A New Feature! On My Blog! Not Porn!

I'm highlighting bloggers who have one of my tee-shirts. Each of their pictures and a link to their blog will be on my sidebar for a month so don't tell me you have no time to read them because ONE MONTH.

First up is Kimber. I love her blog and she has a huge following so go be part of the mad rush to worship her. You're welcome.

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

Can someone make this horrible woman and this horrible commercial go away? And she can take her horrible bumpits with her. The name "Flo" hasn't been used since biblical times and then only to describe the mess Moses made when he parted the Red Sea. And if you believe that story then maybe you're wearing bumpits and your name is Delores.

And what has happened to Grace Slick, one of the all time coolest chicks who ever walked the planet? Fronting the Jefferson Airplane, or the monument, I can never remember which, and flipping the bird at the camera.

She's now 70 and believes rockers older than 50 don't belong on stage. Well Grace, if you look as bad as you do now, yes, you need to stay off stage since rumor has it the kids today don't buy tickets to see their grandmothers sing, unless it's in the bathroom and then they sell tickets for that event to all their germy little friends.

Three words, Grace - Ex er cise.

"Following your curiosity is a good idea, because you don't want to be sitting around at my age going, 'Gee, I was too scared to go for it.'" Apparently she wasn't too scared to go for desserts either.

I got the most retarded coupon from Wells Fargo Banks. If you use your debit card as a credit card for the month of March they will credit you up to 7 dollars that month. SEVEN DOLLARS. You can't go through a drive-thru window for less than seven dollars, even if Grace Slick isn't in your car.

And In The You Can't Win Department: I never look at my brokerage account statements because I'm afraid of the bogey man but I finally looked at the last one. I guess the Internet was broken that day. I discovered that Morgan Stanley Smith Barney was deducting $35 a month because I carried too low a balance. How did it get low? BECAUSE THEY WERE DEDUCTING MONEY FROM IT EVERY MONTH. And this is on a retirement account. They do not want you to retire. Good thing because you CAN'T.

So The Bite Me Award Of The Week goes to Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley. Now if I only had a badge to put into this post. If anyone wants to make me one I will give you a free t-shirt in exchange. Which is nice of me considering I could instead deduct $35.00 from your account or send you $7.00 in the mail.

Grace Slick Jefferson Airplane Wells Fargo Banks Wells Fargo Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley Smith Barney

L.A. Sign Of The Times #52

This is Gower Gulch at the intersection of Gower and Sunset, right down the street from me. It's actually a Shopping Center. No one uses the word Shopping Center anymore. Now a small grouping of stores is called a Strip Mall. Even though there are no tassels or slot machines anywhere in sight.

This red car used to be a place where you could get keys made. Then some genius decided to close it up and uh, leave it there. Which is why people hate L.A. We're made up of senseless individuals and their key-making carts that have no customers.

Click on the label below to see other weird pictures of L.A. I've taken over the 3+ years I've been blogging.

In my defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

We Need To See Other Bloggers

I've been with some of you for over three years.

I'm bored. Tired of your same thing day in and day out. I want to see other bloggers. There. I've said it.

We never go to BlogHer together. You never tell me my uploads are pretty. What has happened to us?

So yes, I've been cheating on you with other blogs.

I spend a lot of time in Apartment Therapy. It's where I met them. Nothing for me has been the same since.

I have also been seeing these people.

And this guy. He's not better in Google Reader than you are and doesn't have any moves that you don't have but he makes me feel like a real woman. Can you say that? No, you cannot.

And I might as well admit it. I've got a crush on My Mother Fucked Mick Jagger. Her followers widget jumped so fast I got high off her tail wind.

And I love the girl who has Just Another Fucking Blog, the story of coming to LA to become a movie star and the unpleasant aftermath of a relationship gone very, very bad.

And then I found someone to take me home to France.

If only my mother hadn't been there we might have had a better time.

Get yourself together. Stop posting every day. Do something interesting or I'm moving to Facebook.

As if.

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

A lot of people have straight jobs. Waitering, catering, officing. And then there are straight jobs that oversee other straight jobs like managing, delegating, vice-presidencing. And then there's the top of this Straight Food Chain called the CEO, the Big Kahuna or The Guy Who Married The Boss's Daughter and then helped give him a fatal heart attack. Then there is the bottom of This Heap, delivery drivers, strippers and sanitation workers.

Yes, take down the stripper pole and stop calling Vegas.

Every job sucks. Because somewhere down the line it seems everyone has turned into an asshole. In my field, show business, we have our share of assholes. We have a very big share. Including, possibly, the percentage of share that your field is supposed to have.

When one of us turns against one of us, our main recourse is to spread the dish as far and fast as possible. If you're treated right you will tell one person but if you're treated poorly you will tell a hundred. That expression fits our business as tightly as one of Lady Gaga's costumes. We can cost you a job simply because you're an asshole. How great is that? Divas last about 10 minutes in Hollywood, unless you're Mariah Carey and no I can't explain that. You can even be an alcoholic or drug addict and can still work if you're a fun guy who is only slightly mental. Hello Tracy Morgan! Hi Andy Dick! Hey You Used To Be David Hasselhoff!

I had forgotten what being disrespected felt like since I haven't worked the comedy club circuit in a while. Those club owners will shred your ass like lettuce, even if you turned their under performing club from an Iceberg Wedge With Mayo into Wolfgang's Chicken Caesar. Yes, I'm talking to you Stardome. And Zanies Nashville.

But that's what happened this week. People disrespected me. People who take themselves way too seriously, which is a by-product of living in Los Angeles. People who think they're more important than they are. So for the last time: the important people are the President of the United States, Mission Control and Dr. House.

I'm sorry it sucks to be you but take a number and get in line. You do not need to beat up on others because you feel bad about where you are in life.

Passive Aggressives meet in the basement of the Lutheran Church every Thursday at 7 pm. Bring dartboards, pictures and snacks so we can eat our rage on toast points. Free parking in the asshole's driveway next door.

I salute those of you who hang in day after day, month after month, year after year. You work hard, take abuse from bosses and co-workers and keep your mouth shut. You're friends with people who routinely put you down or use you up like a free sandwich pass at Subway. But I? Cannot live that way. If you disrespect me in any way I'm outta there. I'd rather starve.

God knows I can afford to drop a pound or ten. (<---hack phrase alert. Sorry.)

End of chat.

We're With The Band

This is another picture of me and Alain. He had a band with the guy on the left, Jean-Pierre. I made Alain let me and Lindy sing with them because two people in a band is not a band, Alain.

At 15 and 13 Lindy and I owned the same dress. She always wanted to do everything I did and wear everything I wore. She probably begged my mother to buy her the same dress she bought me. And I probably yelled at her and said We're Not Twins You Stupid Moron. Because I have an incredibly sophisticated vocabulary from reading all the thick books in our library.

We entered a Battle of the Bands at the Casino de Royan, the next town over from Meschers on the west coast of France, and came in second. I was devastated but I remembered that it's not whether you win or lose but how you play the game. I bet I know who coined that phrase. LOSERS. Here we are singing at the Casino de Royan. As you can see, we just had the one performing outfit. We're even wearing matching shoes. Sure it's a horror to look at now but check out Alain's shoes. I hope to God we did not all plan to wear white shoes for the contest because if we did I have to turn in my subscription to Vogue and move to Bulgaria.

Three years later I was in college in Paris and dating a German named Karl, below. Karl devirginized me. I can still see the trauma etched on my face as it finally dawned on me why he kept pushing my head down to his crotch. I probably looked like someone in The Blair Witch Project. I saw Karl only once more, in New York, many, many, years later. His brother took me aside and said "Karl no longer speaks. He got tired of talking."

At dinner I kept up a steady stream of chatter and eventually he answered one of the forty hundred questions I asked him, Why did you give up talking? He said he had talked enough and was going to spend the rest of his life listening. Because I have excellent taste in men.

Why are some of my pictures oddly shaped? Because I used to put my photo albums together like this and yes I have a disease.

The next summer we were in Canet Plage in the south of France and my sister looked like this in a bikini: Horrifying.

She was 14 and had longer hair but I convinced her to let me cut it all off because A. I'm a terrible person and B. Not one boy found me remotely interesting while she wore that fucking bikini. But the only thing shorter hair did was call more attention to her body. She always had spectacular boobage until she lost them in a tragic aerobics accident many years later. No body fat? No boobs. Run and hide, A Cup, run and hide.

Meanwhile I can increase my cup size just by looking at pudding.

I Read This Book Before I Had Sex

We had a library in our home. I spent a lot of time in that library because that's where my father would send me when I was punished. And I was punished a lot. Not my fault I was smarter than him.

My sister Lindy never got in trouble so consequently never spent one minute in that room. I think she didn't learn to read until she was 28. I don't even know for a fact if she can read today because we only talk on the phone. Not my fault I was smarter than her.

I came to know every book in our library because I stopped sticking pins into my Dad's pictures long enough to read all the thick ones because I was sure they were the hardest. Then I would quote really big words at the dinner table. Just to punish him.

Eventually I got around to a thin book. Hardly visible among all the novels and biographies (Eleanor of Aquitaine! The Call of the Wild! Crime and Punishment!) was a pale blue hardcover called This is My Beloved by Walter Benton, first published in 1943. Inside I discovered lusty phrases like Your warm naked thighs and Your breasts are wonderfully alive under my kisses and the very disturbing Your lips cushioned the inherent murder in your teeth.

I was 15.

And had just kissed my first boy, Alain, in a town on the Atlantic coast of France called Meschers.

This is me and Alain, who was 17. Look how relaxed Alain was; look at me clutching my Kodak Brownie Camera as if he was going to steal it. You know the French. If he and I had gotten married we would have given birth not to a child but to one giant nose.

I came back from France that school year and read Walter Benton's incredibly gorgeous book of poetry. I thought I knew everything about love and the fine art of French kissing but as it turned out, apparently there was A LOT more to learn.

When I left Meschers, Alain gave me his little silver medallion from the most famous church in the world, Lourdes. Buying something from Lourdes often implies someone really needs it to keep them healthy. I hope I didn't kill him by accepting it.

But chances are good that I did.

So Happy Valentine's Day to all the boys and girls with "inherent murder in their teeth." It's a miracle I ever kissed anyone again after reading that line.

I still have that little silver medallion.

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

Sent in by Martha Jane.

A Handbook for the Freaked-Out New Dad

I don't know why no one thinks of the dad when a couple gets pregnant. People always concentrate on the mom and think the dad does nothing. And they would be right because NO ONE HAS EVER TOLD THEM WHAT TO DO BEFORE.

Written by comedian and filmmaker Chris Mancini ,with a foreward by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor of Baby on Bored, hilarious chapter titles like My Baby Is Crying. Help Me and I See a New Mother, but Where the Hell Did My Wife Go? make this book as original as it is funny.

One of my favorite quotes is "You know that voice in your head that says 'You really shouldn't say that' right before you say something? Mine is broken." A man who can admit when he's making a mistake? WE LOVE THIS GUY.

Check out Chris's website and if you want to buy a signed copy of his book (as well as Stefanie's), head over to Comedy Film Nerds. You can also pick it up at your local book store.

Buy it for the guy who is over his head and under his wife, or maybe the other way around. Wherever he is, he'll thank you for getting him the Cliff Notes to his new life.

L.A. Sign Of The Times #51

Seriously, a 2010 calendar? Isn't he dead?

When I'm 88

If I was a millionaire, and oh GOD I'm sooooooooo close, I would buy homes and decorate them all day and then fly to Milan and Paris every weekend to shop for clothes. Some lucky billionaire out there is missing an opportunity of a lifetime to have his fortune wiped out because HE HASN'T MET ME YET.

When I'm 88, as is Iris Apfel, below, I hope to God I throw caution to the closets and end up half as fashionable. This is the woman who launched one of the most persistent fashion trends of this century. Keep reading.

In the 1940s, a young girl named Iris hounded the owner of a Wisconsin Army & Navy store until he finally ordered her a pair of boy-sized denims. Her intent was to wear them with a turban and large hoop earrings. Such was an early milestone in the career of a fashion visionary and muse who quite possibly launched a trend in women’s fashion — jeans — that now represents a 10 billion dollar industry yearly in the U.S. alone.

With a personal style the New York Times described as 'controlled flamboyance,' (when I first read this I thought it said 'flatulence' and I was impressed) this New York society figure and co-founder of the legendary textile design company, Old World Weavers, has traveled the world inspiring fashion designers such as Ralph Rucci, Jason Wu and Isaac Mizrahi. She recently appeared at the top of Vanity Fair’s international best-dressed list and is featured in print ads for Coach.

Elements of Style According to Iris Apfel:

1. Never take yourself or an outfit too seriously.
2. Visit the animal kingdom.
3. Consider the clergy.
4. Travel widely.
5. Go high and low.
6. Don’t fret about your age.
7. Don’t be afraid to stop traffic.

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

Sent in by Joe.

Why I Went Off Anti-Depressants

A few years ago one of my girlfriends told me she posed nude for a Japanese magazine and got paid $2000 for her trouble.

"Oh, that's nice." I replied.
"You're not shocked?"
"Should I be?"

I'm generally unflappable. I used to think it was because I lived a very interesting life and surrounded myself with others who lived similarly. Dullards need not apply was my philosophy. And being around interesting people inures you to the quotidian. So to me, getting paid $2000 for posing nude for the Japanese was just not that big a deal. Knowing my sister once had to tread water in shark-infested waters off the coast of Africa and keep her friend afloat until the people on the yacht they were on turned around and rescued them? That was a big deal because A. Imminent death and B. LindyMOMSGOINGTOKILLYOU.

When I went on antidepressants I was in bad shape. I had lost all feeling in my hands after my ankle surgery in 2008. Coming off crutches screwed with my neck muscles which in turn affected my nerves and presto chango: no feelings in my hands. I dropped and shattered glasses in the sink, couldn't write with a pen and was unable to tie my shoes. I cried all the time. Even though I felt sorry for myself I believed I was very much part of the problem. My brain was set to We're All Going To Die and I couldn't stop myself from feeling bad every. single. day.

Thoughts become things. Choose wisely.

Someone who saw me every day during this time suggested I see a professional and my first response was, "No way; I like using my feet to hold a glass in a restaurant." But I knew it was time to get help. On the advice of a psychiatrist I went on a low dose of 10 mg of Lexapro* and my pity party shrank by one occupant.

I stopped crying. I stopped dropping glasses in the sink. And I stopped wearing shoes that required shoelaces.

After a year, the Lexapro had done its job. But if I thought nothing shocked me before, this last year on anti-depressants removed any vestiges of even the slightest possible recoil that I could have from life. I was deadened from the chin up.

My friends would tell me what upset them and I would stare blankly into space. Unable to see how they had constructed such huge mountains out of such minuscule molehills. My own mountains-to-molehills ratio had shrunk by such a large number that I was only able to empathize with others via the comments section of their blogs. If they had no blog I hurried them off the phone. I'm sorry your life sucks. Take a number and get in line.

I've now been off Lexapro for over two months. When I decided to quit I thought I might go into the shitter because, you know, I have goals and all.

But I didn't.

I would go back on them in a heartbeat if I started to slide down the proverbial rabbit hole. I still can't feel the last two knuckles of any of my fingers but the Lexapro gave me distance and perspective on where I was in life. I can now tie my shoes and sign my checks. Can world domination be far behind?

If you think you need anti-d's, DO NOT go to an internist, gynecologist or your local grocer. You need to see a psychiatrist because they're the ONLY ones who can diagnose your trauma and dispense antidepressants responsibly. They're trained in the vagaries of the brain. Do not let people convince you to the contrary or you can end up with a diagnosis for the vapors. After all, if you break a leg, do you go to a dermatologist?

And please don't write me and say you got a script from your dentist and you were fine and I'm a moron. You were lucky. A psychiatrist makes you check in regularly to monitor your mental health. A dentist will only remind you to floss.

And I certainly don't need you to tell me I'm a moron while my mother is still alive.

End of chat.

*Lexapro worked for me. It doesn't mean it will work for you. I'm not a doctor although I'd like to play one on TV.

Photos Of Me And Some Funny Men

I'm posting pictures you may have seen here before but SUE ME ALREADY. I love that my name is part of a larger plan to suck money out of the bank accounts of strangers. After all, many of us don't get a chance to sue our parents and don't think it hasn't occurred to me.

"Suzy, it's time for school."
"I'm going to sue you for making me learn to read and write. Take that, hateful people, take THAT."

I once sued a bouncer at a nightclub in New York for shoving me so hard I fell on my ass and ruined my pantyhose. But the case was pretty stupid because how can pantyhose be further ruined? The nylony part is so viscous you could hoist it on a raft and sail that sucker to Hawaii. And that glaring white crotch area? Do the words 'Let's Try Lavender' NEVER come up in a company memo?
This is me standing between two men who would go on to become multimillionaires while leaving me in my one bedroom apartment putting my pantyhose back into their L'Eggs containers.

I can still see Phil pretend-walking down stairs in the Newsradio episode where he builds his own office. I have to find the photo I took of him holding a garden hose up to his crotch and pretending he was peeing.

Carl Ballantine died last November. He was one of the great character actors of the 1960's. He lived in my neighborhood and I ran into him a lot. He was always funny. Just funny on the street funny. In this photo from 2005 he is probably asking me what happened to my hair.

This picture was taken at Phil and Brynn's house. Andy thought he was posing for the press. He had forgotten he was at a party.

And finally, me and Flavor Flav. I made him pose for a picture because HE WEARS A CLOCK ALL THE TIME. Even while he's shopping.

I asked his son to take the picture with my cell phone camera. That fucking clock was bigger than my head and I have a jumbotron for a head.

End of chat.

Larry David Jerry Seinfeld Carl Ballantine Flavor Flav Phil Hartman Andy Dick