Dear God I Own Brown Pants

Like that one New Year's Eve when I was at a party and stood up at midnight to kiss someone, only to discover I was the only single woman there and all the couples were kissing, thus hangs my brown pants in the closet. Alone in a sea of black. A sea of black clothes kissing.

And not just any brown pants. Brown polyester pants. Jaclyn Smith's brown polyester pants. From K-Mart.

Can death be far behind?

It was 2008 and I had to go to India for surgery. Because of extreme pain I couldn't make it off the couch to the kitchen without 2 Vicodin and a walker. So I had put on weight. Up to 140 pounds from my constant 128. Nothing fit. How was I going to sit on a plane for 22 hours wearing the only thing that would fit me, four towels bound together with electrical tape?

So I dragged myself out to shop. There was a K-Mart over the hill in the San Fernando Valley. I went straight to the Overweight Section, which takes up about 97% of the store, and bought my brown no-wrinkle Jaclyn Smith pants. "No love will be lost when I donate these to The Salvation Army," I said to myself while I leaned on a store employee crying because I now owned brown polyester pants.

But when I got home I realized I didn't have anything to go with brown pants so I went to Ross and bought a matching cotton shirt. "Oh won't this make a well coordinated outfit for some nice person who loves the color brown?" I said to myself as I leaned on a store employee crying because I was now buying cheap brown tops to go with cheap brown pants.

Here I am in India wearing my K-Mart pants, my Ross shirt and risking my life in one of their pedi-cabs,  made out of plastic and spit. The necklace is from Planet Blue in Malibu and cost twice as much as the pants and shirt together. Notice how the pants appear to be riding up my leg. It turns out a big butt takes up a considerable amount of pant.

You really do learn something new every day.
I still have the outfit. I gave the necklace to my mom. And at 133 pounds and holding, I still wear the outfit. I miss the necklace.

End of chat.

More Boobs From My Sister

Not The One With Rock Hudson And Doris Day

When my sister Lindy first started modeling in New York she got a lot of different jobs. But when she booked her first cover shoot I was very proud of her even though I'd never heard of the magazine.

She called our Dad, who was living in Florida, and excitedly told him she had been chosen to do not one but two covers for a magazine called Pillow Talk. (not this one) She gave him the date the first one would hit newstands and then forgot all about it.

The day the magazine came out Lindy's agent called to tell her and she ran to the nearest kiosk. She came home and waved it in my face and said OH NO OH NO OH NO!!! I'd never seen her so excited.

But it wasn't exactly excitement.

It was more dread.

And fear.

Of the loss of her inheritance:
By the time she called Dad to say the magazine was NOT repeat NOT repeat NOT EVER coming out he had already bought it.

Thank God the next month they only used her body:


End of chat.

Public Speaking Isn't For Everyone

I'm no stranger to surgery. I'd like to say it's because I'm married to Dr. Oz and every day on the way to meet him for lunch at the hospital I stop off and spend all his money.

But no, I've had surgery for real reasons. None of which included a lawsuit and a huge cash settlement but that's probably just poor planning on my part.

Frankly, I'd hate to die on an operating table because they say when you leave your body you can look down and see the doctors working on you. I bet that's not what they're doing. They're probably going through your pockets.

During my last surgery, right before I went under, I remember the doctor holding a scalpel, the florescent lights and the smell of burning flesh. NIGHTMARE.

Do you know how bad you look in florescent lights?

In the operating room they make you count back from 100 when they give you the anesthesia. They make you think you're going to be awake for a really long time. Meanwhile you go 100, 99. Out! Why don't they just make you count backwards from 2?

When I woke up I drifted into consciousness and heard the loudspeaker crackle alive.

"Code Blue on the fir... (muffled voice) Gina, is that a 1 or a 7? A 7, realllly? Code Blue... (muffled voice) Gina, that's blue, right? Not purple?"

"(muffled voice) There is no Code Purple."

"(muffled voice) There isn't? Maybe I'm thinking of blue and red make purple. Like the blood mixed with the blue, you know?"

"This is Gina, ignore all previous announcements except this one: CODE BLUE ON THE SEVENTH FLOOR."

Then a nurse came in and said "I'm going to have to attach you to a drip." And I'm thinking, wouldn't I heal a lot faster if they hooked me up to a cool person? She gave me my pain meds and I cheeked the pills and saved them for later because double dosage later always trumps single dosage now.

Have you ever dropped a pill on the floor and then picked it up and taken it anyway? And someone will inevitably say, "Ooooh, that was on the floor." How do we know those pills weren't on the floor before they got in the bottle? There's probably a guy over at Squibb sitting on the floor going, 18, 19, 20.

I know you're supposed to take all the medicine a doctor gives you but it's better to have extra medication lying around. Once I ran out of sugar and had to put Cherry Nyquil on my Cream of' Wheat. Because I'm a genius.

A study says married men don't need as strong an anesthetic as married women. For women they give them intravenous Valium and for men they make them listen to a tape of their wives asking them to take out the garbage.

End of chat.

L.A. Sign Of The Times #67

A paparazzo waits in his car outside of my Hollywood Starbucks. For sitting in his car polishing his camera lens he gets to sit on his ass wearing Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses. Poor bastard didn't even know I was taking his picture. **




**to see the rest of the series click on the label below this post. I take strange pictures of Los Angeles. Because I am strange.

She Was A Sinner. She Was A Whore.

I don't have children. But I grew up around them.

I'm not a parent. But I grew up around them.

Is bullying someone's fault? Shitty children? Shitty parents?

When I was in junior high the girl down the street, Susan, got pregnant. The neighborhood buzz was that she and her parents were to be shunned. Her parents had done a miserable job raising this child. She was a sinner. She was a whore.

She was my friend.

And this is where the story splits in two and travels different roads until last year.

I remembered my mom told me to go to Susan's house and walk with her to school, just like I did every day. I always said I was lucky to have a mother who was not judgmental about that kind of thing. I also remembered that Susan's mother came by our house after dark one day and thanked my mother for her kindness. I'd repeated that story a million times.

Last year I was talking to mom about Susan. I wondered what could have happened to her. They sent her away to a girl's compound where unwed mothers, as they were then referred to, could have their babies. Susan's mother brought the child home and raised it as her own. We never saw Susan again.

I thanked mom for telling me not to avoid her.

My mother said she didn't believe she'd done that much. I asked her how she could think that and she replied, "Well, the day you came to me and said you were going to walk her to school, just like you always did, I realized that for you it was a matter of standing up for your friend and you really didn't care what anyone thought of you for it. So I didn't stop you. And when Susan's mother came by and thanked you for your kindness, I was very proud of you."

All these years I'd thought it was my mom who did the right thing, but it was me. She'd just agreed with my decision. Even if she hadn't I would have done it anyway. Throughout school I was always first in my class in the headstrong division.

Is a child born with an inner compass for right and wrong and even with their parents influence one way or the other, do they still feel that moral imperative? I believe there are good kids everywhere and some who aren't. I'm not sure parenting of any kind can help a natural born asshole.

End of chat.

Fall In Love With This Guy

Since I began the Teeshirter Program, not to be confused with The Betty Ford Center Program, in March of 2010, I've been surprised by what readers send in for their month riding shotgun on my sidebar.

This month is no different.

David McGrievey, the extremely popular blogger from An Illustrated Life, or as I like to refer to him, That Guy Who Draws Stuff Without Photoshop Unlike Other Bloggers Who Shall Remain Nameless, took time out from his very busy schedule of bar-hopping in the east village and making fun of badly dressed people in Bloomingdale's to draw me this:

I hope you're impressed.

I was.

Want your own free month of advertising that's not really free because you have to buy a shirt? Then click on the sidebar and order one. I'm currently booked through December so January is open.

If you're bored with old school blogging try the more fun blogging platform, Tumblr. I've started a blog over there on all things standup and other bloggers like Web Savvy Mom, Juli Ryan and Aunt Becky are over there too. It takes seconds to start your own and it's so idiot proof you can make your own template, change colors, load videos and pictures and just about anything else in no time at all. And the best thing about it? NO COMMENTS REQUIRED. And no one puts up long-ass posts about growing heirloom tomatoes or their vacation with pirates in Somalia, although I might actually read that.

The internet world has moved on. Again.

End of chat.