The place of employ supports the arts. Supports ’em rock hard and rock steady. So much so it’s lousy with musicians.

Today’s divertissement? A collegial little concert followed by wine and chat.

If I could sing I wouldn’t write.

I’m back. Back in sunshine. Back in a job where today’s unscheduled meal was a back patio barbecue. Back with a man who bought me a present just for coming back.

But, it was fucking weird being back in Boston. Being back with friends. Being back in a couple old places where I’ve done comedy and doing it again. Back in the scene.

Is home where you are now or where you spent most of your time and drank the most tequila?

I wish it was all perfect and swell. But, it’s not. Sometimes a relationship is more confusing and painful than the time spent being alone. Mostly, the future seems bright and unlike in fucking reiny shit dark gray Cambridge, I do need to wear shades here. Wish I had a crystall ball though. And, a frictionless universe.

For reputable dayjob reaons, I’m at the Beyond Broadcast conference.

A tad bit self-congratulatory in the morning about clever fun web thingies. My favorite aspect in the oh-so-interactive, but otherwise like other conferences, web shindig is the rolling questions projected behind the speaker and submitted live via their website.

The question projection led to the highest moment of irony and snarkiness, which I love. Christopher Lydon holding court, pontificating, opining, pick your favorite action verb of wind and blow, in front of a screen out of his view asking something to the effect of “Wasn’t your ‘Duly noted…’ answer dismissive, Christopher?”

Here I am. I ain’t never stayed at a hotel in Harvard Square, until now.

I walked around all day, from Harvard to Central Square and up to Inman and back through Harvard Yard. It’s kind of weird to be “visiting” a place, I lived for over 20 years. There’s a new Thai place down the street from my house, and my favorite quirky, artsy, craftsy ecletic style and junk store is closed. I hope the guy who ran it moved onto something more fun not hard times.

Tonight, I’m reliving the good times, connecting with the friends from comedy who I actually miss. I hope, it will start with clams. No good steamers out west. The western clams don’t look right steamed. My tour guide for culinary adventures down memory lane is the inimitable Dorothy Dwyer.

I also walked away from one potential real estate agent who I’d been talking on the long distance line about renting my digs out. Really, Mohammed, how many fucking times can you argue with me and use the word “dump” in a sentence, referencing my former home. I get it, you’re smart and clever about the biz. (Best part, it’s been raining here for 10 days or something, Mohammed’s basement office had a serious moldy funk about it and a giant wet vac in the middle of the floor. What a fucking dump?)

After getting my key back from him, I went to the Chamber of Commerce and got a list of him, possibly reputable business folks. A couple minutes later, I was talking with Terry, who said she’d come by the place and sure enough did. (It took three phone calls and a letter to get that kind of action out of my friend Mohammed. Maybe he needed a mountain to move him.)

Anyway, after a heart to heart with Terry and looking around the empty place with fresh eyes of distance and time, I am seriously pondering the selling question. If I sell, I walk away with a pile of Benjamins and no long distance management caverns of doubt. I might be time.

Meanwhile, no M. for the weekend, because we’re saving some of his time off for some fun. The first thing I did was turn on the heat in the hotel room. If he were here, while the benefits would be many, artificial heat would have been a missing luxury.

Here’s my capsule summary of “MI3” (or maybe that should be MI III):
Too much Cruise, not enough Philip Seymour Hoffman.

All movies should have more Philip Seymour.

The reason I’ve written that tiny review, rather than hide my shame for having seen the movie (file under, things we do for love), is that it must be less than stellar for causing me to doze not once but twice. Last night, at the regular movie theater, I didn’t full on start sawing wood. But, in that resting your eyeballs way I intermittently skipped some of the dialogue with my waking mind. What the hell? I thought, it could have been the rich dinner, the wine or the dessert accompanied by a fortified dessert wine whose name I forget.

But, tonight while re-living the thrill of teenage years without the bag of weed and six of Michelob, I introduced M. to a peculiarly American locale — the drive-in moving picture the-a-ter. Poor guy had never been.

It’s a bit chaotic at the Century Capitol Drive-in Theater in San Jose with fences in places I can’t figure out, but the lack of oversight in sight means you can scoot over to one of the other screens. When our flick was done, M. was back admiring his virtual boyfriend, Tom Cruise. This time I dozed off in the comfort of my own car without any wine. What does that say about the action of that movie?

Someone at work told me that “we” are supposed to be boycotting Cinqo de Mayo tomorrow. She was being ironic or funny with her “we” (I hope). “We” are Americans, I think.

Apparently, because them people, who when the rhetoric starts flowing sound all dirty and tricky and shifty-eyed, you know, they are protesting. Yeah, that will show them. Just like boycotting Saint Patty’s got the Irish to stop applying.

For the life of me, I can’t hear all the Lou Dobbs or whoever angry anti-immigrant white guy of the minute shouting on TV without thinking of all of the other dirty, horrible immigrants who ruined this country. You know, “Irish need not apply,” Japanese internment camps, the Chinese Exclusion Act. (OK, sometimes I have a warm, fuzzy spot over that last one. But, what would I be up to if it were the Exclusion Act of 1982, when a certain someone was gearing up to someday live all American dreamy.)

I guess the good news is you can know longer get away easily with the whole burning the foreigner part of town or slaying a bunch of the unwanted visitors.

Right now, I share my bed with a nationalized citizen, and another one gave me my job. So, maybe I’m a bit open minded on the topic. Or, maybe I just like ethnic restaurants more than most.

Not much left to be said out on the world wide web about Stephen Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ shindig. If you lack the wherewithal to find the streamed video (or you noticed you can’t find it on youtube.com, because the NSA has thousands of other amateur videos to stream, here it is from the Democratic Underground. And, thanks to the Daily Kos, there’s the transcript.

My only point in posting this stuff, ‘cuz I got nothing more to add, is fuck yeah, Stephen. I’ve seen a lot of professional comics (I’ve also seen 100 times more shitty comics), but I’m only talking about the real fucking good ones. When the shit has gotten tough, and some folks in the audience have stared them down, every now an again even the best one folds like a card house. It’s hard out there on the stage.

You throw in drunks, because the folks I work with in the power elite tell me it’s a drunken hoedown of a black-tie function, and the Leadear of the GODDAMN Free World staring feet away. It’s a tough fucking gig.

Colbert looked good, though, and my liberal bias tells me that was some A-1 politicking type satire.

Seriously, Colbert is so good at being Bill O’Reilly and the rest it’s unnerving. I bet old GW went home arguing with Laura whether some of that shit was true.

God, fucking, damn. I wrestled myself whether to post or not post the final chapter of the fuckhead waste of my time. I might some day, maybe in a side by side with the shit where he was trying hard to charm me and the more pathetic shit where he tried really, really, really hard to put me in my damn place whilst trying to hide his agitation to maintain an illusory upper hand and coolness.

Nothing like the psychotic, emotional ping pong, quotes flipping from ‘you’re cool’ to ‘you’re a cunt’ in succession. My so-called friend who was goading me into replying, which I admit had a certain giddy fun to it, has a calculus for success. Basically, the game is to keep your rhetoric pretty level, use the same manipulation techniques, you know like a soupcon of passive aggression, and watch the psycho’s responses rise in length and stake-raising.

My major defect in the whole thing is I get all OCD and can’t deal over inaccuracies. I can fight anyone on the shit that’s true about me, my politics, my choices, my ideas, blah fucking blah. All damn day, I’m willing to listen. But, say shit that just doesn’t make sense or ring true, I want to fact check like a mental case. Top would be his interpretation as to my desire to jump onto his project. Hehehe.

If perchance one of his champions comes by and thinks “She fucking misses the point, his rants are a riot.” Fucking, please, he mined the desperate, lonely and female cliche so deep its just irritating now. We get it, chicks who talk back need to get laid, if only someone was willing to do the deed. Last I saw, his craggy, alcoholic face, he better get as much ass as it can this year, because he’s less than a minute from “That old guy is scary.”

Also, bitterness is not defined by my not enjoying abuse.

ENOUGH, ENOUGH, ENOUGH. The past is dead even if it does email me and then call me names.

I ride into work in a fucking convertible in weather that makes that pleasant. I come home to a guy who lets me rant pointlessly about this shit and understands my frustration. In the middle, I work with some incredibly interesting people, who all seem to go well the fuck out of their way to not treat each other like assholes. Even the lawyers and the French chick at work bend over backwards to not come off arrogant, and its genuine.

Once again, and better yet, it’s lemon season. (I don’t actually fucking know if lemons have a season.) But last year around now, a co-worker of M.’s gave us bag after bag of fresh lemons from his tree. Since he’s not working with that guy any more, I felt desolate and non-citrus-y. Today, joy was restored. Lemon fresh JOY. Someone I work with gave me a bagful.

(On a side note, an onlooker in our cubicle farm, originally from somewhere East of the Missippi, mocked me. She said that she too embraced all bags of lemon when first she moved out here, but the love fades. We shall see.)

Here’s where I am a year after walking away from the Boston past — I’ve moved up in doing better shows with audiences and proper hosts and all and gotten paid a bit; People email me to perform when they have a spot, instead of my always having to ask; I’ve submitted a couple of things to competitions and contests; M. and I put together a show, I hosted and some charities got some dough; I got sunshine on a cloudy day; M. and I havve evolved from a long-distance relationship to a close-up thing; I got a job; my job is sending me to a conference about ‘blogs, v’logs, media and broadcast and last convo I had with my boss, she mentioned the need to free up more of my time to work on media shit; and a week ago, I bought the best, most slamming, fucking awesome shoes ever, and I’ll continue to wear them to work, even though it’s sandal time.

I dunno, maybe my upcoming trip to the old town is making me antsy about how far both M. and I have come. It kind of reminds me of when one of my best friends moved back East after going to grad school in San Diego. He wasn’t a happy camper that year, and all of his edges showed.

But, I got lemons man, and I opted for life to hand them to me. Fresh.

Thanks to a few emails, the fabulous M. And my frequent commenters (thanks guys), I’m re-examining my inner douche.

Dvae is right that ther’s a bit more going on. The bit more is at my comedy beginnings I kind of believed this guy. In retrospect, very stupid.

So, imagine the high school bully that had you looking in the mirror fucking emailing you for no damn good reason. All of the anger you should have jammed down his pathetic throat calls to you. At the same time, most all of the non-lizard cells in your brain say who the fuck cares?

Equal feelings that create inertia. Who the fuck cares, right?

Or, I’ll start listening to this guy, and go to town imitating the brain of a psycho right back at him.