George Clooney pulls up on a motorcycle and doffs his helmet with casual grace. He is arrestingly handsome in person, and his suave, familiar smile leaves me breathless. But looking into his warm brown eyes up close, I see a tinge of sadness. The unlucky-in-love Clooney is said to be in mourning these days; recovering from yet another failed relationship.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” George says, holding the door for me as we enter a small, unpretentious Hollywood café. “I just got back from playing racquetball with Brad [Pitt], and things got pretty heated. We do enjoy a little competition.”
Off the racquetball court, it can be argued that Brad Pitt is the one coming in ahead these days. With a beautiful woman on his arm and an enviable family life, Pitt has been lucky enough to find that special someone. He never has to worry about having no one to come home to at night. Though Clooney has dated a string of beautiful women over the years, it’s widely evident that he still has yet to find a soul mate.
George orders his coffee black and I do the same. “I’m trying to watch my figure,” he says with gruff charm, and winks. It’s obvious that Clooney is concerned about maintaining his attractiveness. As a single man in his forties, he is well aware of his diminishing appeal. The older he gets, the slimmer his chances are of ever finding a woman to settle down with. These are sobering thoughts for a single man of a certain age.
I decide to be daring, and address the elephant in the room, asking Clooney point blank about his most recent devastating break-up, with Vegas cocktail waitress Sarah Larson.
“Wait, who?” he says, expertly feigning confusion. It’s clear that his heartbreak has not yet run its course. “Oh right, Sarah. She’s a great girl—it’s too bad it didn’t work out. I wish her the best. Let me tell you about this project I’m working on with Don Cheadle. The man is a fucking genius. It’s been so much fun kicking ideas around with him. The other day we were out in LA…”
As Clooney talks, I am struck by how much he reminds me of a lost little boy. I want to take him home with me and set him up on a blind date with my maiden aunt. His rumpled button-down Oxford shirt and salt-and-pepper hair cry out for a wife’s loving, critical attentions. Still, I admire the carefree smile he presents bravely to the world, hiding his pain and loneliness with a life full of exotic travel, wild parties and a rewarding, illustrious career in film and television.
I halt my mournful reverie long enough to notice that Clooney is telling an amusing story about the time he and Matt Damon lost a friend’s Camaro in a poker game in Mexico. “Man, I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he cackles gleefully. “I could get in trouble.” I wonder briefly what his apartment looks like, and the thought makes me sad. No matter how he tries to fill it with track lighting and stylish décor, underneath the expensive rugs and modern furniture it must be a barren place; an empty, husk of a shrine to his failed hopes and dreams of becoming a happily married man.
As our conversation winds down, George pays our tab and escorts me to my car like a true gentleman. It is heartening to realize that such men still exist in our world, even suffering as they do from lonely hearts.
“Don’t ever give up hope, George,” I want to tell him. “I know in my soul that there is a woman out there for you. A partner in crime; someone for you to wake up next to every morning for the rest of your life, instead of a steady stream of cocktail waitresses and young party girls who are only out for a meaningless fling.”
But instead, I only smile as we part ways. “Keep your chin up, kid.” Clooney tells me. “It’s nice to see you smiling.” A stretch limo pulls up to the curb next to him and the back window rolls down. Through peals of laughter I hear a female voice inviting him to climb in. As the limo pulls away, I catch a last glimpse of Clooney. He has a glass of champagne in one hand and a woman’s stocking in his teeth. Perhaps this time, he will finally find love.
Howard and I took on media coverage of David Carradine’s death in this week’s Perpetual Post. Read his side of the story here.
News media, I’ve gotta say. The way you’ve been handling this David Carradine thing is freaking me out a little. The ghoulish and unnecessary details continue to leap unexpectedly out of the headlines of even the blandest websites. WordPress.com, why are you telling me where I can find pictures of Carradine’s naked corpse? CNN news, why are you barraging me with tawdry details while I’m on the treadmill at the gym? CNN! Talk to me about tax hikes and the swine flu! Don’t discuss the history of erotic asphyxiation! Even you, MSN.com. I visit you in search of Bundt cake recipes, and I come away with a recipe for a scrotal square knot.
Granted, the whole situation is freaky, and it strikes me as the kind of tragedy that would really hit a family hard. However, having never met the deceased, I would prefer to be left unscathed. This is where 24 hour news coverage becomes a serious drag, as does the public’s apparent unblinking fascination with the sordid and intimate details of public figures. Not to be a sentimental fool, but whatever happened to not speaking ill of the dead? Apparently it’s more important to have salacious headlines and increased web traffic. The unceasing attention to and strange disapproval of the situation surrounding Carradine’s death could lead an outsider to believe that he was some sort of evil, hated public figure. His movies were good! He died in a mysterious, disturbing manner, but most importantly, he’s dead now, and that’s sad! Can we move on?
I think we may need to give the news media a bit of a breather. It appears to be on overload; popular broadcast channels have too many hours to fill with breaking stories and urgent information. A few concessions from the American public might be in order—perhaps a general agreement permitting live networks to take a few minutes to air some utterly useless footage once in awhile. Really, would it hurt anything if news anchors spent twenty minutes thumb wrestling or discussing their cats every once in awhile? Perhaps the cameraman could go outside to capture a cloud shaped like a duck that one of the interns spotted during her lunch break. If there are no looming cold fronts or impending hurricanes, the weatherman might indulge viewers with a brief tap routine. At this point, I’d rather watch Wolf Blitzer tie and untie his shoes Mr. Rogers style for fifteen minutes than hear anymore horrible details about the unfortunate death of David Carradine.
Jillian and I took on fashion trends in this week’s Perpetual Post. Read her side of the story here.
One of my favorite quotes about fashion comes from the writer Lester Bangs, who said, “style is originality; fashion is fascism.” I think of this quote whenever a particularly nauseating fashion trend takes the world by storm and dresses it in pleated pants.
When it comes to fashion, I’m all about comfort. I’m also all about hating new trends, and then quietly buying into some of them several months after they’ve peaked and gone out of style, and can be purchased in thrift stores. I like to call this Cheap, Poor and Lazy Chic. Still, there are many trends I steer clear of—including the resurgence of trends I didn’t understand to begin with (high-waisted jeans, I’m staring in your utterly unacceptable direction).
I dreaded the Dawn of the Formal Short, for one thing. If you are lucky enough to have shapely legs that go one for miles, you might while wearing formal shorts manage to give the impression that you are an attractive girl wearing unfortunate shorts. And really, that is the BEST outcome you can possibly hope for when wearing such shorts. Meanwhile normal girls with average sized and shaped legs have to walk around looking like Gumby.
Another unfortunate trend I can’t stand? Belts that appear to be keeping your breasts from sliding down your ribs. I have no problem with putting a belt around your natural waist—which I realize can be quite far above your hips. But I’m fairly sure it’s also at least a few inches below your breasts. I’m just saying. Pull your damn belt down. You look like you’re trying to cinch in your ribs—and I thought we were past all that.
So it was with great trepidation and fear that I learned from Jillian of the potential come-back of The Scrunchie. Why, fashion world—WHY? I feel like I’m in the movie Groundhog Day, except instead of reliving the same day over and over again, I’m reliving the same regrettable fashion trends that vanished—for a reason!—into the ages and the closets of so many regretful trend-followers so long ago. Although, come to think of it, I have the feeling that the film Groundhog Day may itself have promoted The Deadly Scrunchie. But don’t blame Andie MacDowell—she does have a ton of hair. I understand the function of the scrunchie; the soft material was perfect for wrapping around your wrist while you waited for your turn to play kickball. The fabric patterns on scrunchies offered a great variety of self-expression, which is unmatched by the thin, dull elastic. I believe I had one scrunchie in day-glo yellow with peace signs on it—which was a perfect reflection of the point in my life that I was at in the seventh grade. But I think we can all agree that the scrunchie’s day is done. Let us wrap it around the wrist of history. You can never go home again.
The all-new FOX summer line-up includes the highly-anticipated reality talent show, “So You Think You Can Torture?” Watch as world-class interrogators compete against one another (and terror) in the rising field of intelligence-gathering. A panel of celebrity judges– with guest appearances by Dick Cheney and Mohammed Al-Qahtani– will award contestants points for style, results, and creative interpretation of the Army field manual. Each week a new loser will be eliminated by audience vote (voters must be legal US citizens) and handed a copy of the Geneva Conventions. The grand prize winner receives a retroactive pardon from former President Bush. (Pardon not valid in some states).
Steve Murphy and I took on Pharmaceutical companies in this week’s Perpetual Post. Read his side here.
Mines is below.
I was all ready to make fun of prescription drug commercials, because they are hilarious, when through the miracle of internet I became acquainted with the fabulous world of prescription drug websites! They’re kind of like the commercials, only with fewer cartoons, more stock photos of people looking concerned, and more fine-print made less fine.
In fact, I would like to quote directly from the delightful Patient-Medication-Guide on the website for prescription sleep-aid LUNESTA, which can be found on www.Lunesta.com:
“After taking LUNESTA, you may get up out of bed while not being fully awake and do an activity that you do not know you are doing. The next morning, you may not remember that you did anything during the night. Reported activities include:
• driving a car (“sleep-driving”)
• making and eating food
• talking on the phone
• having sex
• sleep-walking”
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a pretty awesome night to me. I enjoy many of the above activities, and can’t always find time for them during the day—so perhaps LUNESTA is exactly what I need to get the most out of my evening hours. I’m not sure I’m down with the concept of “sleep-driving”, but that would make a good excuse the next time I run a red light during a late night drive. “Huh? Officer? What? I’m not asleep in my nice warm bed?! Nooo! LUNESTAAAA!!!” It’s the perfect crime.
Given these side-effects, I have to concur with LUNESTA’s claims to give you a good night’s sleep. Actually, any period of rest during which I make and eat food, talk on the phone and have sex—I call a GREAT night’s sleep. LUNESTA, you may have just found another satisfied customer.
Then again, some of the negative side-effects of taking LUNESTA include:
• abnormal thoughts and behavior. Symptoms include more outgoing or aggressive behavior than normal, confusion, agitation, hallucinations, worsening of depression, and suicidal thoughts or actions.
• memory loss
• anxiety
Ok. Any of those side-effects would kind of put a crimp in my sleep-eating, sleep-screwing and sleep-talking-on-the-phone style (by the way, that’s also a great way to get out of a phone conversation that’s quickly going south. “I owe you how much in unpaid cable bills?…What?…What am I doing? Who is this anyway?! LUNESTAAAA!!!” Click.)
I mean really, what’s the point of making delicious sleep-feasts and having fabulously sexy sleep-relations if a) you don’t remember any of it and b) you’re confused, aggressive, depressed, anxious, suicidal and hallucinating? Aren’t those the same symptoms you have if you’re an insomniac? Why not skip the LUNESTA and lessen the chances that you’ll wake up doing 80 on the highway or eating a bullion-cube sandwich? You might only get laid while you’re awake, but at least you’ll remember it.
There are also common side effects like
• unpleasant taste in mouth, dry mouth
• drowsiness
Is there some legal reason they have to list drowsiness as a side effect for a sleep-aid? Finally, my last favorite part of the Patient Guide? (There were so many!):
• For customer service, call 1-888-394-7377.
• To report side effects, call 1-877-737-7226.
Oh, to work the LUNESTA reported side effects hotline! What a wealth of unimaginable dramatic and comedic riches!
“Last night I called every number in my cell phone and yelled ‘I HATE FEET!’ at anyone who picked up.”
“I woke up two towns over with my car in a ditch…and dry mouth.”
“I had no trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. And then I had no trouble eating half a roast chicken and having anonymous sex with my building’s security guard. I feel like I finally have my life back, thanks to LUNESTA.”
One of the books I bought with my wonderful book store gift-certificate birthday present was “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz, which I later discovered had been one of the books read in my Boston bookclub. Boston Bookclub, we are in harmony even now. How I miss you.
In other book-related news, I went crazy yesterday and ordered 3 books from Half.com. Oh how I love Half.com, with its promise of $1.49 paperbacks, except that the price never includes shipping.
The books which are now headed my way are:
1) “Dry”, by Augusten Burroughs. I loved his first book, “Running With Scissors”. I recently devoured his latest, “A Wolf at the Table”, about his life growing up with a sociopathic father. It was terrifying but also reminded me how macabre and hilarious his writing is.
I recalled perusing “Dry” at the airport when it first came out several years ago, and deciding I couldn’t afford to buy it new just then. So I was long overdue to read it. (In airport news, the Raleigh airport has a used book store! I KNOW!! The last time I traveled by air in early May I bought and read “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton, because I somehow thought I had never read anything by Edith Wharton, except I have– “The Age of Innocense” and “The House of Mirth”, both of which I loved. So oops. Anyway “Ethan Frome” was absorbing but kind of a downer.)
2) “Nightwood”, by Djuna Barnes. Highly recommended to me by my friend Donn, I have been meaning to read this book for over a year, but every time I was at the library or the bookstore, it slipped my mind– kind of like how I can never remember to pick up milk at the grocery store, but I constantly buy packets of Taco Seasoning like there’s a great Taco Seasoning Famine sweeping the nation, even though we have a stack of such packets in the pantry at home. So in conclusion, I’m excited to read “Nightwood”.
3) “The Stories of John Cheever”, by Guess Who. I recently read a review of a new biography of Cheever by Blake Bailey entitled “Cheever: A Life”, and the review made me extremely curious to read the author’s work. (Although currently I’m reading “Rabbit is Rich”, by John Updike, and it’s kind of depressing me with it’s ‘lives of quiet desperation in the suburbs’ theme. And since Cheever is apparently known as the ‘Chekov of the suburbs’, I’m probably in for a fairly downbeat ride. But we’ll see.)
John Updike is one of those authors (along with Hemingway and Faulkner) whose work I know I should have read, or read more of, but just never did. So I’m trying to remedy this one book at a time, although the Garner public library branch is not helping me. Each time I go in there looking for a particular book by an author, they have a different book by that author that is not the one I wanted. So last month I went in looking for “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand (don’t even get me started on my hate-hate relationship with Ayn Rand) and came out with “Anthem”, which I probably won’t read. I went in looking for one of the earlier books in Updike’s Rabbit collection, and came out with a later one which probably spoils all the twists in the earlier books and presents a fairly depressed protagonists in his early 50s who feels that his best days are behind him. Another problem I have with the Garner library (and I hate to dis on libraries, because I loves me some libraries) is that it shelves romance novels in with regular fiction, which means that every third book on the shelves has some variation of the word ‘passion’ or ‘rogue’ in the title. I can see why they are shelved in this way though, since shelving the romances separately would only highlight how many more romance novels there are than non-romance novels. Dang it.
Anyway. Sorry for the rambling. What are you reading right now?
Last night I had a dream that Lindsay Lohan asked me to buy drugs for her, since I was apparently going by the neighborhood where she gets drugs. She even gave me a list of drugs she wanted. I only really read one of the entries on it, and it was written in binary code, as in “1011101”. I wondered what the hell kind of drug that was. The total price on the list (she had indicated estimated costs) was $14k. The dream also included every other neurotic dreamy neuroses I have in my dreams, which unfortunately are not blog-appropriate, or even waking-life appropriate.
Jessica, Stephon and I took on the topic of High School reunions in this week’s Perpetual Post. Find it here!
My ten-year high school reunion is around the corner, and my feeling is, either I’m showing up with Hugh Jackman on one arm, pushing a stroller full of nonuplets with the other, or I’m not showing up at all.
A high school reunion is no time for subtlety. Trust me, nobody wants to hear about your new springer spaniel puppy or your job in publishing. They want to see whether you got fat or divorced or developed a nervous tic. They want to hear if you’ve saddled yourself with a whiny loser or popped out any kids. They want to casually pretend not to recognize you, to show that they’re too cool to bother remembering once knowing you. Ninth grade habits die hard. Maybe things will be different in another ten years when you all feel like failures, but right now it’s still too soon. Your only defense against this kind of behavior is a good offense, and you only get one chance to make a dynamite first impression—to achieve that sweet moment of redemption that somehow erases an entire freshman year spent pretending that you had no friends on purpose. You better make it good.
But wait, put the monocle down, sparky. Don’t bother going if you’re going to look like you’re trying. You cannot walk back into the gym reeking of desperation. If you’re busy whiting out the word ‘Assistant’ on your business cards or thinking up ways to make it sound like you moved back in with your parents because they missed you, stay the hell home, and I’ll tell you why: Above all, the name of the game is to keep those bitches guessing, and sometimes, putting in a non-appearance is the flashiest way to do that. In the back of their minds, those people I spent four years love-hating are bound to have a brief moment of wondering, “Huh, and where is Molly? I was looking forward to pretending not to recognize her.”
Is she sitting at home watching The Wedding Date and eating raw Pillsbury Crescent Rolls from the can? Or out partying topless on the French Riviera with Kate Moss? Maybe I’m home polishing my Nobel Peace Prize or at a cocktail party chatting with Tom Wolfe and wearing a 24 karat gold pantsuit. No one really knows. And nobody really wins, either, but I also don’t have to nod with a frozen smile on my face as my former classmate tells me she just got back from spending the year in Machu Picchu, “just hanging out”. I don’t have to congratulate girls who used to make fun of my thrift store clothes for passing the Bar exam, or having babies, or headlining the World Organization Committee on Agricultural Transportation Banking Summit. So actually, someone does win: Me. Take that, Class of 1999!
Howard, Steve and I took on women in comedy in this week’s Perpetual Post. Check it out!
I’m growing tired of hearing about how Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are such funny women. I mean, yes, they are. But is this such a revelation? The amount of attention those two receive for being funny is becoming a little patronizing, because for the most part it’s the same reaction of good-natured astonishment that would be elicited by the sight of a gopher wearing chaps or a tap-dancing kitten. The implication is: Look! These women are breaking down barriers, they’ve turned our misconceptions upside down; they’re thriving outside their element! It’s as thought the general public thinks each of them woke up one day and said, “Today, I think I’ll be funny– unlike women.”
Tragically, I was never informed that women aren’t funny. As a result, I spent my clearly misguided youth worshipping witty, smart-ass female authors like Erma Bombeck, Jean Kerr and Cynthia Heimel. I listened to old records and radio programs and grew to love the crackling improv of Elaine May and Joyce Grenfell and the sweet guile of Gracie Allen. I rented early Saturday Night Live episodes and marveled at the physical comedy of Gilda Radner and the snarky wit of Lily Tomlin. All of these women were brilliantly funny. I guess none of them got the memo.
It’s true that my many female comic idols are often less well-known than their male counterparts. George Burns’ fame far surpassed that of his counterpart and comic foil, Gracie Allen. Ricky always told Lucy she couldn’t be in the Babalu show. Saturday Night Live, for all its talented female stars, never seemed to launch their careers as far as it did the careers of legendary comedians like Steve Martin and Jim Belushi.
Indeed, for every smart, funny female role model I discovered through books, radio and television, there were many mediums which suffered from a distinct lack of vibrant female characters—or any female characters. After all, Bugs Bunny had all the good one-liners. None of the women stranded on Gilligan’s Island had decent comic timing; Smurfette was dull as dishwater. But to me, the lesson there was still not ‘girls in general aren’t as funny as boys’—it was ‘those girls aren’t funny’. So instead I watched Murphy Brown raise hell, and dreamed of the day I would live un-chaperoned in the Plaza Hotel like bossy, outrageous Eloise.
I agree with Steve Murphy that humor thrives on awkwardness and alienation, and that an adolescent penchant for feeling like an outcast is very likely to produce an individual who is quick with a one-liner and has a Simpson’s quote for every occasion. But I disagree that humor is a defense mechanism and a means of social survival mostly for males. Rather, I think it is a natural reflex for either sex—one that, if properly nurtured and cultivated, can be merrily abused as a dysfunctional means of self-protection by both boys and girls. After all, both face a tremendous amount of pressure to fit into their respective roles—and there are always going to be those on both sides who look around and think, “Wow, this shit is hilarious.”
I also agree with Howard that individual women who are not funny are often used as an example to somehow prove that women in general are not funny—which I find unfair. Were this standard applied to men, Pauly Shore alone would irrevocably prove that all men as a rule are desperately unfunny. Which is fair to no one, except Pauly Shore.
I Heard Tell 