writing

I think we can all agree that the world has gone freaking crazy.

Like flip city crazy.

Whether I’m in the line at the market, pumping gas or flipping someone off, gently reminding them it’s not okay to text and drive—I swear–there’s a special brand of madness out there.

This weekend it felt different, more virulent than the generic cray, cray we’ve been living with for close to a year. You know what I mean—the up is down, black is white, and truth are lies reality that we are all attempting to navigate without losing our minds.

“Snap out of it!”

And we can’t even blame the full moon you guys, it’s too early!

Friends told me that they argued almost to the point of a duel at dawn over issues they barely care about.

Insecurity loomed large.

Our mail carrier (who drives at a glacial pace) got broadsided at the end of our block.

And I ate pie. All weekend. Like, the entire pie.

That wasn’t the only display of cray at our house this weekend. The wildlife, which you know if you read this blog has overrun our house, well, it upped the ante.

“We have a crazy squirrel”, Raphael informed me as we sat down to play cards on the patio Saturday afternoon.

“That sounds like an understatement. Have you met the squirrels around here?”

“I’m not kidding”, he continued, unamused by me. “It either has rabies or it ate some rat poison.”

“Wow. Those are terrible odds”, I replied, trying my best to stiffel a giggle. “Hey, how can you tell when a squirrel is…you know…crazy?” I was trying to make a point. I knew the squirrel hadn’t eaten poison. After the summer we all had, the entire neighborhood has rat fatigue. All our poison stations are empty. Besides, as intended, the openings are too small for the squirrels to get to the poison.

I know these things. Raphael does not.

“All I can say is it’s not acting normal.”

No one is acting normal anymore. No one.
Not our elected officials, not our relatives, not even our beloved national pastime! When the final score of a five-plus hour World Series Game is more like a football score—12-13. Normal is so far in the rearview mirror it has disappeared on the horizon.

Besides, what is normal squirrel behavior anyway? My observation has been that they run around our backyard like lunatics, hiding peanuts and fucking like…squirrels. Not a bad gig.

When I pressed him for details he just said it was acting “weird”, taunting the dog and then barely making a clean get-away.

I brushed it off. I had to survive. My experience with the fauna in our neighborhood this year has given me a form of PTSD.

Raccoons, and skunks and rats—oh my!

I just couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that the squirrels had now jumped the track.

Now, let me set the scene for this last part.
There’s a dog running around and two adults enjoying a couple of hours of cards. There’s music playing both inside and outside and patio doors open to catch a rare, cool, late October breeze.

In a nutshell…a peanut shell—there’s noise, activity, and broad daylight…and a crazy-ass squirrel lurking inside under a cabinet like Kato from the Pink Panther, waiting for us to come back in the house.

When we did—all hell broke loose. The house went full metal cray.

“That damn squirrel is in here!” Raphael yelled as he held Ruby back by the collar.

There was screaming. Even from the squirrel.

It ran into the fireplace and hid (not very well I might add) among the twigs and leaves I collect throughout the year for kindling.

The dreaded boom came out. The death broom. But Raphael was able to quickly sweep the daft little fellow back onto the patio where he stopped, fixed his hair, and did the Macarena.

Great! Now the wildlife is nuts. What’s next? Attack of the killer gardenia?

I give up.

Carry on,
xox

Throw Shade:
To talk trash about a friend or acquaintance, to publicly denounce or disrespect someone.
When throwing shade it’s immediately obvious to on-lookers that the thrower, and not the throwee, is the bitchy, uncool one.
“How does Barbara keep any friends? Last night at the party all she did was throw shade at people.”
~Urban Dictionary

Fucking Barbara.

We All know a “Barbara”, right? And maybe…on occasion… we have to admit to being a “Barbara”—but that’s beside the point.

This is about shade—and my Shadar, as I like to call it.

Just like the French cheese in my fridge, the dead rat in my attic, and a dog fart, I can smell shade coming from a mile away!

I can’t explain it. It’s one of the superpowers I’ve developed in my close to sixty years on the planet. I keep it in the same holster as my Gaydar, right next to my BS Detector.

So, in the parking lot on my way to do something I absolutely SUCK at, I could already feel my shadar going off. No worries, my guy Larry will be there, I told myself. Larry is as old as an eight-track tape deck and that comes in handy because that is the exact decade where my understanding regarding anything tech resides.

Larry is patient and kind and not judgy at all. Larry understands me.

But apparently, Larry had the audacity to retire.

Anyway, There I was—at Kinkos—to make copies of my screenplay. Now, that sounds easy enough, right? How hard could it be?

But for me, using the giant, state-of-the-art copiers they have in the “Self Serve” section is so far above my field of expertise that I may as well be launching a rocket ship to Mars. Seriously.

I get so flustered that I’m almost tempted to have the fellas at the printing desk print them for me—except for the fact that I want to make my mortgage payment this month and I can’t afford to do both.

So, Self Service it will have to be.

I got myself all set up. Great! I reassured me, That only took forty minutes.

After I swiped my credit card I pressed the big green START button on the printer. It shuddered and moaned and asked for more.

Having already entered more information than ANYONE, ANYWHERE, has EVER needed from me, I acquiesced because somehow, this seemed pertinent.

FILL PAPER—STUPID, it demanded. (I may have added the stupid part.)

Oh, shit! Right. Paper! I looked around clueless.

That’s when I saw them. Or rather I felt their shade. Three young Latinas clad in blue Kinkos smocks, all gathered up in a huddle, clucking, and snickering and looking my way.

There it was. Shade. Thrown.

I looked one of them straight in the eye. The pretty one with the bright magenta lipstick (which I’m sure was in direct violation of the Kinkos dress code. Just sayin’). She stopped her laugh in mid Ha and feigned concern.

“Whatareyoutryingtodooverthere?” she asked in a language I’d never heard before.

“I need to print some copies…uh…of a screenplay.”

The three of them rolled their eyes so dramatically that I think I felt the earth shift on its axis. Adhering to an unspoken bitches covenant, the other two turned away.

Magenta Lips had spoken to me. I was her problem now.

But not without throwing a bit more of the worst kind of shade. Latina shade.

“It says here I need paper, ha, imagine that! Paper for copies!” I chuckled in this self-effacing way I have that annoys most people.

“Yeah”, she said taking a look at my script. “Youneedthreeholedpaper”, she spit out in her special dialect.
I had no idea what she’d said so I just stood there, frozen.

“You need the paper with three holes on the side”, she yelled, exasperated. “You have to buy it. Go! Get paper!”

I took off running like a contestant on The Amazing Race and then stopped mid-stride. “Where is it?” I asked, already out of breath.

“There!” she threw her head to the left where another thirty-five thousand square feet of Kinkos yawned in the distance.

“Could you be more specific?” I asked, suppressing the urge to run back over and bite her in the face.

Her two other “sales associates” were back. They had settled in over by the stationary section to watch the 1:30 showing of:
A Dufas Makes Copies.

Shade was everywhere. It had turned total solar eclipse dark all around my copier.

I tried to shrug it off, loading the appropriate paper while my lovely Kinkos associate worked the complicated keypad like she was bringing the warp-drive online aboard the Starship Enterprise.

“There. I set it up for you”, she huffed as she walked back toward the coven.

I tried my best. I really did.
But eventually, I made so many mistakes that my Visa card’s fraud department alerted me on my phone to the fact that a schizophrenic serial copier had gotten a hold of my card—and subsequently—they froze my account. (See screen-shot above)

Oh, now Visa shade? Whatever.

When I finally finished, I prayed to God Almighty that those bitches had nothing to do with the in-store FedEx department since I had to ship a copy. But as I traversed the store my Shadar picked up the cool chill even before I saw her.

Magenta lips snickered in the corner, throwing her shade, while Debbie, a lovely, middle-aged but clearly confused and jittery victim of Stockholm’s Syndrome, patiently guided my dumb ass through the shipping process.

I smiled sweetly at Magenta Bitch the entire time, mouthing the words thank you in her direction.

At the end, I blew her a kiss. Not Debbie, although she probably needed one, Magenta, the shade thrower and her coven of bitches.

It was like throwing water on a wicked witch. They all melted. Not really. I wish. The three of them just freaked out and scattered.

I’m not sure there’s a lesson here. I just have one parting thought. Magenta Lips may have had some fierce lipstick—but my false eyelashes kicked hers to the curb.

Shade returned….and…scene.

Carry on,
xox

There was an older guy in pajama pants walking down Vineland today. Not this guy. This is Daniel Day-Lewis. And…you’re welcome.

Anyway, my guy wasn’t just strolling, he was struttin’ those pajama pants with attitude.

And Vinland isn’t some small, insignificant suburban avenue. It’s a massive four-lane highway divided by a median whose landscaping is either meticulously tended or weed-choked depending on how far into North Hollywood you go.

He was strutting’ his pajama ass in the transitional section of Vineland—which made sense somehow.

This guy was edgy.

His pajama pants weren’t dandy—dark paisley and silk. Nor were they dirty cotton with frayed cuffs and a fly that doesn’t close anymore (I look for stuff like that).

They were simple, lightweight, hunter green plaid…ish.
In other words, pajama perfection.

On the top he was wearing an old concert t-shirt, that was so faded (and not in a bad, I don’t give a shit way. More like an I love this band so much I’ve worn this t-shirt out kind of way, which I think we can all agree is better) I couldn’t be sure, but I think it was The Police which makes me swoon a little—I’m not gonna lie.

He was also sporting a tanned bald head. And not your old man, bullet head kind of bald.
We’re talkin’ Bruce Willis bald.
Vin Diesel bald.
Sean Connery bald.
Ed Harris bald.
You get the picture.

So, now I’m intrigued (and a little bit smitten).

Here’s this dude struttin’ his pajama-clad self down Vinland in the middle of the day right where I’m slowing down to look for a meter. So what did I do?

I opened my window and “woo-hoo’d” him. I swear to God.

Like construction workers have done since time immemorial, I cat called the guy!

The minute I woo-hoo’d him I wanted to take it back and not for the reasons you think. I didn’t feel bad for objectifying him or guilty for being a hypocrite by exhibiting my own special brand of sexual harassment.

Nope. I wanted to die because he was so fucking cool that a woo-hoo was beneath him!

And no wonder. When he looked over to see what idiot was making a fool of herself, I recognized his quirky smile.

It was John Malkovich.

At least I think it was.

And I bet he thinks I did that because he’s a celebrity (and I would NEVER because…lame) I did it because he was hot and sometimes I’m the poster child for bad behavior.

Oh well.

Carry on,
xox

*Please tell me you’ve done something similar!

This is Chuck.

Sure, Chuck is cute. As a matter of fact, I think we can all agree that with her googly eyes and flipped up windows—Chuck is cute af.

In a lot full of average cars like Saturns and Kias—Chuck is a showstopper. She’s even been known to elicit whistles, shouts, and catcalls on her weekly Sunday morning drives. And since she’s close to sixty, Chuck finds this newfound appreciation intoxicating, so she works very hard to stay grounded.
Unintimidating.
A real car’s car.

But this Sunday Chuck had the misfortune to be seated at the party next to this overdressed, blue, Italian bitch.

Gah! Even though they were both combustion engine vehicles, Chuck felt like a blender next to the Bugatti.

Hey! Big deal! You’re a Bugatti. We get it! You’re sexy and shiny and…

Her engine raced. Her oil boiled. Sure, the Bugatti’s paint job was perfect, her design flawless, and her engine purred like a sexy panther, but seriously, under the hood were they really that different?

Yes, Yes they were.

With 1,471 horsepower separating them, the Bugatti could go from 0-250 mph and back to 0 in 42 sec.
Chuck could barely make it to 60 mph (coughing and sweating) in the same time!

Not everybody likes fast! Chuck reasoned. I’m slow and dependable…and with my lawnmower-sized engine, I’m both affordable and low maintenance, something the Bugatti could never claim to be!

Chuck pulled in her fenders and tucked in her tush feeling inadequate and small.

A few minutes later she could feel someone staring at her. That’s impossible, I’m invisible next to this bitch…but Chuck was wrong. She glanced up to find the Bugatti’s Melania Trump sideways stare focused on her like a laser beam.

Doah youeh have a ah cigarette? The Bugatti purred in her syrupy Italian accent.

A cigarette…uh, no. Firehazard? Chuck answered. Gawd. Why did I say that? Fiyarhazrdddd. What a sarcastic, jealous little car I am!

Si, si. Youah rigght. Don’t smokeah. Ew cahn’t geta the smelleh outa youra polstry… I like youra flippy windoz. Thehra molto bello, the Buggati said, finishing with a heavy sigh.

Well, everything about you is fantastic! You’re so lucky to be so beautiful and fast and worth so much money!  Chuck gushed to her new best friend.

Occhiata, Youeh areah the fortuna one. Youeh make evreeebody smiiile. Bambini. Nonna. Evreeebody. Me? Solo uomini. Only Men. Men witha airy chests and grande…how you say? Wallets

That must suck, Chuck replied with a minimum of sarcasm. She was under no illusion that the Bugatti was truly sad or lonely—it was more likely she was just bored.

Then it dawned on Chuck that maybe this Bugatti babe was on to something.

Everybody did love her. Babies, Grandmas! And Chuck was never bored. She loved her family, their little brown dog, her googly eyes, and her small little life.

I aim to be more like Chuck.

Carry on,
xox

*Addendum: I was just informed that like all good bitches, Bugattis are French! C’est La Vie!