. God is just a made up thing like the Easter Bunny of the Tooth Fairy. By the way, I saw the film Leatherheads tonight. Pretty okay movie. Not perfect. But...
But God seems to want to keep me from being happy. I really needed to see the Persian cougar tonight. Especially after the bad vibes slash email I got from my other ex this weekend. Just to fulfill my already rock bottom self-esteem.
But no. No happiness for me, no passion, no sex, no caring, no nothing. Just emptiness, lonliness, the void.
No tenderness, no human feeling, none of the normal things that normal men and women enjoy. Just anger, bitterness, failure, hate, and deep deep deep emotional pain. Well life sucks, what else is new on the horizon?
I go back to work tomorrow. After my one day a week off. I make a good salary. But at six days a week it seems I'm always working. And really, so what? What else do I have in life? No friends, no life, no girlfriend, no sex, no nothing. Just bitterness, misery and loneliness. And I can never seem to work hard enough to get any of those things I mentioned that normal people enjoy.
Fuck you God. You don't exist. You never did. When I talk to you I'm just talking to myself, to something that does not exist. Belief in God can go straight to Hell. Since it's obvious a freak like me will never know any taste of Heaven in life.
We all get depressed. But most people have friends, wives, lives, girlfriends. They are normal, reasonably happy people. Not fucked up manic depressive borderline psychopaths. I'm exaggerating for literary effect obviously. Still, I shouldn't complain. I'm on upswing lifewise these days. I really am. My life is uttery pathetic. So any improvement means I'm shooting more than par for the course. Plus I've been hearing the lovely sound of airplanes flying overhead in the distance today. One of my favorite, most relaxing, peaceful sounds.
I mentally revisited a movie I saw a while ago. Dario Argento's Deep Red. His best giallo. And his fave film of mine. I love the Edward Hopper Nighthawks influenced set design in it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073582/Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow...
