My roommate approached me just now with yet another “issue.” I like how she waited until after Robert went home to spring this new assault on me. Actually, in that regard, I am genuinely grateful.

I’m starting to think that she’s making things up, or else planting evidence to attempt to use against me. The knock came. I opened the door. And there’s the Mistress of Terror herself, holding the frying pan up.

Mistress of Terror: Um, Phil?
Phil: Yeah?
MoT: I pulled the frying pan out of the cabinet and found it like this (holds up pan to show a mark and a speck of dust).
Phil: Uh huh.
MoT: Generally, when you clean it with soap and water, this sort of thing doesn’t show up.
Phil: …
MoT: …
Phil: What do you want me to do about it? I can go clean it?
MoT: No, I just went to go cook with it and found it like this.

I’m convinced she’s making this up for further excuses to gripe about me. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the last person to use it, either. But how would I know, right? Because every time I take out the rack to put the dishes in to dry, she takes it down and puts it away.

I suppose that the one good thing about no longer having company is that I’m free to look for that elusive new place to live. I’m so getting on that. Like, now.

Here’s hoping that no helicopter comes flying around my neighborhood in oh, say, the next hour or so. I could do without the whirring sound of chopper blades. And without peeking out the window to see the thing flying low with a giant search light glaring down into my neighborhood. And flying in circles. And neighbors shouting and scurrying through the streets to their cars. I could do without all this because I had the thrill of experiencing it all last night already.

I was stuck there in bed, wondering vaguely if flashing lights would appear, cops would surround the place, and I would be arrested for something I obviously didn’t do, man. And yet I’d still feel guilty about it, because that’s what happens to you when you’re half asleep already and, despite working to overcome guilty feelings that have no basis, it’s so ingrained in you that it surfaces and mocks you and your now-messy hairdo.

And just now, as I was typing this, I heard again the rumbling sound of a helicopter overhead. “Fly away from me, bitch!” was what came to mind to say. So I did. And, mercifully, it listened to me. And now, iTunes decided to put in its two cents and play Pink Floyd’s The Happiest Days of Our Lives. You know. The one that starts out with helicopter blades whirring. Seems I can’t win after all. Dammit.

It’s not every day you get to see a show that can captivate and thrill you to the point of no return, as was the case for me tonight. Since finding out my first week here (in January) that Wicked was playing (its second run in LA, but the first since I’ve been here, obviously) at LA’s historic Pantages Theater, we’ve had tickets to see the show.

And damn. They were worth every penny. Having spent my youth never actually seeing shows (the musical genes only shine in the gay one in the family), and then also being in Albuquerque, no show ran for more than eight days, or two weeks if we were lucky. So it was (and in some ways still is) difficult for me to fathom the fact that Wicked, here, was set to run from February through June, but that they were pushing it to run all the way through January of next year. How do you sustain audiences? How do you maintain interest? And the answer is: put on the most amazing production you’ll ever see in your entire life.

I’ll try to sum up what it’s like to see Wicked in two words: FUCKING INCREDIBLE. (Note: that first word is necessary because no other word in the English language can function as such a powerful adverb.) Aside from times when I’m sick, I’ve never breathed so much through my mouth in my entire life. My jaw simply refused to say put, opting instead to drop in incredulity about twice a minute.

The LA cast is amazing. A powerful ensemble traverses the stage throughout the show in a variety of roles. A live orchestra fills the place effortlessly. Characters flit about an elaborately decorated stage full of killer sets and lit by lights that, let’s face it, may as well be magic. And through it all, a delightfully girly Galinda (”GAH-LINDA”) (played by Megan Hilty) antagonizes a brilliantly honest and bitter Elphaba (played by Caissie Levy, who has one of the most amazing voices I’ve ever heard sing). The two witches played wonderfully off one another, and had the show gone on all night, I doubt very much that I would have noticed.

What’s great about Wicked is that first and foremost, it’s a fantastic story. Then, as a musical, the music is catchy, the lyrics are smart, and the sets are breath-taking. The Clock of the TIme Dragon? Awesome. The bridge outside? Beautiful. The school grounds? Perfect. Elphaba’s castle-esque Wicked Witch Hideout*? Genius.

And costumes! My god, COSTUMES!!! Lovely, the lot of them. Having only listened to the soundtrack and read about one-third of the book (I’m still going on it, and will finish fairly soon, I’m sure), it was a treat to see it brought to life so spectacularly. I was so pulled in to the show that I may as well have been sitting on stage hanging out with everyone there. Is it any wonder, then, that as we left the theater when it was over, I waved the theater goodbye and promised to see it again soon? Yeah, didn’t think so.

*I’m not sure if it’s a “lair” or “castle.” It always looked dungeon-y to me, or else castle-like.

In the middle of Los Angeles, as luck would have it, there are fabulous pits of tar. Pits of tar that trapped helpless animals who were not fortunate enough to realized that the liquidy substance they were traipsing through was actually tar, and that they would get totally stuck and then die and then be doomed to be eaten by predators (who not only ate you, but argued over who ate what part of you), who in turn occasionally got stuck and died, only to have Darwin come along and decide that none of you were the fittest of creatures, so too bad too sad you’re dead, and then other humans would come along and ogle at your remaining skeleton.

That’s pretty much the low down on the La Brea Tar Pits (translation: “‘The Tar’ Tar Pits”). The tar pits hold preserved bones of many a mammal and insect and tree that existed about 40,000 years ago, up until about 10,000 years ago. Or, roughly, a time span that appeals to yours truly a great deal, because in my spare time, I’m a huge anthropology nerd. In a limited sort of way. I wasn’t even aware of these tar pits until Robert brought them up as we drove by the street named after them. But that doesn’t mean I liked them any less. Maybe I’m just like Marcus Brody from Indiana Jones, all full of knowledge but otherwise clueless about the world around me.

But how could you not love looking at giant sloth skeletons? And birds? And dire wolves? And mammoths whose teeth, when put all together, form an area larger than your skull? And camels? And saber-toothed cats? The list goes on (no dinosaurs, though), and it’s all fantastic (even without the dinos, imagine that).

There was also a movie being shot while we were there. So I’ve now added to my resume “witnessed production set for a movie” and checked it off the list. I guess it’s some movie that installs occasionally interesting and funny but otherwise one-trick-pony Will Ferrell. The movie, called Land of the Lost, involves some park ranger stumbling back in time with his two kids. And it involves the tar pits. And dinosaurs. Of course. Yawn. It’s more like “The Land Before Time: 20-year Anniversary Remake of the Original Yet Stunningly Beaten to the Bush By Sequels Edition.”

Every now and then, a little confidence gets thrown in with all the doubt. In many areas of my life, I’m full of doubt. In LA, mostly the doubt involves knowing where I’m going. I’ve gotten lost a number of times, though because I’ve mostly been on my own in such incidences, it’s not been a huge problem for the main reason that no one was really relying on my knowing where I’m going.

When I go out and about, I generally write down the directions to wherever it is I’m looking to go. Then to come back, I just follow said directions in the reverse. And then came tonight. I took Robert out to a fabulous little gay piano bar I’d discovered shortly after moving here. And in all my excitement, I remembered exactly how to get there (sort of–I thought I had missed the place but we miraculously found it immediately after I said so), but didn’t know quite how to get on the freeway home (thereby avoiding the long drive down Sunset Boulevard we had enjoyed on the way over).

But it was night time, and after my delicious and long island ice tea, I was perfectly confident that I could get us back to the right interstate in a jiffy. And by “jiffy”, I apparently meant the following: a.) I would first drive down some streets I didn’t even recognize the names to, b.) I would turn down more streets I didn’t know the name to, and c.) I would jump onto a highway I had only ever before driven when I was lost. If that’s not a winning combination, then I guess I’d better quit gambling before I ever actually try it.

And while I was feeling all up for an adventure, and thus taking said roads rather than back-tracking the way I had come, my passenger was a bit apprehensive. Which is understandable, given that I had been thinking out loud something to the tune of: “Well… I’m not sure where this’ll take us, but I think it’ll get us to someplace I recognize.” And then it totally didn’t. And then we ended up in the hills somewhere between Glendale and LA, and it looked all dark and shit, and I was like “hey this is a nice drive.”

Very fortunately for me, I finally DID find some interstate signs I recognized as belonging to one I had driven at least twice. (LA has at least five hundred different interstates crossing through the city. When I get directions to someplace that involves my driving on more than three freeways, I basically consider myself fucked and give up without trying to get there. It saves me the hassle of getting lost along the way, and I figure I probably didn’t want to go that that place badly enough anyhow.) And for once in my life, I felt proud for having thrown caution to the wind and trying something new. Sure it was just a bunch of lucky guesswork, but I like to think that I somehow displayed some fabulous and unknown form of navigational intuition. Call it wishful thinking, but I’ve always fancied being a pirate, and this is the closest I’ve ever come to actually fulfilling that dream. The only thing missing was the parrot on my shoulder. Next time, maybe. Next time.

Twenty-four hours ago, Robert and I were sitting in the middle of a historic theater in downtown Los Angeles, eagerly awaiting the amazing and beautiful Margaret Cho. (We’re currently sitting in my room, which is crazy fucking hot, and my psycho roommate won’t turn on the A/C, apparently, until August. Yes, she’s a bitch. But I digress. Back to the more important topic at hand.)

Margaret Cho delivered an amazing performance, as we knew she would. We had the added bonus of being present on a night the show was being recorded. Hence, the day the DVD is released, you can bet I’ll be canceling any important appointments for the day and going shopping.

I love live shows. Margaret was my second stand-up show to ever see (the first being Kathy Griffin last summer; what can I say, we love our fag hag comedians, and even though we’ve never met them in person, we’re still on a first-name basis). And each time, we’ve managed to get what we think are great seats, only to find that someone loud and super fucking obnoxious ends up sitting directly behind us. For Kathy, we had to sit in front of this huge queen who kept shouting “HELLO!” to everything Kathy said. Lucky for us, he passed out drunk half-way through the show.

Then last night, we’re sitting there, thrilled to death, when three already drunk crazy women waltzed up the stairs and plopped down right behind us. From what I could gather, it was one of the women’s birthday, and apparently she was also a newly out-of-the-closet lesbian. Who was trashed. And kept on drinking. And shouting “Take your shirt off!” at first and then later replacing that with “Take your top off!”

The ladies wound up getting more subdued later on in the show, which was a huge relief. I think it was a combination of the fact that they seemed to be getting progressively more drunk, and also that the jokes were not ones that the partying lesbians could actually understand. I could hear the woman directly behind me laughing this totally fake guffaw (”haw! haw! haw!”) that was generally coupled with “that’s hilarious.” Or “she’s hilarious” just to add variety to it. And then, because she was so drunk that she could only self-censor the ‘t’ at the end of the word, an occasional “oh shi–”. Then followed by a “that’s so funny.” The three crazed lesbians, interestingly, laughed hardest at what they said to each other. Every “Take your top off!!” was followed by fits of hysteric giggles.

But Margaret! What to say about Margaret! She’s fabulous, she’s funny as hell, she’s got great tattoos, she’s a wonderful person and fighter for equality, and did I mention she’s fabulous? She is. Robert decided that he and I, while gay, cannot just be any regular Ass Master for Margaret. Oh no. We are Cho Ho’s (spelled with apostrophe because we’re not gardening tools). Robert, for creating the name, is the Chief Cho Ho, and I am General Cho Ho, a.k.a second-in-command Cho Ho. Now all we need is some shirts declaring us so. And just for shits and giggles, we’ll write “take your top off” on the backs. Because there’s no funnier sentence in the world. Ever.

Because I got totally distracted thinking about how my partner was going to come to town, I completely forgot to add one item of distraction to my list yesterday. How appropriate.

• Parents with little children distract me. Sometimes. As was the case last night at Costco. The craving for a Costco Hebrew National hot dog overcame me, so I stood in the mass of people vying for a chance to order some food. WHen I finally sat down to eat, it was delicious. And all of a sudden, a family of four arrived: mother, father, son (age 4), son (age 2). Though I know of several people who are much better much better mothers than I am, I couldn’t help but wonder about the 2-year-old with a pacifier in his mouth. On the one hand, I think to myself, “two isn’t all that old. But then I see the kid, who’s sitting in the main body of the shopping cart, climb out of the thing and leap to the ground, a process that took him less than a minute. Which is faster than I could do it, especially without first tipping over and crashing and destroying myself completely. So I guess what I’m wondering is this: why is he the one with the pacifier?

Okay, so that’s the last of the distraction list. For now. Robert arrived right on time, and despite our totally standing and staring at the wrong baggage claim for half an hour, we got his stuff and he’s officially here for the next week. A week whose hours and minutes need to pass as slowly as possible, for me to completely max out every moment I spend with the poor man. Tonight was “Welcome to Los Angeles” night. We got to play in traffic (which consisted of nearly getting hit only half a dozen times), eat some delicious California Pizza, and generally galavant around town shopping and doing whatever we pleased.

I’ve been full of energy all day, and Robert has travel weariness mixed in with a time zone shift. Which will totally be cured by tomorrow, when we’ll take LA by storm. Margaret Cho, we’re coming for you!

Because I’m on spring break, and because I’ve been inundated with totally awesome company, let’s do another list of things that distract me.

• California drivers distract me. It’s not really that there’s a whole bunch of beautiful people around. It’s more the driving “culture”, if you will. Tonight I’m driving home from the store. I turn right onto the main street home, and someone turns left at the same exact time. A someone who I couldn’t see because, well, it was 9:30 pm. And the giant extended cab pickup truck didn’t have any lights on. Bitch turned on his lights when he almost hit me. Thoughtful of him, I know.

• Bravo Reality TV shows distract me. First Kathy Griffin’s Life on the D List. Then Project Runway. Now America’s Next Top Model. And hi, Top Chef Chicago. I love how Top Chef always has to have some short, spiky-haired butch lesbian on the show. I love that show because I took chef classes for a year, and damn, it’s hard to try new things with food. It makes me harken back(I originally typed “bake”; I must be hungry) to days when I didn’t live with the Passive-Aggressive OCD Roommate of Destruction.

• There’s these posters and billboards going up all over LA that are totally distracting me. They say super creative things like “You suck Sarah Marshall” and “My mom always hated you Sarah Marshall.” The ads point you to a website, www.ihatesarahmarshall.com, which is a “blog” written by one Peter Bretter. Naturally, it’s not anything real. It’s for an upcoming movie. So instead of using standard previews, you get a glimpse of the movie via the dude’s blog, and also the devoted fan site to the dude’s estranged ex-girlfriend. It’s an interesting advertising tactic. And a distracting one, that’s for sure.

• My partner is coming to town tomorrow. I haven’t seen him since I moved here in January. I’m so excited that it’s taken me over half an hour to type this out (because I’m so distracted, obviously).

It’s currently my spring break, and much fun has been had for yours truly. My friend Vina has been in town and we’ve done all sorts of things: walked the beach on the windiest fucking day in the history of California, drove 200 miles and nearly saw some amazing sequoia, flew to the moons of Endor and were shrunken and then blasted into outer space and accosted by pirates and rescued by Indiana and photographed with a giant mouse (we went to Disneyland), made many enemies (bitches with the “fast passes” at Disneyland), visited Body Worlds, and more. I’ve taken pictures like they’re going out of style. I’ve driven over 800 miles in the last five days. And then, there was today.

Having run ourselves ragged, Vina and I decided to chill in my ROOM, because that’s all I seem to be renting at the moment. How do I know? Well, let’s see. Perhaps it’s intuition. Perhaps it’s the fact that that’s the part of the house I use that is snooped in the least (sort of). Or, maybe, the way all my items of daily use in the bathroom were shoved unceremoniously into the cabinet, to go along with a nasty handwritten note slipped under my bedroom door. The note opened like this:

“Phil,
As you can see I did hang your towel where it belongs, behind the door. The towel arrangement was not an option….”

Apparently, even though I’m renting a room (and bathroom, according to the original ad), I’m only a guest when it comes to USE of the bathroom. I can do whatever I want in my room, as far as aesthetics go. As in, I can hang up whatever shit I want to and the worst I’ll get from the Roommate of Death is a look of disdain. HOWEVER, the rest of the house is her domain. Including the tub of margarine that I got chewed out about for actually eating from (she confided that she never really uses it, but when she does, it better damn well be FULL). Maybe I should strike back by throwing away her jar of Mayonnaise that expired last September. For all her issues with me, I’m shocked she hasn’t noticed by now. I suppose if she did though, she’d go all crazy and throw out the entire refrigerator, so I’ll know when she does notice.

I remain optimistic, however. We had a cordial chat about the whole thing, wherein she told me I’m like a Caveman (capitalization mine), mostly because I know nothing about decorative towels. And I’m a total wimp because I don’t like using the special hook behind the door to hang my towel, never mind the fact that my towel never actually dries when I do use the fucker. Though I tried to set up my special palm tree toothbrush holder, that was rejected, too. It apparently doesn’t fit the “decor” (which is basically nondescript). I pleaded my case on a bullshit argument of preferring a toothbrush holder for sanitary purposes. I still lost, but not before she offered to buy me a new toothbrush container, just to fit the decor. I told her not to buy anything on my account, but I’m secretly hoping she does, because then that means my rent money is at least going toward something on my account.

But wait, I mentioned optimism and haven’t gotten to that part yet. The optimism is that I’m now actively searching for a new place to live. Because for all its perks, living with this Roommate of Death is driving me nuts. And I’m pretty sure SHE’S the one who’s crazy. Not to mention bipolar. An angry note in the morning, and then a fairly genial exchange about the whole thing in the evening? Wow.

Time to join the roommate finder websites again. Only I’ll have to assume a different identity/screen name because she’s probably still on there (soon to be wondering why she can’t hold onto any roommates). Good thing I deleted my profile once I moved in here. Sort of. Strike One, meet Strike Two. Maybe third time’s the charm.

We drove over 400 miles today. And nearly got to see some amazing sequoia trees. Upon our arrival, we discover that it costs a mere $20.00 to go through. Well worth it, obviously. Except we picked the wrong day to go, as the guard pointed out casually. “Well, you’ll need chains for your tires if you go up there. You can rent them down the way a few miles, or if you’re in the area, come back tomorrow, it’ll be better.” Bastard. I mean, “Sure, we’ll just drive the 200 miles home and then come back in the morning, no problem.” Dammit.

But we got some good pictures (sort of) along the way, and the drive itself was quite awesome. And considering that all we did was drive the whole day, I”m awfully exhausted.