Sunday, May 29, 2011

Memorial Day For My Dad


The caisson carrying my Dad's ashes into Arlington Cemetery, Washington D.C.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

I Met Oprah And Scared Robert Redford

Back in the 90's I was in a movie called Indecent Proposal. The director hired five comedians to keep the principals laughing between scenes because the shoot days were long. I got assigned to English comic slash actor Billy Connolly. The comedians had no lines, got day player rates and all the food they could steal for later. Unlike the others, I didn't steal any food. I borrowed it. As you can see I'm very honest if Craft Services is reading this.

Robert Redford and Demi Moore were in the film and Oprah had come to Los Angeles to interview Demi. Oprah's team asked Redford if they could question him about Demi but he declined. The only reason I know that is because Oprah told me the story while she rolled her eyes and said, "I guess since the interview isn't about him he's not interested."

I had talked to Redford the second day I was on set. He was about 20 feet ahead of me and I yelled, "Mr. Redford!" He turned around and I made a dumb remark. He laughed and stopped walking long enough to make a dumb remark back. And if I didn't have Alzheimer's I'd remember what I said and what he said. I'm sure it was brilliant, though. Not him, me.

I saw him the next day and said "Hey!" when he walked by. He smiled and said "Hey" back and I wish I could remember what we both really said. Other comics with me that day and the day before thought I was mental for talking to him as if I knew him. Well, he was in my movie, wasn't he? That means I knew him. The third time he spotted me he quickened his step. Away from me. Whatever.

The arrival of Oprah was a big deal. She wasn't nearly as famous as she is now but her arrival still got everyone buzzing.

I, of course, positioned myself to run into her. She stopped and said hi to three of us blocking her path, told us about Redford and I launched into this story:

"I'm a comic. I travel a lot and get stuck in condos with male comics. I always watch your show every day I'm on the road and this story happens over and over: The first day the male comics always find me sprawled on the couch with the remote control in a death grip and the TV turned to Oprah.
"Is that all that's on?"
"YES IT IS."
Then they watch a few minutes and wander away.

The second day, same scenario. Only now they stay and watch for about 10 minutes before they wander away.

The third day the men yell out to me, "Hey Suzy, you're missing Oprah." By the time I get to the couch they're already watching. And they don't wander away."

Oprah laughed.

Why do I remember this story and not the conversations with Robert Redford? My Alzheimer's kicked in later in my career, apparently.

That afternoon we were in a scene and Oprah was standing off to the side, watching Demi and Redford. I was standing by Billy Connolly, telling dirty jokes and trying to get him to laugh and disrupt the filming. As you can seem I'm very easy to work with if any directors are reading this. I glanced over at Oprah and she waved to me. Only I thought she was waving to someone else so I looked behind me. No one.
Oprah waved at me again. STOP FUCKING WITH ME, WINFREY. I looked behind me. No one.

Finally Oprah pointed to her chest, her very ample chest, and then pointed at me, stabbing her chest twice and then towards my direction twice. She WAS waving at me.

I still looked behind me before I waved back.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

L.A. Sign Of The Times #80

National Director of Listen to Your Mother and person who mixes gold with silver until I arrive and yell at her to change, Ann Imig.



Seriously, who mixes gold with silver? And lives to talk about it?

Monday, May 23, 2011

Sometimes My Brain Is On Pause

Saturday I was lying on my couch waiting to die, waiting for the Velocirapture to swallow me whole. And watching a movie called The Family Man starring Nicolas Cage and Tea Leoni. I spent most of the movie trying to keep track of Nicolas Cage's hairpieces. He had more styles and colors than a 25 year fast-forwarded clip show of Oprah's hair.



There's a moment in the movie when Cage and Don Cheadle, who plays an angel, are in a car and Cage is confused about what's happening to him. Cheadle tells him he has to figure it out. Cage asks him why he just can't tell him what's going on but Cheadle persists. "Let it come to you. It will come to you."

This is how my life has run its course. The Answer always comes to me. It pops into my head and I instantly "Know" it's the right thing to do.

Sidebar: This offer not valid with boyfriends.

It happened in Paris, it happened in New York. Both times I was miserable but then I heard The Answer and off I went. But as unhappy as I've been living at my present address here in LA, I haven't heard The Answer. That calm inner voice of The Higher Self. The voice telling me what to do, where to go. It once told me the password of someone's email account. It often gives me the result of someone else's problem. I depend on it so much that it writes the majority of my punchlines. It's never been wrong.

Sidebar Again: This offer still not valid with boyfriends. I repeat this for my own benefit.

But lately I've been obsessing about The Answer. Where is it? WHERE IS IT? And then I take a breath or seven and remember that all the other times it came to me, I didn't expect it. It just showed up.

So I'm watching Don Cheadle, one of my top 5 favorite actors ever, tell Nic Cage that the answer WILL COME. It will come, he repeats. And as much as I've been fixated over this very issue, I knew it was a message I was meant to hear as messages appear in many forms. Movies, a chance encounter, a phone call. We've all read The Celestine Prophecy, correct?

Then my phone rang.

I looked at the caller ID.

Area code from St. Petersburg, Florida. The town my father died in. The caller hung up immediately, didn't leave a message. But they didn't need to.

I heard it loud and clear.

I spent Sunday with my sister. I told her the story and at the end of it she burst into tears. "That was Dad helping you out."

Yes, I know. So, thanks Dad.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

L.A. Sign Of The Times #79

Local morning anchor and funny woman Jillian Reynolds.


I pinched this off her twitter account and asked permission to post it and got no answer back. So it's like when you were in high school and asked your parents for twenty dollars and they didn't answer becauseyouwerewhisperingitupstairsintoyourpillow so you just went ahead and took it out of their wallets.

After they'd gone to bed.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

A Very Sexy Giveaway

Eden Fantasys gave me a $50 gift card and I'm giving it to one of you!  Go to their website or click on their banner ad on my sidebar and see all the hundreds of items they have. You can get lost in there. Okay, I got lost in there.

There is great stuff for both men and women. So leave a comment telling me why you, your husband or your parish priest deserves some souped up sexy time. Go easy on the priest toys.

You've got until Saturday to enter and I'll announce the winner next Monday. I'll use the number choosy computerized thingamajig so leave as many comments as you want.

(I'll have no idea what you ordered so don't worry)

Thursday, May 05, 2011

Sometimes They Give Me The Opposite Of Money

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

The SEALS Are So Elite Everyone Wants To Be One. Except Me. I Can't Swim.

This was originally posted in 2010 as One Minute You're Fine And The Next Minute The Internet Is Ruining Your Life. But in light of the recent heroism of the Navy SEALS in Pakistan, I thought I'd post it again.

I first met David Silbergeld in New York. I was working for a co-op developer when David came into our office with his supermodel wife Mel Harris, who would be named one of America's 10 most beautiful women by Harper's Bazaar in 1989.



They bought a huge co-op from my boss and I assumed I would never see them again.

A little over a year later my sister Lindy was living with me and told me she'd met this great guy. A divorced man named David Silbergeld.

Same guy.

One day I came home to an empty apartment and when I walked into the bedroom I heard my sister whispering from inside one of the closets.

"Snookie, is that you?" She always called me Snookie and I always called her Bijou. I won't repeat the names we call each other today but one begins with an A and the other one begins with an A.

I opened the door and she was crouched on the floor with her hand over my dog's mouth.

"David called earlier and I screened the call. Somehow he got upstairs even though I didn't buzz him in and he was fooling around with the door knob and you know he was a Navy SEAL and those guys can infiltrate Fort Knox and I know he was trying to get into the apartment and somebody's DOG wouldn't shut the fuck up."

But David was not outside or anywhere else in the building. He never called Lindy again.

By the late 80's his ex-wife Mel was on a show called Thirty Something. Had the internet existed back then I would have read that she and David had only stayed married for a year. And that he had no job and no money. It apparently took her a very short time to figure out why he had married her. And they say models are dumb.


One day I read an article in The New York Post about a small plane flying into Teeterboro Airport in New Jersey with the lights off. The pilot was David Silbergeld.

The Feds arrested him upon touchdown. He had an arsenal of weapons in his waiting car and went to prison for possession of 610 pounds of cocaine worth $200 million. The New York Times reported it as the largest drug-smuggling bust in the northeastern United States.

One day I got a call from him. He had served his time and wanted me to meet him and some of his friends for dinner. At dinner I asked him about prison but he didn't want to talk about it. We had a great meal, a great time and then David disappeared.

I didn't know much about the SEALS until 1997, when the movie G.I. Jane was released. I had no idea they were, along with other Special Forces the Rangers, Green Berets and Delta Force, considered the elite of the military branches. They're the people I want to rescue me if I'm ever caught by pirates off the coast of Somalia. You don't know; I MIGHT GO THERE.

A few years ago I decided to Google David and found this:

Silbergeld's fictional SEAL war record, which earned him full disability pay of more than $2,300 per month, along with a prison-earned doctorate from a diploma mill allowed him to become a Pennsylvania community-college history professor and contributor to National Defense magazine. He also set up a business that defrauded the U.S. government through sales of night-vision equipment. At his sentencing he pleaded for leniency — by pointing to his bogus military record.

By now the Internet was helping to close in on all the thousands of fake elite Special Forces that had sprung up around the world. David was being investigated and was subsequently fired from the university in Pennsylvania. He must have known the trail of felonies would now follow him wherever he went. I'm sure he had run out of plans. And ego.

He was found in a town square in Delaware sitting on a bench, a bullet through his brain and the gun dangling from his hand.

One Minute You're Fine And The Next Minute The Internet Is Ruining Your Life

I first met David Silbergeld in New York. I was working for a co-op developer when David came into our office with his supermodel wife Mel Harris, who would be named one of America's 10 most beautiful women by Harper's Bazaar in 1989.

They bought a huge co-op from my boss and I assumed I would never see them again.

A little over a year later my sister Lindy was living with me and told me she had met this great guy. A divorced man named David. David Silbergeld.

Same guy.

One day I came home to an empty apartment and when I walked into the bedroom I heard my sister whispering from one of the closets.

"Snookie, is that you?" She always called me Snookie and I always called her Bijou. I won't repeat the names we call each other today but one begins with an A and the other one begins with an A.

I opened the door and she was crouched on the floor with her hand over my dog's mouth.

"David called earlier and I screened the call. Somehow he got upstairs even though I didn't buzz him in and he was fooling around with the door knob and you know he was a Navy SEAL and those guys can infiltrate Fort Knox and I know he was trying to get into the apartment and somebody's DOG wouldn't shut the fuck up."

But David was not outside or anywhere else in the building. He never called Lindy again.
By the late 80's his ex-wife Mel was on a show called Thirty Something. Had the internet existed back then I would have read that she and David had only stayed married for a year. And that he had no job and no money. It apparently took her a very short time to figure out why he had married her. And they say models are dumb.

One day I read an article in The New York Post about a small plane flying into Teeterboro Airport in New Jersey with the lights off. The pilot was David Silbergeld.

The Feds arrested him upon touchdown. He had an arsenal of weapons in his waiting car and was carrying cocaine. He went to prison for possession of 610 pounds of cocaine worth $200 million. At the time The New York Times reported it was the largest drug-smuggling bust in the northeastern United States.

One day I got a call from him. He had served his time and wanted me to meet him and some of his friends for dinner. I asked him about it but he didn't want to talk about prison. We had a great meal, a great time and then David disappeared.

I didn't know much about the SEALS until 1997, when the movie G.I. Jane, starring Demi Moore, was released. I had no idea they were, along with other Special Forces the Rangers, Green Berets and Delta Force, considered the elite of the military branches. They're the people I want to rescue me if I'm ever caught by pirates off the coast of Somalia. You don't know; I MIGHT GO THERE.

A few years ago I decided to Google David and found this: Silbergeld's fictional SEAL war record, which earned him full disability pay of more than $2,300 per month, along with a prison-earned doctorate from a diploma mill allowed him to become a Pennsylvania community-college history professor and contributor to National Defense magazine. He also set up a business that defrauded the U.S. government through sales of night-vision equipment. At his sentencing he pleaded for leniency — by pointing to his bogus military record.

By now the Internet was helping to close in on all the thousands of fake elite Special Forces that had sprung up around the world. David was being investigated and was subsequently fired from the university in Pennsylvania. He must have known the trail of felonies would now follow him wherever he went. I'm sure he had run out of plans. And ego.

He was found in a town square in Delaware sitting on a bench, a bullet through his brain and the gun dangling from his hand.

Monday, May 02, 2011