The PH Is For Penthouse

I was working on my book or my notes or my pile of adverbs with four letter chasers or whatever you want to call it when my bulky, peasant hands typed out the sentence, “All I ever wanted in life was that Barbie Dream House.”

So, instead of continuing with the keypad dance and getting work done and completing another page of gobbley gook, I Googled “1970’s Barbie Dream House” and there it was on eBay, in all its early 70’s glory. Tall as a miniature Christmas tree, colorful as a painter’s palette and as alluring as a naked Nefertiti.

Now, I never wanted the two story Barbie residence with the red roof that opens up like suitcase and looks like traditional, bell-bottomed, suburban home of the late 1970’s America. The one that has haunted my dreams and whispered sweet night terrors into my ear is the earlier 1970’s version with three stories and crank elevator and a panoramic view of what would have included my parents dark, book-filled living room if I had ever received it on a chilly, Christmas morning.

In fact, it is not a house but a penthouse, a chic, single girl dwelling that invited in a sophisticated guest list of authors, artists, poets, composers and gigolos posing as bartenders, who served up perfectly pink Manhattan’s, salacious Sidecars with sugared rims and whole-hearted hand jobs. I always imagined the conversations would be dappled in clever quips and regal retorts and Barbie would float through the clusters of perfectly posed plastic people making sure everyone’s glass was filled and every doll was delighted.

My obsession with the penthouse may have come from a teasing television commercial but in the deepest recesses of my forgetful mind I do not recall ever seeing it advertised on our three-inch black and white Zenith. No, the dripping desire to own the penthouse of my dreams came from pure, unadulterated envy, schadenfreude in shades of very dark, disturbing gray.

In 1973, the year this model of Barbie beauty came out, we lived in a huge courtyard complex of faculty housing known as Escondido Village. Dozens and dozens of townhouses sat next to one another in a huge circle, enclosing an inner village square type-area the size of two football fields. There must have been twenty kids of all ages living in our village, all of whom were our fast talking friends and partners in crime. We all shared toys and costumes and kick balls and dirty jokes and this upbringing was as idyllic as one could possibly imagine. Save for my constant fear of being kidnapped or sold to a murderous, gypsy family, two very specific fears my sister professional installed into my psyche, my life was marvelous.

Then one day, the bottom fell out of my awesome, little world when Bettina and Babette Boor, two gorgeous Danish sisters, moved in three doors down from us, bringing with them an offensively enormous Barbie Doll collection and MY Barbie Dream House with crank elevator. They flaunted it like a hickey on a horny teen. They showed it off like a crotch tattoo on a titillating trollop. And they rubbed it in like a prescription ointment on an open sore. And they never, ever shared.

I had to sit and watch as these blessed beauties threw lavish, ball-gowned Barbie bashes on the open patio deck of the penthouse that emotionally belonged to ME, while a cavalcade of deliciously dressed dolls lined up like The Rockettes on a Radio City staircase. Never once did the Boor Sisters bother to invite or include my two, mangled, hand-me-down Camping Barbie and Surfing Skipper, to the party of the century.

No, my odd ball pals with their homemade haircuts, pilling sweater sets and aged swimsuits ballooning out at the crotch from too much sun and not enough fun, had to sit out the first dance to the last dance all the while crying fake, crayon drawn tears into real paper napkins. Knowing that the Bore sister’s treasure trove of accessories and handsome Ken collection of khaki-wearing manly mates would taunt me day in and day out until the end of time, or until they retreated back to their homeland of post-modern furniture design, Bang and Olufson stereo sounds and Frikadeller meat balls, I tried my un-artistic best to create a beautiful, mid-century modern hideaway for my wilting wing women, using an avocado green step stool and an old Famolare show box. But, much to my disappointment and dismay my attempt looked more like the back room of a filthy Florsheim’s than penthouse perfection.

And now, all these years later, trying my computer-challenged best to fill a thirty-seven year old hole and scratch a thirty-seven year old itch, I sit here weeping (no joke - serious tears and snot here) because I waited until the last few seconds to win the bid for the forbidden cardboard cut out of glamour and good taste that I have craved all these years. Not knowing how to correctly maneuver eBay and beat the one competing bid, I failed to complete a simple task that required a little light reading and the simple click of a manly, unpolished, index finger. I didn’t confirm my $56 bid in time and lost the penthouse with all the original, super cool furniture included, for a mere $50, to some ass-eater in Copenhagen who most likely bought it just so she could relive her glory days, one floor at a time.

I think I may need professional help.

Vote For Garden State, Gourmet Food Truck of Italian Wonderfulness On The Food Network

So, Kevin Sandri, the owner and operator and chef supreme of Garden State (food truck to the fabulous) has been friends with my hairy husband since the Jersey metal hair look was first invented and lazy weekends were spent sleeping until noon and listening to bootleg Grateful Dead cassettes on a boom box next to a lake. He was in our wedding, looks great in a tux, is a brand new daddy and has been a force in food for many years now. Please take a minute and vote for him at

http://foodtrucks.teamdigital.com/?truck=44#page_top.

Just think.You will be voting for divine Italian-inspired eats he learned from his Nonna and one of the fresh food good guys in a world of packaged Olive Garden bad.

Of course, I wish he lived in L.A. so we could partake in his perfection instead of Oregon, where home prices are low and they can truly enjoy a variety of weather patterns instead of the perpetual sunny with a chance of sunny we Los Angelenos get every day.

Go Kev!

Deadline Hollywood Announces My Man's Movie, Baby! Or, is this filet or the ass of a beefy bus driver?

This is how cool my husband Dave is. He writes a killer script (pun absolutely) about eating people and they all say, Bon Appetite! I am so proud! You can either read the archaic cut and pasted version of the story below or you can click on link and see it up close and personal in fancy time ways.

Neil Marshall Orders Up Extreme Cuisine


Neil Marshall Orders Up Extreme Cuisine

EXCLUSIVE: Neil Marshall, whose period action film Centurion opens today, has been set to direct Underground, a David Cohen-scripted horror thriller set in the world of gourmet underground supper clubs. Now, considering the cannibalism that Marshall featured in his post-apocalyptic film Doomsday, who knows what he's putting on the menu? I asked the producers for clarity and was told the protagonist is an ambitious young chef who ventures into the terrifying underbelly of extreme cuisine. The film's produced by Taka Ichise and Erin Eggers of Ozla Pictures, along with Cohen and Jeremy Platt. ICM, which reps Marshall and Cohen and just signed Ozla Pictures, is packaging the film. Marshall's managed by Principato Young, Cohen by Generate.

Tough As Nails and Puppy Dog Tails

I am not a tough girl, per se. I never got into fights in high school like the dangerous chicks that smoked Capri menthols at the bike racks and had pre-homeroom sex in the back of cars with names like Pontiac or Trans Am. Not the girls, the cars. If I had gone to school with a girl named Trans Am I assume that my life would have turned out a lot differently. I would have felt left out of the loop in a pack of barely caged animals and been forced to change my name to Camaro just to survive. Or at the very least, I would have needed to pony up to a moniker like the very American Cutless Supreme or the exotic and Hispanic Buick Riviera for no other reason that to procure a pock-marked date for the knife wielding-themed semi-formal known as “Night of a Thousand Shivs.” Then, with my A-symmetrical feathered hair and my blue eye shadow quad safely tucked in to my patchwork vinyl handbag, I would tip toe into the future wearing warn-out white stilettos and inevitably end up a biker gang beauty pageant runner-up or the second baseman of a women’s medium security prison softball team.

But the road I took was never as confrontational or exciting as the one described above. I have always been a pacifist when it comes to my own well being and my fear of authority figures and overall punishment kept me mostly on the straight and arrow when cute, dangerous temptation reared its gorgeous 80’s hair early in my life. Add to that my extremely low threshold for pain during hand-to-hand combat and chronic fear of disappointing my parents and you have a girl who always preferred quiet evenings at home reading Teen Beat and Beverly Cleary novels rather than sneaking out of an attic window and stabbing a rival with a blush brush over said yummy 80’s hair dude.

There have never been any punches thrown or spit spat in my general direction and I can honestly say that I have never been physically threatened. Unless, of course, you count the time Sieda, a girl six times my size both vertical and horizontally, with Mel Gibson-sized anger issues and a pitiful fashion sense, cornered me in the Jordan Junior High locker room after school and asked me if I wanted my bony ass kicked for no apparent reason than she was bored and hungry. Thinking like an accountant trapped in a cubbyhole with no calculator and a leaky pocket protector, I coldly replied, “People know I’m in here and you will get, like, totally busted.”

There are moments, though, that the hackles on the back of my neck rise up in protest and hellcat hairiness. If a store clerk is being yelled at by an unjust and hateful customer or a little old lady is being harassed by a street walker who wants granny to buy her some condoms with her social security money than I will intervene and do my best Cagney and Lacey to rectify the situation and help the one being wronged. I will stand up for myself with arm gestures and cheerleading enthusiasm when, for instance, the hair extension-addled daughter of a famous football player who happens to live down the street from me and used to have a reality show with her mother about their designer clothing addiction and their common allergy to day jobs lets her chocolate lab, Bailey’s and Cream, crap on the grass in front of our apartment and than refuses to accept a nice, new poop bag and tells me to fuck off after my offer, instead of picking up B and C’s fecal matter, thus leaving it on the lawn so Otto can step in the terrible turds with his knock-off Crocs I bought for him at Target, a store I am now told I cannot support due to their recent $150,000 donation to a Minnesota republican candidate who supports anti-gay legislation and has befriended and rocked out to a Christian singer who thinks killing gays is moral while he rapes Axel Rose’s unique bandana fashion fedora look and calls it his own in the name of Jesus.

I will also dig my feet deep into the dirt of the small patch of dying lawn in front of my apartment when the rancid butterscotch-inspired, Olympically spray-tanned, Pave diamond-dripping, David Yurman-regurgitating grandmother of a toddler who has played with Otto less than a half dozen times in three years invites herself to sit down and have her off spring’s offspring manhandle all of Otto’s carefully placed sand trucks and then has the over-accessorized, skinny white-jeaned, Ed Hardy-inspired nerve to tell me that one of the trucks, a truck Otto was given by my Aunt Barbara who kindly took the time out of a very busy life to send it to Otto from Wisconsin in a huge box in the dead of a humid summer with a card and a smile is, in fact, her grandson’s truck and she is planning on carrying it back to their apartment in her large Louis Vuitton tote she uses as a casual diaper bag so he can play with it by himself. It is moments like these that my back gets straighter and my hair gets curlier and I point out with a calm and clear voice that the truck in question, along with all the other trucks, have been parked beside our house for over three years and there is no way in her Dolce and Gabbana-soaked world that the truck would belong to anyone BUT Otto and his best neighborhood buddies.

Then over-baked, Coke Bottle Gummy Bear grandma pulls out the aggressive, I am older than you and tanner than you and cheesier than you attitude and again, tries to tell me that that she is sure the truck is NOT Otto’s and she will take it home with her no matter what. I then get as serious as a cold sore and I stand up and say in my best bristled, mother bear, angry-under-the-surface, out-of work-commercial-actress, who never wants to don a dreadful mom ensemble again while waxing poetic about the Wal-Mart price point, seething-foul-mouthed-fledgling writer, once-was comedienne, never-was famous female who hates confrontation and kills them with kindness voice that it could not possibly be her little Louie’s truck.

And finally, this old piece of half-chewed, peppered beef jerky found under a Macy’s sale rack matron finally backs down because I am relentless and passive-aggressive but polite and I can supply dates and times and names to back up my story and I was taught by a very kind but kick-ass mother to respect my elders, even though they sometimes cross the moral meridian and bold face lie while dressed like the old lady version of Snookie on the soon to be debuted VH1 show about retired whore nanas, called “Retirement Community Property.”

Sometimes it feels good to stand up instead of backing down and to make it right when it is clearly wrong. But those moments of mayhem are few and far between and, like the little tween girl I was all those years ago, I would rather cuddle my kid and read some books than fight the good fight against the bad dressers. But just for the record, Bubie let me make myself as perfectly clear as Swarovski crystals on a tacky tablecloth. That truck that Otto loves more than chocolate cake and chipped teeth had better be right where I left it yesterday or it is on like hardcore hot fudge on a self-defending sundae.

When The Puke Hits the Pan

Running off to the beaches of Santa Barbara and being invited by our dearest pals to stay in one of the best beach houses ever is just one of the many treats that life has thrown us lately. Seriously soaking up sun and sopping up sand and eating copious amounts of corn salad and drinking spicy beers and magical margaritas was just what the doctor ordered. Toasting Dave’s delightful week of TV success and movie mayhem also added to the celebratory nature of a few days away. We really have had a delightfully summery summer filled with family and friends and fun and jaunts and jettisons.

But there has been a piece missing for the last few months, a few pieces, in fact. Those pieces, or chunks to be more exact, include chewed up carrot, torn up tomato, emulsified egg, pulverized pizza, crushed cookie, apologetic apple juice, cheerless Cheerio’s and ground-up grapes.

Yesterday, Otto began to complain of a tummy ache and a headache during lunch. We had already gone on a bike ride and a run to the pet store to stock up on overpriced senior cat food whose main selling point was to aid in the prolonged life of a feline way past his expiration date. Why I bother to spend large lumps of cash on a twenty-year old cat that sleeps twenty-two hours a day while dreaming of a fluffy cloud-shaped cat bed covered in wet food in heaven is beyond me. It must be the animal lover buried deep inside me, a woman I wish I could evict without a thirty-day notice or an ounce of guilt.

When Otto’s complaints began my worry meter started to twitch. We had just spent the weekend with friends who had suffered a bout of stomach flu a few days before our weekend away and the germ-a-phobe in me was on high alert. I knew that no matter how much Purell I force-fed my family or how often I washed Otto’s hands with Comet and Soft Scrub Sani-Wipes the bug was coming our way. My steel-trap stomach had been bothering me a bit since the morning of our departure but I never saw this kind of sick tsunami coming our way.

After getting up from the table having eaten no more than a wanton starlet on a Wednesday night, Otto lay down on the living room sofa and began to weep like twice date-raped sorority girl without a dress for the Kappa Kappa Gamma spring formal. He clutched his skull and let out screams that scared me to my curdled core. Being the calm, together mother that I am, I immediately called Dave at work and told him to call the pediatrician and possibly and fleet of fire trucks. By the time I hung up the phone the perfect storm had truly begun.

As I put the phone down Otto sat up and did his best imitation of a frat boy on a Friday night. He ralphed into his rainbow quilt, spewed into a spare towel, horked into a hand towel and blew chunks all over Bundy, his most prized possession and bedtime monkey blanket. All the while I continued holding the pile of bile with one hand and rubbing his heaving hunch back with the other hand while begging the gods to stop the biblical barfing already. When the deluge finally dissipated I scooped Otto up, who was now wrapped in the mound of mess he had created and carried him upstairs to the bathtub, hoping that I could make his pain go away and finally order a new sofa from Design Within Reach.

What could be sweeter and sadder than a sick child in a lukewarm bath filled with bits of vegetables and pieces of poultry? Perhaps the list is long but Otto, being a clean freak and a perfectionist, wanted nothing more than to get cleaned up and out of that bowl of regurgitated ratatouille as quickly as possible. And to me, that was as precious as it gets. With the speed of a bullet train and the focus of a valedictorian I scrubbed him and dried him in less than two minutes flat. The clean pajamas hugged and my arms coddled and he fell fast asleep in bed clutching a back- up Bundy and moaning a malady melody.

The next few hours were filled with a cruel cocktail of sleeping child, bellowing boy and mortified mother. Dave had called back to let me know that the doctor said a terrible twenty-four hour bug was going around and all his symptoms fit the bill for this kind of ill. Yet, no matter what the doctor had said I was a wreck. At one point, I was so worried about his thrashing and wincing and water- shedding that I called Dave using a voice similar to a rusty can opener and begged him to come home.

But being the universe I live in and the bag of nuts I often eat Dave rushed home to find a calm, cuddling cutie as opposed to the crazy chaos that I had described in great detail. And instead of being annoyed by my dramatic interpretation of events and awful interrupting of urgent work that needed to be tackled, the father of my child held his son tight and rubbed his head and lay with him on the damp sofa and watched Wallace and Grommet while I breathed a sigh of relief as windy and wild as harried hurricane.

And what now? All is quiet at the Team Cohen headquarters and once again, the team conquers all. Now for the laundry.

Wax On, Wax Off

"Wax only hurt for second, Daniel-san. But balls so smooooth."



Filling a rare day off with grooming appointments and self-betterment errands make me as bat shit crazy as the cat lady that used to live next door to us in a urine-soaked house during my perpetually odd childhood. Mrs. Ferry was her name and soiled-nighty wearing/Pall-Mall–smoking was her game. She didn’t care what she looked like and was happier and more fragrant for it, even if her neighbors were not. And yes, some days I wish I were Ferry-esque and let it all go West, young man!

I hate having to work at being a girl. I do not understand why the roots of my hair cannot just color themselves when I am sleeping or why my toe nails do not suddenly become a cherry red Corvette on a showroom floor after a quick dishwashing or why my bikini area does not miraculously transform from jungle hideout to blissfully barren beach after a lukewarm whore’s bath and a Ikea towel drying.

For starters, the money I spend on fixing up the follicles and redirecting the realism of my body politic is always annoying to part with. No matter how many twenties I cough up there is something inherently frustrating and unfair about taking one’s coddled coins and spending it on acts of age escapism and deep tissue denial.

But what really chaps my newly waxed ass and sends me home huffing hair glue and Henna is the time commitment needed to look my sassy, painted, balding best. Just to do the basics, the bare minimum, the bottom of the barrel in the primp and crawl takes at least three hours out of a twelve-hour day. And honestly, I would rather be doing fourteen other things on that list than having a half-blind, Persian woman rip the hair from my nether regions using molten hot wax, old bed sheets and cheap button thread.

While awkwardly positioned on all fours, I would much rather spend forty-five glorious minutes mopping up a red wine spill, looking for a lost contact lens or be on the happy receiving end a horny high five from Dave rather than standing like a frozen, fearful Lassie as a virtual stranger tries to make small talk while transforming my rusty, rear bumper into a freshly blown up balloon.

Nor do I particularly enjoy carving out another hour out of my day by putting my patchy paws in a suspiciously unsanitary dishpan and getting a broken down foot massage with painted nail chaser by a meek and underpaid woman who whispers foul nothings into my cuticles and curses the day my feet were ever born.

Sitting in a vinyl swivel chair and having tremendously toxic potions poured onto my scalp in the name of home girl improvement is something I look at as a collection of precious moment figurine hours that could have been better spent doing something more satisfying and beneficial to my life. Instead of bleaching my hair using dye colors with the names, Desperate and Dark and Old Bag Blondie I could be washing my kitchen ceiling with a Q-Tip or whittling, “I Hate The Bachelorette Foreva” into the leg of my dining room table with a dull Swiss Army knife.

But seeing that I am off to the beach for the weekend and do not want to be looked at by my fellow beach combers as a homeless Wooly Mammoth at a wondrous water park I spent my day today doing just what I hate most. My toes are the color of a new, shiny bruise, my hair looks and tastes like a chemically damaged Neapolitan cake and my sexy detective is 90% Telly Savalas, 10% Serpico.

I'm all lost in a supermarket

Life can be messy and emotional and hard to manage and loud and as muddled as a Mojito on Monday morn. And having a kid and a crazy dog and a lumpy cat and a lot of laundry can whittle down your memory meter and leave you seriously scattered on a dirty street corner with a pocket full of pennies and a barking parking meter. Trying to organize and remember and reply and repeat is a daily occurrence for millions of mothers and manscapers. Loading the dishwasher, if you are lucky enough to have a portable one the size of a wrinkled manila envelope, helps with the clean up of four IKEA plates, two Salvation Army forks and half a dozen Crate and Barrel glasses that break more often than the spirit of a has been Disney tween star.

If the gods look down on you with hungry, moist eyes because your husband happens to be a phenomenal chef with the ability to make dog excrement taste like the finest fois gras then, hurray for you! If he also happens to sauté and simmer using the arm of a major league pitcher and the propeller from a twin engine sea plane, then your kitchen, like mine, will look like Julia Child’s condiment cupboard exploded buttered bits and olive oil entrails all over the stove and up toward the ceiling of your galley kitchen made for one.

That clean-up on aisle nine will only add to your duty-filled day of random tasks and internal lists and folding this and stacking that, making the big things seem as distant as a Seychelles sangria. Purchasing toilet paper and de-boned chicken breasts will somehow take precedence over getting your oil checked or repairing the dangerous, splintered, broken window in the living room and the enormous hole under the kitchen sink. Instead of re-registering your car you will somehow stuff the helpful reminder envelope in a drawer when you are cleaning the house for dinner guests and cocktail talk in the new dining room that used to be the playroom and is now adult once again, in theme and form, respectively.

Then weeks later, after said dinner guest have gone home and the house is quiet for a splendid, split second, a terrible pain will begin at the base of your neck followed by a floating hologram of the DMV logo floating past your squinty eyes and throbbing skull. After every dresser is searched and every pile of paper is perused you will discover that, not only does your car need a wash and a new rear wiper blade, it needs a smog check before being registered and road-ready. As your sore eyeballs read along you suddenly see bold, black letters screaming that the registration is over due and the state of California, a bankrupt institution of the highest order, plans on charging you a late fee for your stupidity, laziness and forgetful nature.

Meanwhile, your beautiful, hairy husband of many moons has spent the better part of the spring and summer with his mind on juggling his balls and the balls of many others and putting eggs in a wicked, whicker basket and throwing whole wheat spaghetti against a wall and seeing what strand sticks and dialing for dollars and writing what great writers write and painting great pictures. So it goes without slurring that he has been seriously preoccupied with the big things.

But really, how do two grown adults with years of meticulous calendar watching and date reminding and competitive Happy Anniversarying between them both agree and acknowledge that their seventeenth wedding anniversary is a full week before the actual date? Was the headache really that bad? Were all the phone calls and meetings really that distracting? Was the pitching that catchy? Was grocery shopping that ground-breaking and the play dating so pleasurable that the fact that we have been together for twenty years, married for seventeen and in love for eternity (cue barf bag) just slipped our ever-melting minds?

Stationary companies deem the number seventeen insignificant enough to ignore it in print while the traditionalist wedding watchers list the seventeenth year as the anniversary of furniture. Not sexy, not shiny but positively practical. So, next Tuesday after more than sixteen years married but a few less than twenty-two together, I will clink glasses with the man of my dreams, eat a meal made for a monarch and give Dave a nice, Naugahyde Lazy-Boy recliner with a built-in magazine holder, a clever remote control case and darling drink cozy. That way when we misplace our minds or lose our marbles we can lift up the pleather, plastic-coated seat cushion and find all our pieces after all.

Farm Fresh and Fancy

What the fudge stick is wrong with me that I have never in my entire life gone to a real farm, a real dirt-covered, tractor-pulling farm and picked my own vegetables and fondled my own fruit and eaten my beneficial bounty the very same day? Sure, I can remember a few blueberry picking experiences and maybe a cow milking here and there but never have I picked lettuce in the hot sun and pulled up parsnips in the whispering wind and thrown them in a bowl with a little splash of stuck up olive oil and a dash of snooty vinegar and patted myself on the back for a day well spent and a job well done. Apparently, I had not truly lived until last weekend.

This Saturday past, Otto and family were invited to a neighbor’s birthday party at a realio, trulio farm an hour outside of Los Angeles and a world away from all the hip Hollywood hoodlums that frequent our four-block radius. We are not surrounded by sugar beets and snap peas but a smattering of the douche dogs who still wear Ed Hardy t-shirts without irony and steal a certain little boy’s basketball hoop when explosively drunk on gin and juice trying their valley best to be ghetto and Gucci, while bragging about mediocre sex with their big windows open and their small minds closed to the possibility that people around them DO NOT enjoy hearing horrendous humping to the beachy beats of Katie Perry’s California Gurls with a Shakira chaser.

When we left on our little trip we were running late and I was as pleasant as a cactus in a couch cushion. But the farther we drove away from L.A. the less growled and the less I could hear pounding percussion of the bleach blonde barkeep two buildings over being anally interviewed in the back of her cloud white, Hummer H2. Nor could I make out the stiletto- styled law student giving an oral interrogation from a three story window in an apartment building that resembles a poorly built Turkish bath house that charges by the quarter hour and has no towel service.

When we finally made it to the manure Mecca I was tickled green and brown by all the crazy critters that lived at this fantasy farm. We cuddled and caressed hairy horses and flirty goats and passed out pigs and miniature ponies and two-ton tractors and mini-trains and gassed up go-carts and the cleanest Port-O-Potty since Tori Spelling’s first wedding.

I hate relieving myself in a upright plastic coffin that smells like Pine-Sol and asparagus pee but this one was like a fluffy white coconut cake with side notes of freshly cut law trimmings and a fruity eucalyptus after taste. I innocently hoped that the fantastic fragrance was due to communing with nature and that nothing ever stunk when one truly committed to the life on the land and peeing in pureness.

But I fear that the sweet scents of the poop palace and the perfection of the produce had more to do with company kept than the communing with nature. This place catered mostly to rich, city slickers who wore their untucked anger underneath a layered collection of James Perse whisper tees and aggressively drove their leased luxury hybrids and thousand dollar strollers over the rough roads that led to this perennial paradise. They wanted fresh Fabreze flavored toilets and God damn it; they were going to get them!

After riding the rides and tiring out the animal, we spent our last few hours picking real food from real vines. We ate ruby red strawberries as tasty and perfect as the first Hot Tamale out of the big box on movie night and showed Otto that carrots come from a dirty hole just like poop does. When the last bean was barnstormed and the last raspberry was raped we pulled our wagon back through the fields and up to an outdoor register that was sadly positioned right back in reality. Mumbling moms and distracted dads were jockeying for better spots in line and eyeballing the haul of the other wanna-be naturalists around them.

One couple dressed like last year’s L.L. Bean summer sale catalogue glared at our goodies as if they were criminally insane. What did my fennel bulbs and Serrano chilies say to them to earn such ire and irritation? Could my eggplant have just given them the finger using nothing more than a brown nubby stalk and a bulbous purple ass? Maybe the wax beans climbed on top of one another, crawled out of the provided plastic picking bag and magically formed the Italian salute for vaffanculo
when Mr. and Mrs. Garden Grove Planned Community just happened to wheel on by.

Whatever it was that these mangled meanies were selling it made us want to run back into our new field of dreams and stuff ourselves with blackberries and butternut squash until we collapsed on top of a head of red leaf lettuce the circumference of a Manhattan manhole. But alas, we new the farm fresh fantasy had to end sometime and end it did. We paid next to nothing for a month’s worth of produce and rolled past all the incoming faux farm hands slathering each other with sunscreen and sanitizer and already arguing over who would pet, who would pick and who would purchase.


All in all, it was a truly glorious experience, most notably the expression on Otto’s face as he uprooted carrots and tugged at tomatoes still clinging to their vines. The pony rides were pretty spectacular as well, especially when a single ticket got Otto six circles around the horn and a two-minute pony pee. I mean, really. Nothing screams Mother Nature louder than a hot puddle of steamy, yellow urine tinkling in the dust. That alone made us sure we would be back sooner than soon. Only next time we’ll wear socks.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

I want to start by saying I was a little bit thrilled to see that a handful of peeps commented on my last post. Thank you. I love the discussions, I love the opinions and I love the debate. I hope you all keep them coming even though more often than not people seem a tad comment shy in this world of blabby blogging. Perhaps discussions on stealth-like Target runs, parking lot road rage and toddler tenaciousness doesn’t much fuel the readers to comment as much as a little window into the world of a popular, divisive radio talk show host who wears knock-off Anne Taylor suits when jogging and may or may not support new legislation making it legal to purchase a real, live Canadian to call one’s own.

If you folks like controversial ramblers I suppose I could write about the time I shot a CNN piece for Glenn Beck about the city of Pittsburg and the beer factory whose product was as frothy and refreshing as warm urine sample at a free clinic. But then, what fun would it be chatting about how the untapped and yet unknown Mr. Beck stole my Oprah Winfrey joke on air, would not let me finish one of the six sentences I had prepared and never looked me in my mascara-slathered eyes while wearing more pancake make-up than an IHOP tall stack? And that was long before anyone, including myself, knew that he was possibly the most proficient blowhard this side of a turbine engine. Toot toot.

The upside of my time with The Glennster was learning about a city I knew nothing of and eating a deep friend fish sandwich the size of Moby Dick’s second cousin. Like reading the fish flavored tome itself, I will never do that again. But I loved Pittsburgh and loved being forced to see unfamiliar places with the eyes of a curious, albeit, overfed child. For years I have wished I could do that in Los Angeles, wander around aimlessly eating peculiar, high calorie snacks and appreciating this town for what it is instead of what it is not. “It’s not New York,” I always burp. “”It’s not Boston,” I belch. “It’s not London,” I barf. I have given this architecturally bankrupt city a bad wrap. I have said more times than not that the people here suck and that there is no sense of community and no feeling of belonging. And I am as wrong as Reagan was Right.

We have lived in the same apartment (cough, spit, swallow) for eighteen years and no this is NOT New York. People ask us all the time why we are still in a 1934 townhouse built for leprechauns who clearly needed only one closet for their tiny buckle shoe collection and a powder room the size of a toenail clipping. They wonder why we haven’t bought a house or why we don’t move to the valley or why we don’t invest in a pink, stucco, Santa Monica duplex decorated with Pier One pre-framed artwork and chunky, factory distressed furniture made to look vintage and valuable and voluptuous while squashing any hopes of individuality and ingenuity. These questions make me more than prickly, especially coming from the folks whose parents plopped on them a large collection of non-recyclable grocery bags filled with money to buy the homes they currently inhabit. I know, I know. This is old, mangy monologue about familial generosity and opportunity and it is as stale and off point as burnt toast at a weenie roast. That, and you’ve all heard it before. So here’s the point, on point.

Seeing that we are not buying a muscled McMansion anytime soon and the thought of living in anything pink or stucco makes my toes hork up some toe jam. That, and last I checked my trust fund consists of a few dead language first editions and an antique loom, we decided to do the poor man’s remodel. Last Sunday, Dave and I took back the living areas, conquered the dining room and switched bedrooms with the boy, giving Otto the master bedroom as his own personal rumpus room while we stole back the small bedroom for ourselves. This tiny, teeny tree house of a room is a calm, cozy oasis from life’s little lawnmowers and we both love it as much as peanut butter loves jelly. And Otto? He is a small king in a large castle and is as happy with his new digs as all white undies were the day maxi-pads spouted wings.

It may sound odd but this shifting of all our shit has helped me see everything a bit differently. With the old rugs gone and the mile high pile of toys doing hard time in rotating storage bins in the garage I have begun to appreciate the old walls and the listing floors and mini-closets and the crazy collection of home furnishings we’ve collected over the last twenty years of California living. Each piece we own means something to me, whether it is the 50’s tile coffee table the color of an overripe avocado or the bulbous puke green thrift store lamp that wiggles when we dance around the living room to The Faces and Madonna re-mixes.

But the slacker rearrange is not only a fresh look at a craggy old space, it is a deep, delicious view at the neighborhood we live in and the neighbors we call our friends. As I spent the entire day moving furniture and cleaning crusty crevices I began to note all the beautiful parts and pieces that make up our eighteen-year history in this crazy cave. Each thing I wiped off and wiggled around had a specific story and a certain someone who has lived a stone’s throw away and who has helped us feel like a funky family.

There are the neighbors who have showered Otto with everything curious George, imprinting him for a love of monkey’s not seen since Michael Jackson’s inappropriate nightly spooning sessions with Bubbles The Chimp. Then, there is the neighbor who gave us dining room chairs and a rug to cushion Otto from life’s little skinned knees. The next neighbor gave us the new bookshelf and a slew of toy cars that Otto sings to every morning. And yet another neighbor gave us the glider and the Radio Flyer wagon and the kiddy Eames chair to make sure Otto felt loved and cradled and cool. Go down the street a ways and you’ll find the neighbor who gave us hip, handsome artwork for Otto’s walls and colorful socks for his awesome ankles. And across the street lived the neighbor who gave us the shag rug in Otto’s room as a baby gift that has always buffered the noise of tiptoeing parents.

Living next to the future Annie Leibovitz gets you a museum quality collection of black and white photos of Otto at different stages of toddlerhood, smiling at the life he has and the place he lives and the smiles he shares. Add to that grocery list, a modern sleeper sofa, a death defying designer coffee table, a bicycle, a pair of bedroom lamps, a little red wagon, a pile of books as tall as an overpaid NBA center and you have a household of happy lifting that generously and lovingly came from a skateboarder, a bride, a business dude, a drink maker, a trainer, a confident, a tante, a writer, a pilot, a make-up artist, a caterer, a photog, an actress, a dilettante, a painter, a model, a yogi, a pal, a brother, a sister, a designer and finally, a baby sitter, so wildly wonderful and torrentially trustworthy that I know from the top of my over-processed hair to the tips of my chipped pedicure that Otto is as loved and looked after with her as he is with his parents.

Yes, along my street, on my block, in my hood it is like Christmas morning every morning and Chanukah night every night. And the funky free stuff that litters our apartment and loves our little one is hardly the reason. It is the nutty nest of neighbors, a posse of people who I know intimately, trust implicitly and I love undeniably, a group of friends, and honorary aunts and uncles who have taken such exquisite care of us in good times and handed us beers and bear hugs in bad.

My occasional disconnect from my adopted city of celebutantes and Cialis junkies may occasionally ooze out of me in dribs and drabs, depending on my mood and the unbearably pleasant and persistently plain southern California weather. Some days I may not see the simple good in a town of self-anointed greats. And there will be muddy moments when the paint chips fall and the floorboards buckle and the sirens blare and The Joneses jet set. On the worst Wednesdays my house might just feel as dumpy and dilapidated as diarrhea in a drainpipe.

But when the sun is shining a bit too brightly and my eyes are hurting from the glare of the gluttons I will walk out of my creaky front door and see a familiar face and get a hug and ask a favor and do a solid and have a laugh with someone I truly consider a friend. It really does take a village and I choose this one.