Side by Side by Luvviepuffaroo ... Episode 1

I never understood those who justify their whole poo-poohing of American Musical theatre with the tired cliché that "no one in real life ever spontaneously bursts into song". I've never heard anyone dismissing the ballet using the argument that "no one in real life ever spontaneously bursts into a grand jeté". Yet do they? I've never seen it. Come to think of it, no one in real life ever spontaneously swings on a web through the city or holds up a taxi with one finger or has 12 inch spikes spring out from their knuckles either, eh? Right little boy? So come on ... quit with the Musical bashing already. If there were no Stephen Sondheim there would be no Luvviepuffaroo because he literally soundtracked my life.

Git'cher self on over to my house on any weekend and you'll find me singing about washing the dishes or painting a wall or just walking down the stairs (with Quibbit joining in merrily, and at full voice). We've got a song for everything. Songs are fun.

Basically, I'm a big fan of any movie that sticks a musical interlude into the normal course of a conversation. This is why I've always been completely tickled by this scene from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.




However, in the tradition of "animate it and make it funnier" (well, I exclude A Scanner Darkly in this tradition) Steve Falzone brings it to a whole new level with this masterpiece:


By the time Legos get involved, it's sheer brilliance:


If this kinda spontaneous burst of song happened around my workplace I'd be so happy I'd probably do a grand jeté.

Seeing John Malkovich

Living in New York you see a lot of famous people around. Not that you ever get used to it ... there's always a little thrill when you see a celebrity in a place you're not expecting them to be. But, you know, this IS New York. You're bound to run into a star as you go about your own fabulous day.

Wednesday morning on my way to the subway I passed a row of movie trailers parked along the street and thought nothing of it. All very bla bla bla until I looked to the right and saw John Malkovich speaking very intently to a girl who was either a 19 year old PA or a 19 year old fan. Either way, he was being very intense. And this, only a week after running into Chloe Sevigny!

I happen to live in a very filmable area so it's normal to see those long trailers parked along my block. It's sometimes nice but mostly annoying -- like when you're trying to have a romantic baloney sandwich with your Boo on the promenade in the moonlight and get shushed off your bench because it's a "closed set".

I once kept a list of every celebrity I ever bumped into but it was on some hard drive that crashed and I never tried to re-create it. Until now.

A short list of the celebrity encounters (which I can remember) in no particular order and by no means all inclusive:

• Seeing Maria Shriver in the ladies room when I worked at Time Magazine


• Seeing James Earl Jones pass by my desk (again at Time) asking the executive assistant for coffee with "fake milk and fake sugar"


• Having Charles Durning hold the door for me on my way into work at Petersen Publishing
  


• Being in the elevator (at Time again) with Isabella Rosellini
  


• Seeing Rodney Dangerfield walking along a beach in Bel Air with a girl 1/4th his age


• Passing Mike Meyers as he contemplated going into Balthazar


• Seeing Kate Capshaw and Stephen Spielberg at Nobu the night I splurged and had a hugely expensive dinner with friends


• Seeing Buddy Hackett walking through the Noguchi Museum one afternoon


• Seeing Nipsey Russell coming out of a restaurant in midtown


• Seeing a very bony, totally scary looking Melanie Griffith sitting in the window of Thalia


• Having Captian Jean-Luc Picard (okay … Patrick Stewart) sit at the table behind me in a Mexican restaurant on the Upper East Side and trying not to hang on every word coming out of his mouth in that gorgeous voice of his
  


• Bumping into Caroline Rhea near Rockefeller Center


• Seeing a tiny tiny Joan Rivers come out of The American Airlines Theatre


• Watching Geraldo Rivera strut so comically down the street in front of the ICP that I thought he was doing it to be funny. Turns out he's just cocky.


• Attending an all star (Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Christopher Walken, Natalie Portman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marcia Gay Harden, John Goodman) performance of The Seagull at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park and spotting Alec Baldwin and Candice Bergen in the audience while I sat right behind Christoper and Dana Reeves


• Seeing Alec Baldwin again later in the park after the performance (I'm not kidding) shouting at someone on his cell phone. (Too long ago to be his daughter, but maybe it was Kim).


• Being introduced to Gloria Steinem by a mutual friend at an event and having her graciously say "hello" and then ask "Do you know where my coat is?"


• Years later, seeing Alec Baldwin (again!) come out of a Union Square movie trying to ignore the crowd calling out to him
  


• Seeing Brooke Shields on the subway
  


• Catching Al Sharpton's eye as he was making a speech to the cameras and have him stutter when I winked flirtatiously (back when I was a cute 19 year old PA for an investigative news show)


• Watching Mikhail Baryshnikov during practice rehearsal at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center
  


• Seeing Paul Giamatti just hanging out in front of a store around the corner from my house soon after Sideways came out
  


• Seeing John Gotti having a nice sit-down in Little Italy and hearing the guy in front of me say "You know, I’m not gay, but that John Gotti is one good looking guy!"


• Standing behind Robert Klein in a crowd scene (when I was an extra) during the filming of Next Stop Wonderland
  


• Seeing Ed Koch in front of the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center
  

• Seeing Eric Bogosian brooding on the subway
  


• Being alone with Mario Bosquez in the elevator … and watching him close his eyes so he wouldn’t have to speak with me when I turned to smile at him
  


• Being introduced to Richard Metzger after he gave a presentation at a Howard Bloom event I was involved with

• Seeing Boy George who, after hours of performing at a record store and signing autographs, STILL had a better makeup job than me


• Seeing Pope John Paul address the crowd from his summer home, Castel Gandolfo, in Italy


• Getting my picture taken with Rudy Giuliani during Sport Magazine's Christmas party (we were sharing the venue with the Fire Department's Christmas Party. He'd come to celebrate with them, but got us too).


• Having Charles Shaughnessy come up and ask me and some friends "What's this line for?" as we were going into The Town Hall. Richard Avedon was in the audience with us listening as Woody Allen and Steve Martin read pieces they'd written for the New Yorker

• Seeing José Eber in the reception area of Sassy Magazine
  

• Seeing Michael Badalucco on the R train in Brooklyn graciously smile as a guy came up to him and said "My wife makes me watch The Practice ... so I know you're famous from that ... otherwise I wouldn't know who you are ..."
  

• Sitting in the same row as Andrew Lloyd Webber at a performance of Bombay Dreams


• Taking meetings with an out-of-drag Lady Bunny in my short-lived stint as a comedy writer for her sketch comedy show that never got off the ground


• Trailing behind Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman at a street fair a few days after Cheers aired their last episode


• Seeing Tom Hulce milling around the audience the night I went to see a screening of Amadeus at a Monday Nights with Oscar event
  


• Seeing Margaret Cho come to a screening of her film, Notorious C.H.O. at Time Inc's joint GLBT/Asian Society (or as my friend called it, the Gaysian Society) event


• Having John Waters sign my copy of Hairspray and ignore me during my sycophantic gushing ... even though I was the only one on line


• Meeting Lidia Bastianich at her restaurant Felidia two of the three times I was there

• Getting an interview with former SNL producer (and ex Woody Allen friend) Jean Doumanian and blowing my chance at working for her by telling her I'd read all about her in a book that painted her as an evil witch
  

Well, that's all I can remember for now. But if you're someone famous and want to get on my list ... contact me! We'll arrange an obscure place to bump into each other. Then, voila! You're on my list. And congratulations to you on that.

Dueling Evitas ~OR~ Shut up, Patti LuPone!

There's an episode of Will & Grace where Jack tries to ignore Patti LuPone as she chatters, crawls around on the floor, and just generally makes herself un-ingnorable. At one point he screams "Shut up Patti LuPone! Shut your brassy, magnificent trap!!!"

She turns around and deadpans … "They either love me or they hate me." I laughed. I laughed because I ... hate her. Those are HER WORDS ... (though they're mine too).

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate her personally ... I just can't stand the way she sings. I'm sure if I had to sit next to her at a gala dinner she'd be pleasant enough company. (Note to the committee planning any gala dinner party to which I am invited: Please don't seat me next to Patti LuPone despite what I just said.)

I remember complaining to a co-worker about how I couldn't stomach her strident braying which evaporated every drop of sensitivity that moistened the sappy I Dreamed a Dream (which, I admit, is my most favorite song from Les Miz because I, myself, am sappy and dripping with syrup). In fact, before I read the liner notes and found out it was her I remember complaining loudly (and often) "Whoever sings that song does that annoying Patti LuPone thing". Leave it to Patti LuPone to do that annoying Patti LuPone thing.

Sure, she starts off making you feel all sorry for her with her plaintive "There was a time … it all went wrong." But by the time she gets to "I had a dream my life would be so different from this hell I'm living" I'm always left clutching my ears and thinking how much less her life would be hell if she could only learn to speak softly and not FORCE every note from her "brassy trap", in that manner that makes her sound like a senior citizen at the early bird special in Boca Raton demanding that the staff put out more croutons and Roquefort dressing in the all-you-can-eat salad bar ... because they've run out AGAIN.

I still love the song. I still hate Patti LuPone.

This co-worker thought he would deflate me by (after my rant) declaring "Patti's a friend of the family" (I think he delivered the line with an arched brow). Sure, I mentally stumbled a bit and the starf*cker inside me shouted "Oooooh boy! Can I meet her!!!! Can I got to a gala dinner with her!!!" But I actually stood my ground and held fast to my opinion and declared, with a toss of my head, "I still don't like her so I don't apologize".

Later that year I went with this friend and some others to see Sweeney Todd in concert. The lead was sung by George Hearn (love love LOVE) and Neil Patrick Harris was there, singing his little heart out too. (Who could resist him as he cooed "Nothin's gonna harm you ... not while I'm around"?) Of course Patti "couldn't pick a worse choice for Mrs. Lovitt if you tried" LuPone was also there, pushing her voice through the notes so hard that I though she was trying to power the whole eastern seaboard with her singing alone. It almost ruined the whole experience for me except 1) I got to see George Hearn reprise the role I'd taped off of PBS when I was a teen and 2) Stephen Sondheim made a surprise appearance at the curtain call and I just about fainted and clapped so much it was as if I were trying to power the whole eastern seaboard with clapping alone. Small aside ... I could never be sure but I was almost CERTAIN that one Ms. Monica (dry-cleaning-is-for-suckers ... wait ... I mean NOT-dry-cleaning-is-for-suckers) Lewinsky was in attendance that evening as well. What she was doing there I don't know. Possibly waiting around to flirt with Doogie Howser. See, she's like that -- always picking the wrong guy.

That was also the night I found out that when my co-worker said that Patti was a "friend of the family" he actually meant a "friend of a FRIEND". And Patti was not so much a "friend of" a friend so much as a "person being stalked by" a friend. So.

When Evita came out in the late 70s the commercials were blasted at me every afternoon during Texas, a short-lived but memorable (at least to me) spin off of Another World. It starred Beverlee McKinsey as Iris Carrington in all her blond dameness ("dame" as in "what's a dame like you doing in a gin joint like this?" ... not "Dame" as in Dame any-British-actress-name-here) along with a bunch of other people who I don't remember because they weren't dames ... which is what I wanted to become when I was a child. A gum chewin' street talkin' dame. (I think I just about made it to 'broad' some time around 5 years ago ... then slid back into 'ma'am'.) So obsessed was I with Iris Carrington that my incessant chatter about her influenced my friend Ookanuba to use the name "Iris" in her very frightening one-page stage play "A Terror for Iris". (Admittedly part of Ookanuba's Juvenilia Canon but nonetheless BRILLIANT.)

There was another character, Kurt Laverty, who my mother and I subsequently saw one year in the late 70s at the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. We promptly followed him around all afternoon watching him and his wife and children. On the way back we bumped into Stiller & Meara. (If you make me qualify that by adding "You know ... Ben Stiller's parents" I will have to take you to school.) New York was like that in those days, with random celebrities popping up during the normal course of a day. (Though truth be told it's like that today too ... I just bumped into Chloe Sevigny yesterday on West 4th and Perry Street ... but I was jabbering on my cell and trying to navigate to Charles Street so I was not that interested in Ms. Sevigny in all her downtown glory.) Point being, I know what it's like to stalk someone for an afternoon. A little boring. Very much. Very boring.

Anyway, I watched Texas every afternoon and the Evita commercial played every afternoon and so my childhood was impressed with this image of Patti stretching out her arm and beseeching Mandy Patinkin to "not keep his distance" and braying "just a little touch of Star Quality" so unintelligibly that for years I had no idea what she was saying. The commercial fascinated me. Her voice distracted me. The whole thing disturbed me. I was hooked on hating her.

So of course you have to understand my complete dismissal of EVITA until many many years later when, in the zenith of my Madonna Worship I lived the story of her journey to play Evita on the big screen. I knew of her seven page entreaty to Alan Parker. I saw her "Take a Bow" video which was shot as such a period piece that there was no mistaking that she was auditioning for the role to the whole wide world. Of course there's also the sub-plot ... Madonna's jump-the-gun ("I'll probably never get married, so I might as well keep this baby since I'm not getting any younger") pregnancy which was kept a secret from Alan Parker until there was no more denying it ... leaving Mr. Parker to cleverly try and disguise her tummy with purses and a children's chorus during the shooting.

The movie (and it's very long lead-in) coincided with me being downsized from a job that was too small for me anyway so I had nothing better to do than spend 6 months rehearsing in my apartment, memorizing the EVITA album and ultimately getting so good at my living room performance that I was able to bring myself to tears EVERY TIME I sang the grand death scene. EVERY TIME. This is a skill shared by me and only one other actress. Yes, Meryl Streep. Just the two of us can cry so convincingly take after take. That's right. JUST US.

At some point, just because the Madonna soundtrack was on a never ending loop I broke down and bought the Patti LuPone version in order to do some field research ... to better round out my nightly living room performances. I think I managed to listen to the Patti version once.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't consider Madonna the better Evita. Or the better singer, really. Or even the more interesting personality. Not by a long shot. And while I find her softer take on Evita more palatable it is NOT a better interpretation and really only speaks to the limited range of Madonna's acting ability which was only as good as it was because she didn't have to speak. (This is how Holly Hunter won her best actress award for The Piano, you know.) Despite my obsession, I always saw this for what it was: Madonna wanting to be considered a credible actress and refusing to admit that that ship had sailed. To Shanghai, I think. What a surprise.

So ... my vote for best Evita? It's obvious. Elaine Paige.

Get Offa My Street

There was nothing like being in Madison Square Garden during Madonna's Confessions Tour when, during I Love New York, thousands of New Yorkers pumped their first in solidarity screaming over and over Get Offa My Street ... GET OFFA MY STREET!

You'd have to be a born and bred New Yorker to truly understand.

Half of the joy of living in New York is having the city to yourself while everyone rushes off to East Hampton or Montauk or wherever they go for the last-shebang-long-weekend-before-the-kids- go-back-to-school. Me, I like to stay in town and spin down the middle of Times Square with my arms wide open and relish the solitude. HA! Come on! New York is never THAT empty, and besides -- the tourists are flooding the traps like crazed maniacs (Looky here, Shirley, a real live Broadway Show poster! Right outside the real subway! Getcher camera out! Take a pitcher!) but the other places, the places WE go ... those are blissfully empty.

On Friday my Boo Quibbit and I met up with Quimica (the lil gal responsible for putting us together almost two years ago) and Ookanuba (my oldest love-her-like-a-sister gal pal) and hit the MoMA where we touched the Richard Serra exhibit (inside) and got corrected by a museum guard (but could run our hands along it outside in the garden to our hearts content). Quibbit had a great time making "oooooh!" noises to hear the resonance in certain spots. Had we been the only four people there I'd have suggested a little impromptu doo-wop but we were creating a bottle neck so we moved on. Also, despite my ability to get us all in for free with an old ID from a past job it was also one of those Target sponsored Free Nights so we could barely get close enough to other paintings to get yelled at again.

Afterwards, since Quimica is a vegetarian and Ookanuba leans towards it much of the time, we all went to Zenith where I was able to have sushi and share an order of scallion pancakes with veggie ham. The four of us haven't been together in a long time and conversation was fast, jumbled and exploded in streams of consciousness. We discussed In The Bedroom and its themes of vengeance and loyalty, we spoke about Goethe's Faust, and the very disturbing version that Ookanuba has on VHS that scared the bejesus out of me even though we watched it in the middle of the day in a well lit room. (No, I never wish to see it again.)

We spoke about the probability of artificial intelligence becoming self correcting/assembling enough to take over the world. We allowed for the possibility and dissected the need for humans to make correlations based on emotional reactions which computers can't mimic. We spoke about the periodic table and my three dinnermates got very excited about a bookmark Ookanuba owns that includes the actinides and the lanthanides which are usually left off though I don't know why ... I'm not quite as scientific as they are but I'm an enthusiastic nodder.

Ookanuba and I recounted stories of when we were little girls and spent summers on the stoop making up plays and dances and treating our rehearsal time very seriously ("Luvvie! Get out here! We're losing the light!!!"). We spoke for so long that we didn't even realize the restaurant had emptied. But not because we closed the joint down ... because it was a long weekend and no one was in town!

We continued the conversation at Thalia (equally dead) where talk turned to riddles. (Ookanuba's contribution: what's long brown and sticky? A stick. Quimica's contribution from Gollum: Alive without breath, as cold as death; never thirsty ever drinking, all in mail never clinking. Answer: A fish.) Ookanuba and I ordered vodka and grapefruit juice remembering that they were called Greyhounds -- and already a little buzzed thus amused at the notion of being 1950s housewives entertaining on the weekends in our backyard cabanas, serving up a tray of Greyhounds to Millicent and Bud and Mildred and Ace while the kids played in the kiddie pool. Things are funny when you're buzzed. Quibbit stuck with tonic water.

Other highlights of the weekend include long brunches with Quibbit (a beef brisket sandwich beyond compare served up at Chicory Brooklyn), movies, reading, walking along the promenade to take in the view and enjoy the beautiful weather, and a very enlightening episode of Daisy Cooks! which included a recipe for Ropa Vieja that was so mouthwatering that it made me cry. Not figuratively, LITERALLY cry ... as if my salivary glands were so over-worked that they had to borrow some tear ducts in order to convey to my face just how much I wished I could be eating this amazing dish of beef, tomato sauce and heaven. Thank God I'm no cook or I'd have been holed up in the kitchen for the rest of the weekend freezing individual portions of sofrito to add to my next batch of Ropa Vieja. (My one attempt at pancakes one morning was fine, except that when I flipped one over somehow I got a damn spatter of grease above my right eyebrow that immediately blistered).

All in all, a totally blissful three day New York weekend. Stay tuned tomorrow when, in the middle of Union Square you'll find me screaming at tourists to get offa my street. Or at least mumbling at them under my breath ...

Fave Five brought to you by Luvvie's Zagat's

The most annoying restaurant to say out loud is Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. Okay, not THE most annoying … I'm sure there are a few others and I'll gladly open the floor to suggestions, so please -- feel free.

Meanwhile, I get the whole story of why it has that name, the whole "I want to show I own this place, so I’m putting my name in front of the really well established name that made me money before it burned down, so that you know the quality is still the same but with a peppy new flair!" thing. When I say "I get the whole thing", I mean get it like I'd get "Murray's Tiffany's" or "Betty Sue's Gucci".

However, in the spirit of Ruth's Chris, I give you Luvvie's Zagat's.

Zagat's, of course, tops the list in the "most annoying restaurant GUIDE to say out loud" category because, like Demi Moore who was "Demi-rhymes-with-Hemi" Moore until the critical mass finally tipped her over into "DeMI-rhymes-with-Marie" Moore that's how it is with the pronunciation of Zagat's. I still, however, pronounce it ZAH-gats and not Za-GAHTS because … and if you're Italian you'll know where I’m going with this … to me GAHTS (phonetically) sounds like Neapolitan slang for something totally different and not quite food-related. Ahem.

For most of my life I've been single in New York, and while I've been dragged to my share of clunkers for drinks or dinner I've also gone to a lot of places that quickly became my favorites. That's the great thing about living in a city this size ... the bar is set really high.

Whenever I went to a place I knew I'd want to return to, I'd put their vitals in a list along with my own rating. It got to a point where I could just whip out my Luvvie's Zagat's guide whenever someone said, "Pan-Asian, Midtown". If you had a craving and a neighborhood you had to be in, I'd have a great place for you to go.

So I now present this week's Fave Five brought to you by Luvvie's Zagat's. I'm going to kick off my Luvvie's Zagat's Fave Five with an R.I.P. in honor of the places I loved so much -- which I could never take off the list but which you'll never find no matter how much you try. Here's to you, Ghost of Dinners Past:

Boxers
190 W 4th Street
New York, NY 10014
Cross Street(s): Barrow Street
212-206-7526
Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
Cuisine: American/Bar
Luvvie's Zagat's Review: Had the most difficult conversation of my life here * Food could be better but I can't forget the times here
Luvvie's Partner in Crime: Everyone
Luvvie's been there: A Thousand Times

Café Rafaella
134 7th Avenue South
New York, NY 10014
Cross Street(s): Charles + W 10th Street
212-929-7247
Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
Cuisine: Café
Luvvie's Zagat's Review: Great conversations, always * Great coffee * Great cake * Nice dinners * Cozy in winter, charming in summer, hot tea when it's chilly, white wine when it's balmy * I could live here, surrounded by my best friends, all of whom have come here with me * Or SHOULD come here with me
Luvvie's Partner in Crime: Won*t
Luvvie's been there: A Million Billion Times

Chez Michallet
90 Bedford Street
New York, NY 10014
Cross Street(s): Barrow Street
212-242-8309
Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
Cuisine: French
Luvvie's Zagat's Review: Just adorable * So sweet and quiet * Made me feel like I'd walked into a corridor that took me straight to Paris
Luvvie's Partner in Crime: No one in particular
Luvvie's been there: A Handful of Times

McHale's
750 8th Avenue
New York, NY 10036
Cross Street(s) 46th Street
212-997-8885
Neighborhood: West 40s
Cuisine: Bar
Luvvie's Zagat's Review: Down and dirty dive bar w. hamburgers that could choke a horse * I LOVE this place, would travel from anywhere to go here * Not one night here was ever wasted
Luvvie's Partner in Crime: work friends
Luvvie's been there: A Thousand Times

Mr. Souvlaki
147 Montague Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Cross Street(s) Hicks Street
718-858-8997
Neighborhood: Brooklyn
Cuisine: Greek
Luvvie's Zagat's Review: Food so authentic it tastes like an accent * The guy always asks if I want utensils, even though I've said "No WE have them" for over 12 years now * He just likes to hear me pretend I've got a husband despite the parade of different men I've brought to his counter
Luvvie's Partner in Crime: Everyone
Luvvie's been there: A Million Billion Times

In closing:
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~Kahlil Gibran

The Diver

I have a smart mouth and it can often get me into trouble. Like all social crutches, this make-'em-laugh tic started when I noticed I got Daddy's attention a lot more often if I was repeating, word-for-word, Edith Ann's sandwich recipe than if I was blathering on about my own boring ass day in my own little kid voice. Hey, Daddy, look what I made with Lego bricks and a good imagination! Yeah, kid, big deal.

So I put together a routine and took it on the toddler circuit (my house) and dinnertime (or Dinner Theatre as I liked to call it) became my time to shine. No one who saw my Knife + Fork Production of Porgy and Bess soon forgot it. And when I was in a Fiddler on the Roof mood, watch out.

I got really good at accents too. And not those mish-mosh accents spouted by those actors who can't do any one particular accent well so instead they mix them all up and pretend they're from a country that doesn't actually exist. No, I'm talkin' really good ones like German and Irish and Puerto Rican and Deep South and various British ones too. (I can take Eliza Doolittle from her 'Enry 'Iggins days straight through to her Rain in Spain days and beyond. Take THAT Gwyneth "Sliding-Doors" Paltrow!). I often said I just made my Brooklynese accent disappear one day in college by imitating my Middle-American classmates and never going back to my original voice again.

I was at my smart-mouth bitchiest during the late nineties when I was knee deep in my own version of Will & Grace – only with a Will who wasn't letting me in on his Will-ness … so I'll say it was a Won*t & Grace.
Won*t and I spent seven years together coining phrases, trashing friends, pointing out people's social gaffs, making up code words, and repeating private jokes so often that they were reduced down to single words. PURPLE was one. EGGIES was another. Meaningless to you – pure hilarity to us. It did manage to turn a lot of people off in those days.

So my advice if you're going to be bitchy, evil, and sarcastic: PLEASE know your audience. Because a person with a make-em-laugh tic will dive for a joke the way Gabrielle Reece dives for the volleyball: pushing others out of the way in a desperate attempt to MAKE THE JOKE dammit! MAKE THE JOKE!!! Only some times you miss the joke and wind up falling on your face and getting sand in your eyes. Regardless of risk I admit: I'm a diver. Having Won*t around almost all the time in those days pretty much guaranteed I'd make the shot. He always laughed. So I got careless.

Two cycles back, America's Next Top Model had a moment like that involving CariDee who thoughtlessly tossed off a joke involving a stick, Nigel Barker's butt and ... well, you do the math. Of course in the editing room they highlighted the utterance with sound effects and subtitles JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED HER JOKE which, by the way, was WRONG and HIGHLY INAPPROPRIATE (or so the sound of a needle being torn from a record indicated to me).

CariDee got reprimanded so harshly by the panel (which includes a has-been model [who, without ANTM would have fallen off everyone's radar some time in 1972], a drag queen [who's not so much queeny or draggy as he is bored], and an over bleached eye-roller [who's snide little Sotto Voce remarks during a photo shoot usually lead to that girl's photo landing in the bottom two] who have all been know to evilly mug for the cameras every chance they get when they're supposedly "judging" which girl is "out of the running from becoming America's Next Top Model" ...) that she was reduced to a shaking pile of blubbering snot as she read an I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry apology note that made me cringe inside. So ridiculous! And yet it must have worked for her, since she went on to win.

How come when you say something by accident and feel genuinely sorry about it, the person you inadvertently hurt gets a get-out-of-jail-free card and can bash you into kingdom come – amid the cheers of onlookers? Why is it okay for someone to have unlimited access to getting you back for something you didn't mean in the first place? Obviously, I've been there once or twice.

One time involved a friend of a friend visiting town, his "fear" of condiments, my inability to stop waving a vinegar cruet in front of him, and the subsequent beat down from five other friends who all called me cruel, vicious, thoughtless, juvenile, and mean. (But look – Won*t is doubled over in hysterics! Don't you out-of-towners see that it's Really Very Funny? We'll be laughing about this one for years! The keyword will be Mustard!)

That one didn't bother me; though I'm still amazed at how, to this day, those out of town friends will repeat "Remember how mean you were to D that one time?" And yet they all have complete amnesia when it comes to the part of the trip where D got back at me ten fold every chance he got despite my Personalized Tour of New York created Especially for Six People out on a Jaunt over the Long Weekend. He was awful to me! But selective memory persists and I'm always painted as the villain who couldn't put down the ketchup for TWO SECONDS and try to understand the trauma I was causing him. Fear of condiments?? A real phobia? Someone call Dateline and arrange a sting ... I'll pose as the 14 year old holding a bottle of Frank's Red Hot sauce.

The second time isn't so easy to mock. In fact it stayed with me for days. Or, I guess ... years. I call it the Blind Kid Story.

The Blind Kid Story happened around 5 years ago but I can still put myself right there in that room and feel that powerful hatred coming at me from a total stranger all because I had to make the joke. My friend G and I were going to the movies and we were tagging along with 2 guys she knew. One was a kid I knew through her (who I'll refer to as Kid) , another guy was a complete stranger (who I'll refer to as ... Stranger).

G and I had been waiting outside Stranger's cubicle and, to kill time, I read some of the things he had pinned to his wall. A Dear Abby column caught my eye.

Some guy was writing to Abby, explaining how he lost his sight due to an illness, and how he wanted something or other and how maybe she could make that happen. And the first line she wrote back was "Dear X, your story touches me so deeply that I want to do whatever I can to help you". I didn't read any further because instead I had to say, out loud, the first thing that popped into my mind which was "If she really wanted to help him out she could have started by writing to him in braille so he could read her answer". I actually wasn't even trying to be funny ... really just making an observation that was a bit wry, IMHO.

My friend G laughed. The Kid laughed. I laughed. If Won*t had been there he'd have high-fived me with an "Oh my GOD!" gasp that outranked the laugh every time. It was probably him I was thinking about when I said it, because it was something he would have appreciated. But he wasn't there. And neither was my guaranteed shot.

Stranger looked at me with absolute pure hatred, snatched the paper out of my hand and said, "You know, that's my friend who wrote that. He's the one who went blind". So, like CariDee, I immediately blasted through a really heart felt I'm Sorry I'm Sorry I'm Sorry apology, probably more than necessary. Stranger looked me right in the eye and said "I don't need to forgive you. You're just ignorant. And nothing will ever change how you are. So I don't need to forgive you. I just need to feel sorry for the fact that you have to go through life being you."

Pause.

Here's the part where, If I'd have been smart, I'd have said good night and walked away. Or here's the part where I tell you how my friend G defended me a little bit with a "Hey, she didn't know" or even a "Well, it is a little bit true". Or here's the part where someone does something to break the tension. But for some reason, we stood there in the awkwardness and somehow still all decided to go to the movies.

We all got on the subway together (with Stranger ignoring the seat that opened up next to me opting to stand the whole way) we all searched for something to eat together (G and I headed for a Cosi, Stranger took off down the block followed by a shrugging Kid who did the gender allegiance thing) and we all watched the most sobering movie I'd ever seen – City of God. Stranger wouldn't even sit in the same row with me. Through the whole movie I could hear him thinking: "See, you ignorant bitch, see … see how awful life is for some people? What kinda joke are you gonna make about THEM, huh? Something about how that five year old kid doesn't have a HEAD anymore cuz it just got blow off by a gang banger?"

I never stopped feeling bad about what happened. And I never stopped feeling worse for how Stranger had completely misunderstood that I hadn't meant it to be mean. I just couldn't stop that dive … and I couldn't shake the Won*t legacy of thinking everything I always said was so damn funny.

Sure, a lot of time has gone by, and sure … Stranger and I never crossed paths again. And sure I had a long talk with a good friend about it on the phone that night, and dissected it till it all was better. But you know, I never stopped wishing that for that one moment back at that cubicle I didn't have such a smart mouth. And to this day, sometimes if I'm with someone who doesn't quite know me well enough, even if someone tosses a great setup my way, I'll hold my tongue and just let someone else go for the joke.

Let's All Go to the Lobby …

I go to the movies. A lot. Not like I see one every week, of course – that would be overkill. More like every OTHER week.

There are a lot of movies like The Namesake and Once (or even Crazy Love and Ratatouille) that keep me coming back. Yet every now and then I'm surprised at how I was suckered into paying ten bucks for a clunker like Epic Movie or the Omen remake (yes, I gave in to the hype and saw it on 06/06/06) both of which left me waiting for a scene bright enough to light the theatre so I could steal a look at my watch. I spent much of those movies shaking up the popcorn bag to ensure good Milk Duds distribution throughout and wiggling around in my seat trying not to imagine that there were roaches crawling across my feet. The mind wanders.

You think I'd know better, considering I'd probably seen the trailer for those movies at least five or six times. But hey, they edit those things to be funny/scary/baffling so, really, you can't blame me for being a sucker.

There was a Simpsons episode where Milhouse, all excited about his first "R" rated move, chants "Barton FINK! Barton FINK!" And the chuckle, of course, is that of all the R movies to sneak into, that ain't it, kid, that ain't it … Which was the same thing I said to myself after the first time I orchestrated my own unauthorized double feature. That ain't it, kid.

It was with my Boo, Quibbit, back in May when the theatres were so clogged with Spider-Man 3 audiences that not one monotoned "welcome to AMC Theatres, enjoy the show" usher could be bothered to prevent our little come-out-then-wander-around-by-the-refreshments-stand-then-go-back-in-again maneuver. Ha ha! Gotcha Monotoned Usher! Take THAT establishment! I'll show you ten dollars a ticket!

Except that our second feature was The Invisible.

The mostly-empty theater didn't quite tip us off --- after all, Spider-Man 3 was basically on continuous loop in 4 of the other theaters so we didn't exactly expect to be fighting the crowd for a movie that didn't have Spider in the title.

Some reviewer said that The Invisible was just like The 6th Sense which tells me that even the reviewer couldn't be bothered watching this movie --- because it was NOT "just like The 6
^th Sense". In fact it was "just like the OPPOSITE of The 6^th (I see dead people) Sense" in that it was "The (I see live people. Who are looking for me. Because I'm the one who's dead. Only no. I'm not dead. And they don't see me. So no one's seeing any dead people. Hence the title …) Invisible". Trust me – that was no spoiler. Thus no Spoiler Alert.

To be accurate The Invisible was actually just like Just Like Heaven, only without the Cure song in the credits and without the scenery being

a) chewed up by Marc Ruffalo and
b) obscured by Reese Witherspoon's chin.

I digress. Point being, my one tangle with a self-assembled double feature was so pointless that I don't attempt it any more.

Anyway … since I'm at the movies so much I get to see a lot of trailers and a lot of Coke commercials, and a lot of those Guess the Celebrity Name things (GERMANY = MEG RYAN … that's a good one) and since I love the whole movie experience so much I'm happy to get there early and laugh every time late comers stumble in with their gallons of soda and their feed bags of popcorn, scanning the seats and then taking the only empty ones available, which are either in the first row or on the extreme left. (FYI: extreme right always fills up first for some reason).

And I'll gladly sit through Hey There Delilah for the brazillionth time because it gives me one more chance to turn to Quibbit and say "Did you see the real Delilah in People Magazine? I don't get it!" And it gives him one more chance to say "I like this song … and I liked the seven hundred other versions I've hear of it that came before". (You can see the influence I've had on him.)

But lately my most looked-forward-to-moment of those 20 minutes of commercials and previews and people watching and Milk Duds distribution is the Fruit of the Loom commercial that features a duet with Vince Gill and the Apple guy. Like underwear, he's with me till I die.

This is the kind of stuff I wish I was creating in my real life … not just in my pretend life where my novels are toppling Harry Potter from the #1 spot on the Times bestseller list and my second career as a commercial jingle writer is so lucrative that it pays for a loft in Red Hook, a second home in Venice, and a yacht that takes me between the two.

You can laugh, but I teared up more at this song than I did during the scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when Sirius got killed at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange. Ooops. Spoiler Alert.