And Newton's Big One Came From A Falling Apple

This past two weeks I have taken the longest blog hiatus since beginning mymommybites. The reasons are simple, Otto and Christmas. The first week of the holiday madness, I came down with a rare condition known as “aching mall headache”, while Otto attended winter camp. This was a four-day party of extra school where the kids do nothing but play while the parents thank whatever Lord they believe in for the wherewithal to sign their children up and hand over a blank check.

The headache, in contrast, came from the smell of bottled perfume samplers and squealing shoe salesmen at the local L.A. shopping pits. I do not like shopping. I do not like sweat suit-wearing crowds. I do not like the smell of indoor popcorn unless it is at a first run movie theatre and I have an unobstructed view of a violent thriller starring an overpaid actor with capped teeth and a secret addition to high-class call whores. I do not like Sbarro pizza pockets. I do not like being told that 30% off is a sale. I do not like long lines, not even back in the 1980’s coke culture. I do not like consumer guilt. I do not like feeling lectured by the piles of brightly colored seasonal items that holler at me while I am wheeling down the aisle simultaneously looking for tampons and earplugs. And I never before realized that those two items could be kept in the same aisle without surprising or confusing anyone.

Despite the litany of reasons that holiday shopping twists me into a Cinnabon, this Christmas brought me a pile of peace due to an ingenious idea that popped into my head one day, a few weeks back. As Hanukkah crept through our house, bearing a new gift for Otto every night and amassing a pile of new things to clutter the ever-crowded playroom (former dining room … I rest my case), I could feel my stomach start to ache from pre-regret. Pre-regret, what I assume is one notch below pre-ejaculation, is an overwhelming feeling that comes over oneself to run the other direction when faced with something or someone who, initially, is wildly enticing but turns into extremely icky within moments.

Think of spotting a piping hot, deep fried Twinkie sitting on a buffet table at the best party you have EVER been to. Then imagine taking a huge bite, burning the roof of your mouth as the filling squirts out and plops onto your brand new, long, sinuous gold Lurex Dries Van Noten skirt you could not afford on sale while you swallow the hot mess, simply because Clive Owen and Madonna are standing next to you. And you, being the lowest member on the guest list food chain, are too horrified to spit the molten chunk of wrong into the monogrammed, linen napkin that the social climbing hostess had custom made in Malawi by Madge’s newest rent-a-child.

My clearest pre-regret experienced occurred in college when I flirted with a horrifically slick, red headed guy my roommate knew and warned me about. Ladies, when someone you love pulls you away from your 2 for 1 drink special and tells you that a slow moving train wearing puka shells and bad vibes is about to hit you, listen as if you are Helen Keller hearing the human voice for the first time. I knew better than to go back to an apartment with a guy whose idea of semi-formal revolved around an open toe sandal and a Mexican serape. For the love of Cristo! I get it! Do not swap warm beer kisses and yogic stretches with a chap that smells like a St. Vincent DePaul armchair left out in the rain. All right, already! It was a night to forget, a night in which I blew off my instincts like a clueless, chipper kitten at a dogfight and cuddled up to a three legged pit bull who hated soap, doing laundry and women. Maybe now, the world will truly understand my lifelong revulsion toward men who resemble a day old Red Velvet cupcake found in the trash.

As far as December ’09, I could not ignore this year’s Christmas pre-regret. I could not stand by as mountains of detritus piled up in closets that do not exist in my house. I did not want to sit on our sofa on Baby Jesus morning and open up boxes of sweaters and turtlenecks and gimmick books published for people who refuse to read a novel and only have enough patience to look at a few words while taking a dump in their gold accented powder rooms. I would stand up in revolt if I was given one pair of over-sized, flannel pajamas with tacky childlike designs that make any woman wearing them resemble a lobotomized patient at a mental hospital who wanders the fluorescent lit hallways with a dog-eared copy of the newest Susanna Kaysen novella while licking pudding from between nibbled, nubby fingers.

So, after my big idea raped my mind and left me for dead, I filed it in the” Best Idea of All Time” folder and proceeded to pitch Dave. While Dave sat playing with dreidel on the seventh day of Hanukkah, I coyly said, “I have a great idea. Let’s do cool gifts for Otto, but only stockings for us. Then, we can get what we really want for one another, a new flat screen television for Christmas.”

Being a good Jew all his life Dave went to temple ate bacon only on paper plates and never had a Christmas tree or a pile of gifts in which to tear open like a wild hyena. But, after meeting me and being corrupted by the consumerism and agnosticism that rages through my Unitarian and Catholic blood, he was suddenly freed from the confines of his parents house, a brightly colored Mecca of distinct religious convictions depicted in 1960’s Judaic wall art scattered throughout their two story, New Jersey ranch style house. The first Christmas we spent together he ran out and bought a tree as high as the Red Sea is wide. That night he wrapped gifts by the light of a bottle of Wild Turkey and I knew he would never be the same. Just asking him to give up gifts for one year made me feel like a traitor. But after I spoke the words “flat” and “screen” he looked at me as though I were a 1977 Atari console in its original package.

Christmas morning came and with it, a tiny, perfect Otto cuddling with his new blue bike with training wheels and his CAT bulldozer with remote control and his green #8 Thomas train. We, on the other hand, feigned surprise at stockings filled with socks, chocolate and scratch off tickets and sat back to watch our ten-year old Toshiba television, an elephant in a zoo of flamingos, for the last time. With its strange green blob sitting in the corner of the screen and the terrible sound quality, we held each other tight and knew that the next day, on the 26^th of December, the biggest shopping day of the year, we would go to Best Buy and do what all great Americans do. We would support an economy is crisis by purchasing a television the size of a garage door and spend all of 2010 wondering why suddenly, everything seemed so much bigger and better and brighter and that anything was really, truly possible.

A Gathering Of Angels Appeared Above My Head

I could blame it so many things. Perhaps it was the large Starbuck’s green iced tea that I was drinking at the time, a beverage that makes me feel as high as I did the first time I tried Dexatrim during homeroom. Or perhaps it was the impending PMS, that lovely collection of days in which every thing swirls into a melted rainbow of, “Oh, no you didn’t!”, complete with the Juicy Couture sweat suit hand gestures and Ugg covered leg kicks.

It could have been me showing my softer side of Sears after Otto’s perfection in cuteness, cuddles and car racing that morning. This was a two hour love fest that was not lost on me, a block of time that consisted of grown up eating, happy chatter and no arguments related to wardrobe choices or diaper changes before school.

No, the tears I cried in the car while driving home from dropping off Otto was for my husband Dave, who had just been told about the death of an old friend. All right, I was listening to a classic rock station, sure. And they may have been playing the 70’s cheese slathered anthem, Come Sail Away; an old keyboard relic filled with drippy words and emotionally castrated high notes. But, there was no stopping them. I felt for Dave, for the friend I didn’t know and the family he left behind.

Dave is my main man, the hot fudge on my Sundae, the shmear on my bagel and he was so saddened and shocked by this terrible news that I couldn’t help but be sad for him. As odd as my emotional reaction may seem to some, especially since I had never spoken to his friend or had him to dinner, it felt oddly right to me.

Dave and I met when we were in college and from the first day of our relationship, we shared everything about each other’s lives with one another and any stranger who would listen. It was either that or get up early and go to Psychology 101 and that seemed futile, at best. We swapped the good, the bad and the truly deformed antics of our previous lives while drinking cheap table wine from chipped coffee cups and Top Ramen broth from a mixing bowl. We discovered that a few years before we met, Dave had followed the Grateful Dead dressed like Weird Al Yankovic, while at the same exact moment, I was parading around my PAC ten college campus in a spandex, shoulder-padded ensemble only an out of work roller skater could pull off. Lest I forget those Velcro shoulder pads that I transferred from outfit to outfit made me look like a left tackle for the Arizona Cardinals defensive line.

When Dave told me that his friend Mike had died, I knew it had to be the Mike with the saucer- sized eyes and crazy smile, the guy in a photo kept in Dave’s old cigar box, a photo where this guy is standing next to a very young, very happy Dave. Mike was a high school and early college friend and from what I’ve been told, a great musician, a lover of all things Jerry Garcia and an avid collector of lead singer leather jewelry. He was the life of the party, and according to Dave, the funniest fucker he has ever known.

Now, we are humor snobs and I say, without reservation, that we have a handful of friends who are shit your pants funny. Seriously, really, truly shit your pants and please don’t tell anyone, funny. Yes indeed, there have been a few excrement incidents over the years, including a legitimate reason why we got rid of the wall-to-wall carpeting in our bedroom. A tale for another time...

So, when Dave says that Mike was bar none, the most hilarious dude he’s ever known, I only wish that I could have laughed at something or at anything he had said, just once. To hear Dave say it, Mike was hysterical in the best times, a good friend in good times, a broken soul in bad times and a train wreck of Amtrak proportions. Dave lost touch with him before our wedding but over the years has spoken of him with a true fondness cloaked in wistful concern. I suspect Dave secretly hoped he had tamed his demons and found happiness but alas, there was no word on him until a few days ago.

The details of his last few years and subsequent death are still unclear. But a few of the old crew suspect that the demons did indeed win out after all. And that, is precisely why I mourn for a man I never knew and a friend I never experienced and a singer I never heard. Mike was part of the patchwork that makes up my husband’s life, including the crazy one we have together. I have to thank him for helping Dave become the guy he is, maybe even the father he is, in some infinitesimal way. Who knows? Maybe one night when they were tripping on blotter acid or smoking pot from a beer-filled electric bong, Mike turned to Dave and said, “Dude, you will be the father of all fathers and the guide of all guides.”

Or, maybe he just wanted Dave to make him a really fucking great, bacon-grilled cheese sandwich using American cheese and the now extinct, Wonder Bread. Or perhaps, he simply wanted Dave to stop mocking his Jersey mullet, a hairstyle that, thankfully, Dave never embraced in the stupidity of his Bergen County youth.

We are the sum of all our parts and today, cannot help but be influenced by all the yesterdays and the relationships along the way. Of course, there are a handful of fruitcakes I would LOVE to have never tasted in my life. But we are what we eat and those wretched brown holiday loaves will always exist, especially around Christmas.

Happy holidays Mike and thanks for taking care of Dave during your shift. May you rest in peace.

Hit it boys!

I'm sailing away, set an open course for the virgin sea

I've got to be free, free to face the life that's ahead of me

On board, I'm the captain, so climb aboard

We'll search for tomorrow on every shore

And I'll try, oh Lord, I'll try to carry on

I look to the sea, reflections in the waves spark my memory

Some happy, some sad

I think of childhood friends and the dreams we had

We live happily forever, so the story goes

But somehow we missed out on that pot of gold

But we'll try best that we can to carry on

A gathering of angels appeared above my head

They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said

They said come sail away, come sail away

Come sail away with me

Come sail away, come sail away

Come sail away with me

I thought that they were angels, but to my surprise

They climbed aboard their starship and headed for the skies

Singing come sail away, come sail away

Come sail away with me

Come sail away, come sail away

Come sail away with me

You Say Chanukah and I Say Hanukah

Hanukah began last Friday with a bang and a boom. Otto came home from school with a gift bag for us from him and his teachers. If it wasn’t clear before, I love me some presents. I will take anything wrapped, crinkled, folded or smashed into a ball and given to me by anyone with a pulse and a desire to please. I do draw the line at dirty clothes I find on the sidewalk or half eaten foodstuffs in non-recyclable containers perched atop public trash receptacles. But if it’s new and intended for me, I will cradle it like a newborn chick and then suffocate it with my materialistic love.

The bright blue bag contained the cutest assortment of goodies any parent could ask for. There was a homemade menorah fashioned out of cardboard tubing cut in half and metal nuts one may find in a mom and pop hardware store that no longer exists thanks to Home Depot’s raping of America. Next came a box of Hanukah candles that melt as fast as butter in a scalding skillet. Two dreidels were also included, both of which have the kind of spinning action a Tiger Woods hanging basket job starter kit would be proud of.

But the real kicker, the heart stopper, the coupe de grace was the sweetest, yummiest photo of Otto fake lighting an even faker light bulb menorah in class. The frame was green foam with fun shapes glued on by Otto himself. He enthusiastically informed us of his brilliant use of a glue stick as soon as we fondled the photo, and my heart overflowed with the kind of pride reserved for ice-skating coaches and murderous house cats. The photo showed Otto deep in thought with a look on his face that oozed pure pleasure at a job well done. As he held the shamash light bulb (shamash is the Hanukah candle that is the ‘helper’ or ‘servant’ candle used to light all the other candles) he seemed to be thinking deep and penetrating thoughts. What, for instance, would he wear on his first day of rabbinical school, his rainbow striped Pink Floyd t-shirt or the 3T sized fireman outfit he wears on really rainy days? Or, perhaps he was contemplating the difficult choice of a blue suit versus a black pinstriped suit when reading the haphtarah portion of the Torah. Maybe, just maybe, he was all consumed with the menu at the after party and could not pull the trigger on whether or not to serve Lando Calrissian kugel or Luke Skywalker latkes.

Whatever it was that filled his thoughts in the photograph, it made me fiercely happy that we have Otto in a super cool Jewish nursery school, a place where everyday he learns more and more about his father’s heritage and giving to others. Not only that, it is a place where he completes art projects a thirty year old would struggle with, memorizes songs in Yiddish like a lip-syncing pop whore and has mastered eating a piece of Challah without chewing.

So, that first night of Hanukah, after hugging him thank you until he swatted Dave and me away like common house flies, we stood around the menorah and began our holiday ritual. Being the woman of the house, I lit the shamash candle, said the prayer as I lit the first Hanukah candle and kissed my amazing boys with thankfulness and joy bursting from a stained, pilling, long sleeved Old Navy fleece hoodie. Then, we all opened up our chocolate advent calendars and stood in front of the most beautiful plastic Christmas tree we’ve ever seen, while Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus played in the background.

My Agent 007

I arrived in Hollywood on May 21^st, 1991 to a smog-filled sky that looked like a day old German Chocolate cake from Ralph’s Fresh Fare. My eyes watered, my head hurt and I did not realize at the time that that is how I would feel emotionally, as well as physically, for years to come. I came here with clogged pipe dreams of fame and fabulousness, dreaming of being on the cover of People Magazine with long, ironed straight hair extensions and a high-waist denim collection I would design for Kmart. This was before any slutsack could give a golfer a rim job and a cuddle and steal the cover shot from a much more deserving IT girl like Tori Spelling or Susan Boyle.

I was never the IT girl or even the THAT girl. I worked intermittently as an actor while waiting tables, buying celebrities predictable Tiffany candleholders or doing menial office work for a collection of truly insane Beverly Hills women, one of whom wanted me to score her some Mary Jane to help combat her “circulatory problem.” Being the kind of employee who needed to eat, I delivered pot to her home office in a manila envelope labeled “tax documents”, knowing the shit could go down any minute. I was constantly scanning the skies for DEA helicopters and looking in the rear view mirror of my 1978 Avocado Green Datsun B-210 to see if a dark, four-door Caprice was tailing me and ready to take me down. As with everyone else, they never even called.

Though I only booked a few jobs a year at most, it was enough to string me along and keep my twisted hopes alive. I knew I could be the next Tiffany Amber Theissen if only the powers that be would give me the chance. I would simply have to survive a head transplant using the cranium from an Ohio beauty pageant contestant that became comatose from a cheerleading mishap and whose only claim to fame was losing to a taller, thinner Mary Hart type in the Dayton regional semi-finals two years earlier.

I never got around to the surgery but I continued on my downward trajectory, doing small parts on soon to be cancelled sitcoms with quasi-famous actors who seemed furious for no apparent reason. One time I was cast as a janitor who was mistaken for a stripper but ends up being just a janitor. It was a real confidence-boosting role that required me to wear coveralls and blue-collar make-up, two exceedingly unglamorous visuals that do nothing to further an all ready, non-existent acting career. Looking like a lost Michael Myers without a mask, I had to wheel in a cleaning cart and deliver four lines opposite Jon Cryer and Vivica A. Fox, who were playing co-workers at a nebulous company that did nothing of importance. Before even rehearsing with the cast, I was told to never, EVER reference Pretty In Pink or utter the words duck, Ducky or Mallard in Jon’s presence. I couldn’t understand why a working actor would not discuss the role that made him a working actor, even if it reminded him of his inner nerd or the long lost head of hair of his youth.

After successfully avoiding slipping up and raping Jon Cryer with questions about Molly Ringwald’s real pubic hair color, I was dragged into a fight between Vivica A. Fox and the director. As I sat quietly in the corner by myself, memorizing the seven words I was required to repeat in front of a tired, tourist-filled audience, Vivica, as I called her, screamed at her producer and then grabbed me and asked me to “Back me up, girlfriend!”

I had barely overheard the argument, which surely involved some cancer curing blocking choices and save the world wardrobe decisions. I avoided eye contact and tried to dodge her questions for the simple fact that I didn’t want to get fired before saying the award winning line, “Can I empty out the trash now or is this a bad time?”

As with most actors, she forgot I was there after finishing her third sentence and I ran away to my empty, generic dressing room and cried myself into a ball. I couldn’t even blame my agent, who did nothing for me and had not even gotten me the job. The casting director had seen me do stand up comedy and clearly thought that I could pull off the role of a sexless, efficient cleaning lady. My comedy career, in fact, was really the only reason I ever got those hapless, bit parts usually reserved for distant cousins of the crew and studio security guards who wanted their five minutes of famelessness.

I had had a string of agents and managers that rivaled the occupants on a very short school bus, complete with food stained clothing (true) and wearing their clothes inside out by accident (also true). The only difference is that none of these yahoos wore protective helmets or had a particularly kind or childlike view of the world. Every meeting I took with them made me feel worthless and frustrated, much like Tiger Woods’ publicist and first wife, Elin.

After countless crying jags in my car, on random street corners and behind the metal doors of public restroom stalls all over Burbank, and, a dreadful phone call from a producer saying I was “the best” but that they had to cut me out of a show that they said would hire me as a regular, I finally gave up theatrical acting for good. Months later I was told by a friend of a friend at a dinner party that I should pursue commercial acting because I was funny. This friend set up a few meetings and I ran around town trying to get someone to put me in a Playtex Tampon commercial so I could quit waiting tables for Persian men who told me boob jokes instead of tipping.

My first meeting was a brutal mix of belittling and backhanded compliments. The agent, a guy who looked like a frat house rapist in a Men’s Warehouse sale suit, told me that, although I was ha ha funnyish in person, I looked too French to book the big gigs. Before taking off my beret and knawing on the baguette I kept in my straw market bag, he took a call from a big money client and stroked her ego by saying things about her great new headshot and how the peeps at Marshall’s just creamed over her latest national spot.

The meeting ended as it had begun, with my pride in the parking garage and tears in my eyes. My plan was to cancel the other meeting I had, for no other reason than I could not take one more passive aggressive rejection sprinkled with stinky chunks of humiliation. But since I already had my amateur make-up on and nothing to do until my night shift as a pizza waitress come harem girl, I decided to take one more stab at the dead carcass that was my career.

I arrived at an office building in Hollywood to meet the last person that I would allow to fling disparaging remarks in my general direction. They had me wait no longer than five minutes, a new high for me, seeing that I had once been left waiting for almost two hours by a big wig at HBO and then asked to return the following day, at which time she put her feet up on her desk and fell asleep while I rambled on nervously about my shoe size and places I liked to eat.

Sitting behind a desk in a comfy, cared for office, was a beaming red headed beauty that I instantly recognized. She had been one of the child stars of a sitcom called Small Wonder that Dave and I watched incessantly in college. Now, she sat on the other side of the desk, helping actors get work. I was a huge fan and immediately nervous to be in her presence. Without any hesitation, she welcomed me with the sincerity reserved for people who actually had real hearts and red blood running through their bodies. We talked about everything and nothing and she made me feel safe, calm and somewhat attractive for the first time since arriving in the land of the lost. By the end of the meeting we had laughed so loudly and honestly that I felt as if I had reconnected with a friend from childhood, a friend who always helped me cut Barbie’s hair too short or pull boys’ pants down on the playground. After she told me that, not only would I work in commercials but that she indeed would love to represent me, I hugged her goodbye and thanked her for the chance to sell fast food to America’s cholesterally challenged masses.

That was almost eight years ago and I have just been told that she is leaving the business for good. She is pregnant with her third child, a kid that will no doubt be as beautiful and fiery as her first two. She has left behind a great staff of wonderful agents, people who still take my calls and laugh at my dumb jokes even when they are too busy to breath in that recycled, air conditioned office air in the (818). But the most important thing she is leaving behind is a legacy of kindness and hard work not often found in this town.

Because she took a chance on me I have been able to pay extra bills, help send Otto to school, be a full time mom and do what I have always wanted to do, write. Even though Dave is the heavy lifter in the money department, those jobs always gave us breathing room and a sense of calm that got us through every week. Every time a check comes in I thank Emily for laughing her contagious laugh and telling me that, after I have a baby and get fatter I will start booking national commercials like the Maytag man. She was right and I am grateful.

Em, thanks for being the lone “yes” in a murky pond on “no’s” and a bright light in this often dark alley behind the 7-11 on Sunset and Stanley where all the trannies hang out and swap war stories and panty lines. Your kids are so lucky to have you all to themselves and luckier still to even know you.

The Getaway

This past weekend was a celebration of two kinds. One involved my slow decline into decrepitude and the other was a weekend away in the desert with my husband. My big birthday gift was not that hot Gucci bag I have in my emotional inbox. It was quality time with my better half. It was a tough call but that marriage thingy won out over a pricey, offensively obvious handbag that screams things like, “Oh shit crackers! I am over forty and hanging on to my youth by a thick leather strap I could easily use as a noose when I wake up and realize that a $2000 satchel cannot hold all my crazy straws, wrinkle creams and happy pills without giving me a frozen shoulder and an inferiority complex!”

Thanks to our wonderful, young, energetic and unfairly attractive friends Amanda and Jonathan who were willing to take Otto Saturday morning through Sunday night, Dave and I were able to escape to Palm Springs and enjoy an unseasonably cold, crisp and delicious weekend not leaving the grounds of our hipster hotel.

This hotel in its new, cool coated form was a former Howard Johnson’s motor lodge from the sixties. Now, its main purpose is to serve as an uber-awesome, perfectly appointed destination hang for Los Angeles types who favor pricey ginger beer, sexting while suffering from Carpel Tunnel Syndrome and ironically unwashed hair. We arrived and were given an immediate upgrade, a sign that they truly felt sorry for us. This was only the second night away without Otto since the little garbanzo bean was born and we drove down the 10 Freeway as if being pursued by Rosco P. Coltrane himself. We must have looked as haggard and unsatisfied as Kirstie Alley’s left labia because without as much as a hiccup, they offered to upgrade us to a special king suite with outdoor fireplace for no other reason than I had asked nicely.

Before they had even given me a key to the room, I pictured myself making hot, soot- covered love to Dave while perched atop the burning logs on our private patio. Then, after screaming for two very different but equally important reasons, I would happily take a ride in a HELI-VAC to Palm Springs Regional Medical Center where I would brag to the doctor on call about my molten lava humping skills while he grafted skin from my left calf onto my ass and lower back. If I had been one of those impulsive girls who got too drunk in the late- nineties and decided to get a tattoo just above my ass crack because I thought it made me look irreverent and carefree, I could look at this as a wonderful opportunity to erase my childhood mistakes and rid myself of the sperm bulls eye that stands behind me every morning and screams obscenities in scratchy, angry voices of one night stands from my past.

We skipped to the room and burst through the door as only two forty year old SWAT agents could, hobbled and tired of the grind. After ogling and oohing and aahing over the fact there was a television, a toilet and a sink, we raced to the pool to try and catch the last hours of the sunny but chilly day. At first we were the only ones there. But, after ordering a round of Bloody Mary’s we noticed that a group of what looked like slightly older versions of my husband were arriving and congregating in the massive hot tub. From afar, they all looked like average, cool hipsters like Dave, with overpriced red label Levi’s, Chuck Taylor sneakers and bearded faces. Up close and a few minutes of eavesdropping led us to the conclusion that they were a gay club from San Francisco. Most were in their late forties, had facial and chest hair and wore nipple rings with the verve and enthusiasm of teenager runaways. But it was only after we heard one of them refer to their group as the “The Otters” that we knew it was something special. Dave went back to his lounge chair, Googled ‘Otter’ and discovered why everyone was staring at him as if he were a Filet Mignon waiting to be eaten.

An Otter - A gay man who is very hairy all over his body, but is smaller in frame and weighs considerably less than a bear.

A Bear – A gay man who is hairy all over and are heavy set who likes to project a working-class image of masculinity in their grooming and appearance

The remainder of our weekend was spent lying in bed, watching edited, commercial-filled movies in our room and cuddling up to the sounds of hard core otter partying all around us. We slept in, ate delicious food and did all the things one might expect on a fun-filled jaunt with our favorite semi-aquatic, fish eating mammals, the Lutrinae. And I was thankful that I was, indeed married, to an otter and not a bear and that no other otters had snuck onto our patio and defiled the fireplace as we watched The Rock on TBS.

867-5309

The following was a description for an audition I was sent out on a few days ago. Seeing that this is my birthday week, a fact I cannot stop mentioning because my narcissism and self-involvement rivals that of a Tiger Woods mistress of the week, I wanted to share this with someone who could laugh at my expense. Please read below.

Hero Female - Caucasian

Female, early 30's, Caucasian. Pretty but approachable.

Cute, likable, young Jennifer Aniston types. Should look smart and

successful. She's bright and done well for herself. Also, she should have an

expressive face and be excellent at telling a story convincingly through

subtle looks and reactions. Slim but not thin, not too tall or too short.

Good teeth and skin. Attractive with some character, but no overly quirky

features.

I will be turning forty-t-t-t-two on Saturday. That shit just stuck in my throat like Fonzie’s Little Arthur. And he never even called.

I have curly, confused blond hair and no career other than an occasional commercial in which I try to pitch products that are unhealthy and mediocre to a mass consumer population that should know better. As far as subtle, there is nothing about me that even whispers subtle. I am not even sure I spelled in correctly. Why is there a silent ‘b’? What good does that do anyone?

And honestly, Jennifer Aniston is not an early anything. She is old. So that makes me really fucking old. When she was in her early thirties her hair was a train wreck of trendy, luring in an entire generation of sweater set moms to go ahead and get that choppy helmet haircut that, in fact, could not even hide facial deformities. It accented them. It called attention to them. It screamed, “Look at the bags under my eyes and my crazy dark Mac lipstick in Motor Mouth Red!”

Does anyone remember how the layers and the flair at the ends made anyone and everyone look like a brand new O-Cedar kitchen broom? Can anyone recall how large it made an imperfect nose look? Will someone please stand up and yell, “Yes, Dotty, you looked like shit when you jumped on that bandwagon and rode it around your neighborhood while wearing Donna Karan brown slacks up to your navel and Kenneth Cole wedge loafers in cocoa!”

I did not go to the appointment. I chose instead to sit in the same living room that witnessed one of the many low points in my hair’s history and build a city of rock ‘n’ roll and with Otto, the dude with the best hair I know. May it stay that way for his sake as well as mine.

Scribbled on wide-ruled binder paper with a giant multi-colored pen, my hopes and dreams began to come alive.

This is my Birthday/Christmas wish list from 1981, a time when I resembled a hungry Cambodian boy who dressed like the unwanted offspring of a nautically inspired truck stop hooker and a Native American medicine man.

 

1. Chemin de Fer jeans with the zipper front crotch in size 0
   
2. Rainbow sticker for bedroom window
   
3. Purple Coty Eye Shadow Trio in Stardust Memories
   
4. Sony Walkman I
   
5. Minnetonka knee-high lace up moccasin boots
   
6. Hello Kitty pencil case
   
7. Dr. Scholl’s sandals in dark blue
   
8. A blue and white striped tube top in XXS
   
9. Purple satin hair ribbons to sew onto my purple painters pants
   
10. Feather earrings from the Earring Tree at Mayfield Mall
    
11. Cinnamon lip-gloss with brush applicator
    
12. Stan Smith tennis shoes
    
13. Blue and white striped Dolphin shorts
    
14. A Le Lapin cooking apron
    
15. Physical Graffiti on cassette
    
16. Boynton cat stationary
    
17. A purple Ciao backpack
    
18. A decorative hanging silk cloud rainbow pillow from the Town and Country Mall
    
19. A bullet pipe from Tower Records
    
20. 97.1 KOME tank top
    
21. Cliff Notes covering the entire syllabus for 7^th grade English
    
22. A “YES” reply to the Sadie Hawkins Dance
    

 

If anyone is so inclined to partake in my birthday/Christmas wish list trip down memory lane, please feel free to purchase one or more of these items at amazon1981.com and make this thirteen year old very happy!