Sasha Is a Monster

And I’m an iPhone user. And I like the iPhone. Quite a bit. AT&T? Is a different story.

Thanks Andrew!

This is actually way better if you just listen without watching the video, and let the words sink in all by themselves.

My luck was accentuated by my living in a market system that sometimes produces distorted results, though overall it serves our country well. I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. In short, fate’s distribution of long straws is wildly capricious.

Warren Buffett, in his letter pledging 99% of his wealth to charity.

It’s a fascinating paragraph — my favorite of the whole letter — and I can’t stop thinking about it. He’s right, of course, in that the acts of saving lives on the battlefield and challenging and shaping the intellect of our youth are far nobler than detecting an over- or under-priced stock with the consistency that Buffett’s demonstrated, and that those acts are not rewarded financially to the extent that they ought to be. But there are also far more people capable of those acts than Buffett’s.

What’s more, if the same number of people who have saved a life on the battlefield could consistently detect and act upon the mispricing of securities, securities would not be mispriced. Buffett’s fortune — and I’ll agree that luck is involved — is not so much a factor of the particular skill with which he was born, but in fact a direct result of the lack of that skill in others. In Buffett’s case, it’s not so much that he drew a long straw; it’s that everyone else in the game drew a short straw.

It’s neither here or there, really, and it has nothing to do with the fact that this man is a brilliant philanthropist and human being, but the logic in that paragraph doesn’t quite follow, right?

You guys, God lives in Rocky Point.

That statement would probably be a hard sell to the women sitting around in the downtown area begging you to let them braid your hair for $10 (braids are “trenza” in Spanish, I learned, because while they were desperately trying to feed their family, I forced them to teach me Spanish words), but I just absolutely fell in love.

I went down there with Kevin, who you may remember from the incident with the $13,000 puppy. Now, I’ve been to Rocky Point many times. It’s about an hour south of the Arizona border, and so for students at Arizona State who are not of drinking age, it is basically a weekend home. That was my memory of Rocky Point — crowded, dirty clubs, tequila shots and hangovers. I haven’t been back since.

Kevin’s family owns a gorgeous home in a beautiful area about fifteen minutes outside of downtown. There are no crazy college kids, no one trying to shove tequila shots down your throat — there is basically no one at all. This is the view that greets you when you walk through the front door.

So, um, yeah. That water you see is the Sea of Cortez, which is essentially bath water this time of year. And I don’t know if it’s the salinity of the water or what, but you can just float on your back for hours and the water holds you up. It’s not a struggle at all. I spent hours in that water, just closing my eyes and letting the currents move me up and down. Sometimes it was steady, sometimes it was intense. But if I stayed relaxed and didn’t fight it, I always managed to keep my head above water. It felt like a metaphor for life. My interaction with the water there was a spiritual experience. Everything about it felt like God was present.

Kevin has a couple ATVs, too, so we did a lot of riding around on the sand dunes. I remember when Kevin first put me on an ATV a few years ago, out in the desert in Arizona, and I panicked and cried a little bit and ran it into a ditch and then ran as far away from that awful contraption as possible. This time, I vowed to put that fear aside. I listened carefully to his instructions and I didn’t panic, and by the end of the weekend I was like an old pro on that thing. I just felt so badass riding it through the dunes in the hot sun, without a building in sight, like some apocalyptic femme fetale, Lori Petty-style. I had a vision of shaving my head and insisting Megan Fox play me in the film version.

I got some much-needed distance from all the attachments of real life. I cleared my head. I appreciated the planet. I got some perspective. I read a bunch of the real estate pamphlets and fantasized about buying my own house there. It was perfect, perfect, perfect. I cannot wait to go back.

I died at this. Just died.

Hi!

I am a regular reader of your blog, evilbeetgossip.film.com. Unfortunately an ad for Liberty Mutual on your site’s sidebar is placed very strangely - looks like a car is crashing into a post box over Gaga’s head. I have attached a screenshot of the same.

This is just for laughs, I don’t think you need to do anything about it. Just a funny circumstance that I thought you would appreciate.

And, on that note, I’m out! I’m on vacay for the next few days. Heading off to Mexico to be a bandito! Check ya later. xo

First off: Here’s a pic from the Fremont Fair parade on Saturday. We got there a little late, and it was IMPOSSIBLE to get a decent view from the crowds on the street, and Mieka and I spotted a roof party. I was like “We need to be at that roof party.” Mieka was like “But how?” and I was like “Follow me.” And then I pulled out all the tricks I’d learned living in LA and I marched into the building and up the stairs, through two separate apartments and past the sign that said “VIP ONLY” until we were one of like 10 people allowed up on the roof. No one even questioned us. Mieka was like “Holy shit how did you do that?” and I was like “PRACTICE.” Nice to know I’ve still got skillz.

Also: Jason is doing well today. I am still living out of his living room, with Leo at my side, but he’s stopped drinking and he’s spent the day in bed vomiting and miserable, but sober. I am videotaping much of it. I am going to make a little video collage for him. It will not be on YouTube. But I think I will set it up to play on his laptop every two days or so, so that any time he thinks about drinking this little video of him puking and shaking will pop up on his screen. He is surprisingly cool about me filming all this. He hasn’t complained once. I think he wants to prevent a relapse even more than I do. I think he’s willing to try even my crazy videotaping-your-withdrawal approach.

From the bottom of my heart, though, thank you all for your thoughts and prayers and comments and emails and Facebook messages and EVERYTHING. They made me feel so much less alone in all of this.

Also, and I can’t talk about this much because the legal proceedings are ONGOING, but today God did something really, really awesome for me. Like, unbelievably awesome. Like, so perfectly timed and elegant and unpredictable that it could not, statistically, have been anything other than an Act of God. (Maybe I’ll tell you guys the details when all the legalities are resolved so that you can check my math on that.) I never really lose faith in God, but oftentimes I forget it. I get so lost in my own dramas that I forget I’m just a simple little player in God’s world. That the plan is His. This past week has been like that. I have moved into my own head and out of God’s world. And then, all of a sudden, God does something where it’s like “BAM! I EXIST! BOO-YAH.” Today was like that. God threw me a softball and I hit it out of the ballpark.