I am a writer living in LA. I perform at the UCB.
My friend and I created DEALBREAKER and we wrote a book about it. I make videos too. If that's not enough, I also
Tweet.
DEHorwitz at gmail . com
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My friends Rachel and Tim made me an album cover. Now I just need to write 10-12 ballads with ghost/forest metaphors.
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Smoke Break
(I almost never write short stories. This is one of them)
Casey ashed her Capri onto the rim of a dumpster outside of Pheasant, the best restaurant in a two and a half mile radius of itself. Thanks to a write up on a popular food blog (unfortunately or perhaps adorably named Small Plates, Big Words), the restaurant was positively slammed this evening and Casey, being the best and most oft requested server, was warn out. She was quite aware of how she looked leaning against a well lit brick wall, impossibly tiny cigarette hanging lazily from her perfect mouth, eyes darting from her phone to her apron as she noticed more and more errant bits of amazing food stuck to it. A grain of rice, a lone piece of arugala, a patch of sauce. She looked stunning and also filthy at the same time. She had gotten progressively better at killing time ever since she started working at Pheasant six months prior, after a bad breakup left her rudderless and a hasty move left her penniless.
The dinner rush was hell on her feet and she’d taken up smoking the smallest and most adorable cigarettes she could find in order to escape the chaos of the restaurant for a few extra minutes a night. It was only when she stopped moving, however, that she was able to fully internalize just how much her feet hurt, and the restaurant’s owner, Albert, refused to let her wear sneakers. A doughy Italian stereotype of a man, Albert thought sneakers looked plain, and insisted his servers were supposed to, in his words, “look like dessert.” Not surprisingly, Albert himself was no prize, and would look exactly like Super Mario if you put him in a red cap and overalls. Not slightly, exactly. His repeated attempts to incorporate Casey into his marriage with his beautiful, strange, artist wife Rita were always met with a resounding no, but every day she thought about it a little more. Some wine, maybe dancing, no doubt a heavy dose of MDMA because, as Albert would put it, “We’re old, be we are not dead!”
Truthfully, the real reason any of this ever crossed Casey’s mind was not because she was deeply in need a sexual reawakening at the hands of an older, worldly couple, but rather because Albert always bragged about having so much cash in his house, he was running out of hiding places. He was an amateur poker player who would take long stretches of time to go to Vegas for “practice.” He’d come back bleary eyed and sleep deprived and he’d take it out on the staff, but never Casey. He seemed to delight in telling her about all of his winnings in an effort to charm the apron off of her. Not a shift went by without him bringing up his, “dirty money.” In fact, he mentioned the obviously laundered money and it’s various locations so many times in his poor attempts to flirt with her, she had begun compiling a list on her phone’s notepad. At first they were obvious: taped behind a framed photograph, in a dummy coffee can with a false bottom in the pantry, lining the sides of a fifty pound bag of dog food in their three car garage. But as the weeks wore on, they got more and more elaborate: Sealed in an airtight plastic bag inside the pool filter, stuffed into a hollowed out leg of the kitchen table, and, ironically, crammed into Rita’s bizarre, ugly, and as-yet-unsold piggy bank sculpture that was proudly displayed in the foyer of their impressive Miracle Mile home. It was intended as a comment on American consumerism, but ended up looking like rejected concept art from a Tim Burton movie. The best part of all of these stories were that they always ended the same way, with Albert guffawing at himself until his face was flushed red while exclaiming, “I don’t even count it! I just toss it and walk away!”
Casey would spend these cigarette breaks turning it over and over in her head. How she’d walk up his long driveway with purpose in the black dress Albert had left in her cubby on her birthday, just two weeks after she’d begun to work there. The intricate lace up back would be a two person operation, and it was so impossibly low cut that she felt like a horny preteens sketchbook drawing of a woman the one time she tried it on. The designer was Deborah Turkington, who Casey had never heard of in her life. Albert had told her she was all the buzz during Fashion Week in Milan, but it looked more like it would have been all the buzz in an after hours hookah bar in Glendale. Nevertheless, she would put on her tacky, sexy little dress and a pair of shoes that looked like stilts, clip-clop up their ridiculous driveway, and, clutching a charmingly cheap bottle of wine, knock delicately on the door. She’d be relaxed, effervescent, and flirtatious. She’d regale Albert and Rita with stories of her days in college, about her bisexual roommate and her affair with a professor. And even though neither story was true, they were what a forty seven year old man wanted to hear. And she would deliver the goods until both of her hosts were good and drunk, and then, with a graceful flip of her hair, she’d say, “shall we move this to a smaller, darker room?” And then, if her timing was correct, and it always was, that’s when the Xanax in their wine would start to take affect. They’d fight it, both too stubborn and eager to admit they were too drowsy to take the party to it’s logical next level, and invite her to the master bedroom. Or the Jacuzzi. Or the den, which they’d dubbed “The Couch Room,” because a soft leather sofa wrapped completely around the walls. It didn’t matter what room. After 10 or so uncomfortable minutes of pawing around in the semi dark, a sweaty hand squeezing a breast, a hot stubbly neck kiss, a tongue in an armpit, they’d be asleep in an eager, aged pile, Casey’s Easter Egg Hunt could begin. She’d sweep each of the thirty-four locations, taking three bills from each: one with the highest denomination, one with the lowest, and a third from the middle. If she hit every hiding place, she estimated she could have anywhere from eight to twenty thousand dollars. Then, she’d leave a pair of underwear on the chair next to their bed with a note: “Crazy night! Thanks for being such great hosts! Love, Case.” The requisite winking smiley face would also make a cameo.
She’d played it out like that so many times that she could watch it like a movie whenever she wanted. She fantasized about that money enough that she could feel the weight of it in her hand. She imagined herself organizing it in stacks, from smallest to largest. She pictured her car loan vanishing, the cardboard boxes and Craigslist Ikea furniture in her studio apartment changing into beautiful fancy adult things. And she could get her mortifying, awful tattoo removed. Some girls get dolphins on their lower backs, Casey had a Marlin below her belly button. She still holds a grudge against tequila for that one.
Suddenly a voice broke through and interrupted her elaborate fantasy. “Hey, table four is whining for you, again. I think they want you to sell them on the flourless chocolate cake.” Casey looked up to see Ryan, the handsome-ish busboy smiling at her. She looked down at her cigarette and saw mostly ash and filter. She put it out on the wall and followed him back in. “You always look like you’re on another planet on your breaks, What do you think about when you come out here?” He looked at her expectantly, and with a sarcastic grin, she shot back, “you, dreamboat.”
Video reblogged from noël with 33 notes
noel:
The happy ending of Manic Pixie Nightmare Girl!!!!
Noel and I had a real fun picnic. Nothing weird happened!
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Things I Am Confused By #35246477
Females with Twitter handles like “TitsDragon” or “MisterGrandma” who have 12,000 followers, an avatar that’s a close up of a mouth or a tank top and a hand holding a footlong hot dog, tweets about like going on a date when you have a yeast infection, a jokey location like “in my cleavage,” and no URL link. Who are you? Are you comedians? Writers? Actors? Bored people? What’s your end game?
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Iron Man III (SPOILERS)
I love Iron Man. I love Robert Downey Jr. When I went to see Iron Man II a few years ago at a Thursday Midnight screening at the Arclight in Hollywood, Jon Favreau and RDJ were THERE and they surprised the audience with an intro. I leapt to my feet and gave an almost involuntary standing ovation. I also vaguely remember yelling “you’re our greatest living actor!” So, I’m on board for Iron Man.
The third movie was the first time I felt like I was either too old for superhero movies, or that this particular one was spectacularly lazy and/or manipulative. Either way, Irom Man III didn’t do it for me. And that’s okayI I’m an adult! I don’t have to see every blockbuster movie (anymore). It wasn’t a total loss. There were some fun moments, some dumb moments, and some REALLY tacked on Christmas moments. It was not unwatchable. Adam Pally has a really fun cameo in it toward the middle that made my UCB heart swell three times it’s size. My biggest takeaway though, was a moment toward the end. If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t read any further. It will spoil the ending and it won’t make any sense to you. There. Warning over!
At the end, the person to actually defeat Cillian whatever his fucking name is (Guy Pearce, looking weirdly fake tan perfect like a guy with his own Bravo show about a dog manicurist or something) is Pepper Potts. She is in the second or third stage of some treatment to become a super soldier trophy wife with lava running through her ridiculously toned body (we know this because she is in a sports bra for the last 45 minutes of the movie because why should a woman be allowed all of her clothes in a movie like this?). Anyway, she saves the day and it’s sort of cool. Then she and Tony Stark embrace and it’s kind of a cool moment because now she’s a superhero too! Are they going to be a team and fight evil together? Nope, Tony basically says, “thanks for saving my life, now let’s get those superpowers out of you ASAP!” So, her screen time as a hero is basically one minute long, and then she gets to go right back to running her boyfriend’s company while he goes out and does cool shit with his overly manicured facial hair. It bummed me out almost as much as not seeing Sam Rockwell dance in this one. I definitely missed that.
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There was a party on May 3rd at the University of Southern California with the majority of attendees being African-American and Hispanic USC students. The party was registered with the school, and there was another party directly across the street being attended by mostly Caucasian/White students. Both parties had similar noise levels according to dozens of accounts from both sides (source).
Two cops arrived to the party with the minorities and told them to lower their noise level; the party’s host told the attendees to go inside the house and they resumed the party in there with lower volume. A few minutes later the cops came back and students began leaving, and the cops arrested the host. More and more cops began to arrive and soon a helicopter came. All of this was while the students were filing out and more and more cops entered the home; furthermore, the white party continued across the street and some officers even went there to tell them to stay inside and safe. A white student told reporters that “basically they didn’t stop our party at all. They had no problem with us.” (source).
As the minority students saw all the cops and attempted to leave, some were tased, and some were slammed to the ground and arrested. Many resisted on the grounds that they had no idea why they were being arrested seeing as they were leaving peacefully and were over the drinking age (the party required ID). Even more cops arrived (source)(video).
Later that night at about 4:30am, a resident at the house where the white party was thrown was awoken by thudding. He rose to see two LAPD officers trying to speak to his roommate. They ordered him to wake up everybody in the (co-ed) house and as they did so they stumbled into two female residents shirtless and asleep, and one of the officers simply stared. (source)
The reason that they were in that house was to gather statements about how LAPD acted correctly against the minority students but the students at the white party’s house gave factual statements that did not incriminate the minority students how the officers wanted. They have complained about their home being entered without a warrant in the middle of the night but have yet to hear back.
On Tuesday USC will have an open forum in regards to the racial profiling that happened (at the party and in the past) at the school but that is not enough; this has to be more than a local issue and should be made known nationally. USC has issues with racial profiling and it is time that it stops. Anyone can help by signing this petition and making it big. (Photograph source)
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