Australians And Howling Dogs

This is the Australian band Kistone at my place Saturday night. Why do they look retarded and why are they holding my sister Lindy's dog?

Number One: Someone didn't understand the concept of a flash camera and it wasn't me, for once.

Number Two: Yoshi, the dog, HOWLS like a wolf. When my sister and I are alone with him, we have to rush to his side to shut him up because he thinks we, as his pack, are LOST. So he howls. LOUDLY. Never give Australians this information because they decided to see how long it would take them to get the dog to flip out and me evicted. Eventually my sister joined in the howling AND I LOST MY WILL TO LIVE and decided to just stand outside and wait for the cops to show up.

Then I started howling.

And the phone rang.

"Hello?"
"What's going on other there?"
"The Australians are giving my sister's dog a Brazilian."
"Well, in case you didn't know, it's VERY, VERY, VERY loud."
"You've clearly never had a Brazilian, have you?"
"I'M A GUY."
"Then I'll jump you to the front of the line."

CLICK.

Here someone put the flash to better use and Simon is consoling Yoshi while Lindsay and Mike make fun of the video they took of him. I thought I had no life. And I don't.

I want to thank Vodka Mom for letting me blog chez elle and for the support of all her terrific fans. I still have numb hands and don't always respond the way I used to in the comments section but I was so moved by Vodka's readers that I'm going to start commenting back again because my horrific, debilitating pain is inconsequential in the face of such kindness and of course I'm lying.

End of chat.

I've Been Kidnapped.

I'm being held hostage over at Vodka Mom. The ransom is $6.98 and no one will pay it.

NO SURPRISE THERE.

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

Apparently this Southwest plane was so offensive to some fliers that they called it 'soft porn.' Comics have been saying this for millenia; people just don't have a sense of humor. That's why I love every single person who reads me because you get me. Oddly enough, I don't read my own blog because there's not enough soft porn in it.

This post is the 50th Bite Me Friday. That's a LOT of bitching and moaning. People who've known me for a long time are saying, "Don't you mean 5,000th?"

Rude.

This week I had lunch with a super popular blogger. Can you guess who she is? (check the bottom of this post for the answer). My camera totally sucks because her turtleneck was the most beautiful shade of lavenderishpurple. With a coat to match. We had talked on the phone a while back and finally got to meet. She's so super nice and funny and I'm so super evil that it was amazing we could converse. Thanks to her, I went C R A Z Y and put on two inch heels. I was so over my flats and Doctor Whore For Money said I could wear them starting last AUGUST. I'm really on top of my recovery, huh? But I couldn't get my black leggings on and dear GOD I am so pale I could play Snow White at Disneyland.

This was our waiter Matt. You can't see it but his eyes are so blue. All of this happened at Buddha's Belly, on Beverly Blvd. If you love great Pan-Asian food, go check this restaurant out, it's worth it.

I like that TV show Lie to Me. I memorize all the tics and clues and then immediately forget them. Probably just as well since if I actually KNEW who was lying to me, I'd have to kill them. And then I'd be friendless. And in Sing-Sing.

This Saturday I'm going to be guest hosting at another popular blog. I'll link it tomorrow.

End of chat.

ANSWER: Margaret. (Now click on her name to discover her blog if you haven't already)

Step Away From The Celebrities #3

I saw a movie star on Monday. He has a house in our neighborhood and was driving his black Benz, wearing a cap and sunglasses. He cut though traffic out of an Arco gas station and I thought, what an asshole, he's going to kill someone.

Oh wait, it's Brad Pitt. He can kill anyone he wants.

I always go out of my way to talk to actors who have impressed me over the years. Poor Mark Ruffalo was trapped with me at Mayfair Market until the paramedics came and put him on a stretcher and gave him pain pills.

Yesterday I saw another celebrity. We were in the same manicurist's shop and the minute she walked in I heard all the manipedipeople yell Hi Ann Marie!

After two seconds I said, "Ann Marie, aren't you the girl from...." and she said "Yes." I proceeded to tell her what a great actor she is and what was she doing now and where did she live and did she know our mani/pedi place was closing and was she going to call the paramedics? I asked if I could take a picture of her with my camera phone and she told me to google her and take a picture off her website. Clearly she's friends with Mark Ruffalo. So I googled Ann Marie Bergl. Nothing.

I finally googled this show and realized her name was EMILY. But pronounced by Vietnamese it came out Ann Marie. Or I've only got one ear left. She was so gracious she didn't even tell me I was mispronouncing her first name whereas I once yelled at someone who called me SUE and not SUZY. She's coming back on the air in the fall in a new John Well's show and is just finishing up a Broadway run. She's busy.

I'm not. Is that a surprise?

End of chat.

Oprah Is Scaring Me To Death

If you happened to see her show yesterday, talking to families that hoard and families that spend too much, then you learned two things about her:

1. She packs her own lunch. When Stedman pointed out that she packed her lunch every day she replied, "Well I'm saving $7.00; you're not."

2. As if this wasn't frightening enough, she went on to say that if she finds a penny on the street she picks it up. If you point out a penny to the homeless out here they'll say, "You must need it more than me."

Oprah is worth 2.7 billion dollars.

Then I heard about the guy who started kids collecting pennies to help other children in need. Over time he turned their pennies into 7 million dollars.

If anyone is looking for me, I'll be outside for a few weeks, months, years, the rest of my life.

End of chat.

How Low Can We Go?

I don't know where this street is. Maybe in hell?

The problem seems to be that these people in the picture below refuse to get a job. You cannot go in for an interview if all you have to show is genitalia. Seriously, put on a suit.

I remember when I was working every week. This picture was taken at The Improv, yet another club that threw me out after 3 years and a hundred Amstel Lights.
Shaq was in the club one night when Joy Behar and Mario Cantone were in town. You know Cantone from Sex and the City and the fact that he did THIS to me at Eve Behar's wedding. Rude.

End of chat.

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

Right before I board The Titanic, I always reread Many Lives, Many Masters. Chapter 6 always set me straight and takes the burden of bill paying, illness and other worries out of my head and into the trash, where they belong. If you don't own this book by Yale Med School and Columbia University trained Dr. Brian Weiss, buy it on Amazon. You can get it for less than a dollar. It's his most famous book and it's about reincarnation. For anyone struggling with an issue, Chapter 6 will set you straight.

Hollywood is full of legendary stories. A lot of people have made mistakes in their career choices. Kylie Minogue passed on the song Toxic and it went to Britney Spears. Kanye West wrote Golddigger for someone else, who passed on it. The famous lines uttered about Fred Astaire, "Can't sing, can dance a little" were the result of his screen test. The note also made mention of his big ears and the fact that he was balding. Nobody thought he would make it. This alone is why you need to read Chapter 6.

Warner Brothers is among the people who passed on something big.

Slumdog Millionaire.

It was made for $14 million dollars. Then it was shopped to them for distribution. WB's final answer on the film was that it would surely go straight to DVD so they passed and sent the producers to Fox Searchlight, who took the distribution deal. This is how films eventually show up at your local movie theaters. You have to find someone who will distribute it. So when Danny Boyle accepted the Oscar for directing Slumdog, he THANKED WB for "graciously giving the deal to Fox." HA! He had to do that because here in LA, you can't piss anyone off and I've learned that the hard way. Has ANYBODY ever learned anything the easy way?

To date the movie has made $130 million.

When I was in Mumbai my guide took me to Bollywood. It looked like a grey cement bunker, like a lot of Mumbai, which is undergoing massive infrastructural growth. And yet their people are colorful, joyous and kind. Now come to Hollywood and check out our studios. Overwrought exteriors, colorful interiors and nasty multimillionaires running the places. And one of those studios wasn't intelligent enough to go with such a brilliant movie as Slumdog. But for God's sakes, MAKE MORE BATMAN MOVIES with different Batmans and so much CGI that our eyes glaze over from your ability to take our money and laugh in front of our backs. (They want to make a total of 7 Batman movies, I guess they think we haven't quite figured out the story yet because it's sooooooooooo complicated).

Three of the nicest guys I met in Mumbai. To see the rest of the pictures I took, go here. Or click on the label India at the end of this post.

This is what 100 rupees looks like. When I was in India it was worth $1.25. Today it's worth $2.00. This is the amount I tipped everyone and was told was too much to give away. And I gave this amount to children and adults alike. TWO DOLLARS. I'd kill for 2 dollars today for God's sakes. And of course that is Sir Ben Kingsley on the bill. (please don't comment about this or I will fail you this semester)
I thought it was hilarious that I have a Best Western at the corner of my street and ended up in one 8700 miles away. (14,000 kilometers).

Two of the kids in Slumdog have been given permanent housing along with money set aside for their education, which their parents can't touch. And they're little tiny heroes in a big, big land. They would understand Chapter 6.

The Druggertons have been evicted so naturally we've all been going in to the vacated premises to steal stuff look around. And by all I mean me. I copped three black angels that were refrigerator magnets. I passed on the hypodermic needle and condom that were in the kitchen. I hope I don't live to regret that.

End of chat.

Lent

Mrs. K is observing Lent this year. I did when I was a kid but don't celebrate it anymore. The point is to give up something that you really, really like for 40 days. Martha Jane used to give up drinking when she lived here in Hollywood. Mrs. K is giving up Facebook and breads.

So this year I decided to see if I could think of things that I liked well enough to give up. Sadly, I came up empty (lie) so instead I'm giving up these torturous items:

1. Patience
2. Listening
3. Compassion

So basically, nothing will change around here.

End of chat.

Where Did Everybody Go?

Over the weekend we bloggers lost some of our 'followers.' For those of you who don't have blogs or know what the followers thing means, go read Vodka Mom. She was thisclose to getting her book looked at by someone uber famous and critical to her literary career but she lost some of her followers and it affected her relationship with this person. It's insane because she's mega popular, kind of like I am on the walls of men's bathroom stalls.

We need you to follow our blogs. If you don't know how to do it, just click on Follow This Blog, where all the tiny thumbnails are, and it takes two seconds to figure it out. You can be anonymous. You don't even need a picture to upload. You can be naked, like I am right now, but for the love of all that is shitty and cruel, please do it.

If you follow me, I automatically return the favor. I may not get around to commenting as much but I still read you all. If I follow someone and they never follow me, I will eventually drop them. It's totally quid pro quo with me because I want us all to succeed. Especially me because, well, it's always about me, isn't it? Really? Are you in tears yet?

This is a new age and we need to make the blogosphere work for us. If you're too jealous of those ahead of you, drop out now, you'll never succeed.

'Followers' help us with publishers and agents, as you can tell from Vodka Mom's post, Who Did I Piss Off? If you intend to get a deal or a gig, use the followers widget and put it on your blog. It's different from having Feedburner or Blogrolls. Apparently those don't count as much. I don't know why. Probably because publishers are drunk. Like you all are right now.

Thank you.

End of chat.

Rich Again?

I spent a few hours thinking about what I would do with my extra $65.00 a month stimulus check from the government. It's so exciting!!! I will not put it in the stock market although I'm sorely tempted because I haven't cried enough in this past year. I think the best place for it is under my mattress, unless AIG or GM come to my house and then I will have to stash it in the toilet tank.

But then I realized something. I don't have a job so I won't get all of that $65. So it appears the toilet is the best place to keep it after all.

End of chat.

Jai Ho!

Finally, a good Oscars. If you haven't seen Slumdog, I seriously don't understand what's wrong with you. All the talk, all the wins and you're still sitting at home? The dancing number is 100% better in the film than what you saw last night and it comes at the end, so wait for it. 8 out of 10 Oscars. A story of hope. A love story without Ali MacGraw. Go.

I read the book The Reader and it was so bad I didn't bother with the movie. Then I saw clips of the film and Hollywood painted some rather broad artistic strokes over the book so now I'll see it. Don't read Revolutionary Road unless you've run out of sleeping pills.

The clothes: I'm so over The Stylist Look, where they plant some pale, colorless gown on the whitest people in the world until their transparency mercifully makes them disappear. And diamonds? Gee, that's new. So my picks were for the always fashion forward Heidi Klum and the man without his dog, Mickey Rourke, wearing the fashion future forward Jean-Paul Gaultier. Honorable Mention to Viola Davis.

Other revelations:

Hugh Jackman: My new husband.
New format: Not memorizing your speech to the nominee. Rude.
The floor reflecting the back screen: FUCKING ANNOYING FOR DAYS.
Sophia Loren: Real Movie Star finally shows up missing her waist.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman: Jews in the 'hood.
Ben Stiller: Please put him out of my misery.
Bill Maher: Stop doing blow. It's so Oscars 1997.
Steven Spielberg: Can I land my plane on your heliport hairdo?
Will Smith: You used to be funny.
Steve Martin to Tina Fey: DON'T...fall in love with me.
Jennifer Aniston: A braid? Really?
Angelina Jolie. You put something in your eyes to make us stare at you. And we can't look away.

Jai Ho means "I hope you win." And they did.

End of chat.

The Best Person Oscar

Today is the 100th birthday of a woman I've known my entire life. She loves me so unconditionally that I used to joke that she probably didn't know me that well!
Happy Birthday Jean.

Once when I was 3 or so, we were driving and came upon a trailer full of horses. I begged her to slow down and she did and we followed while I squealed the whole way.

Finally she told me we had to pass the horses or we'd be late. I got so mad I screamed Mean Jean at her. Jean is now mostly blind and half deaf but the most cheerful and upbeat person I have ever known. She once told me she got up every day with a smile on her face and assumed it was going to be a great day. Obviously we're not related.

I still am obsessed with horses and ride whenever I can. Unless I have to sign a release WITH MY HANDS. As you can see on the photo, I USED to be able to write. I'm sure there's a handwriting expert out there amongst you who is looking at that sample and thinking, "Well THAT explains it."

End of chat.


***I can no longer do word verification on blogs that have that feature. It's too hard on my hands, unnecessary and for me, a waste of time. I hope you understand.