Top 10 Movies of 2006

My friend Ann Abeyta is not as crazy as she looks in this picture and of course I’m lying. And yes, that is the fat Elvis. I knew he was still alive.

Every year Abeyta sends out her list of Must See Movies so I’m posting it on the day of the Golden Globes. This standup comic, Hollywood projectionist and Genius Film Girl knows her cinema. So as she said in the email accompanying her list, “Set your Netflix to Stun!”

1. Half Nelson – I caught this at a Screen Actor’s Guild screening way late into the hype… actually WAY, WAY late into the hype. I was pretty convinced that the film had no chance of meeting the expectations that I had built up for it. But Ryan Gosling just smiled his gentle little smile, stroked my hair and gently whispered into my ear, "Shhhhhhhhhh, I got this baby. Just relax and let Daddy do all the work." Then he ripped my heart out and held it towards the heavens so Shareeka Epps could dance and giggle in the ribbons of blood. I didn’t stand a chance. You have heard all about the film at this point, so I will just say that I thought it was fearless, beautifully acted and I still can’t shake it.

2. Pan’s Labyrinth – I love me some Guillermo Del Toro! I am one of probably six people who thought "Hellboy" was genius. This however, is his masterpiece. A beautiful and very dark fairy tale.

3. The Departed – Hi Marty! Welcome back to everybody’s top ten lists! We missed you. Did you miss us? I bet you have hairy ears. Mark Walberg and Alec Baldwin (the only Baldwin who has managed not to become an embarrassment) alone are worth the price of admission. Leo will get nominated for an Oscar, as will Jack Nicholson, but in my heart I would love to see Alec or Marky Mark get one. This is an excellent film, violent, smart, and the editing is insanely brilliant.

4. The Proposition – The beating to death of our lord and savior from "The Passion of the Christ" has nothing on this tale of brother against brother, and quite frankly, westerns haven’t been this good since Sam Peckinpah was making them. It’s dark, bloody, and incredibly good. Nick Cave wrote it and set it in the outback of Australia. If you’re unfamiliar with Nick’s work download the songs off "Murder Ballads." Who better to write a film about having to kill your brother to save your own life than an ex-punk rocker?

5. The Descent – Every year I try to include a film that reminds me of why exactly we love movies. Seeing this in a jam-packed theater on opening night was film geek nirvana. I loved everything about this one, from the total chick empowerment to the blood-soaked thrill kills that left me crumpled in a sweaty heap. (If you get the chance you should see it with my coworker Amar, he surrenders to a great film with the genuine eagerness of an eleven year old. It’s an infectious and beautiful thing.)

6. Letters From Iwo Jima – I didn’t like "Flags of Our Fathers" and as a result I had totally written this one off. Christ, was I wrong. Clint has done it yet again. The greatest antiwar film I have ever seen. The tone, the acting, the dysentery, no detail was too small or overlooked. It breaks your heart and never turns its face away from the horror of the costs of war. They will probably sell this and "Flags" as a DVD boxed-set and my suggestion for a title is: "Everyone Loses a War."

7. United 93 – Not too soon!

8. Notes On A Scandal – Wow. Made me more uncomfortable than having dinner with white people. **** I am positive that this will receive at least two Oscar nods, but probably deserves way more. Such a great script and perfect note casting. Cate is amazing, but the film belongs to Dame Judi Dench, who once again is so good it’s almost criminal. I will also give a major shout out to Bill Nighy, he proves what an amazing actor he is once again doing so much with so little screen time. (I felt totally dirty watching Cate Blanchett make out with a fourteen year old boy.)

9. Children Of Men – What would happen if the entire world lost hope? I can’t believe how scary this film is, how utterly frightening the thought of the end of the world coming right at you, but at a snails pace, would be. You’re helpless to stop or change it, you just have to watch as the planet ages and dies off. It’s done so realistically here that you just get pulled in completely. Stellar work from Clive Owen, and we can now officially put to rest the question, "Is Clive Owen God’s greatest gift to man?" The answer is "Yes." I knew it a long fucking time ago by the way.

10. The Queen – I thought seeing this would be like having to do homework. I was more than pleasantly surprised. Helen Mirren will storm the Oscars like David Spade trying to get backstage passes to a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. My favorite moment in a film this year was the way she joyfully cries out "Tea!" Mirren manages to convey more with a simple glance than most actors or actresses can throttle out of a whole career. She pulls off something I would have thought absolutely impossible; she carries the weight of the monarchy, she is the Queen.

Honorable Mentions:
Borat, Dreamgirls, Babel, Hostile, The Hills Have Eyes, This Film Not Yet Rated, V For Vendetta, Jackass 2, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Volver, Hard Candy

****Editor’s note – I didn’t know Ann wasn’t white. I emailed her and asked her to check off one of these options:
A. Mexican
B. Octoroon
C. Chinese with an eye job
D. She wrote me back a not very nice email
E. End of chat.

The Envelope Please

Illustration by Sean McCabe
















The People’s Choice Awards are tomorrow night. The Golden Globe and SAG nominations are in. The Hollywood awards season has officially begun. Let the schadenfreude commence.

There’s really nothing more entertaining than watching actors who work a hundred times more than you lose in front of millions of people. And then pretend they’re not upset.

Sidebar: Except for the Tony Awards because A. Who cares and B. One day they’ll move out here and try and steal jobs from those of us who’ve been slogging it out in the trenches with the 22 year-olds for ten years. Don’t think you can parade your forty-seven octave range and Shakespearean talent around and come swanning into some dumb sitcom just like that. You can’t Kristin Chenoweth, you just can’t.

When the camera is on an Oscar nominee and the award goes to the other guy, the nominee puts on the I’m Okay With That face, like he had already pre-paid his ticket for the Loser Train to Loserville. He cheerfully talks to the press as he enters his limo. (Oh my God, are his eyes watering?) He goes to the Vanity Fair party and congratulates the winners. (Is that a shredded Kleenex in his hand?) He’ll go to all the parties; he’ll drink all the Cristal and then he’ll go home, call his mother and burst into tears.

And in keeping with this sentiment, is there anything more satisfying than watching a beauty pageant contestant bite the dust? When it’s down to the final two, one of those girls knows that coming in second is just not going to cut it back in her hometown of Gee Whiz, Georgia. No one at the drycleaners is going to say, “Oh great, here comes the first runner-up!” Instead they’re saying, “Uh-oh, here comes the first runner-up, hide.” The handlers who magically hustle those runners-up out of camera range are probably consultants to Osama bin Laden.

I like to watch how losers react because I’m a sore loser. I’m the asshole that tips the board over and yells “You people SUCK!” Remember how Monica always had to win on Friends? Hi, I’m Monica. Activities I can’t participate in because my friends won’t do them with me anymore: running, horseback riding, skiing, tennis, charades or cards. They’ve also banned me from any game that involves a board because I’ve figured out how to cheat at every one of them except chess. And that’s only because it requires the ability to see into the future. And if I had that skill I would own the stock market and buy new friends.

My lowest point came when a neighbor’s six-year old asked me to play Chutes and Ladders with her and I cheated and won. She started to cry because she had never lost before. She threatened to get her mother and I said, “Go ahead, I’ll kick her ass too.”

“Hi, my name is Suzy and I have to win at everything.”
“Hi Suzy!”

And when there’s no variable for cheating, I’m even worse. Back in the late 80’s I was entered into a Most Beautiful Legs of New York contest by a delusional/high/retarded/blind/yougetthepicture boyfriend, and I lost to a tower of giraffe supermodels, and yes, ‘tower’ is what a group of giraffes is called. In my defense I don’t think I should have worn those panty hose that stopped at a line across the tops of my thighs. As I was being escorted out yelling obscenities and kicking the security guards I still managed to threaten a lawsuit.

After that fiasco, I appeared on Star Search. They rated performers with a 4 star system and the more stars you got, the better you did. Only they broke it down into fractions, like I paid attention to that day in school. So they announced that I had 3 and one quarter stars and the other guy had 3 and three quarters stars and when the camera is on my face, you can see the beginning of a dark cloud forming. I wondered if Ed McMahon could take a punch. Someone from the sidelines hissed at me to get off stage and probably not a minute too soon. Needless to say, I haven’t competed in anything since.

And while we’re on the topic of winning, can you please show me the person who really believes that it’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game? World Cup 2006, France versus Italy in the final and Zinedine Zidane of France head-butts Marco Materazzi of Italy. Zidane is tossed from the game and voted Most Valuable Player of the World Cup by journalists. Somewhere Mike Tyson is crying into a pair of his gym shorts.

End of chat.

The Death Of Santa Claus

It was Christmas Eve and I got up when I heard noises downstairs in the living room. I don’t recall how old I was; I may have been in my thirties for all I remember.

Sidebar: I only have a good memory for ex-boyfriends and the things they do that are just so patently wrong. Seriously, a mesh shirt? Is that a cry for help or something?

I was finally going to see Santa Claus. I tiptoed to the top of the landing. My little, or gigantic, thirty year-old, heart was pounding in my ears. Wouldn’t every one of my miserable friends be jealous when I told them this story? I peeked down the stairs and saw my parents putting gifts under the tree and eating Santa’s cookies. I wanted to scream We have other food in the fridge you big stupid heads because it hadn’t hit me; even with the seemingly incontrovertible evidence, Santa wouldn’t be coming. Not tonight. Not ever.

The next morning I didn’t say anything because my sister was two years younger and if I had confronted my parents in front of her they would have punished me. I had already been penalized for some of my other ItWasJustAJoke infractions:
-I threatened to stab her with a kitchen knife if she didn’t stop snoring. (they made me cut meat with a fork for a month)
-I forced her to help me slide raw eggs under our refrigerator to drive my parents crazy with the stench. (she eventually ratted me out)
-We’d go to malls and I’d tell her to get on the Up escalator with me and then I’d run back down while she burst into tears and had to go up alone. (and yet she kept getting on escalators with me)
-I’d wait until she was coming upstairs to our bedrooms and then jump out and scream at her. (come on, that shit never gets old)

I find it ironic that when we’re young we’re lied to with the approbation of the entire world about Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and why Mom and Dad don’t sleep in the same room. And then told never to lie to our parents. Are you shitting me? This is WHY I lied to my parents. I was paying them back.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD, an organization made up of the United States and Canada, tracks Santa Claus every year. I can understand why Canada is tracking Santa Claus; they have plenty of free time on their hands. But the United States? People are gunning for us all the time. Shouldn’t we be tracking where Kim Jong Il drops off his plutonium? Or in which cave Osama Bin Laden is reading back issues of How To Kill Americans Digest? It’s all over the news, this Santa tracking. How many 7 year olds are watching the evening news? Hello, is this thing on?

This was the quote of the week from NORAD “In the end, I hope that the Canadians and Americans are assured that NORAD is prepared to respond to threats as they present themselves and more importantly, to deflect and deter those attacks before they occur.” Seriously, if they’re tracking Santa Claus, I’m not all that assured that they’re prepared to deflect and deter attacks from giant killer tomatoes, much less suicide bombers.

Recently, a teacher in the UK and a priest in California told children there was no Santa Claus. The teacher was fired and the priest had to issue a formal apology. Yet kids are encouraged to tell teachers who brought the semi-automatic weapon to school and Catholics are urged to go to confession three seconds after they’ve screwed up.

I don’t have children of my own but I’ve dated four men who did. If any of the kids had asked me if the above fabled entities existed I would have lied and said yes. Once again, I’m part of the problem.

End of chat.

The Twelfth Card Of Christmas

This postcard was given to me by Grandma Jean, a woman I love more than life itself. She is 97 years old and the kindest, most loving person I have ever known. We are not related but in my heart she is my family and the grandmother I never had. She once told me that she got up each morning assuming that the day was going to be beautiful. She is always in a good mood.

I have a huge postcard collection, started for me by my father when I was in my teens and kept in a six foot tall revolving rack in my living room. A Starbucks, a newsstand and a few airplanes and I could pass for an airport.

Friends send me postcards all the time and this was one that Jean passed along many years ago. There is no postmark so I don’t know what year it was sent. There’s a one-cent stamp on it and it’s addressed to Jean’s maiden name on R.R. 10 in Indiana. She married her husband John in 1928 after dating him for a year so obviously it was sent before then. The back of the card is signed ‘Shorty’. When I decided to run the card as the last in the Christmas card series, I called her in the assisted-living facility where she now resides in Ohio and she didn’t remember anyone named Shorty from her youth. I don’t remember yesterday, what am I going to be like at 97?

Jean and John were married for 59 years. Jean’s parents were married for over 60 years and her grandparents were married for over 60 years and Jean always talked of that missed year with regret.

John died of Alzheimer’s in their 59th year. Please support stem cell research.

End of chat.

End of cards.

The Eleventh Card Of Christmas

There’s a story that I tell over and over that’s quintessential Behar. (Comics always refer to each other by their last name. I have no idea why)

Comics have home clubs. Back in the 80’s New York City had around ten comedy clubs and the home clubs were the ones that gave you the most stage time. I had two home clubs, The Improv and Comedy U and sometimes Catch a Rising Star, especially when Louis F. wasn’t booking it, and Joy’s home clubs were the aforementioned Catch and Greene Street. Neither of us played The Comic Strip, which was home to Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld. Every Christmas, all the clubs hosted parties and the best one was always at The Strip. Their comics worked for months shooting short films, writing sketches and staging roasts that resulted in a highly insulting and hilarious event.

Sidebar: After I moved to Hollywood, I got a call from Dave Edison, a regular at The Strip who had also moved out here. Dave has since gone on to become an award-winning director and videographer in L.A. but back then he was shooting a short movie for the Comic Strip Christmas party and wanted to know if I would play one of the parts. That’s how committed their comics were to that annual event. Even if they didn’t live in New York anymore, they still participated.

So Joy and I went to a Strip party. If you didn’t play a club, you didn’t really go to the party. I mean, you could go, and many people did, but you just felt like an uncomfortable interloper. But this one particular year we went because they had acquired quite a reputation and we wanted to see what everyone was talking about.

The show began. The movies were shown, the sketches presented and their MC’s appeared between segments to ridicule everybody. Everyone was laughing their asses off and then I heard one of the lines, “Well at least she’s not a bitch like Joy Behar and Suzy Soro.” I looked at Joy. She was doubled over laughing. I was embarrassed but did that fake laughing thing that you do when you want to pretend that your feelings aren’t hurt and you're in on the joke. The MC’s moved on to decimate other comics and I turned to Joy.
“Behar, they called us bitches.”
“Yeah, so?”
“We don’t even play this fucking club.”
“We don’t even play the club and yet we managed to make it into their annual Christmas roast. Think about that, Soro. And when are you going to get it into your head that ‘bitch’ is a good word?”

End of chat.

The Tenth Card Of Christmas

This was one of the Christmas cards that Leslie Norris and I used for our group Single, Married & Divorced. We toured the U.S. for eight years and Leslie played Married and I played Divorced. Even though I’d never been married and was dating The Impotentate, that relationship supplied me with enough bitter material about men to fake it, something I became an expert at during those seven miserable years. Please don’t ask me why I stayed with him. I clearly had a brain tumor that was developing slowly.

Leslie and I used many people over the years to tour as the Single girl, five I think, and every one of them was borderline psycho. I won’t tell you which category the one in the picture fell into but two were mean drunks, one was a stripper, oh excuse me, show girl, one was an opera singer who had no punch lines and one had a terrible case of OCD. She could not go onstage unless she touched the top of her head a certain amount of times. Not a deal breaker if she went out on her own, but as a group we opened with a song and a sketch and filed out in a line. Leslie first, then Her OCDness and then me. So Leslie would hear the music cue and strut out and I would stand there waiting for the head tapping to end. I could never figure out how many taps needed to be completed because like a small child mesmerized by shiny things, I would lapse into a trance and lose count. More often than not, the tapping didn’t end and I had to push her out onstage.

The baby that Leslie is holding is her first born, John. This was the last time we used him in our photos because not only had he gotten too big but he was constantly squirming around, as you can see in the picture. We did all our group photos at Sears because they had the best lighting for multiples and they were a lot cheaper than Los Angeles photographers, who really didn’t know how to take photos of a group in under seven hours. Plus Sears had the cheese factor, always important to those of us who take ourselves way too seriously.

The following year we were back at Sears desperately trying to get John to calm down when we spotted a Chinese woman standing in line with a sleeping newborn and begged her to let us use him in the picture. She did.

Sidebar: I want more than life itself to write Single, Married, Divorced & Ching Chong but that would be wrong, wouldn’t it?

That year Leslie and I agreed to send the Improv on Melrose a card. At their Christmas party we found all the cards from comics and industry taped on a large wall of the club and discovered that we had each sent one. We were horrified, what kind of ass-kissers card bombed a comedy club? We waited until everyone was drunk (ten minutes after the party started); and stole one of them back. No sycophants, we.

End of chat.

The Ninth Card Of Christmas

This is my friend Karen Lorshbough… again. In the 90’s, Karen worked for a company in NYC that supplied entertainers for parties, promotional events and lots of Mitzvahs, both Bar and Bat. Among other events, she worked the opening of Trump Tower on 5th Ave and Trump Plaza in Atlantic City.

This picture was taken at the home of Princess Grace’s eye doctor in Harrisburg, PA. The party was given in Prince Albert’s honor. Known as the most eligible Prince in the world, the 32nd ruler of Monaco had a blonde date who they all assumed was hired from a modeling agency since he ignored her the whole night.

While you sit around and think your life sucks and if only, if only, you were a royal and life would be different, look at the Grimaldi’s.

The youngest, Princess Stephanie, has three children from two different men. Her first marriage ended after a year when her husband was spotted cavorting with a Belgian stripper. She had a third child in 1998 but refused to name the father. She also dated an elephant trainer and the head of the Circus Knie, a Swiss troupe with whom Stephanie and her children traveled. In 2003 she married an acrobat with the same circus. For years she was accused of driving the car that killed her mother.

Prince Albert has two illegitimate children from two different women. If he dies without a legitimate heir, the throne passes to Princess Caroline, who has been married three times and has four children by two different men. After her second husband died in a boat crash, she married the Prince of Hanover and had one child with him, who is the Princess of Hanover. You think your kids don’t get along, imagine that one of them is born royal.
“I’m a princess and you’re not.”
“Are not.”
“Am too.”
“Are not.”
“Am too.”
“Princess, come give Mummy and Daddy a kiss before you ride to hounds with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. You other kids polish her tiaras and feed her pony."
"See, I am a princess."
"Are not."

Yes, I know the three children of Prince Rainier have a lot of money and a privileged life but that doesn’t bring their mother back or amend their unfortunate choices of significant others. Shit, if that’s all it takes I would make an excellent Grimaldi.

After Karen got the pictures back from the party, she decided to send one to Prince Albert along with this note:

Dear Prince Albert of Monaco (or so you said)
Enclosed is a picture of the night you proposed. So where’s the ring?
Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Love, Karen

He sent her a Christmas card with the official family photo, signed by the entire lot of them. No ring.

Karen was lucky, someone who sent text emails to Princess Stephanie ended up in prison and was deemed ‘disturbed’ by the courts. I should call Karen because now that I think about it, I haven’t heard from her in a while.

End of chat.

The Eighth Card Of Christmas

I used to run into Mary Ellen Hooper, 1998’s ‘Best Female Comic’ at the 12th Annual American Comedy Awards, at every airport in the country, or so it seemed. We were always either arriving or leaving clubs that we each had played over the years, so there was plenty of comparing, contrasting, lots of air kissing and “Gotta run.” Sometimes we ended up on the same plane and didn’t know it until we landed at LAX.

One of my favorite Mary Ellen stories is about The Improv’s. Notoriously sexist, The Improv chain has always been booked by women who hate women. (Translation: women who didn't pursue their dreams dumped their anger and frustration on those of us who did) They mistakenly thought that women didn’t do well in the headliner spot. But Mary Ellen was headlining all over the country at every club but The Improv’s, where she was only the featured act. (Comedy clubs have an opening act, a feature or middle act and then the headliner)

She got a call from the Brea Improv to open for Richard Jeni, a very funny comedian who insisted on a female opening act.

Sidebar: I’m sure he thought that a female comic would be easier to follow than a male comic. I love ya Richard, but yawn.

Mary Ellen went out that first night on the gig and crushed. She got a standing O and never had to middle The Improv's again.

She now tours regularly with 3 Blonde Moms along with two of my favorite comics, my good buddy Joanie Fagan and Helen Keaney. You can see them on the E! Channel or check them out when they come to a town near you.

End of chat.

The Seventh Card Of Christmas

The Christmas card I received from the comedy team of Carl and Buzz reminded me of why I love comics. Nothing is too sacred to destroy. A laugh is a laugh is a laugh.

Carl Bradley and I met at a backer’s audition for a Broadway-bound show. He was not impressed with my limited knowledge of Sondheim and my inability to sing on key but he gave me a callback anyway. I had mentioned my Costco card in passing and I have a feeling that figured prominently in the callback but maybe I’m just paranoid.

A lot of people may recognize Buzz Belmondo from his eight years on Out of This World and two years on Baywatch. You gotta love someone who goes by the name Buzz.

These two funny guys decided to combine their considerable talents and start over as a comedy duo which of course I found highly suspicious. What’s next, a run at the White House? Although a bitter ex-network executive and a comic from the Philippines would probably do a terrific job since they’re already used to being laughed at.

I once called Carl and said I was thinking of doing a one-woman show about my pretend funeral. I thought I could lie in a casket onstage and then have people get up and speak about me. I thought it might be a little out there and asked Carl what he thought. He loved the idea and sent me a detailed two-page email with his suggestions and a note, ‘As long as you don’t sing.’ See why I love comedians?

End of chat.

The Sixth Card Of Christmas

Bill Rutkoski is another comedian friend of mine who put some muscle into his Christmas cards. And Bing Crosby.

One winter Bill and I were booked to do a standup gig in Burlington, Vermont. As we drove north from New York City I looked longingly at the snow-covered houses and farms that were spread out picture postcard style along the highways. How peaceful it would be to have a normal life in a quiet part of the world, I thought. What a relief to not be driven by something as ephemeral and unpredictable as fame.

Suddenly Bill turned to me and said, “Wouldn’t it be great to be normal and just live in a house in a quiet part of the country and just be a regular person?”

Bill moved to L.A. a few months after I did and one day we got locked into a conversation about how annoying it was when people found out what we did for a living. One of the best things about being a standup comic is making people laugh. But one of the worst things about being a standup comic is listening to the suggestions of accountants, teachers, salesclerks and anyone else who thinks they understand the complexities of comedy.

“I’m a temp; you should do a skit about that.” They did, it’s a movie called The Temp.

“You should see the people at my office; you could do a whole skit about them.” They did, it’s a sitcom called The Office.

“I’m a waiter; you should do a skit on that.” They did, it’s a reality show called The Restaurant.

“I work in an ER; you really need to do a skit on that,” at which point I’ve lapsed into a coma and could really use an ER.

For starters, stand-ups don’t do ‘skits’; that word went out with Vo-do-dee-oh-doh. Improv players do ‘sketches’ and stand-ups do ‘jokes’. And please, let me save you the trouble: Yes, we write our own material and No, we don’t know how we come up with our jokes. And please, please, please don’t tell us a joke and if you must, try not to tell a racist, homophobic, sexist joke and then tell us we can use it. We’re never going to use it.

Bill has since gone into acting full time and told me he stopped telling people what he did for a living. He now just says he sells shoes.

End of chat.

The Fifth Card Of Christmas

Steve Altman consistently made the most creative cards I’ve ever seen at Christmas time.

We met at a club around San Diego over ten years ago. It’s a little fuzzy but I remember that the owner of the club put us up in separate condos and then later that night paid for all my drinks, going so far as to walk over to the bar and get them for me. He also offered to buy me a massage from His Massage Girl, as long as he could watch. He did not offer Steve these perks and Steve was the headliner. I turned him down. Well, not the drinks.

Steve killed that first night and I was glad I didn’t have to follow him. That weekend he ran interference for me with the owner of the club who was only interested in talking to me about how he would be glad to help me with some of my jokes, which female comics were not as funny as me and had I considered wearing shorter skirts on stage? It was a long, long weekend.

To punish me for not returning his attentions, he wouldn’t pay me after my last set until after Steve’s part of the show was over. Steve did an hour and sometimes went longer. I had a lengthy drive back to L.A. in the little gray Ford Festiva, which pretty much doubled the trip time. I pitched a fit and he finally paid me after he deducted the cost of all the drinks he had bought me on that first night.

After that, Steve put me on his Christmas card list for a few years. Then there was a period of time when I stopped getting them. I guess he might have been a bit fuzzy on how he knew me as well. I tracked him down and begged to get back into The Christmas Card Club. He let down the velvet rope.

Some of the songs on this album, Santa Lane, are Reindeer’s Garden, Here Comes the Son, Beclause and Mean Mister Macy. That's Bing Crosby bringing up the rear, walking behind Steve.

P.S. I’m off the list again, out of the club. I’m pretty sure Studio 54 was easier to get into.

The Fourth Card Of Christmas

This picture was inside the last Christmas card I got from Clark Henley. He was the first friend of mine to die of AIDS and the best friend I ever had. We met in San Francisco and were inseparable for years and when I eventually moved to New York, we spoke regularly on the phone. He always sent me postcards from his travels because he knew I had a huge collection of them. He was generous, thoughtful, kind. And funny. Endlessly funny.

His HIV+ diagnosis was a blow. It was 1986 and AIDS had just been in the New York public awareness since 1983 and only because The Village Voice did an extensive story on it. I wasn’t really clear on what the disease was or how it ravaged the body and I wasn’t alone in my ignorance. There was no AZT cocktail back then, no Diana, Princess of Wales touching HIV-infected people in front of international cameras. No one knew much about it except that it seemed to be a death sentence. When Clark got full blown AIDS I told him that if or when it got really bad I would come and take care of him for as long as he wanted. Every time we talked I mentioned that he only had to say the word and I would drop everything and fly to San Francisco. He said okay. We had a deal. Clark would call if he needed me.

Presuming he was all right I never bothered to make sure. To double check. I was so wrapped up in my standup career that I didn’t take the time to call his other friends or his family to see if he was, in fact, okay. The late 80’s were the boom years of standup. There was so much work I could’ve opened a club in my living room and had a full house every night. I was working constantly and it seemed that Clark and I spoke less and less but I never questioned why. He was living his life, I reasoned. He was okay. I zoomed ahead in standup with fifty dollar gigs at The Duplex and late night MCing at The Improv, a weekend at The Comfort Inn in Niagara Falls. Yes, there was a gig there. I was happening, people. I was on my way. Clark would call if he needed me.

Clark had my sister’s address in his daybook, but not mine. He knew mine by heart. So when the family sent out death notices, they sent one to my sister. That’s how I found out.

What kind of person had I become? What kind of friend was I? How could I have thought that my ridiculous career was more important than a person I cherished and loved?

The weeks that followed swallowed me whole. Why didn’t it ever cross my mind that Clark might have been protecting me from his pain or from possible infection if I went to take care of him? Those were the days when people thought that if you touched someone with AIDS, you got it. Did Clark think that? Why didn’t he call me and talk to me about it? Was he even too sick to call? More importantly, why didn’t I call him? How could I have been so incredibly passive, so pathetically shallow and self-involved in my own boring little world of MeMeMe?

I’ve never been that selfish again. If anything, I’m more than there for all my friends. I go above and beyond because one day I didn’t.

Clark always refused to call me Suzy. He called me Susan because he said I was most definitely not a Suzy.
“Like Susan Hayward, that’s how I think of you.”
“Why?”
“Because everything you do is very, very dramatic.”
“Well sure, if you’re gonna count that.”

Clark came from a wealthy Bay Area family and never had to work a day in his life so he had plenty of time to be creative. The Christmas tree in the background of this picture is entirely decorated with elephants. I think of him at least once a week. And always will.

End of Chat.