Ready, Set, Gross

My surgery is in 19 days.

I'll be on crutches for 3 months in my apartment, which is on the 2nd floor in a non-elevator building because apparently I don't have the ability to see into the future. So naturally I thought I should try and get the place in shape so that by the big day, things would be organized. Ready. Prepared.

If you'll recall, I had a very long list.

The first thing I did was place the paper cutter on top of the HD box, next to the TV, in case I needed to trim off the speakers of the TV or cut the glass in the paintings above it to make coasters. I'm practical that way.

Those are some of my trademark papers on top of the paper cutter, so maybe I should cut them into little square shapes and stick them between 2 pieces of the cut glass when I make those coasters, thus giving my guests something to read while I bore them to tears about my surgery and ask them why they didn't bring me flowers painkillers. Hey, I'm not wasting my time over here.

I also painted this wall. Crutches hate an unfinished wall.

Then I organized my office so that I could find everything at a year's moment's notice.

Those albums are half of my scrapbooks and photo albums from my long, illustrious life of working two weeks a month and complaining the other two.

And last, but not least, I thought it might be nice to organize my back bedroom closet so I could easily get to all the clothes I wear over and over and over . That grey suitcase has been there for over a year, filled with framed portraits of dead family members I never knew. I guess they're from my family. They might be dead family members from one of my Dad's 4 wives. EXCELLENT Feng Shui by the way. One of the last things on the list is to figure out how to balance a plate of food on my head while walking with crutches but other than that, I think I'm making myself crazy progress. I'm thinking of making a dress that is entirely made out of pockets.

Or maybe tying Zorro's hat to my head? But only if Antonio Banderas comes attached to it. But then I'd have to keep Melanie Griffith occupied and you know what a pain she can be. "No Melanie, I do not have any spare collagen and syringes sitting around."

End of chat.

Even Tom Brady Needs A Coach

L.A. is full of actors who have suddenly found themselves staring down the barrel of a gun to pay bills and survive. WGA is on strike and that means no old shows and worse, no new shows. Over 60 shows in various stages of development have been dropped by the studios. The Oscars are hanging by a thread and mortgage payments are on hold everywhere except at Steven Spielberg's house. Many actors do other jobs to support themselves so here are some of the faces workin' it!This is Lauri Johnson, my Life Coach. She's done everything from offbeat films like Waitress, Laurel Canyon and For Your Consideration to every major sitcom and one hour drama of the last ten years. And the best part is that she started at the age of 43. It never occurred to her that she wouldn't make it because before acting she was a very successful corporate honcho. One of my favorite 'Lauri' memories is when she once asked me a question about standup and I replied "I don't know." She narrowed her eyes and said, "Yes you do. EVERYONE knows." She was right. I did know.

So next time you don't think you know whether you should quit your job, husband, wife, whatever, you do know. EVERYONE knows!

Here are some of the actors who showed up at the free seminar Lauri gave recently to help us survive this drought.
David Jaye - Commercial Actor

Daytime Job - Wescom Credit Union

Shari Rhone - Actor/Singer. Lion King Los Angeles. Bands: Proud Mary, Soulicious and Bella Donna.

Daytime Job - Disneyland Maintenance Choreographer

Jennifer Slimko - Actor. Infomercials: Hip Hop Abs, iRoomba,Voom. Spokesperson: Inflight TV, all major airlines. See her link for her acting demo reel and amazing photographs.

Daytime Job - Healthcare Practitioner

LAX And LA Cops

A few weeks ago I went to LAX to pick up a friend. I saw this scene up ahead of me and took my camera out of my purse, which meant I had to keep one eye on the road and the other one on my purse. Hey, who wouldn't want to be driving next to me?

I got the camera, turned it on, didn't crash into anybody and snapped this shot. The SPLIT second I did that, the cop you see standing by that car ran off to the right and jumped into his squad car, which is out of frame. I looked into my rear-view and thought he was going to do a 180 and come after me for taking a picture of LA cops stopping a citizen whose only crime was probably taking a picture of LA cops.

When I first got to LA I was driving a Ford Festiva because that's all I could afford. One day I made a right-hand turn and was immediately stopped by a cop. The first thing he said to me was "Have you even got a driver's license?"He wrote out a ticket while I asked what I had done wrong. He said I had pulled out in front of oncoming traffic and he was writing me a reckless driving ticket. Those are $350 here in California, twice what my car was worth.

The last thing he said to me was "And don't think you're not going to pay this ticket because I will show up in court and YOU WILL PAY THIS."

Later, I looked at the ticket and it did say "reckless driving" and he had marked that I was driving 10 miles per hour.

Nazi.

End of chat.

The JanFebs

This is the time of year when things suck and suck hard. We've gained weight, regret the money we've spent over the holidays and hate our children jobs. Weather is bad, couples get divorced, and the wrong celebrities die.

Here in sunny Southern California CAN IT JUST STOP RAINING FOR FIVE FUCKING MINUTES? And it's 36 degrees F at night. Are we in Russia or something? I can hear people in Canada removing me from their feeds right now because 36 F in Canada in the winter is actually summer to them. I hear you; who needs my whining? Please, that's all I have left.

Saturday my mail lady called me from the downstairs intercom to tell me I had a package. How nice you say, she didn't just drop it and run. Really? Really? Well normally she brings them straight to my door on the second floor. On a plate of rose petals. With a blank check attached. But now it's the JanFebs, so she's all 'I hate the second floor and hope you die.'

I did an 18% TCA peel this week. It's supposed to Zamboni off your dead cells and transform your skin into a surface that Wayne Gretzky could easily navigate. Liars! It peeled so lightly that it looked like I had dust bunnies on my face. And not the good kind, which are all bunched up like tumbleweeds and ready to be Swiffered away. These are all scattered about like leprosy. And don't look as good. Wayne Gretzky would break a leg skating on my face.

The closer I get to my surgery, the more aggravated I get. Can you tell? This will be my third major surgery in five years and I remember better days, when I could walk without pain. I found this picture of me that was taken two and a half years ago. (I'm the one with the purse)
This is when I could wear heels, walk two miles a day five days a week and was a size 6. That skirt? Sitting in a corner of my closet crying. And those 4 inch heels ran away from home back in the summer of 2007.

Sidebar: I have no idea who that guy in the picture is or why we have our arms around each other. This is just your garden variety Hollywood Picture Taking Stance. I think he manages a singing group from the 80's. He looks sleazy enough to do that. Anyway, it was a big lunch and everyone took photos and someone sent me this. The white dress you see floating into the shot belongs to one of the women who I cut out of the photo because she's insane.

In other Body News, my neck is on strike. It turns out that if you don't exercise regularly then when you start doing upper body work to prepare yourself for 3 months on crutches, you'll be so tense that you'll hunch up your shoulders and walk around like Frankenstein.

My shoulders are so close to my jawline that I could wear them as earrings.

End of chat.

Ding Dong The Bitch Is Dead Part 2

FINALLY! This is good news for comedians everywhere. Judy Brown has been ripping off comics for so many years that if you cut her open and counted the joke thief rings it would date back to 1857. The year she was born.

Thankfully Jay Leno put a stop to her thievery. Click on the label at the bottom of this post to read the entire story but score one for Team Comics. Writing a joke is one of the hardest things in the world to do. If you don't believe me, write one and then go on stage somewhere and use it.

From Yahoo News

Gina Serpe, Wed Jan 23, 10:02 AM ET Los Angeles (E! Online)

The Tonight Show host has settled a lawsuit filed against the creators of a series of joke books he claimed ripped off material from both his show and stand-up routines.

Leno and his fellow plaintiffs—including NBC Studios and a contingent of fellow comedians, among them Rita Rudner—filed the lawsuit in federal court in November 2006. The target of their ire was Judy Brown, who edited such compilation books as The Funny Pages, Squeaky Clean Comedy, Funny You Should Know That, Getting Old Is a Joke and Joke Stew, as well as the books' respective publishers.

The lawsuit claimed the books were tantamount to copyright, trademark infringement and false endorsement, as each stolen yuk-yuk was attributed to its famous funny creator.

Under the settlement, announced Wednesday, Brown's publishers agreed immediately to cease the distribution, manufacture and sale of the joke books. The defendants will also shell out an undisclosed financial settlement to the comedians, who maintain, as they did when they first filed the suit, that they will donate the money to charity.

"I thought it was important to make it clear that jokes are protected like any other art form," Leno said of the case. "On behalf of the tremendous and talented group of writers we have at The Tonight Show and many other hardworking comedians, I'm very glad we've been able to stop this practice once and for all."

As for Brown, she issued an apology to the comics scorned, who, in addition to Leno and Rudner, included Kathleen Madigan, Jimmy Brogan, Diane Nichols, Bob Ettinger and Sue Pascoe (widow of comedian Ronnie Shakes), and pledged to respect the sanctity of the joke tellers' material in any future publishing endeavors.

"In my books, I have published jokes of Jay Leno and the other comedians in this lawsuit without their permission," Brown said. "I sincerely apologize for doing so. I greatly admire the creativity, wit and energy of stand-up comedians, and I recognize that comedy is as much an art form as other types of creative expression...This is why I am settling this lawsuit by agreeing never again to publish their jokes without asking their permission to do so."

All told, Brown was responsible for compiling 19 of the joke books, all of which were little more than a collection and repackaging of the comics' acts—or as the original lawsuit put it, "no more than alphabetizing original works."

In addition to the stand-ups themselves, NBC got in on the litigation act against Andrews McMeel Publishing, Sterling Publishing and Rowman & Littlefield, as any stolen joke of Leno's is a stolen joke of theirs. Any comic yarn spun by the host on The Tonight Show qualifies as the studio's property, and each episode since 1992 has been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Both the studio and the plaintiffs' legal representation, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., have agreed to donate at least a portion of their cut in the settlement to charity, along with Leno and the other comics, all of whom chalk up the legal victory as a major step in comedians' ownership of their material.

Said Boutrous of the legal victory: "The settlement sends a strong message that the intellectual property rights of comedy writers must be respected."

Jay Leno lawsuit Judy Brown lawsuit Jay Leno vs. Judy Brown

Joke's On Me

In case you didn't know this, comedians make jokes about tragedies seconds after they've occurred. It's our job. Remember the Challenger in 1986? With Crista McAuliffe on board? About 12 seconds after it blew up, a comic called me and said, "What was the last thing Crista said on board the Challenger?" Thinking this was some real news I breathlessly asked "What?" And he said, "What does this red button do?"

So this week's tragedy about Heath Ledger, who had a rolled-up twenty dollar bill on him because that's how all movie stars keep their money, garnered this Best Dead Joke Award sent all the way from Hawaii by Martha Jane.

"Heath Ledger was found dead in Mary-Kate Olsen's apartment. He starved to death since there was no food in the house."

And in other ridiculous news, remember how I made fun of these ugly things?

Handbags with little coin purses piggybacked to them? Oh how we all laughed.

Well I'm not laughing now. Two of my favorite designers showed these in February's Bazaar.

I will not be snapping anything but my wallet shut.

End of chat.

If I Were In Charge Of Food

I hate food shopping. I think I choose boyfriends based on their ability to food shop, and so far I've been lucky. They've all loved to do it except for The Doctor Howard, who had housekeepers do it. When you're born you should automatically be assigned a housekeeper who food shops. I seriously think this was an oversight on God's part and I don't understand why I'm not in charge of things like this. Believe me, no one would take my name in vain.

I should have taken a camera with me this morning so someone could have snapped a photo of me lying in the aisle crying.

The problem is that I get bored eating the same foods over and over. One week I'll want German food and will eat sauerkraut, potatoes and black forest ham. Then I'm on to spicy shrimp sushi without so much as a backwards glance at German Week. I've been around the food track a zillion times and I keep landing back on START, because maybe you didn't know this but they do not invent new food. Ever.

THIS WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IF I WAS IN CHARGE.

I can lay part of the problem squarely on the shoulders of my mother. (Who else?) Going to Europe every summer since I was 5, my sister and I were dropped into a lot of homes where people cooked food we'd never eaten before. Our mother explained that it's considered the height of rudeness to turn down food, especially since in many countries, they may not have a lot of money or resources and if we were in a village in Africa we were going to eat that gazelle OR ELSE. And when your mother says OR ELSE, well, you know what that means. Although based on our obesity rate, I don't think Americans turn down a lot of food. Anywhere.

As I got older I traveled more and ate fabulous exotic foods and was glad that my mother had opened me up to a level of sophistication I wouldn't have found just swapping Twinkies with classmates in Junior High.

Once my sister and I were in Marrakesh and were guests of a Moroccan emir. We were told in advance to honor the eating customs of the country because the host was part of the King's entourage. As brave as I am, I didn't know if I was up to eating something I didn't recognize that might still be alive and crunchy. We sat on the floor with the others and an enormous couscous in a huge wooden bowl was brought out. My sister and I looked for our silverware while everyone else used their right-hand fingers to eat, as is the custom in many cultures. We did the same.

My sister deviated from this plan one year because she had given up meat. So she brought a huge Chilean sea bass to her then boyfriend's house for dinner. On Thanksgiving. His parents had cooked a huge turkey and were insulted by my sister's gesture and the guy broke up with her two days later. One year I gave up dairy food (not realizing cheese and ice cream were in this category) and some old friends I hadn't seen in a while threw me a cocktail party and served French cheeses in honor of my background. I ate the cheese. They didn't break up with me. I went back to eating dairy food.

So this morning I was standing in aisle One million D wondering what I hadn't eaten in a long time and waiting for my eyebrows to fall off my face. One hair at a time.

And then it came to me. Scungilli.

End of chat.

L.A. Sign Of The Times #32

Somebody Please Call My Mother

I'm the type of person who, when confronted with a To Do list of 10 things, will complete the 7 easiest ones in about 56 minutes. Then I'm left with a false sense of accomplishment and can coast for days on my ability to do things half-assedly.

So the 3 hardest things I leave for last are usually in the categories:

1. Sever own limb

2. Climb Mt. Everest

3. Call my family

I can drag out these last 3 until I'm seconds away from cardiac arrest. And with my surgery 29 days away, that's exactly what I've done. Again.

Only my list does not have 10 things on it. I started out with that dream and then that list had babies and now it looks like this:

Just to give you an idea of how far I can take this, one of my 3 hardest tasks on this current list included completing the trademark on my blog name. Months after I started blogging I got emails from industry about how great the name was, plus a mob suggestion from a well known comedy writer here in LA that I should trademark it. It required a lot more money than I wanted to spend and multiple merchandise samples to submit to the United States Patent and Trademark Office but because of the ubiquity of the Where 'Something' Comes To Die concept, I went ahead with it. The name was approved but of the four samples submitted, only two were accepted. The other two were rejected because of a colon.

And not the kind in your intestine.

The USPTO said I had six months to redo the last two samples. In my world, the rest of my life. So first I removed the colon from my banner only to realize that now it looked like I knew nothing about punctuation. And I'm a writer and that's part of what you need to, you know, write. So I'm aware of rules like where to place a semi-colon, that an ellipsis has 3 dots and that in a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction a comma is required after each term except the last and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

So Hollywood: Where Hot Comes To Die™ is correct. Without the colon? Not so much. Maybe no one else has noticed but now that I've told you, admit that it looks like I flunked 5th grade English. Which, looking back, I might have.

The last sample was more complicated to fix so of course I waited until the penultimate second to resubmit. Now I'm just praying that it doesn't get rejected because of another body part.

The last thing on my list is Call My Mother. Anyone?

End of chat.

The Worst Movie I'd Ever Seen...

...was Convoy starring Kris Kristofferson and Ali MacGraw. Trust me, love means never having to see this movie.

In my life I have only walked out of one movie theatre, although I can't remember what film was playing. Since I'm three hundred years old, that's a lot of movies. Last year Screen Actor's Guild sent the screener Venus to its members, just one of many usually good ones that we get sent every year. Halfway through it I bailed and the cooked cabbage stench it left behind is still alive and well in my left frontal cortex. Where death lives.

So 300 years x 20,000 movies - 2 = pretty good.

For some reason, a really bad, truly awful film holds me spellbound. I. CAN'T. LOOK. AWAY. And that is why I sat through Convoy which has, for me, held The Worst Movie record for over 20 years.

This year's SAG freebies were Away From Her, 3:10 to Yuma, Into the Wild, No Country for Old Men and a free ticket for There Will Be Blood. Then there is another one that was sent. One that pushed Convoy into second place. It's the piece of crap that is And even though I was generously sent the 2-disc Shake & Shimmy Edition, that was not enough to keep me from wanting to kill myself 1/8th of the way through it. And like with Convoy, I was helpless to look away. Here's why it sucked.

1. John Travolta in a dress.

2. Travolta's makeup courtesy of an Akron, Ohio mortician

3. who is blind.

4. The hot High School guy dumps his hot High School girlfriend for the fat chick.

5. Didn't that happen at your High School?

6. Christopher Walken

7. needs to be put down.

8. Segregation would not exist if white kids could only dance as well as black kids.

9. As if white kids will ever know how to dance.

10. Anorexic Michelle Pfeiffer kept me on the edge of my seat

11. waiting for her to drop dead of starvation.

12. Comedy is supposed to be funny.

13. Baltimore.

14. End of chat.

I Have The Most Generous Readers

First there was the reader on the East coast who sent me $100 to give to the homeless on Christmas day. Then another reader, Anne from Minnesota, sent me a collection of her fabulous homemade soaps and potpourri. Rose Gold and Calendula are among the many fragrances and I think Calendula is made out of old calendars although it might have been made out of colanders. I'm not good with details.

I'm posting this info because I liked what she sent me and I get no kickbacks or more free stuff out of it. So I'm talking from the heart here. I know, many of you didn't think I had a heart. PSYCH!

The designs are discs, stars or hearts (I photographed the heart upside down because it wouldn't sit on its side without falling over) and the ingredients used are olive, coconut, cocoa butter and all natural dyes. I keep the big jar of potpourri in my bedroom, with the lid off, and it emits the most perfectly understated floral aroma. It can also be tossed into a vacuum bag and used to freshen the carpet but since I'm not the Queen Of Cleaning because I'm far too busy doing...uh, you know, nothing, I took the sit-the-jar-on-a-bureau and stare-at-it option.

The best part of Anne's company, Really Homemade Soap, is that unlike the store-bought variety, her merchandise lasts forever and won't gunk up a soap dish.
Gunk free and used every day in a stolen ashtray from Les Deux Magots in Paris, where they apparently don't know how to spell my name correctly.

If you're looking for gifts that are homey and woodsy and other words that end in 'sy', click here.

Top 10 Movies of 2007

Ann Abeyta here. Last year I posted my top 10 list on this blog and I got nothing out of it, so thanks for having me back to continue my slide into obscurity, Suzy. And no cracks about my new headshot.

This has been the strongest year for films in probably a decade. If you missed these, run, don’t walk to Netflix. So, in no particular order, these are the top ten movies of the year:

1. The Kite Runner – This is the story of the fall of Afghanistan’s monarchy in the 1960’s and of two boys who are best friends. Adapted from the national best-selling novel of the same name, we witness the devastation of a friendship based on an extreme act of brutality against one of the boys, an act that will forever alter their friendship and the path of both of their lives.

2. Michael Clayton - George Clooney, welcome to my loving arms! I know you tried so very hard with Syriana. You were kinda fat and gross in that movie and I rejected your Syriana love. This, my friend, was more than a girl could hope for… except for that part where Tilda Swinton was sniffing her sweaty armpits. What the hell was that all about?

3. King of Kong, A Fistful of Quarters – You would be hard pressed to find a more compelling film this year than King of Kong. Steve Wiebe, the star of the film, is my hero. In the past, roomfuls of big budget writers couldn’t come close to capturing the intrigue, the trophy wives, the mullets, and the backbiting that occurs behind the scenes of the competitive gaming world. But this movie does. It simply is the greatest tale of good vs. evil in a long, long time.

4. Juno – So. Fucking. Great. Who knew Jennifer Garner could act? Seriously. Nobody saw that shit coming. Vegas wouldn’t have even taken that bet. You would have had an easier time trying to convince me that the Village People weren’t gay than trying to convince me that I would one day say the words, “Jennifer Garner is flat out incredible in this film.” Don’t even get me started on the genius screenwriter that is Diablo Cody. Juno was her debut screenplay and she sold it the first day she sent it out. She also wrote a best selling book and has a blog called ‘The Pussy Ranch.’ (That sound you just heard is all the men surfing away and heading to Google) So she went from being a stripper to a Blogger to a best selling author to a screenwriter. It has to make you smile that a girl who once charged sketchy Middle Eastern men for lap-dances will soon be looking for mantle space for an Oscar. Mark down that Ellen Page (made last year’s Honorable Mention list with Hard Candy) will be the greatest actress of her generation.

5. Once – An Irish busker boy meets a girl, falls in love, and all is right with the world. If you ignore the fact that she’s 17 and he’s 39 then all is right with the world. But don't let that minor fact cloud your thinking or you and your moral high ground will miss the most beautiful and touching film of the year.

6. No Country For Old Men - Javier Bardem’s hair should get an above the line credit and I should have hated this film since I’m Mexican and all the Mexicans in it are drug dealers, dead drug dealers, or soon to be dead drug dealers. I know somebody is going to say Javier is Mexican but he’s not playing one in this film. No self respecting Latino would have that haircut! He’s either an angry Eskimo or Russian, but not Mexican. Seriously, you would have to be Sweeney Todd to give that haircut to one of my people. Shit! I just watched the trailer again; I think he might be Samoan.

7. There Will Be Blood – That’s all my Mom said to me when I turned twelve.

8. Atonement – A beautiful film about a single moment that destroys three lives. I loved this film not only for how beautiful it was - that green dress was a showstopper - but for how courageously it embraced the story it was telling. This wasn’t some cheesy Hollywood tripe with a buttoned-up ending and a hero riding off into the sunset. This one got down to the real business of telling a heartbreaking story of wrecked lives and the consequences of knowing that in a single moment you can make the wrong choice and will have to live with it.

9. Zodiac - Classic film making from David Fincher, (Fight Club, Se7en, Panic Room) who never fails to amaze and inspire. Robert Downey, Jr. will tragically be overlooked for a best supporting Oscar nomination but he deserves one.

10. The Diving Bell And The Butterfly – So, this guy has a stroke and becomes completely paralyzed except for one eye. That is one fucking eye, people. They had to sew the other one shut because the muscle wasn’t working right and it dried out. With one good eye he blinks out a novel. Why don’t you take a second to re-read that sentence? Oh, screw it. I’ll re-type it for you… HE BLINKS OUT AN ENTIRE NOVEL! I didn’t do my dishes for five days last week, how big of an ass did I feel like after seeing this?

Honorable Mention:
The Host, Black Snake Moan, Super Bad, 3:10 To Yuma, The Lives of Others, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Into the Wild, Hoax, Enchanted, The Savages, Sweeney Todd, Knocked Up, The Darjeeling Limited, The Orphanage, 300, Shoot ‘em up.

Explain The Dead Thing To Me Again

My father used to say, “Live every day as if it's your last.” So does that mean I’d be picking out a coffin, a headstone, and talking to a mortician? Or that I’d wake up thinking Today is my last day on earth? Then the next day I’d get up and say what? “Shit, I just blew yesterday.”

I’d rather be cremated than have a memorial service but I was raised Catholic so that means that when I die there will be a wake, something I’m never going to be again. And why is it that when you go to a funeral, afterwards people ask you how it was. What do they think you're going to say? “Everyone loved my dress; I saw lots of old friends and met a really great guy.” It's a funeral; it's always going to suck.

And have you noticed that only the fabulous people die? He was always smiling and was such a beautiful person. Everyone loved him. Just once I'd like to hear, Well good riddance. Serious B.O., didn’t flush and never returned things. And when someone dies too young you always hear, She was a ray of sunlight, never hurt anyone's feelings and was loved by all. I guess that means I'm going to live to be a trillion. They say that when you die there's a bright light, ethereal music and all your dead relatives line up to greet you. So now you're trapped in eternity with people you didn't even want to spend Thanksgiving with? And apparently your whole life flashes in front of you. I’m going on the record right now that I refuse to revisit any of my exes, geometry and anything from the 70’s. So if anyone’s listening, please delete those items from my Instant RePlay Book.

Around children, parents use euphemisms for death because they don't want to upset them. When I was a kid my mother and father said they were putting my dog to sleep. And all I remember was that one night they went to his bed and I never saw the dog again. I didn't let my parents near my bed for weeks.

If you’re really ill, they have to put you on life support. Wouldn't it be smarter if we got life support earlier on in life, when we really needed it? Like we’d get $62,000 to pay off our subprime mortgages so we wouldn't have had that stress-induced heart attack and be intubated and lying on our death-beds in the first place.

I think the reason so many die during a disaster is that they save the wrong people. Women and children first. Then the elderly. I’m thinking specifically of the Titanic. They put the women, children, and old people in the rafts. And left behind the only group who had the strength to row them. The men. I can just imagine another ship passing by and their captain saying, “What's that noise? Crying kids? We're outta here.”

Everyone knows that you should only evacuate women and children first if there are spiders and bogeymen on board. And old people? How long will it take them to get to land when they can't drive faster than 18 mph on a freeway? I say we light them up and use them as flares. They're just going to get back to shore and run us over with their 1978 Lincoln Continentals anyway. I'm glad the captain had the good sense to go down with the Titanic. If he lived, what were they going to do, transfer him to the Hindenburg?

I don’t like all the phrases we use as a substitute for the word ‘died.’ He’s in a better place. If he was truly in a better place, wouldn’t we all be trying to get there? He’s gone to his reward. So that’s what you get for spending your whole life fighting with spouses, having stoner kids, working a shit job and paying bills? Death? They kicked the bucket. Unless you’re talking about Jack and Jill, fine. Otherwise? Dead. Dead. Dead.

Some people take ads out in their local newspapers to commemorate the anniversary of the death of their loved one. "For John: his first birthday in heaven.” It seems a little strange to me. How do they know which newspapers are delivered in heaven? And I’m not knocking heaven; it might be okay, although there's probably nothing on TV there either.

End of chat.

California Fire Damage Fall 2007

This Is Why I Know So Much About Men

The Honolulu Comedy Club, Honolulu, Hawaii

The Last Laugh, Seattle, Washington

1. They are very knowledgeable about porn.

2. I know this because they helped me shop for some.

3. They never think women are funny.

4. I know this because most of them couldn't follow me.

5. They can't cook.

6. I know this because I did all the cooking.

7. They're very smart.

8. I know this because I did all the cooking.

End of chat.

The Winner Wears The Hat

This is the picture of DJ the Sheep, the winner of my 12 Pets of Christmas Contest.

These are pictures of DJ wearing the first place prize of a sheepskin coat Where Hot Comes To Die ™ baseball cap.

zzzzzzzzzz

For My Arch Enemy Jenée...

....and Romhell, Abeyta, Princess Normal, Copscotch, Chilidog, Stanhope, Louis CK, Laphboy, CatheB, klownhuntr, Baldguy, Slaight and many others. Romhell was recently at Coconuts in Clearwater, Florida and found this picture of me and Steve Marmel side by side... ..secretly planning the demise of the other.

Not really but it would be perfect if these were put up during the Wired For Laughs feud between me and him, when he threatened to throw me out of his house if I showed my face.

In 1999 comics from different parts of the world belonged to a newsgroup on Usenet called alt.comedy.standup, also known as ACS. Marmel decided to host a reunion here in L.A. for all of them and dubbed it Wired for Laughs. Klownhuntr, a former clown who used to work for Ringling Brothers and as he often reminded us, played the White House while the rest of us were only playing comedy clubs, always claimed the credit for coming up with the reunion idea. He's now in Vegas in one of the road companies of Defending the Caveman. The rest of us are still in comedy clubs because, you know, we suck.

Marmel and I decided to stage an online feud for no other reason than we were bored. We went back and forth sniping at each other for weeks while ACSer's picked sides. Marmel let My Arch Enemy Jenée in on the joke and I think she was the only one who knew since I never told anyone. But you know how guys gossip so I may be wrong.

Marmel and I would get emails from comics saying 'You're the funniest' or 'You're going to win this' and then he and I would compare notes. We definitely each had our fans and we also each had our detractors. He used to send me the emails Klownhuntr would send to him wherein I was trashed to within an inch of my ego. Fortunately my ego is large enough that it took almost a full two and a half weeks before I broke down and cried like a girl.

Comics flew in from Scotland, Australia and as far away as Indiana. The feud ended the day of Marmel's BBQ at his house, which was part of the reunion as was two nights of shows at the Melrose Improv. I walked in and saw comics pointing at me and whispering as I forced my way through the crowd asking over and over, "Where's Marmel?" They turned him in faster than Linda Tripp could pick up a phone and get a dial tone.

Marmel couldn't stand 'feuding' anymore because he wanted to be liked. Me, not so much. So he shushed the room and announced that the feud was faked. I don't know what we expected but people seemed disappointed. Pissed, even. They had all eagerly gathered around as if at the hanging of Saddam Hussein. The moment Marmel said it was faked, they wandered away, bored.

Fuckers.

Suzy Soro
To my knowledge, end of chat.

Screwed By Screw Magazine

Al Goldstein wanted a female comic who was not easily offended, owned stilettos and mini-skirts and who could emcee three nights of hardcore shows at The Limelight in New York City. Most female comics back then wore no makeup and talked about getting married and having babies. I, on the other hand, thought makeup was one of the four food groups and had worked with so many male comics over the years that I could distinguish the wife's voice from the girlfriend's voice when I was on the road and answering the phone in the comedy condo. And yeah, I know, your man doesn't cheat on you when he's out of town. And Robert Blake did not kill his wife.

At the beginning of the first show, I was introduced to one of the producers who was coked out of her mind and seemed offended that I didn't want any. Then I met the two male producers, also coked out of their minds. Then I met China Kitty and Carmen, anorexic trannies with grapefruits stapled to their chests. The entire audience was Asian men WHO DID NOT SPEAK ENGLISH. So there I was cracking jokes about American politics (I'm so lying; I was talking about blowjobs) and watching these men stare at me, probably wondering why I wasn't naked. I was supposed to hand out condoms throughout the show but I ended up just throwing them at the audience so they wouldn't rush the stage and trample me with their tiny dicks.

Sidebar: I have not ever seen an Asian dick but in the spirit of stereotypical discrimination I bow to the populace.

 I brought the trannies out first and the Asians chanted "They is men. They is men." Had they not ever seen transvestites in the Far East? There are some trying on clothes in my bedroom as I write this for God's sakes. China and Carmen ran off stage. I only wish I had had the sense to follow them. Ron Jeremy got thunderous applause, as did Seka and Candida. Whenever I came back on stage between acts, there was this big collective sigh, like "Oh great, it's the COMIC. With her clothes on."

I was fired the next day.

L.A. Sign Of The Times #31

The Pet Contest Winners

Out of 23 entries, I picked the final 10 for different reasons, none of which I'm going to reveal because I started getting entries back in October and now I've forgotten the reasons. Click on the label at the bottom of this post to see all the pictures again.

And the winner is:

Sidebar: The day the Academy Awards changed 'And The Winner Is' to 'And the Oscar Goes to' was the day I wanted to ram an angry squirrel up someone's ass. I'm not an egalitarian blog. There are WINNERS.

First Place: The Sheep and The Snowman. The concept was out of the box and made me wonder how medicated the creator of that picture was.

Second Place: The Boxers. The sheer effort of the entry was impressive.

Honorable Mention: Drunk Dog. Who among us doesn't want to get our pets drunk? Just me? Didn't think so.

First place has the option of either the baseball cap or the set of 6 blank cards with envelopes and second place gets what first place casts dismissively aside. If you are in first or second place, email me your address and the combination to your home safe and I'll get the prizes and burglars out to you right away.

I'm linking the finalists because they all have disturbing terrific blogs. Some of them didn't have links so just imagine them sitting at their computers wishing they did so they could trash me because they didn't win:

The humiliated Italian Greyhound Pet #1
The angry Christmas Squirrel Pet #2
Black Cat with lights Pet #3
The Elf and the Ferret Pet #4
The toilet Octopus and the drunk Dog # 5 and #9
The Sheep and the Snowman Pet # 6
The Boxers Pet # 7
The J.A.P. Pet #10

End of contest. Finally.

New Year's Resolutions For My Friends

-Stop complaining about the same thing over and over. I can’t fix it. If I could, I’d fix all the things I complain about over and over.

-Make up your mind in less than four days. As fascinating as the difference is between ecru and taupe, your equivocation gets on my last available nerve. Choose one and move on.

-Stop asking me what I think you should do with your life. I don’t know what I should do with my life and yours interests me even less.

-Stop asking me if you should have plastic surgery. Look in the mirror. If you don’t burst into tears, the answer is no.

-Stop asking me if you should lose weight. Look in the mirror. If you burst into tears, the answer is yes.

-Stop asking me for my opinion over and over and over. Even a 3 year old knows what he wants.

-Do not re-gift my ass. If you do I will tell your mother about all the sex you had in grade school. See how that works?

End of chat.