My Funny Valentine

If you want to give someone a nice Valentine's Day gift, buy this book. I have an essay in it so I might be a little biased. A lot biased, even. But there are tons of funny essays in it by other humor writers as well. They made me write that before I got my copy.

I've had my jokes published in The Huffington Post, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, The Edmonton Sun, The Calgary Sun, The Toronto Sun, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Daily News, The International Herald Tribune and Stars and Stripes. They were also featured in the seminal book on women in comedy, Performing Marginality by Joanne Gilbert.

But this is the first time an essay of mine appears in a book with pages that turn, as opposed to a download. I have nothing against downloads so stop typing your comment. And I didn't have to self-publish!! Yet. It's so intellectually satisfying to wave it in front of my family and yell, "I'M ONLY GOING TO CHARGE YOU RETAIL!"

I wish my dad was still alive because he would have bought hundreds of copies.

He followed my comedy career with an enthusiasm he usually reserved for bourbon. He often penned a joke or two and would say "You can use that if you want." It was really endearing as Dad often lamented he didn't pursue a career in humor. But his generation had to work to support families. First his own, then ours. I always feel bad for people who can't pursue what they feel their gift is, what their heart wants. As someone who did, I know how lucky I am. Even though the money isn't always there, I won't be on my deathbed saying "If only I'd..." But I will be on my deathbed saying, "Now, who can put my funeral on their credit card?"

After I'd done Seinfeld, Dad was at a dinner party at his Yacht Club in St. Petersburg. I don't recall my Dad being on any yachts in his lifetime unless the Army used them in World War 2.  He was seated next to a woman who patiently listened as my Dad went on and on and ON about how funny I was as a child.

"How old is your daughter now?" She asked when Dad stopped talking long enough to take a sip of his Manhattan.
"I don't know; she won't tell me."

He was funny. Everything I got, I got from him.

So this book is for you, Dad.



P.S. I'm signing my copy of My Funny Valentine and giving it away. Leave a comment (or many for a better chance) and I'll pick a winner by Sunday and speed it your way in time for Valentine's Day. Did I mention I'm in it? No? Well, I'm in it.

Please Stop Hugging Me

I'm not a fan of the hug. What happened to just nodding vaguely in the direction of the other person while muttering hateful things under your breath?

I see people lurch towards me with outstretched arms, like some Frankenstein off his meds, and try to grasp me in a claw-like embrace that, were I anorexic, would kill me. Although once they've got me in their clutches, I want to be killed.

Some of the worst offenders of the hug:

The Mom Hugger:

Please take your snot filled sweater and your poop-stained hair and walk away. Keep going. No, further, I can still smell your diaper genie.



The Drunk Hugger:

Please breathe on me harder because I have a cold sore I need disintegrated.



The I've Never Met You Hugger:

I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU, PSYCHO.



The Lonely Hugger:

Yes, I can tell you have no friends because now my 34 C's are 32 A's. Let go. No seriously, LET GO.



The Uncle Hugger:

"Uncle" means Sex Offender. Look it up on the Internet. God knows you spend enough time there.



Female Celebrity Huggers Hugging Other Female Celebrities:


Not interesting unless they both have very big breasts.



My Mother Hugger:

You have me confused with your other daughter, the one you love.



When I got hired to do Seinfeld I was told it was a No Hugging Set. I thought they were geniuses.

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

If You Haven't Seen My Seinfeld Yet

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

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

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

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

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

End of chat.

That Seinfeld Episode I Did

Larry David, me and Jerry on the Seinfeld set

I just saw on IMDb.com that the next airing of the episode where I got the last chocolate babka is on Tuesday, April 17th on TBS at 6:30 pm. I have no idea what time zone that's in.

I thought I would give you some detes on that shoot back in 1994, when I still had all my teeth and was not wearing Depends and a hearing aid.

That is my own coat, pants and turtleneck sweater in the picture, which was taken at the end of the shoot and was what I wore on the show. My friend Henriette Mantel, who co-directed the Ralph Nader documentary and who is currently in Paris directing another doc, had just shot the Brady Bunch movie and we were shopping at The Gap. I decided to buy this black turtleneck and when we got to the cash register, she took it out of my hands and said, "This is on me." It lives on forever in this episode.

I brought two coats to the shoot, as wardrobe asks you to bring in your own clothes if you're not the star or co-star or even the almost-star or going-to-be-sometime-in-my-next-lifetime star. I brought in the above coat, which was a Kenzo, since my mother worked for Kenzo in Paris at the time and I had a lot of his clothes. Mom had also given me a Jean-Louis fake leopard fur which was gorgeous and what I really wanted to wear but the show opted for the more sedate Kenzo. I borrowed the scarf from a friend of mine and thin belts were in.

The picture was taken by Carol Leifer, one of the writers on Seinfeld. She was the comic at the Richard Jeni memorial that said she liked comics just a little bit better than other people. She starred in her own sitcom, Alright, Already and is now a permanent staff writer for the Oscars. I emailed her a few weeks ago and said that I regretted having her take this picture as I wish I'd put her in the shot and had someone else shoot it of the four of us.

The guy who plays my husband was not exactly the kind of guy I've ever dated in my life. Ever. He came up to me and introduced himself and said, "I'm playing your husband in this scene." I looked at him and almost said, "Yeah, right" until I realized he was serious. I thought THIS is who they think I would marry? He was overweight and balding and well, just not...hot. How could Larry David, the Executive Producer and a friend of mine, have cast this guy as my husband? Did Larry think that's all I could get?

Meanwhile, the cast fluttered around him and kept saying, "Oh I LOVE your work" and it wasn't until halfway through the shoot that the person playing the bakery counter lady told me that my so not hot husband had played the part of the grown-up bratty kid who traveled on the bus in A League of Their Own. His only scene was at the end of the movie, in the Hall of Fame ceremony. He had one scene people, calm down. And I would never have married him in real life unless he had a really good agent who would represent me as well.

A lot of people asked me if I was nervous to be on Seinfeld and I said that I had been preparing for a day like that my entire life. I felt like I belonged on that sound stage. I guess my subconscious was in agreement because I left behind my friend's scarf, my Henriette turtleneck and my Kenzo coat. The next day I got a call from the wardrobe department saying I was retarded. I mean forgetful. It was like when Elvis, a guy who I was madly in love with, came to visit me from out of state for 24 hours and left his toothbrush in my bathroom, or like the girl who accidentally leaves her thong and a shoe at a guy's place. They don't want to leave.

So the day I made an appointment to retrieve my things was January 17. At 4:19 a.m. on that day I woke up to go to the bathroom. The only reason I know it was 4:19 was because I was so sleepy I had to sit on the side of the bed and get my leg game going before I could stand up, and in the course of that time I glanced at the clock. I finally walked the round-trip twenty feet and came back to bed, happy to hit the sheets again. But at 4:29 a.m. I heard a tremendous roar and my apartment started to shake violently. I climbed out of bed, now fully fucking awake thank you very much, and tried to walk. The floor was pitching so violently that like a flying Wallenda I had to navigate it as if it were the high wire. I heard all the car alarms in three counties go off. My. First. Earthquake.

A 6.7 on the Andy Richter.

No phones, no lights and because of an hysterical lesbian in my building, no gas, as she panicked and made the manager turn off the main valve. I went out on the balcony and every resident was already outside with flashlights. They kept shining them in my face and asking me if I was okay. DO I LOOK OKAY? I wanted to scream but I couldn't talk. A woman from two apartments down walked towards me and told me I should put on some shoes. I had managed to find my Victoria's Secret satin pjs, which was a miracle in itself since I sleep in the nude and have no idea where I found those pajamas. Yes I know that was too much information but you'll live. My neighbor asked me if I had a flashlight and I looked at her and wondered why her mouth was moving and yet I couldn't hear her. The earthquake had first made me lose my voice and now I was deaf.

"SHOES, where are your shoes?"
"I don't know," I said, each word shaking like a Chihuahua. Apparently I can remember not to go outside naked but can't remember where I keep my shoes.
"In your closet maybe?"
"Oh my God, in my CLOSET! You're a genius."

You know that if I can't remember where my shoes are, the apocalypse is here.

The next day, when electricity had been restored, I heard that the Seinfeld stage had taken a hit and suffered water damage. It was such a famous show at the time that it was singled out for earthquake damage coverage. I sat in my apartment and pictured my clothes going down with the ship.

End of temblor chat.