Saturday Night Special

Saturday nights have changed so drastically for me in the last few years that I feel as if I am living another life all together, one of a lazy space alien who can’t seem to amass the slightest bit of energy to get up and try to contact the mother ship and say, “Hey fuckers, it’s great down here. Come give In’ N ‘Out Burger a good, old fashioned ^:~^*~`chance.”

My new T.G.I.F is like a baby blue sky suddenly turning that crazy pre-tornado black before the twister lands on Aunt Velma’s roof and rips off all the shingles that Uncle Jerry and Cousin Troy had so carefully put on the previous summer while Grandpa Earl yelled from his lawn chair, a collection of sentences that inferred in small, garbled grunts that they were doing it all wrong and if only he could walk upright and didn’t have such a bad case of the shingles he too, would be up on that roof fixing the holes that the rain lets in.

A mere five years ago my Saturday night would start at 9:30 when I would have to take an Olympic long jump into a pair of black cargo pants so tight and trendy that my lower half would resemble a pathetic, black crayon stuck in the built-in sharpener of a deluxe box of 64 count Crayolas. I would then slip on my Doc Marten shit kicker boots covered in the dried remnants of sour mix and tears from the night before and drive my 1985 Volvo station wagon with roll-up windows and vinyl seats to start my shift at one of the hipper clubs in Hollywood, where I would make retched Red Bull Vodkas and loser Long Island Iced Teas and yucky Jager Bombs and creepy Cosmos for the Lakers and Paris and Lindsey and Pamela and Hefner and his hot pockets and every American Idol hopeful with a new wardrobe and deluded dreams.

By the end of the night four Ed Hardy douche sticks would have vomited somewhere on the premises, Seven For Mankind, man-eating whores would have wept for various reasons having to do with sad sex, dull drugs, horrifying high-heels or all three combined and sixteen hangers-on of all shapes, sizes and colors would have been escorted out for being too dumb, too damaged or too D-list.

The lights would come up, showing us the trash-strewn trenches that encircled us all evening and I would count out the tips with my comrades in black, eat a street hot dog wrapped in bacon and cooked by a woman as creepy and as crusty as the hot dog itself and, by 3:30 in the morning, I would drive home a few hundred dollars richer and a few decibels closer to deaf, sleeping until noon the next day and recovering at my languid, lazy leisure.

Five years on the fast forward button and I am sitting solo in bed, blowing my nose, nursing a cold and silently high-fiving myself because I got Otto down happy and lovely by 7 o’clock. I am also doing a mental conga line for the simple fact that I ate my favorite, fancy dinner, toast with butter and honey, while watching the first Mission: Impossible, circa 1996, from start to finish and will be down for the count by 10 o’clock, give or take fifteen seconds. 10 0’clock, a time that, for so long was the start of my evening, the beginning of my shift from normal to night owl, has now become the time that this princess of pathetic turns into a pumpkin of power napping.

I do not miss the screaming fun or the sticky stench or the raging ridiculousness or the barroom bedlam or the crates of cash. Okay, I miss the cash. I’m not stupid. And sure, once in a while I miss the murky mayhem and the feeling of exhilarated exhaustion and crazy camaraderie. But, when I roll over and turn off the light and my old, Sony Dream Machine spits back at me a blinking, neon green 10:00, everything feels as good and great as that magical calm before the storm.

Happy Birthday, To Our Southern Comfort

Today is a very special day because it is the birthday of a very special dude, an uncle of wonderment to Otto and a friend of fabulousness to me. Today, this lovely October 26, 2010, is the day that my pal, my brother, my neighbor and my southern hemisphere turns 40!

Now, I have already reached that terribly icy, cold and lonely peak. I have crawled up the sheer face of my life and struggled to get oxygen in my lungs and not fall down the crevasse of my birthdays past. I know the feeling of looking around and realizing that skinny jeans, black eyeliner, Jagermeister chasers and late-night, bacon-wrapped, VD-riddled street food is a thing of the past. I am just cognizant enough to realize that if I drink in excess while dancing to INXS that I have jumped the cool shark and fallen into desperate and dangerous middle age waters.

We have spent many a birthday with this man, a man who struggles with the love of yellow birthday cake but will just as enthusiastically eat chocolate cake as if it were his last meal in a hot desert of desolation. Over the years he has eaten whatever we provide him with a voraciousness and violent appreciation of a feral lion at a wedding reception.

One year he even ate a disgusting sugar-free cake but that was before someone barfed on the lawn. And then another year someone was thrown into a bush and another year someone lost their footing and may or may not have tripped and fallen into a toilet and another year the before and after pictures looked as if the participants (Bobby and myself) had been dipped in cheap, paraffin wax and molded into the ghosts of Christmas past by a group of angry amputees.

I miss those crazy days, the unscrupulous behavior, the incriminating evidence collecting on front stoops and inside handbags and the wild dance-offs, but never, ever the mornings after or the painful breakfast burritos. Luckily though, I do not have to miss Bobby one, single bit. Tonight, we are being treated like the A-List, having been lovingly included in Bobby’s big 40. Sure, it is a grown-up affair at a fancy restaurant where they frown on table dancing, crotch grabbing and Dotty and Dave spit-taking and public clothing removal.

We will behave like adults, refrain from food fights, consume a reasonable and rational amount of wine and be home by 11. But seriously, if you could see what our instincts tell us to do or go deep into our collective, teenage mentalities you would have a live, gyrating William Hogarth painting on your hands and no one could stop it.

Happy Birthday, Blobby! I love you, man.

Goodbye To My First, True Love

This was my first boyfriend, my closest friend, my fuzzy confident and my tenacious ticket into a world of raucous rock 'n' roll fantasies. I jammed with Jimmy Page, I jogged with Phil Collins, I jiggled with Mick Jagger, I skied with David Lee and with those orange fuzz balls on my ears I always stood front row and VIP for Robert and Ozzy and Randy and Pete and Roger and Ziggy and the hearts that broke and those cars that drove and those men who worked and those girls that go-goed.

When I tore open that box on my 13th birthday, I burst into a world of cool I never knew existed. To this day it was the single greatest material gift I was ever given by anyone. And yes, props to Mom and Dad again and again and again. It shook me to my core in all the right ways and made me feel unstoppably stupendous and peppered with possibilities.

Today, the announcement that Sony will no longer sell the The Walkman broke my heart a little on the left side. The cell phone can kiss my ass and the laptop can suck it and the rocket pack can blow me and the Internet can talk to the hand. Nothing will ever impress me as much as those pretty, little tangerine-colored headphones and the crazy, cool cassette player that walked me through my wonder years and into a future of endless, musical love.

Antoine Dobson should sing, “Lock up the kids and lock up the wife and lock up those words!”

Why is today so much different than yesterday? Why is it that all of a sudden, out of the blue Otto understands EVERYTHING and I have to be so, super careful and not step in this pile of stinky EVERYTHING? What I used to see, as tepid, casual words have now become bullets of bad, bad, bad. I know better than to drop an F bomb, an S grenade or a handful of C shells. I realize that asshole is not the best word to choose in referring to the place where poop comes from or a bad driver who has just cut me off. I accept that douche bag can and will be seen as much more that a water-filled, vaginal cleaning device if uttered under my breath at a stoplight or while watching one of seven different Fox News anchors. What I didn’t realize was that ALL the everyday words and sayings and expressions are now up for grabs and need to be monitored like Lindsay Lohan’s urine sample after the VH1 Music Awards after party.

This morning Otto and I ran out of the house, spinning in circles as we tried not to forget the lunch bag and snack bag and our jackets and keys. After we had driven away in my car, a vehicle which has become a musty, oversized Cheerio holder on wheels, an all- terrain gravel pit that houses enough sand, dirt and random detritus to be mistaken for the bottom of a public trash receptacle at the mall, I realized that I didn’t say a proper goodbye and good luck to Dave. My husband, you see, had a meeting this morning with a big, bad ass director who is signed on to direct one of Dave’s uber-amazing scripts, a pile of penultimate words and scenes as brutal and brilliant as a Roman Polanski therapy session. It was an important meeting and one that warranted some sort of verbal high-five.

To back track a bit, Dave and I have always used the expression, “Kill, kill, kill” when one of us had a big meeting, audition, court date, or what have you. It began when I used to perform stand-up comedy, and yes, I was paid a meager wage, if at all, to get up on stage and tell dick jokes and feign fellatio, in front of small and large crowds of semi-uninterested drunk folk. Before any gig Dave would always tell me to kill, kill, kill and I, in turn, would do the same for him.

So, this morning while driving to school, I realized I had forgotten to say it to Dave. When we got to a stoplight I dialed Dave’s number and put the phone on speaker because I am a super careful mom and have never talked on the phone and driven at the same time and I do not text while the car is moving and my hands are always at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel and I hate cops and tickets and have an irrational fear of authority figures and men in uniforms and handle bar mustaches and car accidents and calling AAA and dealing with insurance companies and never hearing the end of it from the universe, if God forbid, I got in an accident because I took a call from a person I don’t even like talking to in the first place.

The following exchanged occurred. Names and places have not been changed to protect the identity of anyone.

ME: Otto, when you hear daddy’s voice tell him to “Kill, kill, kill” in his meeting.

DAVE’S VOICE: Hello?

OTTO: Daddy, kill, Kill, kill. Wahhhhhhh, nooooooooo!

ME: Otto, what’s wrong?

DAVE’S VOICE: Hello? What’s happening? (Shitty AT&T reception)

ME: Otto, are you okay?

OTTO: Mommy, wahhhhhhhh, kill is a bad word!!!!!! I don’t want daddy to kill. Wahhhhhhhhhh!

DAVE’S VOICE: Hello?

ME: Oh no, I gotta go, Dave. Just wanted to tell you to kill, kill, kill. Oh, ah…

OTTO: No mommy, don’t say that!!!! Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

ME: No, sweetie, I am so sorry. It’s just an expression. It’s not bad. I mean, I suppose it is a bad word but not a bad expression. It means good luck.

OTTO: It’s not good. It’s bad!

ME: No, you’re right. It’s bad and we won’t say that word again. I am so sorry! Can you stop crying? Are you okay now?

Otto wipes away his tears and stops shrieking.

ME: Do you want to call daddy back and hear his voice? Will that make you feel better?

OTTO (sniffling): Yes.

I dial the number at another red light and push the speaker button.

ME: Okay, this time when you hear daddy’s voice you can use a better expression! Tell him to break a leg!

OTTO: Nooooooo, wahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

DAVE’S VOICE: Hello?

THE END... Well, almost.

Happy Happy, Dave!

The first birthday of my husband’s that I actually spent with him was a beautiful, chilly October day in Boston. I was wearing ultra faded 501’s, cinched up at the waist by a black belt, a black blazer four sizes too large, a black velvet hat that looked like a Tim Burton pin cushion and had been an impulse buy I enthusiastically purchased at an art cooperative for under privileged librarians, and a pair of black, snakeskin cowboys boots that were too painful to wear throughout Europe the year before but now were as cool and broken in as Clint Eastwood’s face. The jeans, hip at the time, now seem an unfortunate fashion choice, one that made me look like an eighty-year old retirement community treasurer playing bingo for refreshment money.

That birthday day Dave’s ensemble included another pair of faded 501’s that he had absconded from me that may or may not have belonged to an ex-boyfriend, a 1960’s, long, leather coat with a few perfected placed sexy rips and scratches, a black t-shirt and black, snakeskin cowboy boots that cost more than the rent. Yes, we were dressed like 1990 hipster twins slathered in homeless chic and sprinkled with a pixie dust mixture of endless possibilities, fearlessness and unfettered lust. The world was our oyster and we were going to shuck, shuck,shuck it together.

To honor my man on this wonderful birthday of his I wanted to share a little slice of memory pie. This song is that great day, all those years ago, walking through the changing leaves and into a future of absolute anarchy together!

I love you, King.

And yes, this video was shot during Dave's birthday week in 1990 and I think I owned that shirt...

It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's A Nap!

Close to the top of the list of the hardest things to give up when you become a parent is the lazy, hazy mornings, the sluggish afternoons and the sex-filled, booze bending evenings lounging around watching great movies with nowhere to go and nothing to do. These sinful snapshots are a combo platter of sloth that occurred all through your twenties and into your thirties, a collection of Kodak moments that you experienced in childless, slow motion because having children later in life happened for no other reason than a) you simply forget to get knocked up sooner or b) you were too preoccupied with yourself and your sleep or c) you really, really liked doing a whole lot of nothing, a whole lot of the time. On the multiple-choice pop quiz of my past, I check d) all of the above.

No matter how many times we get a sitter or I try and take an afternoon for myself it is never the same as lying in the fetal position on my sofa in the middle of the day dressed like a grown toddler in ripped, college sweatpants and a tattered bathrobe while seminal flicks from my wonder years play on an old, all-too-green-contrast Sony Trinitron, a relic of the early nineties America of endless possibilities and dark MAC lipstick. Okay, I am waxing and waning a bit too much here as I do not still own or miss that horrid television one bit and have, on many an occasion, thought about cheating on Dave with the new flat screen Panasonic I begged him to buy me for Christmas last year. Yes, to HD, hell yes to sports on HD and hells yeah to TiVo and surround sound! I said I was lazy, not stupid.

But this past weekend the earth must have fallen off its axis a bit and time veered sideways so as to witness our long, limping hobble down memory lane. For two whole days our world of racing to something and playing somewhere and feeding something and running anywhere morphed into the lazy and hazy weekend of yesteryear. And it all started, thusly.

Beginning on Saturday morning we received a stranger than strange gift in the form of a few days of rain and an overtired little boy cut from the same cloth as his indolent parents, resulting in a weekend of a crystal-encrusted collection of honey-dipped hours of do-nothing time. After attending a Shabbat service at Otto’s school on Saturday morning Otto seemed more than a little out of sorts and worse for formal wear. That morning he had gotten up much earlier than the roosters and his cock friends, making everyone’s morning a bit tired, crooked and crusty. The Shabbat celebration was wonderful, with the kids singing on stage and moving their empty hands like puppeteers in search of a spare sock. But when it came to the after party and the playground time Otto refused to leave our sides, whining and half-crying the entire time. His eyes were blood shot, his mouth was dry and his mood was foul. We finally made our exit and drove away spent, spun and spitting.

With his loud yawning and snotty sniffling streaming from the back seat we drove Otto home, quickly realizing that our little lug nut needed a nap more than Bill O’Reilly needed a mute button. Seeing that Otto is a child that dropped his nap over a year ago and has steadily been collecting weeks and months of thirteen-hour days and crazy, crinkled shenanigans like an A&E hoarder, I thought for sure the nap would never happen. But the moment we walked into the house he went right upstairs with me and, with only a few dramatic protestations, crawled under the covers and slept for three, whole, hell yes, hours. What? Where? When? Who? Why? WTF? Woo Woo!

Taking full advantage of the rainy afternoon and the oddly quiet household, Dave and I both napped as well, falling into a deep, dreamy state, pretending it was just like old times by drooling like dimwits, dreaming like dilettantes and getting nothing done. Oh. The long, limp months all those years ago that were strung together by a thread of ineptitude and a dirty laundry bag filled with feelings of failure, misfortune and feral freshness. Sleeping fourteen hours a day, back in the day, may have been hard on the career and the self-ish esteem but it sure was easy on the face and great on the pillow.

After our REM reunion was over and we both stopped channeling a Hootie and the Blowfish video, Otto finally got up and out of bed looking as stylish as a post-coital Einstein and as rested as an ingénue in rehab. He then came downstairs, gave out hugs like free, stinky perfume samples and ate an amazing lunch Dave had fixed for us all, smiling the whole, mouth-filled time. Then, as if on fantasy cue, he climbed onto the sofa with us and watched the second half of Raising Arizona, laughing at all the subtle nuances, brilliant backtalk and quirky perfection, a little film fan after our own, double-featured hearts. As the credits rolled and he remained all cuddles and cutesy, I noticed that the original, 1978 Superman, with Christopher Reeve in tights and Margot Kidder in Diane Von Furstenberg, was about to start.

Since this film was one of Dave’s top three favorite movies of all time and I had not seen the whole thing since opening night when I sat with my parents in a smoked-filled theatre bursting with bell-bottomed brunettes and un-jaded juniors, I asked Dave whether is was as G-rated as I had remembered. He assured me it was. (Note to self: Husband is a horror/thriller screenwriter and in the future be wary and possibly question his ability to assign a parental guidance listing on all movies produced after 1952. Just saying.)

That afternoon, that glorious, rain-soaked, napped-filled, filmic afternoon, Marlon Brando started the engines on a flight that would soon be commandeered by Christopher Reeve and the charming, red-booted, simplistic bravery of an unspoiled superhero that no longer exists. With his unearthly ability to redirect a nuclear missile using his less dominant hand and embracing the fashion sense of a drag queen on a high wire, Otto watched Superman do one good deed after the next, never breaking a sweat or cracking a frown. Anytime the action slowed down and Clark Kent popped up again with flooded slacks and fake, funky four-eyes, Otto would turn to me and say with much ado about something, “When will Superman save the day, mommy?”

Sitting with my son on my lap and my man to my right, watching Otto’s face contort as he watched Superman for the first time and his smile widened to the length of a yard stick and he squealed with unfettered joy as Superman flew into the air and saved a cat and stopped a bomb and turned back time by circumventing the globe numerous times at warp speed, it dawned on me that there is nothing as wonderful and as awe-inspiring than seeing a great movie for the very first time with the fresh eyes of a fan and the clean slate of a child. And watching Otto nibble on a huge slice of our collective childhoods and adore it as much as we first did made me truly realize that those languid, lethargic lumps of pre-child time I had missed so much were never as tasty as I had remembered. Sure, they were filling in their own way and somewhat satisfying to a point, but much like store-bought spaghetti sauce one eats in college, once you graduate and taste the real, homemade thing, you can never go back to the red, watery crap you used to think was so delicious and so adult.

Red Rover, Red Rover, You Cannot Come Over

The school year has begun, the car pool is upon us, the kids are fighting on the playground and the golden rules are in place. The onslaught of school birthday parties, otherwise known as the great weekend time killer, has arrived with much fanfare and political correctness. Everyone in class must be invited to the parties lest you scar a small, precocious pre-schooler for life and traumatize the parents who take a birthday party snub as a social indicator that they are still those nose-picking, generic jeans-wearing losers they were back when sporting a comb in your back pocket was considered a birth right and velour was du rigueur.

I like the rule of having to invite everyone in your child’s pre-school class to your tots over-priced, frosting-festered birthday bash. The list is set from day one and it makes it easier to cut the “maybes” off and make them the “no-ways”. That is not to say that I look at a guest list with the eyes of an elitist party planner who wants only the best looking, best dressed, best gift givers to arrive under a canopy of crystal-encrusted muslin draped lovingly across a white balloon arch filled with the breath of a million butterflies while a man servant costumed as Marcus Aurelius sprinkles real, gold-leaf confetti onto your head as you saunter past the Pinkberry ice sculpture and collect a gift bag that must now be included on your yearly tax return.

No, the mandatory class inclusion rule results in you having a string of guilt-free moments when you cross off all your real friends, your oldest pals, the peeps who crack you up and who have children who do not go to school with your young charge or whose kids happen to be inconveniently age inappropriate for a gang hang with your rugrat. This easy out is a guarantee that you do not have to throw a far-reaching fiesta for one hundred angry parents and tired toddlers and spend your hard earned money on drippy Domino’s pizzas and pre-cut fruit chunks that may or may not taste like ammonia and barely resemble the fruit in question. Instead of ordering a tower of illegally dyed cupcakes and vast trays of sliced mystery meats and child-friendly canapés designed to resemble Disney characters but quickly morph into half-melted, unrecognizable lumps of protein after a long day in the hot sun, you could get a deep-tissue pedicure and a head start on your child’s education fund for the following overpriced school year.

So, why is it when all these rules have been followed and the party is a success and you are relieved that it wasn’t a stampeded of everyone you know and the kids had the best time, that you sit back and feel two, foreign, funky feelings come over your already exhausted, parental person? One, you have a tiny case of the guiltys for not including those people you REALLY wanted to include? And two, you feel kind of icky and sad when months later you hear through the grapevine that your friends that you did not include, due to overcrowding and school rules, did not invite you to their kid-a-palozza?

Just about now you dig deep into your tattered bag of old adages and pull out a classic, crusty stand-by that has irritated you since your mother first whispered it to you after you refused to invite Larissa to your birthday sleepover but still wanted to accept her birthday gift with open arms and grabby hands.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

Ain’t that the truth?

Happy Belated Birthday, Jilliz

My mother, my wonderful, amazing, knit-happy, book-wormy, spell-checky mother, spent her birthday visiting her awesomely funny, loves-his-bourbon, transistor radio-hugging father in the midwest. Instead of being showered with a colorful bouquet of confusing wild flowers and a semi-fancy lunch at a dark and tasteful restaurant that serves bland, poached chicken and flan, her husband's go-to favorites and not hers, she spent time in cow country with family and a mysterious birthday cake goblin.

So here's the missing slice, mom and here's to your birthday celebration!

I Love You!

Doro

Mr. Sandman, Bring Me A Dream

The hardest thing about being a parent has to be the sleep deprivation, the fear of sleep deprivation and the before and after affects of sleep deprivation. I have spent the last three and a half years in a perpetual state of anxiety regarding how and when I will catch up on my sleep and how best to sleep when catching up on this sleep. I know I am not alone in the tired department and I also know there is an army of crazy-ass moms out there who not only function well on a few anorexic hours of shut-eye, they get off on it, much like a line-backer enjoys a good bone- crushing tackle even if he is on the receiving end and it happens to be his bones that crinkle up like a potato chip in a front pants pocket.

I recently ran into a mom and dad I barely know through a friend of a friend of a pal. They are a super sweet couple with three great kids and a huge dog and a house the size and feel of the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. According to the husband, the wife suffers from an unquenchable desire to have yet another child with or without his say so, a condition I gather may run on both sides of their families. Without hesitation he shared with me his long ago intention of only wanting one child and that dream having quickly morphed into a Brady Bunch episode of muddled misunderstandings and too much laundry detergent. I have a knack for not only attracting the run-on sentences of Olympic over-sharers but for being truly, madly and deeply enthralled in the contents of the soliloquies in question.

Yes, it was weird and sure, a bit inappropriate on both our parts, him for talking to a virtual stranger about his marriage and his runaway sperm donations and me, for listening with an ear the size of a half-deflated pool floatie. But, I had to know how they did it, how they kept it all together and how the heavy metal balls stayed up in the thick, smoked-filled air of their rock ‘n’ roll arena.

As the mom took off after the tiny toddler and the kids, including my own, chased the dog and raced around like a wild and out of control hockey team on melting ice, I asked the husband point blank. “How do you do it and how will you do it with four?”

Without a pause or a hiccup or even a facial tremor, he simply said, “My wife hasn’t slept in six years. What’s another three?”

Every organ in my body convulsed simultaneously, with my uterus leading the charge, grabbing my ovaries by their mock turtleneck collars and heading to the nearest exit with the speed and precision of Jeff Gordon on the final lap of the Daytona 500. I, of course, was right behind them with bags packed, train tickets in hand and a pitch fork for protection if anyone got any ideas, including the super procreator to my left, a dude I was even afraid to pat on the shoulder for fear that I may become impregnated through an exposed hangnail or a blinking eye.

For a week now I have not been able to stop thinking about having a lifestyle in which sleep was lower on the list than forming complete sentences and eating one square meal a week. And for that reason and that reason alone I realized that Dave and I had truly made it through the rough sleep patches and could now live a little. I needed to start opening up my mind to the possibility that a life existed outside of my early to bed, early to rise nursery rhyme that I had on a loop in my paranoid head.

So, what did I do? Last Friday night, after running into an old friend I haven’t seen in a decade, I went out with her and her platinum-sprinkled party posse on Friday night and had a blast with a bunch of smart, cool chicks I had just met who were not afraid of alarm clocks or creeping morning sunlight. I even took a cab to and fro and stayed up later than I had in four years. Then, the following night, Dave and I went out for game night with a group of parents from school, a group I can luckily and honestly call my friends and laughed as hard as I have since the 1980 opening of Airplane! and a glorious introduction into off-colored humor, tasteless fart jokes and seamless, sexual innuendo.

Sure, Sunday came and it was my turn to get up with Otto and I felt like I had swallowed an anvil through my left nostril and beaten my head against a cement pillow for simply sacrificing a few hours of precious sleep. But if it were not for those few hours I spent awake instead of drooling on my pillow I would not have experienced some of the greatest conversations I have had in eons and some of the hardest guffaws I have guffawed in months. Sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind and keep your eyes wide open. That, and birth control!