The Sexy Sweaters Of New Year's Eve

In 1999 I was performing in a standup show I co-created, produced and starred in called Single, Married & Divorced. That year we were booked in South Carolina to do two shows on New Year’s Eve at the Comedy House in Savannah and Columbia. They had comics at both clubs and on New Year’s Eve they wanted each set of comics to be driven in town cars to the other club, do a show and then be driven back. The night that we changed to the year 2000, the year all the traffic lights across the United States were supposed to stop working and engines were going to drop out of all cars in South Carolina.

Another great gig.

The night was a total disaster. It started out like this: ...and went downhill from there. My business partner, Leslie Norris, the one in the middle, thought it would be a good idea to buy these sweaters in some shelter for blind people and then force us to wear them for the show.

Because we were PAINTED on a wall in one of the clubs, we were expected to blow the room away. After all, how many comics got immortalized in South Carolina along side Jeff Foxworthy, Chris Rock and Pauly Shore? Although why Pauly is considered funny is a mystery to a lot of comics. Okay, ALL COMICS EVERYWHERE, EVEN THE ONES IN OUTER SPACE.

But people stayed away from the clubs. And the few that showed up made my New Year's Eve gig at Lompoc Prison look like a back rub from George Clooney. All I remember is three gay guys in the front row. There is no decent, self-respecting gay man anywhere who would be caught dead at a comedy show unless every other venue in their town had caught fire.

This picture isn't too bad. Mainly because my 'Wall Face' is obliterated by the flash of the camera. But take a look at my 'Wall Face' in this one:

The alien in Alien didn't look this bad. Mickey Rourke after his first face lift didn't look this bad. Jocelyn Wildenstein didn't look this bad after her 167 plastic surgeries to make her look like a lion.

End of career chat.

CAPRICORN

© Clayboys 2006

Best with: Virgo, Pisces, Scorpio, Capricorn, Taurus
Fair with: Libra, Aquarius, Leo, Cancer, Sagittarius
Difficult with: Gemini, Aries

Happy Birthday Howard Stern, Richard Nixon and Rush Limbaugh.

If You Haven't Seen My Seinfeld Yet

I'm the one in the bakery scene with the straight blond hair. The grown up bratty kid from A League Of Their Own plays my husband. I didn't cast that part because I would have booked someone with whom I might actually want to have sex.

On another note, I'm really enjoying this Christmas because my upstairs neighbors are out of town. The McPoundersons have a circa 1970 blender, which has a V-8 engine, and wakes me up every fucking morning at 7:30. I have told them a gillion times that their kitchen is directly over my BED and that when they stomp around wearing their concrete shoes I wake UP. And seriously, who needs to run a garbage disposal before 8 AM? Are there bones and potato rinds in there screaming KILL ME; KILL ME NOW! I guess I should be grateful that after 5 years, they have finally stopped hammering and building things at 1:00 in the morning.

I'm posting this before 6 a.m. because I lost power in my living room last night when the winds blew the crap out of the Hollywood Hills. None of the breakers were down so I just flipped them all until I found the one that gave me back the living room lights. This morning my alarm clock said it was 7:21 but apparently it was only 5 a.m. I didn't lose power in the bedroom so I have no idea what happened there. And now I can't turn my stereo off because when I do, it plays a Mexican station. P.S. the stereo was not on when I lost power and I never listen to the radio. Then I lost the Internet and TV signals later last night and was forced to READ. So needless to say, I was asleep early.

On Christmas Day I did what I do each year except for the last one, when I donated goats to a Rwandan family, and I gave out money to the homeless. I wouldn't mention this if it weren't for one of my readers. He emailed me and asked me to pass out $100 for him, which I did. He is sending me a check for it in case you think I'm independently wealthy and want to email me and ask me to buy you a Marc Jacobs bag. He and I have never met in person and have only exchanged a handful of emails over the last few months. I don't want to name him here for fear he'll get asked to buy someone a Marc Jacobs bag but suffice it to say that he's a very funny blogger over at humor-blogs.com and obviously a really kind man with a big heart.

So peace on earth, good will to (wo)men is alive and well here in Hollywood.

End of chat.

Blue Balls

This picture sums up why I love living in a big city.

This is the front window of the 101 Restaurant, which is at the bottom of my street and is one of the hottest after-hours places in Los Angeles. They don't give a shit what people think of it. How great is that? And no one has complained about it. How great is THAT?

The Christmas Rocking Horse

This year I put a stocking on my storage door, which is adjacent to my main door. I live in a place built in the 1950's, a typical Hollywood building with all the apartment doors emptying out onto a common walkway that wraps around the building. These are the gifts that I got. -A little roll of Fruit Tingles. Not the BIG roll, but the little roll because someone didn't want to spring for the extra 17 cents the big one costs.

-Some Mango Glycerin soap whose wrapper has warped and might have to be removed with a sledgehammer.

-A small bottle of hand lotion from a bathroom at the Bellagio Hotel so we all know how much that costs.

-And judging by the color design, a turtle candle that someone bought while they were tripping on blotter acid.

Because in my building, I am BELOVED.

This is my Christmas Rocking Horse where I store all the holiday cards I receive. And yes, it rocks back and forth. One year I had it out and I kept looking at it and thinking that it might be time to put it out to pasture at the Salvation Army, time to buy something newer and more modern. That same Christmas, the manager of our building, a psycho named Rhonda, was in my apartment visiting. She commented on how much she loved the horse so I asked her if she wanted it. "REALLY? I've loved that horse for years!"

So I gave it to her. Fast forward a few months and she and I were talking down by the pool and she mentioned that she had cleaned out her apartment and was cutting down on clutter. I thought nothing of it until two days later when I emptied my garbage into the big bins on the side of our building. There, sitting on top of a mound of garbage, was the Christmas Rocking Horse, lying on its side. Crying.

We have a lot of homeless that root through our garbage and I wondered if one of them had seen the horse buried and hidden and had placed it on top, hoping that someone would find it and give it a new home. After all, wouldn't finding a home be something of a priority for them?

I brought it upstairs and cleaned it. Rhonda was so psycho that I never mentioned it to her. She once chased a homeless woman away from our building and down the street. She would duck down in her apartment so the UPS and FedEx guys couldn't see her through her kitchen window and deliver the packages to her in case we weren't home. She lied if she did have a package for us because she might have wanted to watch TV instead of, you know, doing her JOB. Rhonda used to rag on all the tenants and then tell me I was her favorite because I never complained about anything. That was because I was afraid of her rage-filled outbursts. I'm embarrassed that I never did, especially since there were things to complain about. Hard to believe with all the complaining I do here, huh? Two years later she was fired.

I've never thought about giving away the Christmas Rocking Horse again. Mainly because what are the odds that I would have found it in the garbage, on that day, at that hour, in that manner? Every time I look at it, I think of that expression, "If you love something, let it go. If it's supposed to come back to you, it will." If only that worked with cash.

Merry Christmas.

The Death Of Santa Claus

It was Christmas Eve and I got up when I heard noises downstairs in the living room. I don’t recall how old I was; I may have been in my thirties for all I remember.

I only have a good memory for ex-boyfriends and the things they do that are just so patently wrong. Seriously, a mesh shirt? Is that a cry for help or something?

I was finally going to see Santa Claus. I tiptoed to the top of the landing. My little, or gigantic, thirty year-old, heart was pounding in my ears. Wouldn’t every one of my miserable friends be jealous when I told them this story? I peeked down the stairs and saw my parents putting gifts under the tree and eating Santa’s cookies. I wanted to scream We have other food in the fridge you big stupid heads because it hadn’t hit me; even with the seemingly incontrovertible evidence, Santa wouldn’t be coming. Not tonight. Not ever.

The next morning I didn’t say anything because my sister was two years younger and if I had confronted my parents in front of her they would have punished me. I had already been penalized for some of my other ItWasJustAJoke infractions:

-I threatened to stab her with a kitchen knife if she didn’t stop snoring. (they made me cut meat with a fork for a month)
-I forced her to help me slide raw eggs under our refrigerator to drive my parents crazy with the stench. (she eventually ratted me out)
-We’d go to malls and I’d tell her to get on the Up escalator with me and then I’d run back down while she burst into tears and had to go up alone. (and yet she kept getting on escalators with me)
-I’d wait until she was coming upstairs to our bedrooms and then jump out and scream at her. (come on, that shit never gets old)

I find it ironic that when we’re young we’re lied to with the approbation of the entire world about Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and why Mom and Dad don’t sleep in the same room. And then told never to lie to our parents. Are you kidding me? This is WHY I lied to my parents. I was paying them back.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD, an organization made up of the United States and Canada, tracks Santa Claus every year. I can understand why Canada is tracking Santa Claus; they have plenty of free time on their hands. But the United States? People are gunning for us all the time. Shouldn’t we be tracking where Kim Jong Il drops off his plutonium? Or in which cave Osama Bin Laden is reading back issues of How To Kill Americans Digest?

It’s all over the news, this Santa tracking. How many 7 year olds are watching the evening news? Hello, is this thing on?

This was the quote of the week from NORAD “In the end, I hope that the Canadians and Americans are assured that NORAD is prepared to respond to threats as they present themselves and more importantly, to deflect and deter those attacks before they occur.”

Seriously, if they’re tracking Santa Claus, I’m not all that assured that they’re prepared to deflect and deter attacks from giant killer tomatoes, much less suicide bombers.

Recently, a teacher in the UK and a priest in California told children there was no Santa Claus. The teacher was fired and the priest had to issue a formal apology. Yet kids are encouraged to tell teachers who brought the semi-automatic weapon to school and Catholics are urged to go to confession three seconds after they’ve screwed up.

Let’s review:
- Kids tell teacher the truth + teacher tells kids the truth = Fired.
- Kids confess truth to priest + priest confesses truth to kids = Formal Apology.

I don’t have children of my own but I’ve dated four men who did. If any of the kids had asked me if the above fabled entities existed I would have lied and said yes. Once again, I’m part of the problem.

End of chat.

Reposted from December 2006

The Twelfth Pet Of Christmas

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

The Eleventh Pet Of Christmas

I know...disturbing.

The Tenth Pet Of Christmas

I had a lot of trouble with the model; the bitch wouldn't keep the crown on her head. My hus was sitting right next to her and he fell asleep on the couch then woke up when my camera flashed and gave me the finger.

The Ninth Pet Of Christmas

Thank God I'm not the designated dog.

The Eighth Pet Of Christmas

While others wait for Santa, we're on suicide watch over here.

The Seventh Pet Of Christmas

It took 22 pictures, a half a box of treats and I almost resorted to a bottle of super glue to hold them still. Their names are Masson, as Santa, Jailee, as Mrs. Clause and Big Diesel, the elf.

The Sixth Pet Of Christmas

This is D.J., the ½ Serta sheep. I live in Georgia Where Buck Tooth Freak Nuggets Go To Breed.

The Fifth Pet Of Christmas

My depraved one.

The Fourth Pet Of Christmas

I could not get the dog to sit still so I had to use my black-footed ferret Stuffy.

The Third Pet Of Christmas

Don't let her fool you. She purred the whole time I was taking these. She's such an attention whore.

The Second Pet Of Christmas

Nothing says 'Christmas At Our House' quite like the arrival of the Angry Christmas Squirrel.

The First Pet Of Christmas

I want to thank everyone who entered. As I said last week, having looked over other blog contests, this one required not only creativity but in some cases, a lot of work. So I really appreciate it because I know how high busy you all are.

All these photos are being posted anonymously and if there was an email enclosed with the submissions, I've edited it and included it under the photo. Keep in mind that the lucky winner gets a Maserati and second place gets round trip airfare to my bank account.

Check back every day for the next 11 days to see the rest of the finalists.

The first Pet of Christmas comes all the way from Australia.
If an Italian Greyhound could say 'fuck off' he would have.

Stairway To Heaven

When I was young, I attempted to ski. This is me in Val D'Isère, France, circa 1856. And way before I discovered hair dye.
I was afraid of ski lifts. You're strapped into an open cage hanging over mountains without a parachute? I gamely took some ski lessons and felt I was ready for the Winter Olympics. Because I'm not right in the head.

I look like I'm shooting a commercial and now that I think about it, Suzy Chapstick STOLE MY LIFE. This above shot is my favorite one. I would like to point out that in every picture I'm doing nothing but posing. I'm pretty sure that was the best part of the whole trip. Because it certainly wasn't those ski clothes from the Shin Dynasty.

A few years later my sister and I went to Switzerland to ski. My sister was a great skier. She did all the pistes noir while I was on the pistes pink, where 9 month old babies whizzed by me because they're notoriously competitive and really, really mean. Bored, I attempted a harder piste. Because I had taken three lessons.

I was eventually taken off that mountain by the ski patrol, on a stretcher, in fucking Switzerland, the neutral country that was trying to KILL ME.

Later my sister said, "You know, I saw this blond girl up there and she had one leg up the mountain and one leg down the mountain and I thought, Man, what a retard; get off the slopes before you hurt someone.

I tore a ligament and had a full leg cast on for like a hundred years.

When the cast came off, I was afraid to put weight on the bad leg. So of course I did what you're not supposed to do and put all my weight on the good leg, because you know, I'm a genius. I did that for so long that eventually all my friends were making fun of me. I would walk down stairs one step at a time, like a two year old. Shut up.

Then I got a big job. When I showed up for rehearsal, the director gave me a tour of the cabaret and showed me the stage, where I was supposed to glide down a staircase with a two and a half foot tall headdress in a skin tight gold sequined dress.

"Is there any other way to get down those stairs? I asked. Yeah, Francis Ford Coppola can airlift you in a chopper, like in Apocalypse Now, and deposit your ostrich-feathered ass at the bottom of the stairs. The director did not say that. Sadly.

I went home and told my mother that I wouldn't be able to take the job. She said I had to immediately go to La Chappelle de St. Rita, the patroness of impossible cases. Now, I'm not a religious person and abhor all organized religion, believing it is the opiate of the masses. I am, however, a spiritual person and yes, there is a huge difference between the two. Spirituality does not require a building nor a particular deity to worship. I was brought up Catholic but thought it was bullshit from the age of 13. But I was desperate. I went to the bullshit Church.

I prayed that if St. Rita fixed my leg, I would give her 200 francs a month (forty dollars) for the duration of the show, which was seven months. I came home and tried to figure out how I was going to tell my bosses the truth. I had already signed the contracts. The French government was in the process of issuing me a permis de travail, a work permit.

That night I watched my sister get ready for a date. I sat on the edge of her bed and started swinging my right leg, the good one. And then I started involuntarily swinging the left one, the bad one, and it didn't lock up. I stood up and walked to the front door. I went from our second floor apartment down to the first floor. The doctors who had told me that I had bone fragments floating in my knee were apparently upstaged by St. Rita.

This is me at the finale of the show which I did seven days a week, three shows on the weekend, two during the week.

That's me with the giant headdress sitting on that guy's knee. I kept my word and gave 200 francs a month for the duration of the show. One month before my contract expired I was in the chapel and noticed that the 'candle guy' was there. All churches have votives and metal boxes where you can put the money for an offering. I saw the man open the box, take out the money and then lock it up. All that time I had been giving money to the CANDLE PEOPLE, not St. Rita's. I was really upset until I realized the candle people must have needed it more.

End of chat.

If You Never Want To Have Sex Again, Wear This

From the Bed, Bath and Beyond winter catalog.

I don't care if you live in a snow drift in Antarctica or in Jeffrey Dahmer's freezer, this is just wrong. Sophie Wrap/Throw:
Throw converts into a robe. Includes snap and zipper closure to keep you warm. Also available in camel.

Why not carpeting that converts into a prom dress? Or an area rug that converts into a carport? Or, I don't know, a catalog that converts into a gun to shoot yourself with in case someone buys you this thing?

Very Superstitious, Writing's On The Wall

Seriously, if there was a toll booth on Memory Lane, I’d be bankrupt by now.

I got scoliosis when I was a teenager. I ended up seeing four doctors about it, two said to operate, two said not to. The one who finally convinced us was the one who said that if they didn’t operate I’d be dead by 40 because my ribcage was rotating so fast that it would eventually puncture my lung. For most girls the growth stops on its own. Mine didn't. When I turned 40 I was depressed at that milestone until I remembered that I might have been dead instead. And not the kind of dead that I am when I have sex blog.

The summer before seeing all those doctors my family went to our place in Paris. My grandparents lived about ten minutes away and knew a woman named Marguerite, who was clairvoyant. Marguerite used to visit and scare the crap out of me and my sister. She told us that she got her powers to see into the future from an old cat who showed up at her apartment one night. The cat then turned into a sea captain and told her he was giving her infinite power but she was to pass it on before she died. Then he turned back into a cat.

My mother took me to Marguerite's apartment once. I only went because I was hoping the cat would start talking or listing to starboard. It did not. About a year before Marguerite died, she told Grandmère she could give her the gift of seeing into the future but my grandmother turned her down. I asked her why and she said that she didn't want to know which of her family or friends was going to die and on what day.

One of our American friends, Carole, used to come by Grandmères with her mother and if Marguerite was there, Marguerite would mutter "pauvre Carole" (poor Carole) under her breath. I asked my mother why she was doing that and my mother said that she must have seen something really bad in store for her. Ten years later Carole committed suicide. Pauvre Carole indeed.

My mother would ask Marguerite about my scoliosis and if I was going to be okay. She would put her hands on my back and say to my mother, “She’ll be fine.”

Marguerite would often take my sister and me to La Cimetière de Montmartre, which was close to where we lived, by the big white church on the hill.

Do you think the cat in the Montmartre cemetery photo below could be the sea captain just wandering around? Yeah, me too neither. I always wondered if Marguerite was going to visit the sea captain. If she found his grave, she never mentioned it. Since those days I have always had a fascination with cemeteries. One of the first jokes I ever wrote was:

I got stopped by a cop this morning. He said, “Lady, you can’t park your car here.” And I said, “Oh, like the spaces between these graves are going to be used for something else.”

At one point mom and Grandmère took me to a man who did something called The Laying On Of Handkerchiefs. I can still see the waiting room with all the hopeful and ailing sitting upright in their chairs, fiddling with their jackets, quieting their children as they anxiously waited. They all had handkerchiefs folded into neat piles and placed on their laps. When it was our turn, the man took the handkerchiefs we had brought and did some abracadabra stuff and laid them on my back. I have no idea whether that practice is still going on but since Europeans are particularly steeped in tradition, probably.

My grandmother was a superstitious woman who believed in clairvoyants and cartomanciens, people who can tell the future by reading playing cards. She taught me how to read cards and I made a nice piece of coin off that whenever I was broke because I was really good at it. I actually saved one man from a Sicilian mob hit.

I remember another superstitious trick Grandmère taught us. If we had a dinner guest or a drop-in who wouldn't leave, we took salt and a broom and threw the salt on the floor in front of the entrance and then swept it outside. We used it over and over and over. It never ceased to amaze us that this simple gesture never failed. When I moved to New York, it was a little harder to do since my front door could be seen from the living room, whereas in Paris, the front door was in the entry hall and hidden from the main rooms, where the guests could see us. But I still did it. When I moved to LA it was the end of the Sweeping Salt Trick. Wall to wall carpeting.

End of chat.

Paris, France Montmartre Clairvoyants Cemeteries Cimetiere de Montmartre

L.A. Sign Of The Times #30

Just Couldn't Get It Together

I got nothin'.

I'm still cleaning up from my pity party. There was leftover cake. I also spent a lot of time staring at my shoes. If you are reading this blog for the first time, I realize this sounds strange. If you've read it before, I realize it still sounds strange. Who stares at their shoes all weekend? Or has a party where there is leftover cake?

I'll be back to normal soon. Normal might be too strong a word.

End of chat.

The Results Show

Financial guru Suze Orman was on Oprah recently. One woman in the audience stood up to say that she was at the end of her rope. Her husband had left her because of all their debt, she lost their house and she and her children had been put out on the streets. She was crying.

What did Suze say? Something soothing about how brave she was and that she wasn't a loser and that she could climb out of her debt. After my doctor explained what was wrong, mainly that I needed pins put into my ankle to fuse my foot because all the cartilage had disappeared, I gamely asked: "So it's bad?" I was really hoping that he had caught that episode of Oprah.

"It's bad." He said.

He said it was probably brought on by some sort of trauma. How much trauma does a foot have in the average week? Am I randomly kicking the shit out of trees when I walk around? Dropping bowling balls on it when I go bowling, which is never? Immersing it into a vat of cement and then using a jackhammer to fish it out? What the FUCK?

The recovery is 3 months. On crutches. Or a scooter, the doctor helpfully pointed out. I told him I lived on the second floor of a non-elevator building and how was I going to go up and down the stairs on a scooter and he said I should go up and down on my ass. Well, problem solved then.

Basically I'm going to have to steal a cart from Target and ride it around Los Angeles. Or learn how to walk on my head.

On the drive home I kept telling myself, "Shut up, it's not cancer. Stop crying, it's not life-threatening. Quit your whining, there will be pain pills and a handicapped sign involved."

And I will get to wear my pony skin boots again.

And no, my spectacular shoe collection had nothing to do with the state of my ankle. The state of my bank account, yes.

Thanks to everyone who emailed me and I'm sorry I didn't get back to you. I was literally speechless for about 8 hours after my appointment and if you know me, you realize that's actually one of the signs of the Apocalypse.

End of chat.

Two More Days Added Because I Can Do What I Want

The pet contest pictures were due by tomorrow but I'm extending it to Monday. I have been such a wreck over this MRI, the results of which I get this afternoon, that I haven't put together the order for the pics to be viewed. I don't think that makes sense but you know what I mean. My stomach is in the shape of a pretzel and wrapped around my neck.

First place picks either the baseball cap or the set of 6 blank notecards with envelopes.



Remember, all pics will be posted anonymously. You can enter as many times as you want.

I'm sitting here at my computer watching TV and they're discussing the movie Awake. Where the guy is conscious during his surgery. Terence Howard said this happens in one out of 8 surgeries. I'm afraid I'm going to need surgery on my foot. FUCKING great.

I think I'll add a third place prize for this contest. That will be you standing in the O.R. and making sure I don't wake up during my surgery.

End of chat.

Mailbag # 3

This is the third installment of anonymous snippets from emails I've received. Click on the label at the end of this post to read other excerpts from my demented intelligent friends. If you recognize your line and want to out yourself, be my guest.

Hee hee....well...I now know you are not perfect and can have typos. Wow. Not sure I can look you in the eye again.

I feel like the last kid to be tested on the rope climb in gym class. Everyone else has finished and is standing around, relieved, just watching me & waiting for me to give myself a crotch burn.

If you ever decide to do a show I hope you'll think of me for director. I won an award for directing a show but I can’t remember the name of the award.

Should I mention my book? Or is that whorish? I'm asking because I know that you are the arbitrator of all things whorish.

She has brought her 9 year old every day and I’m sorry but I don't spend that much time with my own kid. I go to work to escape kids and then I’m stuck with that kid...who's not even cute.

I am off to try and finish the first Harry Potter. Am I the only one in the world who just can't seem to get into it?

There is this thing in nature where newborn babies look like their father so the father doesn’t eat them.

Anyway, the main point of this was to email and admit to being an asshole. I have thought of calling you back every day. Retarded shit happens like it's literally too windy to use the phone.

And yeah, I like the Phillies because Who Am I If Not Being Chronically Disappointed By My Sports Team?

I'm just not sure he would have the balls to call her. And then they'd probably just have sex anyway.

I noticed you didn't post today and I got worried.

I bid low and got to perform at the house of this millionaire. I did great. They were happy. I should have asked for more.

Did you ever write so much that you start obsessing about remembering where commas go?

I mean, not everybody is going to like Andrew Dice Clay, but even the people who do like him would get a little freaked out if he broke character in the middle of his act and started talking about how much he loved the Joy Luck Club.

End of chat.

SAGITTARIUS

© Clayboys 2006

Best with: Libra, Aquarius, Leo, Aries and Sagittarius
Fair with: Pisces, Scorpio, Gemini and Capricorn
Difficult with: Virgo, Taurus and Cancer

Happy Birthday Britney Spears, Donny Osmond and Stalin

THANKS For GIVING Me My Own Room

I was invited to spend the holiday with McLoserstene's family, who live about 100 miles south of Los Angeles. I left late Thursday morning thinking there would be less traffic.
I was wrong.

Her family is not normal. But I guess you already knew that based on the fact that McLoserstene never allows her face to be seen on the internet.

This is their dog, Dali. This is their backyard, where they asked me to sleep.


This was the tablescape for Thanksgiving dinner. Mrs. McLoserstene has an obsession with fake food: coffee, pastries, pizza, olives, etc. It is always strategically placed in areas that would not invite suspicion so I spent 15 minutes waiting for others to eat first just to make sure that I wouldn't be the only one to die of Styrofoam poisoning.

The following day they drove me against my will to the Wayside Cafe for lunch. Patrons are encouraged to donate items to the restaurant as the Cafe is apparently too cheap to decorate. Thankfully there was so much to look at that I didn't have to listen to the McLoserstenes discuss the merits of chocolate Dr. Pepper over regular Dr. Pepper and why the egg salad was spilling out the sides of the whole wheat bread.Don't get me wrong, under other circumstances and in a different setting, I would have found those topics still boring fascinating. There are people in their town who have nothing to do so they bring their coffee cups to the Cafe and use them each time they visit. Little do they know that people like me will touch all the rims of those cups with leftover grease from my onion rings because I have nothing to do.

McLoserstene and I redid the family's living room. Mr. McLoserstene scowled a lot and Mrs. McLoserstene had to be surgically removed from her votive candle collection and fake ivy. Even though we told them we do this for a living and were doing it for free, they started drinking heavily.

Because after all, isn't that what the holidays are all about?

End of chat.

Thanksgiving, What A Dumb Holiday

All that cooking. All that cleanup. Stultifying hours with the family. Small talk that would kill a coma patient. Casseroles that dead people wouldn't eat. And not enough alcohol in the world to make you want to live another day.

And no gifts?

Dumb.

You have 9 more days to get your Christmas Pets jpgs to me.

FIRST PLACE PRIZE:

Kidding.

Geek Alert

New York Magazine has a section every week called 'Best Bets' and I found this listing and sent a scan of it to Howard, who lives in New York. When he was here in October, he was in a rental car with his cell phone. He called me from about 20 minutes away from my place and said to quickly give him directions because his cell phone was dying.

If you knew Howard you'd realize this is just his typical behavior. Charge your phone at your hotel at LAX, an hour away from L.A. proper, then get in a rental car and use your cell all day and then when it's almost dead, call your dinner date for instructions on how to get to her house and freak her out that she's all dressed up for NOTHING because your cell phone will die and you will be forced back to your LAX hotel while she'll have to call Pizza Hut.

Since I tend to be dyslexic with right and left, not to mention the two middle numbers of any string of numbers, I was talking slowly to make sure I didn't screw up.

"Q-Ball, talk faster." A lot of people over the years have called me Q, in reference to Suzy Q. But Howard has called me Q-Ball since I met him. He says it's because in pool, the cue ball breaks the pack. I don't know if that's a veiled diss or a passive-aggressive compliment. Either way, I'm Q-Ball to Howard.

"I can't talk faster, I'm trying to remember how to get you here."
"For God's sakes, you live here, don't you know how to get to your own place?"
"I do when the person I'm talking to is not yelling at me and you know, all MEAN and shit."

So when I saw this cell phone charger gizmo, I thought Howard might want it. He emailed me and said he was going to buy it but again, it's Howard, so it could be years before that happens. And yes, he made it to my house that night.

Anyway, I was just wondering if the whole world knows about this or if I'm just the last to know.

End of.....hello? I'm out of juice...helllllllo?? chat.

Dancing With The MRI

Today I had an MRI for my ankle but it wasn't in this machine. It was in a smaller one with an opening for my leg. I can't imagine going into one of the body MRIs. I'm not claustrophobic, but I'm sure everyone says that until they have one of those. It only took an hour and fifteen minutes and I read trashy magazines during the process. (Seriously, Angelina? How can you not like George Clooney?) During the set up, the technician said he had a hundred stories about the 'crazy' stuff that happens in his MRI cubicle. Once the scan started I asked him to tell me some and it turned out he had ONE story. I'm no math genius but 100 vs. 1 is really you just needing a hug.

He said he had a man in his 70's who warned him that he sometimes started to pee but he never knew when it was going to happen nor did he even feel himself peeing. Halfway through the scan the tech hears water and thinks he's going to have to clean up a pee-soaked MRI machine. It turned out to be the old man's water bottle. He had knocked it over and all the tech heard was the gushing liquid.

Real glad I chose standup as my profession because you know, stuff happens.

I took a sweater in with me because I haven't been into any doctor's facility that's warmer than 64 degrees in..... ever. And the longer you stay in one position, the colder it gets. I always keep sweaters, sneakers, and gloves in the trunk of my car. You never know when I'm going to be driving around southern California and a spontaneous snow storm/marathon/CSI investigation will break out.

I am totally hooked on Dancing With The Stars after having trashed it every year since it began. I started watching because I like Scary Spice because she and all the Spices can dance. To me, if you can't dance, well, there will be no sex. Ever. If you're a white guy, do the world a favor and take some lessons and lose the White Man's Overbite. If you don't know what that is, you're a white guy who can't dance. Girls, stop laughing.

In 1997 I was on a Canadian tour and because there's not a lot going on in parts of Canada (Hello Saskatchewan, love you anyway) we got our picture in the Calgary Sun with the Spice Girls. And even though they were mega famous at the time, somehow we got the top copy. So wrong.

And a radio station made us wear those tee shirts. Again, so wrong.

End of chat.

Elementary School Children Beware

For the twenty-seven people over 40 who don't know what NaBloPoMo is, it's a bunch of insane bloggers who decide to post every fucking day in November. I went to their website to see if I could find some funny non-mommy blogs to read and chose the randomizer to sort through the over 6,100 that are listed as this year's participants.

In the process I found a widget on one of them that, after entering a url, reveals the educational reading level of that blog.

This was mine:

It's nice to know that my world view has trickled down to those scary unique, outcasts special kids who are funny, swear, talk about Hollywood and bad relationships and have a sarcastic take on life. Or maybe I'm only comprehensible if you're 12 years old and know how to accessorize.

I was willing to take the hit until I loaded in some other urls and discovered these results:

Perez Hilton - Junior High School level
The Onion - High School level
Craig's List - Genius level
The Superficial - Elementary School level

So I guess it's true.

End of chat.

The Pot In Spain Grows Mainly On The Government Official

This is a satellite photo of the Strait of Gibraltar, where Spain and Africa attempt an Eskimo kiss with only 7 miles between them. It's also where the Atlantic Ocean (lower left hand corner) is separated from the Mediterranean Sea (top of the photo). It reminds me of how much trouble I got into when I passed through this part of the world.

I was traveling with a girlfriend in the south of France and we went down to Barcelona for a few days. I met a guy named Craig and he and I decided to go on to Africa while my friend went back to France. We crossed the Strait on a ferry and ended up in Ceuta, Spanish Morocco, at the northern tip of the African continent. (the red dot on the photo below) Spain still controls this city and has since 1580.

Craig was a smoker. I was not. He bought cigarettes over food and when I complained he told me cigarettes took the hunger away. And presto-chango I became a smoker. Thank God I quit, 12 years later.

Because Craig and I had little funds between us, we spent a few nights at youth hostels and then decided to sleep on the beach with a lot of the other tourists. I had a big leather bag that I’d bought in Paris. It had our passports, the top of my bikini, some silver jewelry I’d picked up in Spain and most of our money in it. The first night on the beach I had carefully dug a hollowed out space in the sand, laid the bag in it, covered it with a sweater and used it as my pillow. Craig and I went to sleep and the next thing I knew I was jostled awake. It took me a few seconds to realize the purse was gone.

Beach thieves are really smart. They wait until you’re moving in or out of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, the dream state, which is the deepest part of sleep. You know when you’re in a dream and there’s a car coming and you can’t move out of the way? It’s called Sleep Paralysis and it’s when the body is disconnected from the brain, leaving the body paralyzed. It occurs when you go in or out of REM and somehow these beach thieves know exactly when it happens. They lifted my head and stole the bag from under the sweater while my body remained immobilized. This also sometimes happens to me during sex. But I digress.

Craig and I went to the police and they put us on the first morning ferry back to Spain. And then we had to get to Seville, since that was the nearest consulate. We were in deep shit. With no papers, how were we going to get back into the U.S.? All I could think about was that I was the one in my family who always got into trouble and I was certainly going to hear about this for years to come. But I was also the only one in my family who had an interesting life since the rest of them were all chicken shits. Don't be a chicken shit with your life. You'll have nothing to talk about when you're in an old folks home drooling creamed corn down your bib.We arrived in Seville in the middle of the night and the consul was alone in this huge mansion that served as the consulate. If there were servants or a staff, we didn’t see them. The consul helped us get in touch with our parents. I have mercifully blocked out what my father said to me but I’m sure there were swear words involved.

“We can get you new papers, but you'll have to stay here a day or two until your backgrounds have been cleared to travel,” the consul said as he pulled out a joint, lit it and passed it to Craig.

The three of us took a few hits and within fifteen minutes I felt really sick. The kind of sick where you know something is really, really wrong. I went to the bathroom and emptied every part of my intestine. All 39 miles of it. I was gone for so long that Craig came looking for me.

“What are you doing in there?” he asked.
“Making breakfast, what do you think I’m doing?”

Men.

“Is there anything I can do?”
“I’m scared.”
“You’re high. That’s all.”
“It won’t stop coming out, I think I might die of evacuation of the bowel.”
“Yeah... again? Just high. And that’s not a disease.”
“You don’t know.”

A few days later Craig and I parted company at the Madrid airport. I flew into Dulles International in Washington D.C. and as I waited in the customs line, the kid in front of me asked if I was old enough to bring liquor into the country. I said that I was and he passed me a sealed box of Courvoisier. He cleared customs and then I cleared and when I looked up, two armed guards took my arms and told me to follow them.

I was led to a small room and interrogated for about an hour. Why was I smuggling drugs for the American boy? How did I know there wasn’t heroin in the sealed box? Why did I have a hand-carved ivory hash pipe on me? Yeah, that last one was tricky.

Both the kid and I were released at the same time. Customs had made many calls. My Dad was a Colonel in the Army AND worked for the U.S. Government. Oops. The kid was in the top of his class at West Point. Oops squared.

I stayed at my Dad’s house for a while and for the first few months his phone was tapped. I would talk to my friends and we could hear the little click that went off every minute without fail. After a while I started making fun of it and saying that the feds had stopped me for smuggling drugs and how dumb they were and oh yes, I COULD HEAR THE TAPPING.

End of tapping. And chat.

L.A. Sign Of The Times #29