Like Erin Brockovich, but with more clothing.

In case you wondered.

9: number of years I'd been alive when I produced my first magazine; it was called Superkid! and featured completely fictional interviews with celebrities like Ricky Schroder and Christopher Reeve, as well as a fashion feature (in marker) on the return of miniskirts and the gorgeousness of cuffed suede booties

1: number of times I have portrayed a circa-1750s, pregnant good-time girl onstage

1: number of issues of Superkid! that was published, as hand-drawn magazines are a real pain to reproduce

2: number of people in the audience one night when the theater company I started with friends was doing a run of The Acting Lesson--and one of the two people was my mom

1: number of times I have told a massage client that he had 30 seconds to get dressed and get out, and to try the back of the LA WEEKLY for the type of massage he evidently wanted

2: number of fistfights I got into with boys on my tenth birthday

2: number of fistfights I got into with boys on my tenth birthday which I lost

1: number of older brothers named Bob I made up in the third grade

5: number of men named Bob who have been influential in my life (long after the third grade)

3: number of instruments I play/have played

7: number of names I currently answer to (Mexican families are nothing if not inventive with the sheer volume of nicknames they heap on a person; not to mention the whole changing-my-legal-name thingie)

Minutia Bite #4

It's a brazenly gorgeous summer day in 1978. Warm sun, light breezes. The car I'm riding in, along with my mother, my brother and one or two of my aunts, seems immense. I am three years old. Everyone is happy. We're going to the beach! The radio is playing Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" and it seems like the happiest song on earth. It matches the way we go up and down the hilly street to find parking. The grown-ups are laughing and joking with me. Later, the drive home will be crunchy with sand and soft with exhaustion. Much, much later--years later--I will hear the song on the radio and marvel at the flood of nearly tangible memory.

Minutia Bite #3

CAKE's "The Distance" contains this line: She's hoping in time/That her memories will fade, which, despite my reverent affection for the song, sets my teeth on edge. Bear with me for a moment. Ahem.

Is the girl hoping in time? Is she floating around in some sort of space-free, time-only continuum, hoping? Or is she hoping that, as time goes on, her memories will fade? Gentle reader, I propose that Mr. John McCrea and his co-horts meant to guide us toward the latter. Dear Mr. McCrea, could the song not have said She's hoping that, in time/Her memories will fade? Absolutely nothing would have suffered. You would even have gotten a tiny wee hit of syncopation in there with the new wording, a little spice, if you will. Do you see? Everyone would have been a winner that way! But no. Instead, we have this fantastic song with this very troublesome bit of wording that stops my brain in its tracks, surgically removes the dopamine.

For these, to quote a Smiths song lyric from 1987, these are the things that kill me.

Minutia Bite #2

The moment RIGHT before the movie starts, sitting in the dark, in front of a giant screen, when the lion is roaring or the drums are rat-a-tat-tat-ing, or what have you. A new story is about to unfold! It's a delicious excitement that never gets old for me.

Minutia Bite #1

It's one syllable in David Bowie's "The Bewlay Brothers," but the way he pronounces the final word in the line "With our backs on the arch" just does something to me. He sounds like he's taking a bite out of something delicious and painful.