Well, well – Look who’s come sauntering in like everything’s normal. If it isn’t little ol’ me. I think I can just waltz back in here after having been missing for days and expect you to just read my blog as though nothing’s happened? Is that it?

Well, I have another thing coming. You’re not some screensaver I can leave on, perpetually cycling a kaleidoscope of flying toasters while I go out and have a life! This is unacceptable! I mean, am I a blogger or not?

STOP!

You want the truth? Is that it? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH.

Actually, you can, but I love that line. YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH. It’s so over-the-top. I’m totally going to say it to my future kids whenever possible.

“Dad? How do erasers work?”

“You wanna know how erasers work, Job Jr.? Well I’m not telling, because YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH.”

I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking I’ll make a terrible father, but it’s not true – I will totally make sure my kids are assigned to the best foster homes available.

Truth is, I’ve been kind of cheating on you. I have another writing gig. I was hired by here!TV, a cable station of all-gay programming, to write a low budget disaster film. It’s in pre-production now, but I’m not going to give you anymore details. Not until it’s available on the shelves of your local Amoeba Music movie department. And maybe not even then. A girl has to maintain her mystery, after all.

But writing this script has eradicated all my time outside of Amoeba, for which I apologize. Normally I like to spend my free time working on this blog; that way it’s like I NEVER LEAVE AMOEBA, but the cold, cruel world is seeping into my magic bubble of retail music wonderland.

I’ll talk more about the process of writing-for-hire in some future entry. For now, let’s focus on my recent past…

…But not the parts where I pick my nose, eat salad or have sex with Seth Rogen because, while they are all important aspects of what makes me who I am, they are very personal, intimate and kind of gross. Especially the eating salad part.

Last weekend, I took my boyfriend Corey to the 7^th Annual Nevada City Film Festival.

Nevada City is my hometown. Technically, I was raised on Oahu, but I “blossomed” in Nevada City (which is a pretty way to say it’s where I first tried drugs and got laid).

Nevada City is in California. It used to be called simply “Nevada” until 1861, when some plagiarizing misfits couldn’t be bothered to come up with an original name for the 36^th State of the Union. The “City” was added henceforth to avoid being confused with the Silver State; a good idea which has never, ever worked. Ever. They should have just re-named our town “Nevada in California” or “City as Opposed to State of Nevada” or “Gladys Knight and the Pips City”. Anything would have been better, but as it is, we love it. It just means that, when introducing the town’s name to people (as I am here) we have to clarify that it’s not in Nevada (as I have hopefully done).

The Nevada City Film Festival was started by my pals and, I guess, myself, just after we took over the local art-house cinema, The Magic Theatre, and transformed it from grimy, scabies-infested grindhouse and into the saucy, organic popcorn serving, Victorian parlor feeling, womb of deliciousness it remains to this day.

This year, the festival directors, Jason Graham, (who once filmed me naked for my audition tape for “Shortbus” in which I did a one-man, nude parody of Björk’s film “Dancer in the Dark”) Jeffrey Clark, (who introduced me to absinthe) and David Nicholson (with whom I don’t have a shared history riddled with deviousness… yet) amped the humble Festival up a notch (or, in corporatenewagese, took it to a ‘whole new paradigm’).

The Festival took place all over, in various theatres, hotels and assorted buildings of Gold Rush history. For me and Corey, this meant a variety of locations in which we opted out of the actual film-viewing, in lieu of tossing back Bloody Marys and Old Fashioneds with the Festival staff.

Nevada City is a drinking town. The only establishments open late at night are saloons, and locals can often be found inside. Every clique has its usual haunt. For my peers, the bar of choice is now at the National Hotel. Its décor is that of the fanciest sets from “Deadwood” – red wallpaper, antique oil paintings, original, carved-wood banisters and moldings. Really quite rad. My clique shares this turf with the National’s other regulars: senior citizens who congregate there to listen to country-western as performed by a one-man band with his drum machine. If you’re lucky, you’ll catch his stirring rendition of “YMCA”. If you’re not drunk already, you’ll wish you were then.

Luckily (or strategically) the bulk of the Festival’s daily panels were located at the National Hotel, so the bar stayed close at hand. Highlights of the panel included a Q&A with the creative minds behind lonelygirl15 and Mad TV celebrity, Crista Flanagan, who spoke about her Internet side-project-turned-phenomena, Hope is Emo, as seen below...