A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Photoshoppers

I'd like to answer Blasé's comment from my last post about helping 2 other bloggers. I've met Ellen once and auditioned for her first sitcom once. I'd love to play Charlie Goodnight's but they haven't asked me and lastly "How do I get my photo so airbrushed?"

That one made me laugh because THIS post is about photoshopping! I'm a comedian and an actor. My first L.A. agent was Irwin Arthur. I got a fashion photog friend of mine to take that shot and when I picked it up, I looked so much better since he photoshopped me to death that I kept it and Irwin Arthur dropped me because it didn't look realistic.

Come on, that's some funny shit right there, kids.

Last night a man asked me if I had makeup on and I said no and he said, you get up in the morning looking that good? I said I went to bed looking like I was 22 and woke up every morning thinking I'd had a face transplant.

One surprised mom found a baby in her pants leg. Image: Corbis.

This was the picture that accompanied that headline. Not only is there no room for the baby but the inside of her thighs is photoshopped so poorly that the baby wouldn't have been able to get into either leg because this woman's uterus shrunk with the last washing of her jeans and is now her spleen.
The pictures below are from TMZ. I used to work for the Hearst Organization in NY in the art department so I can spot photoshopping even when I'm blindfolded, which is how I read.

1. They painted this girl's hairline darker because the subject of the layout was about celebrities who let their hair fade. That one side is more faded than the other is just poor craftsmanship. I'm guessing a man did this as no self-respecting woman would be able, or want, to let one side grow out faster because IT'S FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE. 2. They also painted in a pinkish colored bra, probably because she has no boobs. They also painted in all the lines on the left side of her white shirt. They're all smudged to make her look boobISH.

3. Look at the upper corner of her right thigh. See that little black painted-in part? Her left inner thigh is also smudged in with dark gray. All this to make a girl with regular thighs appear unattainably thighless.

This Beyoncé photo is from the same layout on celebrities who've let their hair color go. Yeah, Beyoncé has trouble keeping up, due to lack of money, especially for a red carpet.

Pamela Anderson, whose boobs you can see from my apartment, STILL is highlighted around her breasts. Look at the top of her left inner leg. Painted in to separate her skin tone because otherwise you'd think her left leg was part of her right thigh. Because you failed biology.

And look at her left abdomen, next to her left arm. They have painted in a black line to make her waist appear smaller than it is. I've seen her up close, trust me, she's already thin.

Can you say hair extensions to this sleb?

None of these people look like this in real life, except me in the photo on the top of my blog. Blasé, I can't believe it took ANYONE 2 and a half years to ask me that question. You must be in the biz.

End of chat.

I'd Like Your Help

I'm posting this email I got without permission because as we all know, I always do the opposite of appropriate.

But I'm posting it for 2 reasons:
1. For the bloggers who leave no emails on their profiles or don't link their names so we can't find you easily.
2. For the bloggers who take time out of their busy lives to respond to their readers because otherwise they'll have to clean the house.
3. To avoid the answering within the comments which I never go back to read because I read over 200 plus blogs.
4. Have stopped checking the little Send me followups button because no one ever answers my questions, not even the blog owners.
5. Because I want to share the love.
6. (lie).
7. Because the email makes me look good. dingdingding, we have a winner!
8. 8 reasons. I can't shut up once I get going.

Subj: You know what I love about you?
Date: 6/13/2009 4:23:59 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: A reader

You have time for your fans! I used to follow another comedian, I won't name names, I commented on every blog she posted and she NEVER replied to me. it's a shame really, because she's pretty funny. I read your comment on my daughter's blog and it just made me smile! Thank you for being so down to earth!


Abbie left me one of the most compelling it-happened-to-me-too comments on Friday's post. When I replied to her privately I came across her website, written about her daughter, who has Hep C and needs a liver transplant. I know a lot of people out there can relate to this or are going through the agony of waiting for transplantation so I'm hoping you'll stop by her website and send some love and then pass it around the internet. Her daughter has two children so mothers, start your engines.http://abbiespot.blogspot.com/

And for fans of teenagers! Why is no one's hand up? But you'll all cheer for this one. She made 3 short videos and posted them on Brickfish. So in the spirit of helping fellow bloggers go vote for this kid's vids. There's NO signing up just click and Dairy Queen Double Serve comes through your screen and directly into your mouth. There are 8 days left to vote. You remember when you were a teenager and life sucked and you were in the band and chess club and wore coke bottle eye glasses and then you WON something, like a spanking? Do me a favor, go vote for this sweetheart and let's get her a win. All 3 of her vids are just so touching and you can vote every 8 hours!! For all three of them. http://www.brickfish.com/acutedisaster09

Thanks kids.

End of chat.

His Dead Wife Moves In With Me

I've gone through my novel, His Dead Wife, and parsed out the rest of the story and just strung together the freaky events, of which there are many more. But you'll have to wait until my book is published by some REALLY INTELLIGENT AGENT WHO I DON'T HAVE YET to read the rest.

So the story jumps forward, after the VCR incident.

I've always been a terrible sleeper. Earplugs, night mask, blackout shades, a sound machine and 2 Unisom a night sometimes all kick in and I can finally sleep.

One night I got up to pee in the middle of the night and saw a pinkish glow coming from my living room. More curious than fearful I walked towards the pink light and realized the stereo was on and since it rotates colors when it's on, blue, red, orange, pink, it was on the pink cycle. As I got closer, I saw that it was not only on but the lid was open.

Closed Lid

Open Lid

What's so weird about that?

I hadn't left it on. I can barely sleep so if there's a pink glow coming from my living room I would have noticed. The buttons on this cheap $100. stereo are behind the CDs so you have to move them to turn it on. When I found the lid open, the CDs were all flush against the stereo. I thought maybe I had absent-mindedly used the remote. I keep it near my desk, opposite the stereo. I found the remote in the bottom of a basket 2 shelves down. It took me 14 seconds to even locate the "Open Lid" function. It was definitely not me. It was comforting to know Alzheimers had not moved in.

I turned it off and went back to bed. I woke up the next day and still couldn't figure out how the stereo had turned itself on.

A few months later I was in a deep sleep. Suddenly I heard talking. In my bedroom. I opened my eyes and saw that the TV had turned itself on. This time I was scared and sat bolt upright. I searched for the remote. Had I rolled over it? Where the hell was it? In a drawer in one of my side tables. If I tossed and turned I would have had to launch myself 2 feet in mid air to get to that remote. In a drawer. I'm pretty sure that would have woken me up.

I walked into the kitchen and got a hammer. Not a little hammer but a full grown huge manly man hammer. I have no idea why I didn't grab a knife but I thought, a knife will produce blood and then I'd have to clean up AND go to prison. But I reasoned a hammer would just produce a huge hurty hole in the body of...of... of WHO?

I was shaking. Who was in the bedroom? I crept slowly back to bed, turned off the TV and kept the hammer and a flashlight in the bed with me. Not cuddlers, I can tell you that.

What the hell was going on in my apartment?

And then the TV turned itself on again in the middle of the night almost 2 months later. And they were talking about Los Angeles Mayor's Anthony Villaragosa's divorce. If that was a clue, it was lost on me. And then the stereo turned itself on again.

End of chat.

His Dead Wife Loved TV's

UPDATE: ALL THE STORIES IN MY NOVEL ARE TRUE.

Less than a year before my Dad died, I was seeing a great guy. His wife had died and because we were friends for about 10 years, the inevitable happened. We kept it a secret for his sake because even though she'd been sick for a long time, his wife had only recently died and he was so sad and miserable that I didn't want to hurt him further by not doing as he asked.

Having sex with a person you've been friends with is very strange when you've only known them with their clothes on. What if we got naked, had sex and it was all a big mistake and we both knew it and now we had to go back to a fully clothed relationship? How was that ever going to work? You could never even glance below their waist for the rest of your life, even if their legs were on fire.

With alcohol, that's how it's done.

How do female movie stars agree to nudity in front of an entire crew? I wonder if that’s why male actors rarely do. You'd think men would, since every body part is multiplied by the multiplex, not to mention the camera puts on fifteen pounds. Everywhere.

The first time I went to his house I was overwhelmed. Did he look around and still see his wife? Were there pictures on the wall or clothes in the closet that belonged to her? Could I move something without him saying, “Please don’t touch that.” I walked around like a tourist. Oohing and aahing and feeling like an interloper in Ozzie and Harriet’s house. Only Harriet was dead and I was the whore of Babylon.

Afterwards, I was in the kitchen rinsing dishes while he dried. The TV in the dining room was on a sports channel and he was watching out of the corner of his eye and talking to me at the same time. All of a sudden the TV shut down, went dark. He walked over to it, picked up the remote, clicked to another channel and it went on. Then another channel and it went on. But when he clicked back to the sports channel it was still blank. He fingered the remote and and then locked eyes with me.

“I know who this is.”
“Who?”
"It's obviously my wife."

I knew it too but if I said something, would he think I was crazy? He believed it, surely I could too? He was convinced it was her because he watched sports all the time and what better way to get his attention? And it had never happened before she died.

I was at my house one night, sitting on a chair watching a rental movie. I didn’t have the energy to do anything else. I kept wondering if our relationship would go anywhere. I was, after all, a rebound and I was terrified he'd figure that out and move on. And as I watched the movie, the VCR stopped playing and the noise of a television show blared through. The VCR then turned itself off. And I knew at that moment that there was someone else present. Pushing STOP and then pushing OFF were two different movements and I was nowhere near the remote or the TV. I’d had the VCR for seven years and it had never done that. And of course it never did it again.

Was his wife visiting me? Checking out my place, noticing if I was neat or messy? Looking at my shoes? I knew some spirits moved objects around, even threw things. Did they steal overpriced shoes still collecting interest on my Amex card?

A few days later, back at his house, we were upstairs in the master bedroom, standing in front of a large cabinet that housed a television. We were hugging and swaying and looking into each other’s eyes. We had a chemistry I'd never had before and will probably never have again. We could not keep our hands off each other.

Suddenly the television started to inch forward. Inch by calculated inch. It was on one of those wooden platforms that glide in and out. We stopped swaying and watched as the TV became fully extended on the platform and then stopped right in front of us. He pushed it back into the hutch and didn't say a word.

One night I was ironing his suit jacket and he was in the bathroom shaving. I had the TV on and when he came out of the bathroom he switched the channel to a ballgame. He did that all the time. I could have any station on and be seriously into it and he would just walk over and turn it back to his channel, or pick up the remote and switch it. It never bothered me because when he was near me, everything else drained from my agenda. I was more than just in love. I'd never felt that way about any man before. I was in serious trouble and I knew it. So we watched the ball game for a while and then he went back into the bathroom to dry his hair.

I changed the channel back to whatever I was watching and continued to iron. After a few minutes I heard the blow dryer stop. He came out of the bathroom and walked over to a chair and picked up the remote. He switched the TV back to his game. He looked over at me and I smiled at him. He smiled back.

Suddenly the TV went dark. Stopped. He tapped on the remote and looked over at me.

“Seems this keeps happening to us," he said, laughing a little.
“Looks that way.”
“You know who this is too, don't you?” he asked.

I couldn't breathe but I nodded yes.

“I don’t think it’s good; not a good thing at all.”

But I knew it was. If it hadn’t been, she would have thrown the TV at our heads. I was suddenly glad I hadn’t told him about the VCR turning itself off in my place. I knew she was trying to get our attention, or tell us something, but what? And how could I tell the love of my life that it was a good thing? How could his darling wife being dead ever be good in any lifetime and on any planet?

And especially with me saying it?


This entire week's posts are excerpts from my novel on reincarnation, His Dead Wife. It has been truncated and some of the names have been omitted for this online version.

His Dead Wife Was In The Pool

Arthur and his wife were friends of my Dad's. They lived in an assisted living facility, not because they needed help, they were just tired of cooking for themselves. Their new place was a glorious two bedroom with private gardens and a patio full of flowers. There was a doctor's office in the compound, a pool, tennis courts, and did I mention a medical facility? And 3 meals a day. Don't think I didn't consider moving there myself. But I can't do Florida, lightening capital of the U.S. and me all full of metal. And the humidity is just wrong.

This loving couple was married for over 50 years. Madly crazy in love. When she died of a heart attack in her 80's, he was devastated beyond repair. He was a bear of a man, a daily swimmer who had easily recovered from 2 knee replacements. But his emptiness over his wife's death was so huge that it took him weeks to even be up for a walk. No one could cheer him up. After four months he finally got back into life and even took up his daily swimming ritual. He was often found poolside reading the newspaper.

Arthur was a very neat man. Everything in its place kind of guy. So he was sitting by the pool one day when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He put his paper down and saw one piece of newspaper floating in the pool. He hadn't noticed it when he sat down; how did it get there? Had it been there all along and he hadn't noticed? He knew that wasn't possible since he knew exactly where the walnuts and the cashews were and they were in identical canisters on the same shelf in the left kitchen cabinet.

He looked right and left. There was no one around. There were also no other loose pieces of newspaper anywhere on the grounds. Annoyed, he waited to see if a gardener or pool man would wander by and pick it out but he was all alone on a beautiful sunny day.

After a while, the wet newspaper bothered him so much that he decided to get it out himself. He walked over to the pool office, retrieved the pool net and with the long pole he gingerly edged the paper towards him. He laid it on the concrete and looked at the date.

It was the date his wife's obituary appeared in the paper. Four months earlier.

And her picture was staring back at him.

This entire week's posts are excerpts from His Dead Wife, my novel on reincarnation. Some of the names have been changed or omitted to protect the people who got on my nerves.

His Dead Wife Shows Up For Dinner

This is my favorite picture of my Dad and his 4th wife.

When she died my sister and I flew to Florida that night to be with him. My sister flew in from L.A., I flew in from Flin Flon, Saskatchewan, Canada. I can hear Canadians laughing from here. I WAS ON THE ROAD IN FLIN FLON, population 6, not counting the comedians.

The next morning I was sitting on a couch trying to wake up before I went to make coffee. I didn’t especially like Dad’s last wife but I really missed her in that moment, mainly because she always made the coffee.

I got up and went into the kitchen and noticed that a little placard was missing from the entrance wall of the kitchen. The little plaque above it was still there and I wondered if Dad had removed the other one to keep by his bed. I made the coffee and didn’t think another thing about it until a few hours later, when Dad and I decided to go to the post office. As we walked down the long corridor that led to our front door, we passed the kitchen and I noticed the missing plaque was back.

“Did you put the plaque back?”
“What plaque?” I stopped and turned back towards the kitchen. I motioned for him to follow me.
“This bottom plaque here, did you put it back?” I asked, pointing to the piece of wood.
“Put it back from where?” my father asked. I explained to him that I had been in the kitchen earlier and noticed it was missing. Standing with my father gazing at the itinerant plaque, we said nothing. Which if you know me, is unusual. My Dad? Could have passed for a statue at any point in his life.

Something was happening, as it often did around me and the dead. All I knew was that the placard was missing and now it was back. I just didn’t know why.

That night at the Yacht Club the remaining family and friends sat at a round table and put an empty place for the dearly departed. I find it creepy when people do that but so many people do it that maybe I’m the creepy one.

I had already been through the drama with Dad in the foyer of our apartment, so when we got to the Yacht Club, I repeated the story to the others. Family remained quiet. Friends, not so much.

One of Dad’s friends, Gracie, was an Electronic Voice Phenomenon tech who recorded the voices of the dead for a living. She and I exchanged looks. Suddenly my stepbrother turned to his youngest daughter and told her to stop rocking his chair. “Dad, I’m not even touching your chair,” she answered.

“Well someone is rocking my chair,” he insisted. Again Gracie and I exchanged a look.
“Hey, stop rocking my chair,” my father suddenly said to me.
“Dad, I’m not touching your chair, look.” My father looked down at the seat of my chair, which was a good seven inches away from his. “Dad, it’s your wife. Your DEAD wife, she’s saying hello.”

The chairs stopped rocking. Gracie and I rolled our eyes at each other as if to say, "Humans. Why don't they get it?"

After dinner Dad and I walked across the street to our condo. He looked so old at that moment, all eighty-six of his years engraved on every ridge of his face. His sadness scared me.

“Really, you weren’t rocking my chair?”
“No, Dad. Your wife never believed in reincarnation or the soul and I used to tell her she was wrong, that one day she would see.”
“Yeah, she really didn’t believe, did she?” he said with a small smile.
“Remember how I told her once, years ago, that when she died she would see that I was right and to send us a sign?” Dad mulled that over for a moment, his eyes suddenly filling with the memory as he stopped walking and turned to look at me.
“You told her to send us a sign when she made it to the other side!”
“That’s right.”
“You think it was her rocking the chairs?” he asked.
“Yes Dad, it was her, that was the sign; there’s something on the other side.”

Dad looked happy in that instant, knowing she had come to him. I never saw him that happy again.

When dead people come back to you, it's never bad, it's always good.

Dad died two years later and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

I Really Haven't Changed At All

People always ask me how I can believe in reincarnation when I haven’t made the round trip myself. I don't know; I just do.

This is me when I was 4. I look the same minus the pigtails and plus a nose job.

When I was 3, I started telling my parents that Cincy, Cindy and I were going out to play. That would have been fine by them only I didn’t have any friends named Cincy and Cindy. Cincy? What kind of a name was that? I'd never heard it and to this day have never known anyone named Cincy. My parents grilled me like a shishkabob over those two people. My answer was always “I don’t know; they are just MY FRIENDS you big stupid heads.”

Sidebar: If I really had said that I would be writing you from my grave right now.

Naturally I out grew Cincy and Cindy and as I aged my Dad talked to me about reincarnation. He believed in it and I think I believed in it because I guess he had a good explanation. Like, Believe in it or you’ll never get your own car.

Sidebar: I did believe in it and I never got my own car because my parents were big stupid heads and I'll write from my grave IF I WANT TO.

It wasn’t until years later that I read when children are under the age of four and start talking about people with names you don’t recognize that you should pay close attention, that these were probably people they had known in a previous life. I used to call my sister Dorothy when she was 2 and tell my parents we were moving to California. My Dad's 3rd wife was named Dorothy, her son lived in California and I ended up here THREE separate times in my life before settling here. And my sister Lindy moved here first.

When I was age range 36-43, (that’s how we give our ages in Hollywood) (That is, if you ever want to work again) I received a letter one of our distant uncles on my father's side sent my father and me. He had hired an assassin to work for him and the media was all over his place. I don't tell anyone who it is because this man assassinated a very famous person and homey don't play no witness protection games. In this letter was a diagram of our family tree. I gave it a cursory glance and filed it under Who Cares They're All Dead Now.

A few years later I was working on my first novel 'His Dead Wife" and I foraged the letter out from my files and in the many branches and offshoots of that tree I found the name ‘Cinzie,’ a woman who had died roughly twenty years before I was born. I stared into space thinking about how I had known her on the other side. Whoever she was to me then, she clearly had been very important so I dragged her into this lifetime.

I called my Dad. He totally flipped out. True, I haven't made the round trip but have MILLIONS more stories like this in my life. Research on reincarnation suggests that children under 4 remember names and places and then when they're fully verbal around 5 and "get stuff" it all disappears for them.

For me? Cinzie never disappeared because I found her in a family tree and never forgot the strange name. I still wonder if she's the one who said, "For God's sakes, child, never get married."

End of chat.

When The Recession Ends I'm Going To Buy This

A 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa nabbed $12.1 million at a recent event on the company's factory grounds, setting a world record for a car sold at auction.

I like hot men. I like hot cars. I like money in the bank.

Email me if you fit that profile.

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

I have 8 photo albums and 6 scrapbooks. Yesterday I started to look through them early in the morning, lost track of time and then realized it was 9 pm and I had nothing in the house to eat except Metamucil.

Apparently I find myself fascinating.

But since people commented on how thin I was in yesterday's picture with Pascal I spent 2 hours today looking for THIS photo. I had just discovered my boyfriend Matty in bed with my gay hairdresser and had stopped eating altogether. I was living in San Francisco and I flew home to D.C. to get away. My father walked right past me at the airport because he didn't recognize me.

Then he took my sister and I on a cruise to Bermuda to "help me forget" and I promptly had an affair with a cute blonde guy who wore Aramis. Needless to say he made an impression because whenever I smell it I think of him. I have no idea what his name was. Like you remember all your hookups' names. Don't even pretend you do. And IF you do, you've had a boring sex life. Trust me on that one. The beauty of this is you can't argue that you haven't!

I looked like this. Probably about 98 pounds. Even back then I dressed weirdly. That navy blue purse was an old lady one from a thrift shop, I have a bracelet up on my biceps, a tooth and Greek cross around my neck and tons of turquoise rings. I would kill to still have those sunglasses. And I was smoking a cigarette in that picture!! My whole goal in life was never to look like anyone else. I succeeded AND STILL GOT LAID.
When we got back home my Dad flew me to Paris so my mother could fatten me up with locamolé at Lake Heroin. And I slowly gained the weight back, especially after meeting Pascal.

Where is he now? He married a very rich girl. My mother said he would never marry me because we weren't rich enough. What's love got to do with it? Apparently nothing.

End of chat.

Me Talk Funny One Day?

It's impolite to make fun of foreigners when they speak. Unless they're your mother.

Me and Mom in Soho in New York.

Mom often makes mistakes when she speaks English but because she converses in 4 languages, we try to overlook it. (lie) It's my sister's and my favorite pastime because we're ungrateful, spoiled brats and jealous that we only speak English and French. And swear in Spanish.

Three days ago this was my phone conversation with my mom:
"Your seester and I went to a lovely partee in Beverly Hills zis afternoon."
"That's nice."
"They had so much food. We had champagne and shrimp and locamolé."
"Locamolé?"
"Oui Mon Dieu, weeth avocados."

Then two days ago she told me she was going with my sister and June Lockhart to Lake "heroin." How do you know when you get there? Curt Cobain and John Belushi are lying dead on the shore?

She was trying to say Lake "Arrowhead."

My first French boyfriend was named Pascal. He had a chalet in Val D'Isère, France and we were going skiing. I had made an appointment to have my legs waxed for the trip but at the last minute Pascal moved the trip up. I was so upset that I ran down the street and popped my head into the waxing shop and shouted, "Je suis desolé mais je ne peux pas venir pour le cirage." Then I ran all the way home to my mom's place. She and my stepfather were having coffee and I told them what happened. They started laughing and I asked them what was so funny. They said I had told the women at the shop that I couldn't come for my shoe shine. Me and Pascal. He's looking at my eyes and I'm looking at his lips. He was very hot. And I don't ski.

End of chat.

All (H)ale Vodka Mom

I want to thank Vodka Mom for what she did for me yesterday. Her support has been exemplary, unflagging and codependent generous. I wish she lived closer to me so I could fall off the wagon and help her beat certain grownups to a pulp. Because we're married, prison won't be a problem for us. Especially me.

And thank you to all her readers who voted for me and followed me because they're afraid of her.

Seriously, I'm very grateful.

Now, will any of you pay my rent? Unbelievably it's due every month. Rude.

End of chat.

But Have You Seen Me Here?

The website Talent Trove has posted one of my articles on stand up comedy so go take a look if you want to live to post again.

They're also on my sidebar and they're a terrific resource for comedy including videos and laugh riot psychopathic geniuses like me.

End of chat.