20 Things My Mother And I Have Argued About

Since she arrived at my apartment two weeks ago, these are some of the arguments my mom and I have had:


1. Whether orange bougainvillea was in fact orange bougainvillea.

2. Why the 8 ounces of water I make her drink twice a day with her medication is in a glass so big she’s never seen a glass that big ever in her entire life am I trying to drown her.

3. How sponges work.

4. The fruit flies in my kitchen should pay rent there are so many of them.

5. Who shut down the online Mah-jongg game when they should have checked with her first to see if she was done playing.

6. The guy who parks next to me is probably glad I had my car washed.

7. Why did it take me so long to get my car washed.

8. We need to stop eating tilapia.

9. Why I eat in front of my computer and will probably die there.

10. That the people on So You Think You Can Dance really can’t dance if you call that dancing.

11. Why don’t I hang up paintings over the couch only hobos live like that.

12. Whether the woman at Bank of America wrote down her password and will try to get into her account because she looks shifty and is Russian and mom is part Russian and knows shifty when she sees it.

13. Why am I forcing her to go to the LaBrea Tar Pits when everybody but me knows she hates fossils.

14. Who moved her coffee cup.

15. Who moved her dish.

16. Who moved her glass.

17. Who moved my coffee cup.

18. Who moved my dish.

19. Who moved my glass.

20. Who drank all the wine.

(21.) me

How Many Mothers Does It Take To Drive You Crazy?

It’s said that you never understand your mother until you become a mother yourself. Unless you count my helicopter parenting of my dog in 1990 I never became a mother. At least not the kind that wasn’t followed by the F word.

I grew up in Maryland, south of the Bacon-Dixon Line as my sister Lindy used to call it, and you don’t know humiliation as a teenager in the suburbs until you’re at the mall and your French mom yells across a crowded store, “Suzeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, we finally found a brassiere small eeeeenough for you.”  A French mom, just what every teenager needs to match her acne and double A cup bra.

Although Mom speaks English, it’s not her first language so some words still elude her:

MOM: If I'd had stinking balls I would have thrown zem at zose people.
ME: You mean a stink bomb?
MOM: Oui mon Dieu, STINKING BALLS.

and...

ME: How are you this morning?
MOM: Not gude, I was reaching for somesing and injured my rotating cup.
ME: You have a cup that rotates?
MOM: Don’t you know anysing about anatomy?

And she doesn’t understand idioms at all. At my 8th birthday party she told my little friends that “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” and they all burst into tears.

Talking on the phone with her requires enormous concentration and math skills. Recently she told me that "Things haven't been this bad since the end of the Civil War.” Apparently she's older than I thought. She’s lied about her age for so long that I’m now older than she is. She said she has a doctor's appointment on Dec 13, 1912. She'd better push that appointment up BECAUSE OH MY GOD HOW IS SHE STILL ALIVE?

When she makes her yearly pilgrimage from Paris to Los Angeles the first thing Mom notices is what's wrong with my hair; the first thing Mom doesn’t notice is my rage. She can never open her luggage upon arrival, the key is missing, lost, or stolen by the customs inspectors trying to make off with her 32 year-old house dress. Then she sighs and when my mother sighs, it's the sigh of a thousand failures, which the French perfected. She’s such an expert at it that once in a hotel room she sighed so loudly she inadvertently ordered room service. I always joke that I'm getting my mother a silver lining for her birthday. Really not a joke.

She stays six weeks with my sister and two weeks with me and Lindy and I live in the same city. She demands so much attention that my friends can’t reach me as I’m basically incommunicado, which is Latin for Close to a Nervous Breakdown. I’m not my mother’s favorite child, as you might have figured out by now. I figured it out after she gave me her wedding gown for my own marriage and she knows full well I look terrible in maternity clothes. I brought out my baby scrapbook one day and in a group picture from kindergarten asked Mom to pick me out. Apparently I was a Chinese kid

But the irritation goes both ways. Whereas I can sit in a chair for four days straight, mom can't sit still for two minutes. She starts dinner. At 11 am. She has this bad habit of opening a window wherever she is: a car, your home, in every room. Needless to say I'm afraid to fly with her. She snores as rhythmically as a metronome so it's really too bad I don't play a musical instrument. She always calls me by my sister's name during phone calls but when we hang up I make sure to say, "Goodbye Dad." And Mom, if you’re reading this, you can’t get Dad’s military pay because he’s been dead for ten years so NO I CAN'T CALL HIM FOR YOU.

I make fun of my mom a lot. In my act, on the Internet, and in real life. And the person who laughs the loudest is my mom. She’s a good sport about it all and I know she enjoys the attention. But it has occurred to me the reason she laughs is she probably doesn’t understand my jokes and wants to throw some stinking balls at my head.

An Excerpt From My Book, Celebrity sTalker

This is from the chapter on Sly Stallone: No Wonder I Never Wanted An Easy-Bake Oven.

I’m not in great shape. The only time anyone wrote “lots of abs” next to my name was in my attendance report from high school. So I joined a gym. You can’t not join a gym in Los Angeles. The authorities will find out and suddenly you’re on a billboard that says Got Fat?

So I Got Serious and hired a trainer, or rather hired the one that Bally’s Gym assigned to me. He'd been Mr. Bulgaria twice; Mr. Northern California in the early 90s and wrote three fitness books, which was three more than I'd written. I felt sorry for him; his business card was an unevenly sliced-up piece of Xerox paper. He was earnest and committed, probably had a family waiting in a cramped one-bedroom apartment somewhere in Koreatown, expecting him to put borscht on the table. He had that sad, vacant look that people who do not ever expect to catch up with life have. I have the same expression after I’ve had sex.

Mr. Bulgaria loved working out and assumed I did also because why else would I be at the gym?

Sidebar: Cute guys, the smoothie bar and cute guys. Oh yes, and cute guys.

I don’t understand why people love to sweat. “It gets out all the toxins.” If there are toxins leaking out of any part of me it means my alcohol levels are dangerously low so point me in the direction of a martini.

Maybe I’d love working out if I enjoyed eating. Then there would be a goal, to lose weight or keep a steady weight. But I hate eating even more than I hate working out. Hand me a pill marked LUNCH and I’m done until I’m handed a pill marked DINNER. Give me a purple drink like the one in the movie Barbarella. Jane Fonda drinks it when she wakes up from a hundred and fifty-four hour nap. Sounds like a perfect place to live; you drink your meals and get to nap for six days in a row. That movie was made in 1963 so apparently the future has let us down. And by us I mean me.

I don’t like to discuss food, shop for food or try the food at the trendy new restaurant in Who Cares, Connecticut. I lived with a man who used to drive me crazy because while we were eating breakfast he’d ask me what we should do for lunch. At lunch, he’d ask me what we should do for dinner. At dinner, he’d ask me what we should do for breakfast. No, we’re not still together, why do you ask?

When I do manage to eat something I inhale the whole thing and am then surprised to discover that it *serves 4.* Four what, anorexics? I can hardly wait until I’m rich enough to have Ina Garten move in. It’s the only reason I’m still breathing in and out.

The only machine I used regularly at the gym was the water fountain but I kept going because of the cute guys. And the smoothie bar. And oh yes, the cute guys. But sometime in the last few years the cute boys emigrated to marriage and the gym became a meeting place for old Chinese women. Mr. Bulgaria deftly escorts me through them as if he’s afraid I'll stop and spontaneously break into a mah-jongg game.

The gym rat in our family is my sister Lindy, who once graced the cover of Muscle and Fitness magazine. Her nickname in college was The Body. My nickname in college was Can You Introduce Me to Your Sister. She goes around spewing communist propaganda like, “I’m really craving an apple.” Please, Johnny Appleseed didn’t crave an apple. If you’re at her house and want something fattening to eat, you have to lick the grease off her stove. She’s always telling me I don’t work out enough, that I don’t do enough aerobics. Like getting up from the couch and lying back down twenty times a night isn’t aerobic. Every time we have an earthquake I grab my Shake Weight so as to maximize the effects of the shifting tectonic plates. If that’s not dedication to exercise then I don’t know what is.

“How do I look in this bathing suit?” I once asked her.

“You look fabulous.” Then ten days later she saw me in shorts and said, “You look terrific; not like you did in that bathing suit.”

As for the rest of our family, we would rather die with a stent in our hearts than a deltoid on our wherever the hell the deltoid goes...

(...continued in book)

When It's Too Painful To Talk About

My sister Lindy got up at 7 a.m., like she does every day. She walked into the living room and opened the curtains then slowly made her way to the dining room to open those curtains.

A pair of doves nest in a fern my sister has hanging on her balcony. A bright green and beautifully lush fern. Twice a year the female lays eggs in it. She sits on them and waits for the male to return with food. If the male thinks she's in any danger, he flies quickly to the balcony railing to stand guard. I've seen him come zooming in from out of the blue if I stare too long up at the nest. They know my sister. They don't know me.

The doves have been coming to her balcony for many, many years. Lindy thinks they bring her good luck and is always excited when they finally appear. One year they didn't come, they'd gone to a nearby apartment instead. Lindy spent that year waiting for bad luck to strike. It didn't. But she held vigil anyway. The doves always have two or three babies and they hop around the balcony before they finally take flight as young adults.

The doves aren't perturbed by my sister watering her plants. They even tolerate her dog Yoshi, who is so fat he'd have a hard time lifting his head to locate them.

When Lindy opened the dining room curtains on Friday morning she saw a man lying on the terrace outside her third floor condo and thought, “How weird that Mel is trying to get some sun this early in the morning.”

And then she saw the blood.

She was in such shock she called the front desk instead of 911.

They called 911.

Mel had thrown himself off his 10th floor balcony and landed in front of Lindy's dining room windows.

Two days before National Suicide Prevention Week.

Lindy cried and cried and when the police came, and spent four hours at the scene, they suggested tenants talk to counselors. Others, as it turned out, also saw Mel lying on the terrace.

This happened last Friday. I didn’t hear about it until yesterday. My sister is like my late father, and my mother. They are not divulgers of painful feelings. For them, it happens and then you move on. For me, it happens and then you dwell on it for years.

A therapist who lives in her building opened her doors to all the residents. Lindy went. The therapist diagnosed her with PTSD. A tenant gave her some Klonopin. She's been on it since the suicide.

Lindy told me this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to her. That she discovered the body of a friend who died violently. I believe her.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”
"Mel wasn't liked in the building. He made trouble for the condo association. They called him a dissident. I liked him and everyone knew that."

Lindy likes everyone.

“People are avoiding me; I ended up not wanting to tell everyone else.”
“I’m not everyone else. I’m your sister.”

Silence.

Like I said, everyone in my family leans towards taciturn in events of the heart.

Mel left a suicide note. He was bipolar. He was 77. He was divorced. His wife lived in the same building, but in a different apartment.

The day that Mel jumped the doves left their nest. Three days went by and they didn’t return. Lindy anxiously checked the fern for signs of their slim grey tail feathers, which stuck out from the fern when they were in residence.

Nothing.

On Tuesday Lindy got up on a stool to look inside the nest. That's how convinced she was they were still there. There was a lone egg in the fern. Cracked open. The baby dove lay in the jaws of the broken shell.

Dead.

Hi Dad

Dad is buried at Arlington Cemetery. Each year for the last 40 years soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry place a single American flag at each grave at the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend. It's called the Flags-in ceremony. It takes them around 3 hours to place 260,000 flags on the graves. Then the soldiers stay in the cemetery for the entire weekend to make sure all the graves keep their flags.

I always think of the soldier who places the flag at my Dad's grave and hope that he or she is never in harm's way.

My Sister Lindy's Weird Dog Yoshi

Today is my sister's birthday and in honor of that I'm posting a picture of Yoshi, Lindy's 11 year old shih-tzu. Here he's staring at a pile of papers sitting on a buffet. He was barking at it until I walked into the room to see what all the noise was about. A bunch of papers. On a buffet.

Why does he bark at things? BECAUSE THEY'RE IN THE WRONG PLACE. It's like he's an interior decorator.

But? THIS ISN'T HIS APARTMENT. Or mine.

We were at a friend's in Santa Monica.

At my sister's apartment, if she places a vase or a chair in another location, Yoshi will bark at it. He must think my sister has no idea these things have moved AND HE MUST ALERT HER IMMEDIATELY.

Yoshi Def Con 5, things don't look right.
Yoshi Def Con 4, has Charlie Sheen been here?
Yoshi Def Con 3, where is the vase?
Yoshi Def Con 2, where is that chair?
Yoshi Def Con 1, the vase is in the hallway! The chair is loose in the bedroom!

BA(RKING)TTLE STATIONS!

As my mother once said when we were discussing how strange he was, "Well, he is Chinese."

Hope that clears it up for you.

More Things I Did That Should Have Been An Instant Alert To My Parents. But Was Not.

Studies show that if a child is given a box of crayons, the first color they choose is yellow. And then they draw a big sun. That must be a normal kid.

I was offered a box of crayons and chose red. And then used it to destroy the dreaded middle initial often found after a person's first name in a book of children's stories.
I had nothing against middle names because I left them all intact. But middle initials? What kind of monster doesn't write out his middle name?

Robert E. Lee
William H. Macy
John F. Kennedy
George C. Scott
Booker T. Washington
Susan B. Anthony
Michael J. Fox

SATAN'S MINIONS.

The Girl With No Forehead Hair

Mom was going through her files and found a large one filled with letters from me. She kept the letters but mailed me the things she found inside them. I'm fairly certain I enclosed a hundred dollar bill in each of the 240,000 letters I sent her over a lifetime but she begs to differ.

I have no idea when I sent her this but she was in Paris at the time and I was living in Washington D.C. I was in the experimental stages of figuring out how to spell my name as you can see from the SUSY. I wonder if I sent her any 4 leaf clovers that said, "FROM THE NEIGHBOR'S YARD ACROSS THE STREET, THE ONES WE DON'T LIKE. Picked by Susie!"



This photo landed me in the office of a big commercial agent in New York. I walked in and the first thing he said was "Oh dear."

I can still feel my heart sink to my stomach from that day.

"Your picture led me to believe that you'd be a perfect character actress and I was so excited because I knew you'd get lots of work. However, in person, you're not funny looking at all. You're actually too pretty to be a character actress but YOU'RE NOT PRETTY ENOUGH TO BE THE STAR."

You know how some critiques stick in your head forever?

I have no idea where this picture was taken. I'm wearing a long black leather coat that my sister bought me in Istanbul, Turkey. I also have no other pictures that would give me a clue so...welcome to Long Coat Black Leather Suzy.


This is one of the only pictures of me where I don't have bangs. Again, NO IDEA where it was taken or where I was at the time. I want to say it was taken in Paris because after I left San Francisco I showed up in Paris with a very short hairdo. So this might have been the growing out phase?

That pin on my right lapel, a little diamonique star, left as you're looking at the photo, was given to me by the heroin addict that was my boyfriend in San Francisco. I didn't know that he'd stolen it from his mother until I wore it to her house one day and she informed me it was hers. I immediately removed it and offered it back to her but she wouldn't accept it. I told her that her son had given me other pieces and described them and they were all hers. Her son was such a troubled person that I believe she was just happy he had someone in his life who loved him. I still have the pin, and the other pieces, all from the 1940's.

Many years later he went to prison.

Looking back at pictures, the first thing I do is assess my hair. Long Coat Black Leather Suzy hadn't started bleaching her hair yet so the ash blond looks dark and goes with my coat. The Oh Dear Suzy had curled her stick straight uncurlable hair and the result was that both sides looked so different that the photographer suggested I put one side up so that it wouldn't be so obvious. Meanwhile, back at Obvious Ranch, it's SO OBVIOUS.

Forehead Free Suzy doesn't even look like me. When it first tumbled out of the envelope I wondered who it was. I see my Russian grandfather in that photo and later pictures of my mother, but to me it looks like someone else. Someone who could be the star of the show IF SHE DAMN WELL PLEASED.

L.A Sign Of The Times #94

Mom and our Greek waiter at our favorite Greek restaurant in Los Angeles, Ulysses Voyage.

Farmer's Market, Los Angeles November 27, 2011

How To Pack Your Memories So You'll See Them Again

Part of the nightmare of moving is finding things stuffed into other things which in turn leads you to finding other things that you forgot you had.  Ultimately you realize you have too many things.

And that your vocabulary needs work if you can't find a synonym for the word 'things.'

I found all these pictures hidden in an album I forgot I had. Because I have too many things.

Exhibits A through D:

A. My sister and I appeared in our hometown newspaper holding balls. Prophetic.

B. Then my sister decided to grow her cheeks in earnest:

C.  This is one of a handful of pictures from a time when my hair was not stick straight. I was in the 9th grade and can't believe I thought this looked good. I'm hoping I was drunk during this era, which would also explain my math grades:

D. Lindy and I have avoided being in weddings our entire lives. The ugly dresses, the expensive gifts to a bride and groom who you'll lose touch with in 6 years and who will ultimately divorce after one of them sleeps with the babysitter. Not to mention no one can afford lobster at their reception.

But this was the one and only nuptials we agreed to participate in. Our father's 4th wedding. And that was because he paid our airfare. And wrote us each a check. And promised me a new car if I didn't swear.

I still have the same old car.

Could my Dad look any more grim?

This Is Why My Sister Never Lends Me Money

If you have a younger sister you know your only job in life is to torture her. My sister Lindy used to be younger than me but as I age she becomes older and older as I bask in the denial of The Vain and The Botoxed.

This is Johann, one of our relatives on my Dad's side. I've been telling my sister since she was a zygote that I often get pictures of her and Johann confused when I go through our photo albums:




This is a picture of Lindy when she was 2 and a half. It's because of this photograph that I keep telling her she's adopted because we don't have any little man trolls on either side of our family:

God paid me back for all my emotional abuse by making her look like this when she was 13:

And like this when she was 38:

God is a spiteful man. Sorry feminists, but...

...MOST DEFINITELY A MAN.

I've Either Got My Mouth Open Or My Eyes Shut

This is my Dad's mother and me at their home in Illinois. My grandmother was probably thinking "Doesn't this child ever shut up?" 

And no, I never shut up.



As you can see I was made for a life in show business because when the camera is on me, I close my eyes. I love this picture of me and my Dad because it shows I was a fashionista even when I was a little girl.

Another Ridiculous Thing I Did For A Guy

Going through the two million things I own and have to pack has rocketed me back to some memories that make me groan. For example, the disappearance of Book Four in the Basic Reader series of children's books that belonged to my father's family.

It happened while I was living in NY and dating The Doctor. When we met I had just moved to NY from Paris and was on Food Stamps. He thought that was hilarious. The girl from Paris was on Food Stamps.

I kept the books on a table in my living room and one night he saw them and said he had them in his family too. They brought back so many memories for him. He was elated to see them again.

That cliche about what do you get someone who has everything really applied to The Doctor.

I mean, the guy had his own plane.

Sidebar: He once flew me back from New Orleans during a storm while I drank Jack Daniels straight from the bottle in the back of the plane. I was drinking the Jack not because I was afraid of the storm, I was eventually too shitfaced to be scared, but because I overheard him tell the copilot that not only was I a girlfriend BUT YOU SHOULD SEE THE PICTURE OF HIS OTHER GIRLFRIEND.

He also had a chauffeured stretch Mercedes and a 10 room apartment on Park Avenue. His shirts were all bespoke, his shoes and belts were always Gucci and he favored Armani.

So for his birthday I gave him Book Four.  I thought I'd come up with the perfect gift for him. And I was right. He loved it. Gushed over my thoughtfulness, my generosity, my creativity.

The Doctor and I went out for three years. After we broke up BECAUSE SOMEONE COULDN'T STOP CHEATING ON ME, we remained friends and a year or so later I asked him whether he still had Book Four.

"Book Four of what?"
"The books that were in your family, my family, you know, those children's books."
"Sorry, no idea what you're talking about."

That was a frequent theme in our relationship.

Memorial Day For My Dad

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

Sometimes My Brain Is On Pause

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

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

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

Sidebar: This offer not valid with boyfriends.

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

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

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

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

Then my phone rang.

I looked at the caller ID.

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

I heard it loud and clear.

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

Yes, I know. So, thanks Dad.

Not The One With Rock Hudson And Doris Day

When my sister Lindy first started modeling in New York she got a lot of different jobs. But when she booked her first cover shoot I was very proud of her even though I'd never heard of the magazine.

She called our Dad, who was living in Florida, and excitedly told him she had been chosen to do not one but two covers for a magazine called Pillow Talk. (not this one) She gave him the date the first one would hit newstands and then forgot all about it.

The day the magazine came out Lindy's agent called to tell her and she ran to the nearest kiosk. She came home and waved it in my face and said OH NO OH NO OH NO!!! I'd never seen her so excited.

But it wasn't exactly excitement.

It was more dread.

And fear.

Of the loss of her inheritance:
By the time she called Dad to say the magazine was NOT repeat NOT repeat NOT EVER coming out he had already bought it.

Thank God the next month they only used her body:


End of chat.

She Was A Sinner. She Was A Whore.

I don't have children. But I grew up around them.

I'm not a parent. But I grew up around them.

Is bullying someone's fault? Shitty children? Shitty parents?

When I was in junior high the girl down the street, Susan, got pregnant. The neighborhood buzz was that she and her parents were to be shunned. Her parents had done a miserable job raising this child. She was a sinner. She was a whore.

She was my friend.

And this is where the story splits in two and travels different roads until last year.

I remembered my mom told me to go to Susan's house and walk with her to school, just like I did every day. I always said I was lucky to have a mother who was not judgmental about that kind of thing. I also remembered that Susan's mother came by our house after dark one day and thanked my mother for her kindness. I'd repeated that story a million times.

Last year I was talking to mom about Susan. I wondered what could have happened to her. They sent her away to a girl's compound where unwed mothers, as they were then referred to, could have their babies. Susan's mother brought the child home and raised it as her own. We never saw Susan again.

I thanked mom for telling me not to avoid her.

My mother said she didn't believe she'd done that much. I asked her how she could think that and she replied, "Well, the day you came to me and said you were going to walk her to school, just like you always did, I realized that for you it was a matter of standing up for your friend and you really didn't care what anyone thought of you for it. So I didn't stop you. And when Susan's mother came by and thanked you for your kindness, I was very proud of you."

All these years I'd thought it was my mom who did the right thing, but it was me. She'd just agreed with my decision. Even if she hadn't I would have done it anyway. Throughout school I was always first in my class in the headstrong division.

Is a child born with an inner compass for right and wrong and even with their parents influence one way or the other, do they still feel that moral imperative? I believe there are good kids everywhere and some who aren't. I'm not sure parenting of any kind can help a natural born asshole.

End of chat.

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.

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

When I was a kid I asked my parents over and over if there was any possibility that we could be Jewish. I have no idea why I asked them but I really wanted to be Jewish. And adopted. Surely these two cretins could not be my biological parents.

Religion was not a big deal in our house. Mom dragged me and Lindy to mass every Sunday where I sat and muttered under my breath how much I hated her church.

She wanted to become a nun when she was 17 and Dad was an alter boy at his church. Although in the above picture he looks like an alter man.

Religion didn't stick on any of us. I left home at 17 and that was the end of all church going activities in our family. Lindy got out of it 2 years earlier THANKS TO ME. Today we can't even sit in a church and listen without eye rolling each other. We wish people got married at bars. Or maybe a nice seafood restaurant down by the beach.

Dad always insisted that his side of the family was Scottish. No Jews.

Our Dad was a notorious pack rat. It took me 3 years to wade through his papers and possessions after he died. I removed this book from the apartment in Florida. It looked old so I figured I should take it. You know, so I could start my own hoarding traditions. The book is called Life of Washington by the Hon. J.T. Headley.

It was published in 1860, the year I was born. Inside is the name Walter Kummerer, neatly and artistically written in black ink. From something called an inkwell, for all you Justin Bieber fans.

After I found the book I asked my mother if she remembered the last name of my grandmother. She replied that it was Kauffman. I said I thought Dad's mom was Scottish but mom insisted on the name Kauffman.

So I went through our family tree and discovered that my great, great, great grandmother was named Kauffman. Her daughter married a Kummerer and their daughter married a Scot.

So my mom was right. Only she got the last name of my grandmother wrong. How did she know the great, great, great grandmother's name but not the immediate grandmother's name?

As everyone who reads me knows by now, I believe in reincarnation. I believe Mom remembered the name because she was part of that family in a former life. There is no other explanation. I'd say she had a great memory but she recently went to Greece and gave me the wrong departure date. And arrival back in Paris date. And then blamed it all on me.

When I was 5 years old I used to say that I wanted to go to California to see Cindy and Cincy. My parents always asked me who they were and I would always reply: Cindy and Cincy. Like my parents were the two dumbest people in the world.

While my Dad was alive I looked over our family tree one evening and discovered that a woman named Cinzie, real name Christina, had been in our family and died in the early 1900's. I clearly met her on the other side. Because who in the hell ever heard of someone named Cinzie?

I dedicate this Friday's Bite Me post to organized religion because I never knew I was part Jewish and I'm sure it's the Pope's fault.

End of chat.

My Sister And I Were Destined For Fame?

Our parents pimped us out at a very young age. In a newspaper. And people wonder how we both ended up in rehab, or as I like to refer to it, show business.

How did my mother get that roll of hair on my sister and why DID SHE GET ALL THE ATTENTION GROWING UP?

Thank God I was funny. And made a living off it. Did my sister make money off her curly FUCKING hair? NO.