sweetheart redux

I was a 23 year old beauty, excited to have gotten a job as a mortuary/cemetery clerk at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Memorial Park, where the upper management were some of the worst people I've ever met and the internment services were conducted by rote – it was the McDonald’s of memorial parks:  “Oh, your young daughter just died of leukemia?  Fill out this paperwork and we'll call you up to the front desk when you're number is called.”   I lasted there for two and a half years before quitting -- it was an intense last conversation with my soon-to-be ex-boss.   "You're the only person who feels that I'm unfair," she said.   "Sorry, but that's completely not true.  Nobody would tell you what they think of you to your face, but they all hate you and think you're unfair and look forward to days you call in sick."  Then, I was unemployed for centuries, in a little suburb called Monrovia.  I was a substitute teacher, which brought ...

As you know if you are a frequent reader, the late painter and personality Renate Druks, friend to Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Kenneth Anger and other bizarre luminaries, was a close family friends whose care we coordinated in her last years.  To thank us, she left us with her beautiful paintings and other artifacts from her long, sad, interesting life.  I long ago took over the maintenance of the website displaying her works (my dad started it), but I was always dissatisfied with it, because it did not meet the set of aesthetic standards she held.  I have worked a lot on the site recently and I feel that it is finally beautiful and organized enough to memorialize her, though of course her spirit lingers right over my shoulder as I type this, haranguing me for not buying the right kind of shampoo. http://renatedruksart.com/ Renate Druks, Catharine Ross and James Caan in front of Druks' painting "Games"

Kelli Callis

kELLI V. Sisi M. Tamra Lucid Michelle T.

PLEASANT GEHMAN/PRINCESS FARHANA MARGARET JOY VALERIE KELLY GINA ABELKOP MISS G ROBIN CRANE

I feel bad about my last post, and it seems sneaky and dishonest to just delete it, so I wanted to write about it instead.   I feel bad using that picture of poor Frances Farmer, who was such a victim of a society that couldn’t stand a wild woman and of the sexist side of psychiatry, where a women’s rights can be signed away when she’s deemed incompetent, and a lobotomy is used for treatment.      I also feel bad using Kimye Dawson’s lyrics from her beautiful song, "hold my hand," about a child in a bad situation who doesn’t receive any help because the welfare worker doesn’t give a shit.   In comparison to either of these situations, my writing about my experience in a fancy rehab and mental health facility probably sounded like a “white girl problem,” a term I generally object to (since it’s a derogatory term, and I know plenty of white girls with some pretty horrible problems), but in this case, I do think my recollections of this time of my life wer...