Wednesday, 23 May 2000 11:30pm

E

veryone gets blinded by love. Everybody knows that. Except for the people who are in love. We've all been frustrated by friends who made weird decisions because they were blinded by love. Trying to make them see how wrong they were. Why is it that love just throws all logic out the window? Well, I recently discovered for myself just how love blinds...
Love makes you feel like your situation is unique. It's special. It's something that's going on just between you and that special someone. Which is why none of the advice that comes from the years of experience of your closest friends and family members makes absolutely no difference. Because it has nothing to do with your specific situation. Even if your friend went through the exact same situation to a horrible outcome... it isn't the same situation because the romantic inside you makes you believe that your situation is special. It's unique. Which is why nothing any of your friends say about their pasts matter. Because their situation isn't your situation... even if it was.
Anyway, this afternoon I went down to the MTV Beach House which is in San Diego, right next to the roller coaster in Belmont Park. I always knew that TV, Hollywood, and especially MTV were fake, but today was an eye-opening experience in fakeness. But I'll get on to that later.
I wasn't really sure if I'd even see anybody famous walking around when I got there, but there for more than 2 seconds before I saw Busta Rhymes in the sand, with some cameras and lights all around him. I guess they were in between takes of some shoot for something or other, cuz he was pimpin' and talking on his cell phone in the sand. Ok, so I guess I would see some famous people around. Actually I ended up seeing a bunch of VJ's, like Ananda and Dave Holmes and that guy Ray who won that who wants to be a VJ contest this year. Who turned out to be a massive chain smoker. I mean... between shots, he would have to smoke. And even between takes... while the camera man was setting up for the next take, he had to sneak a drag off his cigarette, then he'd hide it on the floor or hold it off camera while he was talking into the mic hahahaha.
Anyway, after I saw Busta, I walked down the boardwalk to the actual house (which is where I saw everyone else). But on my way up, I only saw the back side of what I later realized was just a fascade. But when I saw the back side I was like... hmmm they're still building this thing? Well, no, but why bother painting the back when no one on TV is going to see it anyway? Of course, that's a pretty common practice in show business, but I thought I'd show a picture of that here just because I know they didn't want you to see it. By the way, right next door they are building Wave House which is going to have a flowrider. Basically, it's a little thingy that they flow a bunch of water over which makes a perfect, permanent, stationary barrelled wave. I'll have to try it out at least once when it opens.
Ok. So now on to the fakeness. It looks like they are taping TRL. If you don't know, that's supposed to be "Total Request Live". It's supposed to be live. Hey wow, look, there's Carson Daly. Or is it Daily? I don't know. And there's Ananda too. Hey look, there is some really pale girl from the midwest on the roof making a TRL request. That's pretty cool. Anyway. Afterwards, when I got home, I turned on the TV. What do you know... TRL is on. But... they are in New York. And wait a minute, there's Carson Daily in New York. But... didn't I just see him at Mission Beach 10 minutes ago? And hasn't he been here for like the last 2 weeks taping stuff? Hmmmm. Just how "live" is Total Request Live anyway?
Which makes you wonder... does any of the voting for the top 10 videos even play a part? Or do MTV executives just decide for themselves what videos to play and how to rank them? After all, the little video blurbs they have with people saying "Hi, I'm Sandy from North Carolina and I'm requesting Britney Spears because she's my hero WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO!!" are totally scripted and they are reading off of cue cards... Which leads to even more questions like... what about those e-mailed in requests that they scroll across the screen during the videos? Is there some guy who sits in some cubicle in New York that just makes them all up and writes them? Hmmmm. I want that guy's job, that would be cool! By the way, that's Ananda's back on that picture with Carson. She has really big boobs. Like, they don't look that big on TV.
Well it was real cloudy and chilly out today. But I'm sure they tried their hardest to make it look like they were having a great time out at the beach. Oh yeah, check out all the extra lighting they brought in... and man, that camera boom on the roof is huge! But it's cool, like the movement was so fluid. I wish I had one of those. Well maybe not that big, I mean, I don't think I could really use a boom that big. But you know what I mean.
Now I don't want you guys thinking that I thought MTV was all real and stuff. I knew it was fake. But it was kind of cool getting to see the fakeness up close. Like when Dave Holmes was 10 feet in front of me taping one of those little things they do with the VJ's talking right before they go to a comercial, and I can totally see the cameraman holding the camera crooked on purpose.
There are a lot of security guys out there. They are big. And they try to be all intimidating and stuff. Like they tried to tell me that I could tape stuff with my camcorder. But. Um. I'm on public property. And so are they. I can tape whatever I want. I'm not even invading your privacy because, well you are on a public beach. When I told the guy that, it he just went away. It was cool though. Cuz like. This 6'5" huge samoan guy was kind of sad cuz he couldn't intimidate me. I mean, I saw him tell another girl that she had to erase her tape, and she did... or at least she pretended she was.
Tomorrow I'm gonna see if I can actually get inside the beach house. I didn't try today, cuz I had my video camera with me and I didn't want to go in there with that. I've heard things from people that you can only get in if you are super buff and super good looking or if you are a girl, totally fine and scantily clad. That may be true, on a sunny weekend when there are thousands of people at the beach anyway... but not on a cloudy weekday in the middle of the day when everyone is at work or at school. It looked like they had barely enough people to fill the place today. So I'm gonna see if I can actually get inside tomorrow... and do a lot of waiting around because that's what everyone that was inside there today did. Even if I won't get in because I'm a skinny little punk, I might as well try, I mean... I'm so bored out of my mind these days anyway. And that's my update for today.

2:40am (thursday morning)

T

onight I was bored out of my mind. And I was all jittery from drinking so much dang soda. Just after midnight, I got this sudden, strong urge to go out to the cliffs and sing and play my guitar. So I packed up my classical and put it in the gig bag that I can wear like a backpack (it's so cool, I love that bag!!) and got into my car. It was about 1am by the time I got to the cliffs and there was a stupid frat initiation thing going on. So I sat by the edge of the cliff and just started noodling around and warming up and stuff.
After a while they left and I started playing some Sting songs and man, I don't know what to say except that it was beautiful. I mean, there I was, sitting at the very edge of the cliff, playing my guitar, singing my heart out, while the waves roared 400 feet below me, and above me in the clouds lightning flashed, while a slight misty drizzle filled the warm night air.
The waves would get louder and softer in cycles. Sometimes they would get louder just as I started a new song. It was like a huge crowd down there cheering louder as they hear the intro to one of their favorite songs or something. Ok that was cheesy, but you know what I mean.
I was about half-way through Message in a Bottle when I noticed a young couple approaching. I guess they had been somewhere out of view already and were walking back. The next song I played was Every Breath You Take and they stopped almost directly behind me and well... they were dancing! Hah. And then they left.
After about an hour of singing mostly Sting songs, I decided to leave. And I felt so satisfied. I forgot about my boredom, and I felt so much peace inside me, and my mind just seems so clear right now.
Look how long today's update is. This sort of makes up for the months of neglect, doesn't it?