We Have A Winner In The Guess The Amount Of The ER Bill Contest

The winner is:

jackie said... I'd guess - $1,655.00. I really want that shirt! Well Jackie, you must have been using The Secret because the bill was $1772, including the cat scan, surgery and aggravation.

Your profile isn't public so I'm guessing you're really Paris Hilton and only want the shirt because the word HOT is on it and you're looking to sue my sorry ass. Please take a number and get in line.

Email me at suzysoro@aol.com with the size you want and your snail mail.

And for the rest of you who are now going to leave a message saying that amount is reasonable, let me be the first to say, "Then you fucking pay it."

Congratulations and I'd like to thank everyone who participated in trying to give me a heart attack with your guesses. The shirt is normally $21.00 but for those of you who entered, I will sell it for $10.00.

End of chat.

I'm A Horrible Person

Because I took this picture while standing in line at the post office and made the guy behind me hold my stuff.

Without asking first, I put my packages on top of his packages. Like he was my assistant. He should be so fortunate. "All humor is based on cruelty."
~Al Capp

Christmas With A Crank

I've been so exhausted. I thought it was allergies but now I'm convinced someone from the McDonald's drive-thu replaced my blood with ketchup. I have four alert hours each day and then I want to curl up in the sink and sleep.

If only someone would do the dishes. And by someone I mean not me.

So on Christmas Day I was supposed to pick up Izzy's famous homemade Christmas dinner in Santa Monica and then drive it over to my sister's, about 5 minutes away.

I got in my car and realized I needed gas. Fuck.

I said Fuck on Christmas Day. You know, like I do every day. I drove to the gas station 2 blocks from my house and ran into my friend Kenny and his dog Sandy Blue. Kenny's the guy who told me he remembered me when I had a flat stomach.

Boy, you really can't unhear that.

He cleaned my windshield as I propped myself up against the gas pump and prayed for an oxygen IV. Then a drunk approached.

"Been drinking a little, Pat?" I asked.
"How did you know my name?"
"It's written on the cooler holding your beer."

Then a guy with an 110 pound RottyPit came by. His name was Claus. His dog's name was Snoop because Claus used to work for Snoop Dogg. Claus said he was a celebrity broker. I'd never heard of a celebrity broker so I asked him what that meant.
"Just Google 'Claus Britney Spears' and you can read all about it."

I drove 2 blocks before I thought, why go to Santa Monica? The party is RIGHT HERE in the Hollywood Hills with Pat the Drunk, Kenny the Sax Player, Claus the Celebrity Broker and Suzy the Sink Sleeper.

When I got to Lindy's I Googled Claus:

Feb 7 2008 3:14 PM EST
Britney Spears' Friend Denies Requesting Money For Rolling Stone Interview

'They contacted me with the offer,' Danish businessman Claus xxxxxxx insists...

Claus was a friend of Britney's. He allegedly requested 2 million for an interview with her. Rolling Stone denied offering it.

I COULD TOTALLY DO HIS JOB because apparently it does not require leaving the house.

Sidebar: How funny do those dogs look?

After dinner my sister and I watched screeners of It's Complicated and Up in the Air, both very average movies so I'm not sure what the hype is all about. We then watched 10 minutes each of Creation, Star Trek, and Coraline. Boring, Who Cares, and Who Cares, Jr.

By the end of the evening Lindy was explaining to me what a vaginaplasty was. So all in all? A typical Christmas.

End of chat.

Merry Christmas 2009

Hope you got to enjoy your Christmas as much as this guy did.

Here Comes Her 19th Nervous Breakdown

Three and a half weeks off Lexapro.

I took them because my hands were numb and I couldn't write, tie things or do dishes. I cried all the time. After a year my hands are still numb even though I can now write, do dishes and tie things. For the last 2 days I've cried. I haven't cried in a year. Even in my diminished capacity as a zombie I knew that wasn't good.

Looking back, there was always that one woman in every neighborhood who was rumored to have had a nervous breakdown. Other neighbors whispered about the "poor thing" and the husband who drove her to this neural wasteland in his gambling/cheating/drinking car.

Your parents told you to stay away from her. Otherwise what? She'd let you watch TV and eat mashed potatoes all day?

Now everyone can enjoy their nervous breakdown because of medication. It's unlikely anyone else can drive you to this brink of living. You can take a cab there all by yourself. Even Psychiatry no longer calls a nervous breakdown by that name. It's now known as a Major Depressive Episode.

It just sounds like a bad day at a Barney's sale.

We have medicated the shame of the nervous breakdown away into what the Urban Dictionary now refers to as a nervy b.

How are you supposed to enjoy someone's crazy eyes and bad hair days, not to mention the endless parade of mismatched pajamas and yelling at the mailman, if they're only having a nervy b?

They have taken the solemn rituals of falling completely apart and turned it into a rapper's name.

I object.

Some Of My Friends Are Mental

Ok, all of my friends are mental.

This card is from Brad Slaight. Of all the comics I've known, Brad has been one of the most supportive. I'm happy to call him a friend.

Check out his creativity in the link below, The 12 Cards of Christmas 2006. He is number 7. The rest of the cards are similarly funny and you'll probably recognize some of the famous people. And if you don't, you're not reading enough National Enquirer and I can't help you.

End of chat.

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

Anything I blog or tweet about is not sacred to me.

And I have blogged about some pretty serious stuff, like my Dad's seeming indifference to his children, his alcoholism, my alcoholism, my mother's ability to make me want to jump off a bridge within minutes of picking her up at the airport, the 3 year estrangement of my mother, sister and I and the impotent boyfriend I had for years.

There are also reams of private things I haven't blogged about and probably won't until I have big advertisers and feel guilty about not parceling out my weight in tragedy. Pay me enough and I WILL make you cry.

I know more people who don't blog, twitter etc than people who do. They not so secretly feel sorry for us, like we have no lives and are desperate for attention. They consider all the things I mentioned above very private. Tomato Tomahto.

Of all the blogs I read, I prefer the ones that bleed from the eyeballs right onto the page. I'm a ghoul. I'm not interested in recipes, knitting, playgroups or anything else involving mommy bloggers. What's that noise I hear? Wow, people unfollowing DOES make a sound.

How many people are not interested in my life? Plenty, I can assure you. But I do read many mom's blogs because they're as loony as I am StefanieHeidiAnnConnieKarenJessicaMarinkaEdenKyddrynJennAmy SusanDooceBloggessVODKAMOM.

This recent donnybrook over a woman's tweets regarding the death of her son shook up the online community. Another woman, who was online buying shoes when her 11 month old daughter drowned in a bathtub was charged by the police for felony negligence. She was not a blogger or a tweeter. Is there more support for us online narcissists than there is for EBayers?

"If it were not for you, I could mourn in peace."

This was the recent comment to the press from the mom currently under fire over the death of her 2 year old. But if it weren't for her tweets as a lot of it went down, we wouldn't know anything about it. Had she tweeted about it after the fact, there wouldn't have been so much controversy swirling around her actions in that situation.

What is private to one is just not private to another. We all have to live with ourselves and I know I speak for many when I say that's no fucking picnic.

And speaking of something I should keep private but am not going to: The results of the Guess The Amount of My E.R. Bill Contest:

The medical center sent me 2 letters. Asking for my bank records and tax returns and my mother's recipe for cheese souffle.

There was no bill attached to these requests.

These unethical assholes think they can first look at my financial records and THEN bill me? Shouldn't they bill for services rendered? If they were a post office, they'd be afraid for their lives every day.

So I've got all your guesses and there will be a winner. I can make this medical center public information and have a record of their devious behavior. For now, I will keep that private.

For now.

End of chat.

Look What I Found!

The Chinese baby!

Thank God this picture was from The Sears Portrait Gallery, which I believe is an oxymoron. Anyway, cheap cheap cheap.

I had caps put on my teeth after this photo. Leslie's hair is looking for the corral it came out of.

This is Gary Lazer. We wanted to try out a guy in the Divorced role. Didn't work out although he was very funny.
I was turned down for a Sear's card many, many years ago. How bad is your credit to be rejected by Sears and yet accepted by Neiman Marcus? I was laughing about it until my sister told me the Sear's card was the hardest credit card to get.

So many kinds of wrong.

This Should Have Been The Christmas Card. But Noooooo... Someone's Got A Husband

This is my business partner Leslie and her son John. He's now 17 and miraculously so is she.

The day we shot the 8 x 10 of our group Single, Married & Divorced, Leslie wanted the photographer to take a separate picture so she could put it on her Christmas card.

Sidebar: The baby in that photo was John. Over the years we kept changing the third member of our group so we kept getting new pictures. And as John grew we also needed to keep getting new babies. We were at Sears one day getting the cheaper-than-an-LA-photographer shot and John was too tall to hold comfortably. So we borrowed a baby from a woman standing in line. The baby was Chinese.

Because of John we traveled with a nanny. A nanny who kept yelling from the back row of our van "I think I might be having a heart attack" and "Has anyone seen my nitroglycerin?"

Very relaxing.

Leslie could not get John to stop crying after that first photo session. He was cranky and after he got into his Christmas clothes he started wailing. The photographer clicked away while I sat on the sidelines and laughed my ass off because I'm very supportive when my friends are in trouble.

Leslie's husband wouldn't let her put that shot on the Christmas card. That's right, wouldn't LET her.

When you do what we do for a living you're the boss all the time. We call our own shots and pray that if we marry we find someone who is our creative equal. Preferably someone with a sense of humor.

That's a lot harder than you think.

End of chat.

How You Can Tell Who Hates You At Christmas

This is a picture of one of my ex-friends. It's from 1991 and was taken with a Polaroid camera and no I don't think it's snowing just on her sweater.

That year I had visited her while she was making gingerbread houses. They were beautiful and complicated and I admired her craftsmanship and skill. She too was a comic and made these every year, passed them out to producers, agents and bookers. At the time I was handing out - what do you call it - oh yeah, nothing. I don't think those houses ever helped her because she wasn't that funny and didn't work very much. Know your audience, people.

There was one that sat apart from the others. She called it her practice house. It looked good to me but she said it had lots of mistakes on it. Upon closer inspection I saw all the 'mistakes' and it was definitely the slum lord property of her Candyland.

What did she do with the practice house?

I have one of those memories that although not eidetic, is just as useful. I remember others' throwaway lines and have surprised many by remembering them from when I was fifteen. Although at the time I said I was nine because I was already in show business and lying about my age.

She said she saved the practice house for someone she didn't like that much.

I think we all know where this is going.

That's right, she showed up at my house with a big smile on her face.

End of chat.

Some Things Need No Explanation. This Is Not One Of Those Things.

From the 101 Restaurant down the street. Their parking lot sidewalk was the one I tripped over.
I posted this deer picture last Xmas. It's from the front window of the 101 restaurant. This is what these people do instead of PAVING THEIR SIDEWALKS. I'm posting it again because I get very religious around the holidays and need to see as many blue balls as possible.
End of chat.

It's Everyone Can Bite Me Friday!

As someone who spent 20 years traveling for my career, I can say that more than a few of my exes were uncomfortable with my life choice as a standup comic. There was jealousy, low self-esteem issues and late night phone calls during which one guy told me: "Just go back to your hotel room. NOW." It was my birthday and I was celebrating somewhere in Canada with the rest of the tour. I did not go back to my hotel room. As if.

I never gave any man a reason not to trust me. I never cheated. But it was impossible to find a male comic who didn't. They would bring comedy club waitresses back to the condos, make me run interference between the wife and the girlfriend phone calls. There were a lot of divorces over the years. One impossible cheat stopped working the road and instead opened a strip joint in his home town.

Because that was soooooooooooooooo much better.

And yes, women cheat too so stop typing.

As Tiger's extra curricular activities worsen and last night's revelation about an additional 6 paid escorts via a Madam has surfaced, it doesn't even shock me. This picture did.
Elin was trying to extricate her husband from the right-hand back rear window, on the passenger side?

The back seat?

Please Elin, this story just makes blondes look dumber than the rest of the world already believes. So make us look smart by cleaning out Tiger's bank account. I'm pretty sure that's what we're known for.

End of chat.

If I Say You're Not Funny, You're Not Funny

Not really. I just needed a headline that would make you want to read this.

I GOT THE E.R. BILL.

But I'm afraid to open it. So instead, I thought I'd let you all guess how much it was and then the winner gets one of my Tee Shirts. The closest amount wins.

Also? I'm wearing a padded bra in this photo:

Also? I have a head in real life.

The Details:
1. I was in the ER about 2-3 hours
2. This was not a hospital, but a Medical Center
3. I got 6 stitches
4. I had a cat scan
5. I got a tetanus shot
6. I have no health insurance
7. I whined like a baby
8. Because I am a baby

I'll keep the contest open until next Wednesday, a week from today. Guess as many times as you want.

Also? I encourage cheating. So I'm hoping Tiger Woods will enter.

End of chat.

What Happens When You Don't Have Health Insurance

You end up at a place where no one understands you. My friend Kenny, who once told me he remembered me when my stomach was flatter, gave me a number to call. And no, it wasn't a plastic surgeon's office.

I needed to get my stitches out after 5 days so I went to the clinic behind Kenny's phone number.Hmmmm. Well, it was a woman's clinic and the last time I checked, I was half-woman half- metal parts.

As anyone can plainly see in the picture above, it looked uh, scary? As anyone can plainly see in the picture below, it looked like a bodega.

But it turned out to be a gynecologist, OB-Gyn clinic. I guess that creepy window above hid the speculum room. And the beer and snacks.

Below is a picture of where I was supposed to go, right across the street. Note the vertical sign on the corner of the building. It says ACNE and CELULITIS. They should've just put up a sign that said SUZY'S PAST and PRESENT.

Did I get the stitches out? No. They were not 'done', not 'cooked.' Now a normal person would have freaked out but not me. I was happy to dance out of there and only pay $25.00. Who are these magicians and why don't the rest of the medicos follow suit? Do doctors A. want us to die or B. just bankrupt us? Ooooh call on me teacher!! I know this answer, ooooh ooooh ooooh!!

I had to go back this past Saturday and the doctor, after sticking a fork in me, proclaimed me still not done. THEN I freaked out. And started babbling about not getting the dreaded stitch dots that only a narcissist like me even knows about.

So now I go back tomorrow and will cry like a baby when they pull them out. It will be my 14th scar. It would have been #15 but that one faded and there's no trace of it. The other ones are visible. Numero 15 was behind my ear. And nobody looks behind your ear.

Because life is endlessly annoying.

End of chat.

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

Remember when you could have an argument on the phone and then slam down the receiver and feel all justified about being right? Now if you get into a telephone fight, you just push a button and the evil person on the other end hears nothing. Not even a little click. My civil rights as an immature person are being violated.

I've watched a lot of rescues on TV and noticed the person being pulled into the hovering helicopter always has their arms crossed against their chest. So when my ambulance pulled up to the ER last Sunday, a firefighter asked me to cross my arms so he could carry me off the vehicle. So I did. He put his left arm around me, sort of under my butt slash thigh. Then he hoisted me off the truck until I was airborne.

I thought I was going to fall so with my right arm I began clawing at the fireman's shoulder and he started yelling "NO! NO! NO!"

Then I couldn't get my arm off him because I forgot the position I was in and thought, "Were they crossed from left to right or right to left? Is he trying to drop me? Am I dying?"

They save horses, baby elephants and really old people and I'm guessing I'm the only problem rescuee they've ever had. Look at the above photo. This person has no arms. Maybe the firefighters removed them while they were playing a real game of Hangman?

Have you seen the commercial where a man looks into the camera and says, "For Christmas this year, arrange an appointment for the woman in your life to get a pap smear."

And then this one: "For Hanukkah this year, arrange an appointment for the woman in your life to get a pap smear. It's just a schmear!"

WHAT THE FUCK? I want to see a couple of women talking about getting their men a prostate checkup. However, since men don't listen while we talk, I'm guessing this idea was thrown out fairly early on in the campaign.

Please don't compare the pooch to a schmear. My body is not your bagel.

And speaking of bad Christmas gifts, many years ago in NY, my boyfriend du jour got me a subscription to Life Magazine. I'm sure I'm not the only one who got something useless for Chrismakkuh. Start typing.

End of chat.

I Feel Sorry For Vodkamom

The poor thing has only got 1221 followers. If you're not reading her, why do you want to break my heart that way?

Maybe she'll offer you a drink.

I Really Need To Start Wearing Underwear

I want to thank Nurse Heidi (not her porn name) and Martha Jane in Honolulu for helping me on Sunday night. I've talked aboutHeidi being smarter than a doctor and she came off a late shift in her Vermont hospital and called me at 2:30 a.m. her time to tell me what to do. Martha Jane also gave me great suggestions and I did listen to them both so I'm grateful for such terrific friends. And to AnnsRants for calling me and all the tweets asking me if I had died yet. Touching.

After I got so many comments of concern I thought I needed to clarify a few things.

When the bill comes and I post the amount, then you can pity me. Because I'm a comedian first and a human being last, I was worried my post wasn't funny enough.

This all was actually a blessing. Because I didn't break my caps, my nose or any of my bones. PLUS, I've been worrying about my brain for 2 years. And not for the obvious reason, that I over think everything and the falls might have triggered a later episode that made me forget to obsess. THE HORROR!

I had fallen on pavement twice before and then once in my carpeted living room. The first one was when a car hit me while I was walking, the second was 5 months after last year's surgery when I forgot to notice my thigh muscles had ceased to exist because I hadn't walked in 5 months and the third one was when I tripped over a garden hose and AGAIN WASN'T WEARING UNDERWEAR and the building gardeners saw my dress shoot over my face, thus exposing the pooch. I'm just glad they didn't speak English because I'm sure they muttered in Japanese, "THE HORROR!"

So I've been concerned for two years and really need to stop watching so much House.

When I fell on Sunday I thought I was headed for surgery. And not the good kind where they make your boobs so huge you can use them as flotation device.

Since the cat scan showed zero trauma, it was a relief. Now I could save the 417 minutes that I worried about it and get down to the business of worrying about important things, like when I'm going to be able to wear stilettos again.

And why my mother was so nice to me after I got out of the hospital. What does she want?

End of chat.