25 Things You Didn't Know About Me

1. I've never been to a costume party and if you go to them it's doubtful we'll ever be friends.

2. I have a titanium bar in my back and no it's not stocked with alcohol.

3. My favorite movie is Pillow Talk with Doris Day and Rock Hudson.

4. I left home when I was 17 but would have left earlier if my parents weren't such MEAN ASSHOLES.

5. My best friend is gay and we've been estranged 3 times yet always wander back into each other's lives. It goes without saying that we're both very stubborn.

6. I speak and read French yet got D's in French in high school and my first year of college. As you can imagine this went over very well with my mother, who's French, and my father, who was Hitler.

7. I've been engaged 3 times but was only in love once and not to any of the men I was engaged to.

8. I prefer going to the movies by myself. Although I used to put my Yorkie in my purse and take him along. Mainly because he didn't talk during the movie.

9. I have one sister and have had 4 stepbrothers and 1 stepsister.

10. There are only 2 people who make me laugh. One is my friend Jane in New York and one is my sister.

11. If I can come up with 25 things for this list I'll be amazed.

12. I never had any female friends who didn't work until I met bloggers.

13. I don't like diamonds.

14. All of my dishes are black and white but in different patterns.

15. Number 14 is kind of dumb for a list of 25 things you didn't know about me. I mean seriously, who cares what kind of dishes I have?

16. I believe in reincarnation.

17. I can't believe some bloggers make a '100 Things You Didn't Know About Me' TAB.

18. I love to travel. The more exotic the place, the better.

19. I never wanted my own children but dated 4 men who had kids. And I loved them all. The kids, I mean.

20. I've been performing since I was 14 and performing professionally since I was 15.

21. My favorite activity is getting into bed and reading. This explains why I have no boyfriend.

22. Don't ask me for my opinion because I'll tell you the truth.

23. I'm a member of SAG and AFTRA.

24. I have terrible taste in men. If there's an asshole on the loose, I'll find him.

25. I'm a great cook.

BONUS 26. After bitching and moaning I'm now on Facebook.

The Mystery Of The Two Windows

While I was looking for apartments, I kept getting a picture in my head of a window at the end of a kitchen. And a picture window in the living room next to it. I had no idea why or what it meant. I would see apartments all day long and come home and have that vision pop into my head at random times. I wondered if it was going to be in a house I would own. (Even though I've never in my life wanted to own a house.)

I continued to look for apartments and then one day saw one I really liked. The manager left to get me an application and while he was gone I looked out the kitchen window. Then rocked to the side and saw this:


It was the EXACT picture that had appeared in my head, the kitchen window on the right, the living room picture window on the left.

Sidebar: The first dog my sister and I owned was an AKC dog named Fago Marigold's Mental Image. We had picked out a puppy but the breeder said, "You're not puppy people." Our dog, eventually named Kiko, was 9 months when we got him and we nearly cut off his balls by accident so we were probably not "9 month old dog people" either.

I had another apartment to see that day and it was also terrific. The manager gave me an application and said he would need to see my bank statements or a tax return. I didn't carry those around with me - obviously - so said I would return in a few hours. But I had a feeling the universe was trying to save me another application fee by putting this snag in the transaction. I knew in my heart I was supposed to have the first apartment. That's what the vision of the Two Windows was all about.

When I got home, the first apartment manager had already called and told me I got it. (He said when he saw my credit score he had to get me into the building) (It must have been high) (Or maybe he was?)

Remember the story of the Nic Cage movie and the angel played by Don Cheadle and how he told Nic the answer would come to him, and then my phone rang and it was from the town my Dad died in? I knew that was a message. The answer would come to me. And I knew it was my Dad "calling" to let me know it was a message. He and I believed in the metaphysical much more than the reality most people hang onto. Our way is more comforting but requires more faith. Although sometimes I run a quart low on that.

This is the view from my living room window.

This is the view from my 3rd floor balcony. In back of the pink house, those pale ash colored buildings, Paramount Pictures, are three blocks from my apartment.

I had so much extra stuff I was able to furnish my balcony.

Which is really ridiculous. I'm only showing one half of it because if I show you the other end, also furnished and decorated, you're going to call Hoarders on me.

Why You Should Never Eat In Cheap Retaurants

It was 14 degrees. At least that's what the neon sign on Lexington Avenue said. It was the dark of winter in New York, and I had just gotten off the 86 crosstown bus, home from working at a fish restaurant I hated. A stray dog stood in front of the bus as I got off and the bus dispatcher said he kept getting on the buses only to have each of the drivers take him off again. He was dirty and sad looking. Like many of the men I've met. I took him home. Like many of the men I've met.

I had a Yorkie who hated the big mutt immediately. I named him Panda because he looked like one. My dog's name was "Selfish and Spoiled", but I called him "My Boyfriend" for short.

I took Panda to a vet and the doctor discovered its previous owner had cut one of the dog's ears in HALF. With scissors. So I had him sewed up. I paid for his shots.

When I got home the restaurant called and fired me.

I had complained that the chefs kept throwing monkey dishes at our heads if we didn't pick up our orders fast enough. They also retrieved food from the floor and put it back on the stoves. But I was fired.

I had six dollars in the bank. I sat in a chair and cried while that mutt crawled up on my lap, put one paw on each of my shoulders and licked my tears. My own dog went to the kitchen and nosed his food dish around. To remind me that we could no longer afford dog food.

I had to find a new owner for the stray so I began walking my neighborhood with a big black and white mutt with half his head bandaged. One of those endless days, someone tapped me on the back and I turned around and saw an old woman dressed in multiple layers of clothes, endless accessories, a lack of makeup and frizzed out hair. I'd never seen her before and thought she might have been homeless.

I said "yes?" She said, "turn around." I turned back around and she took her right hand and made some chicken scratching movements on my upper back. When she stopped she said, "Don't worry, everything will work out. It will be fine."

I thanked her and started to walk away, relieved she hadn't asked for money I didn't have. But it occurred to me I hadn't asked her WHY everything was going to be okay so I turned back. She was nowhere to be seen. I lived on a very wide avenue, and there wasn't a lot of foot traffic on any given day because that part of the upper East side, by Gracie Mansion, was not accessible by subway, only bus or taxi. She had just vanished into thin air. And I never saw her again in the ten years I lived there after that incident.

The next day as I ONCE AGAIN walked with Panda, a woman came out of the flower shop on our street. She asked me why the dog was bandaged and I told her the story. She said she wanted a dog but her husband didn't and wouldn't let her get one. She called her husband and persuaded him to meet me and Panda later that day. When we arrived, Panda peed on the guy's shoes. The wife said, THIS IS OUR DOG!! The husband laughed and gave in and they took him. With a bandaged head.

I kept in touch with them for about a year. They kept Panda as the dog's name. They also discovered what my own vet had missed. That poor dog had 2 cut ears.

I got another job waiting tables not even a week later.

Things always do work out, even if it doesn't feel like it at the time.

And it NEVER feels like it at the time.

Some People Are Worth Their Weight In Dogs

When my 5 pound Yorkie Kiko first got sick I took him to the ASPCA and the doctor asked if I wanted to put him down. I said yes and placed him on the examining table.

"No, down. DOWN."

I thought, "Make up your mind buddy; I haven't got all day" and took the dog off the table and put him on the floor.

"Do you want to put him to sleep?" he finally said in the tone of voice reserved for imbeciles.
"KILL HIM?"
"He has diabetes."
"Did anyone put Mary Tyler Moore to sleep when SHE got diabetes?"

It was in New York, 1990 and I was booked for road gigs in Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Princeton, Pittsburgh and a thousand other towns so small the only thing I remember about them is my bar tab.

Mildred was an older woman who worked in the dog grooming shop on our block. She said she would babysit Kiko while I traveled. She knew how to give insulin shots and each time I returned home there were detailed, loving notes about what Kiko had done or not done while I was away.

DONE: Peed on everything
NOT DONE: Refrained from peeing on everything

I had very little money in those days. The most I could pay Mildred was $11 a day. For months this exchange worked out until one day she stopped returning my calls. I think the eleven dollars a day plus the traveling from her home on the upper west side to mine on the upper east side did her in. She was 51 but smoking two packs of cigarettes a day had aged her. She looked 52.

So because I had no choice I started taking the dog, the wee wee pads, the insulin, the hypodermics and ketone strips with me on gigs. I only got kicked off one Greyhound Bus. But once off the bus, the driver took a close look at my little dog, who was by now blind, and let me back on. And yes I was wearing a low cut blouse. And didn't the Ketones used to sing backup for Marvin Gaye?

Eventually the dog died, I moved to Los Angeles and never thought about Mildred again. Ten years later I inherited money when my Dad died. The first person I thought of was Mildred.

I bought a card, wrote that I wanted to send her a check to make up for the pittance I had paid her back in New York and was hoping she was at this same address.

Three weeks later I received the card back in the mail, unopened, with the word "Deceased" written across it. I burst into tears. I could never repay this wonderful woman for all she had done for me. I removed the card and stuck the envelope in that year's journal. I packed it away with all the other journals and never looked at it until this year.

I found the envelope and unfolded it. There it was, "Deceased", written across the top. But this time something caught my eye. Something I hadn't noticed when it was first returned to me. The word looked very familiar. And then it hit me, IT WAS MILDRED'S HANDWRITING.

End of chat.

The 5th Day Of Christmas

Me, the last guy I almost married and my dog Kiko. Kiko was an AKC show dog, which explains why he's posing perfectly. That dog knew where his key light was. I did his hair and makeup in case anyone's wondering.

I look so young in this picture I've decided never to look in a mirror again.

Ex-Boyfriends And Small Dogs Are Both Mental

This picture was taken back in the early 80's, here in California. I had been invited to an ex-boyfriend's house to meet his new girlfriend because men actually think that's something their ex-girlfriends want to do.

And I did.

A chance to judge, to mock, to talk about it later with anyone I could get on the phone, are you kidding me? WHEN DO WE LEAVE?

I was in town from New York and had my dog Kiko with me. My ex had always preferred the dog to me so what else is new.

Kiko loved anything that was as small as he was and breathed. He almost lost his eyes millions of times because he could not resist a cat. Even when they hissed at him, bared their teeth and lifted a paw to strike, Kiko would just look at me plaintively. He was like that kid at the park who can't find anyone to play with.

So we're at the ex's and someone had a baby with them. A tiny, breathing baby. So naturally Kiko went over to say hello.

I interrupt this broadcast for breaking 80's fashion news.

See the inset below of my sister's foot in those white shoes? (The actual picture is the last one in this post) Those sandals were from Giorgio of Beverly Hills. At the time they cost $198, which means they would cost about $895 today. I was with Lindy when she bought them, days before the visit with my ex, and Giorgio's, like many great boutiques, served champagne to their customers as they shopped. Alcohol and shopping go really well together. As do bankruptcy and a low FICO score.I remembered that Lindy had eventually grown tired of the shoes and given them to me. She also did this with an actor named Jack Scalia. As you can see, he was much cuter than the shoes.

It's hard to visualize but those little oval things popping up from the shoe were gold leaves. I emailed Lindy the pictures and asked her if she remembered the shoes. This is what she wrote back:

Of course I remember those shoes!!!! I just forgot that I had given them to you. You're right- they were from Giorgio's because in those days I only shopped in Beverly Hills, had a maid, had facials every ten seconds and full-served my gas tank! Those WERE the days. Did I mention that I had membership to about 1700 gyms and did Karen Voight's class every day which cost more that gym membership anywhere in L.A. in those days?

I only started saving $ when I realized that I wasn't going to live forever.

This is the difference between us. I'm not going to live forever so I double-up on my shopping. This might explain why my sister is richer than I am. But I'll be better dressed in the casket. Stop groaning, you know you were thinking the same thing.

Anyway, end of fashion news, back to the baby and Kiko. The baby, like a cat, was not amused by my dog and started pounding on his head. Babies are mean.

Why My Dog Hated Me

Three pictures of my Yorkie, Kiko.

Lazy Dog

French Dog

Christmas Dog and I'm not talking about the guy, although he qualified in the finals