highindustrial.

Our personal spaces commingling, Jeanetta Arnette looked up at me and half-smiled. Perhaps I was going to tell her how much I had loved watching her play the secretary on Head of the Class when I was growing up. Or ask her what it was like working with Becky Number One from Roseanne on Boys Don't Cry. Or at least comment on her fairly remarkable preservation since the Reagan era. (She looked like she hadn't aged a day in fifteen-plus years. The same certainly couldn't be said for Howard Hesseman or Billy Connolly; Dan Schneider, maybe.)

But, as it happened—and it happened in the Oral Care aisle at Savon—I was just reaching past her for a tube of New! Aquafresh® Extreme Clean Toothpaste ... 'cause it's the one with micro-active foaming action. + 9

We had tix for 28 Days Later at the Ford, but the venue was so over capacity that we said fuckit and ended up grabbing dinner and catching whatever was playing next at the nearest desirable theater. Which ended up being Hollywood Homicide. Which was so bad that no one shushed us while we basically heckled it, and when the dude a few seats over actually took a call on his cell and started having a conversation, no one cared. And this was at the ArcLight. Memo to Harry: Indy Four, pedal to the floor. + 8

1996-97: Too much Kiwi Strawberry Snapple, Mountain Dew, Minute Maid Orange Blend; 1997-98: too much Brisk, Lipton Peach Iced Tea; 1998-99: too much Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice, Welch's White Grape Juice; 1999-2000: too much Citra, Cranberry Lemonade and Watermelon Strawberry Nantucket Nectars, Fresh Samantha Oh Happy Day; 2000-01: too much Pepsi One; 2001-02: too much Cran-Grapefruit Vitamin Water, Fuze Grape & Aronia Punch, Orange and Fruit Punch Gatorade. Currently: too much Arizona Green Tea.

Oh, and lots and lots and lots of water. I'm all about the hydration. Evian for the longest time, by default; Dasani these days, mostly. So there. + 10

Dear lefty political action chickie,

Irony of ironies, I probably agree with most of what you were saying, in core terms, but you were such a raving spaz, and so ... particularly odored ... that I couldn't recover from the karmic whiplash of having to look at and, ugh, smell you.

Also, I was kinda oxygen-deprived and retarded after my workout. Sorry I kept asking you to repeat that stuff about Senator So-and-so and missile defense and social services and the big bad wolf.

Also, to expand upon something I said earlier, you smelled. Really bad. Like, so bad. You really needed a V-8—a tub-full, you in it.

But I'll vote for The Other Guy in 2004. I promise. + 4

According to my dentist, I've been sleep-grinding my teeth, so I have to wear a molded appliance on my maxilla come bedtime henceforth. The appliance, while discrete, is suspiciously retainer-like, down to its crescent-shaped plastic case. I've been assured said appliance is in no way a retainer—which, of course, logically, it's not ... and yet.

So I've become one of those people who grinds his teeth in his sleep. I didn't know that even happened much outside of romantic comedies. Sleep-grinding one's teeth seems like something a Bill Pullman or Tom Hanks character would tic whilst neurotically pre-cogging a Nora Ephron destiny. Cue ingenue, a misheard conversation or two—hijinks ensue. + 7

The Kirsten-Colleen condensate effervescing girl-next-door cutely into her V60 in my chair cluster at AA Gate 29A, LAX, was received at AA Baggage Carousel B, BOS, by her complementarily proportioned boyfriend—as compact as she, save perhaps for a face-saving additional inch in stature. I was struck by their Sim-perfectly scaled physicality, their right-of-median attractiveness and apparent fundamental intactness. Lulled by the looping syncopation of the luggage conveyor, my thoughts zeotroped to their statistically feasible destiny from that moment, an isometric future of suburbs, symmetric children, barbecues, Nerf paraphernalia, a dog.

As for Boston: funny thing is/always has been, as much as I like the city (a lot), I also sort of hate it (a bit). I love the Public Garden; the popup-book skyline in the afternoon: rain or shine. I hate the traffic and the nocturn-turn-turning collegial rotisserie. I don't know that I could ever again live against, but removed from, a backdrop of perpetual tertiary academia, at least not where it would be such a prominent, however periphery, theme; at least not during the remainder (oy) of my twenties. After a while that vigorous pulse would seem to quicken like a death rattle, in memoriam of events I warmly recall but could never, would never, revisit. I have eaten the "Eat Me," I am too big now. Embroidered aphorisms acid-reflux to mind.

Or perhaps it was just the heightened meta-grad pandemonium this past week. What a zoo. I've never been so perversely, albeit passively, relieved to be reintroduced to Los Angeles' post-everything drywall sprawl. As we pulled up to my building Sunday night, I spied somebody's* (*tagged) cat doing its "business" in one of the flower boxes out front. We made eye contact, cat and I, and understood each other just then. Symmetry. + 4