THAT'S NOT ME...

I don't know. As I sit here (on an air mattress, in my friend regi's living room) with my belongings exploding out of a dufflel bag on the floor and the rest of what i own, crammed into the Ford Contour parked outside or in a Public Storage locker out by Burbank Airport, for all intents and purposes homeless and broke, and apparently a soon to be divorced alcaholic, part of me still thinks I just described someone else's sad story. That's not me.

But apparently it is.

Fuck. They say in AA that the first step is admitting we were powerless over alcahol, that our lives had become unmanageable. Well, one out of two...ok, kidding. I don't actually believe that. There is an arrogance not uncommon to newcomers that makes us believe that we can handle all of this ourselves. "Hell what do you mean I'm powerless over this shit. i got three weeks" While I'm still leatning a lot about the why and how of my drinking, my life has become unmanageable.

But it was time to end my drinking career. The blackouts had begun.Strange unnerving things had begun happening involving it. Physically, it had begun to do great damage. All of which began two years ago when my wife decided she could no longer be in the marriage. But, understand, dear reader (you fucker) that my reactions to that are entirely my responsibility.

The blackouts were interesting. After Karen and the girls left and I put my stuff in storage, i found myself staying at the Piersons, housesitting. One night after an evening of drinkling, I drove home and found myself struggling with the keys at the front door in that way one does, getting used to a new location. I got in and went to sleep. I woke in the morning and started to get dressed. I realized I couldn't find my pants. I looked under everything, went through thr house recreating half remembered half imagined scenarios from the night before. No pants, wallet, phone, car keys. I start to get angry. For some reason, I decide to go to the front door and open it. On the stoop, yes, my pants. For some reason, as I stuggled to open the door last night, something told me that I'd do it better pantless.

Horrifed, I dressed quickly trying to stifle the scenarios of the discovery of my episode if my hosts were around rattling around myhead. This was new. And it scared me. As it turned out, not enough.

A few weeks later, I found myself wandering around Universal Studios Jurrasic Parking structure, looking for my car. At one point I shook my head as if waking myself and I realized that I had no idea how i got there and what I had done while I was there. I kept walking every level of that garage which by this time was nearly empty. And again. security drove me around. No car. Which required me to file a stolen car report with the police there, after which I took a cab home, "Home" being another friend's couch. I drove their car to the Oyster House, where I found mine, which raised more questions than it answered. How did I get to universal? Was I alone? What did I do there and before? The best I could verify was that the OH called a cab for me again, which instead of taking me home, for some reason took me to Universal.

Again, deep embarassment. But still my secret.

About a week after that, while driving on the freeway, very suddenly a sharp, headache erupted like a grenade in the center of my head. I grabbed my forehead and said aloud "what the fuck is this??" I had the worst headache of my life for a week and was vomitting contantly. About five days after that on the way out of the OH, I collapsed and once again getting out of the car. I ended up in the emergency room and then admitted to the hospital with a cerebral hemmorrrage and a minor heart attack. I stayed there for a week which I'm told included extensive detox.

While ignoring high blood pressure was the outward culprit it was impossible to ignore the role my drinking played. It was obvious it was time to stop. I broke the news to the OH that they weren't going to need to keep as much Patron in stock anymore (I was never a cheap drunk)

I go to AA. I have a sponsor, but i look in the mirror and no longer reocgnize the person on it. I don't like him. He is a self centered liar. I want to change that.

That's not me.

Here is the first chapter of my unfinished novel from which I drew the title of my lil blog...enjoy....

Malcolm Orange’s pudgy, balding older brother scowled at him from the bathroom mirror. Sure, he was an only child, but what other explanation could there be? The gut hanging over the boxers of the poor bastard repulsed him. Tufts of hair shot from the back and shoulders of the reflection, as if to compensate for the thinning scalp. Gray edged apologetically into the hair and goatee. How could anyone let themselves go so badly? Who was this schlubby lump of goo?

Mirrors had become a cruel joke to Malcolm. His world view hadn’t changed. He was a life long Democrat, although he had begun the edging towards the politcal middle that occurs in one’s mid -thirties. Culturally, he thought he was pretty hip, unaware that describing himself that way made him exactly the opposite.

His health was another matter. Malcolm willfully ignored the alarms his body sounded. He had gained about thirty pounds in the past ten years largely through his inclusion of Heineken and Hostess products as major nutrition groups. Whenever he forgot about his added girth, his memory was refreshed when he found himself short of breath after such grueling activities as getting out of his favorite chair or tying a shoe.

All of his maladies conspired to paint the portrait of the stranger in the mirror. A paunch, thinning hair, tired eyes begging for glasses that Malcolm refused to consider all pointed to one inescapable fact. Malcolm was middle - aged. Forty, precisely, and more brutally, forty today.

But was it all an illusion? Some trick of time and space precipitated by, who knows? Stress? Lack of fiber? Cell phones?
Malcolm darted out of the room and hid in the hallway. After a count to “Three Mississippi”, he leaped into the bathroom.

“Ah - ha!”

Sadly, his reflection was not taken by surprise, springing fiercely at him. Startled, Malcolm slipped on the bath mat, Wile E. Coyote - like, treading air as he tumbled backwards. Time slowed. He noticed a rusty - yellow water stain on the ceiling for the first time. As Malcolm made a mental note to call the landlord about the substandard plumbing, his skull caromed off the toilet with a clang that Malcolm vaguely placed as a G sharp. A thousand flashbulbs went off as he landed on the tile and the room faded to black.

For most people the fall would have surely caused severe injury, or worse, but Malcolm was blessed with the most prominent and peculiar of Orange family traits. Oddly, it was twenty - seven years ago, to the day he learned of it.
Malcolm attended his first baseball game on his thirteenth birthday. On an August evening thick with humidity, he sat with his father and his younger brother Maynard ten rows behind the Red Sox dugout, in one of the hallowed halls of the sport, Boston’s Fenway Park. Malcolm and his brother were loaded down with hot dogs, pretzels and sodas watching the Red Sox battle the hated New York Yankees. By the third inning, the Red Sox were losing eight to two and Malcolm was suffering the first of his life long bouts with indigestion.

“Dad, do you have a Tums?”

“What the hell do you need a Tums for?” asked his father, as if there was some sinister motive behind Malcolm’s making a play for the yummy antacid goodness wedged into his hip pocket.

“I ate too much.”

“Good for you, buddy.”

“I feel really sick.”

“Jesus Christ, son. You’re supposed to go to a ball game and eat like a goddamn pig. If you don’t, you’re not really a fan.”

Years later, when his fathers weight, blood pressure and cholesterol all hit two hundred sixty and he dropped dead, Malcolm found comfort in the thought, well, there goes a real fan.

His father reached into his right hip pocket to extract the roll of Tums. Stuffing his sausag - y fingers into Calvin Klein jeans two sizes too small, he grunted and pulled out a couple of crumpled lottery tickets and an unwrapped stick of gum.

As he burrowed deeper into the pocket, his wallet popped into the air.

On the field, Ron Guildry, a left hander with nasty stuff, whipped into his wind - up. Carlton Fisk, Red Sox catcher and future Hall of Fame inductee, awaited the pitch.

The wallet executed two perfect mid air turns.

Guidry kicked high and pushed hard off the rubber, unleashing a fast ball which began in the middle of the plate and as it hummed closer, tailed to the outside corner.

The wallet did another one eighty on the way down.

Fisk rightly anticipated fast ball and strode forward, coiling his bat, leaning in as the pitch moved away from him.

“Shit!” Arthur bent down to retrieve his wallet.

Fisk swung, making contact off the end of his bat, lining a rope into the first base stands, marked for the death of the ticket holder of Section J, Seat 10 -

Who was at the moment, hunched over, unsticking his wallet from a puddle of congealed ball park muck.

Malcolm, the ticket holder of Section J, Seat 12 wondered why his father insisted on wearing such tight jeans. He was too young to recognize his dad’s embarrassing taste for what it was in truth, a desperate attempt to ward off middle - age by suffocating it in denim.

Witnesses later described the sound of the baseball drilling Malcolm’s head as not unlike that of a coconut being cracked open.

Malcolm woke up at Massachusetts General Hospital. The wconcerned face of Carlton Fisk hovered over him like a Thanksgiving Day balloon.

“You’re looking good, pal.”

Why Carlton Fisk had any interest in his well - being puzzled Malcolm, though, not nearly as much as the television lights and the microphones now being shoved in his face. Later, Malcolm learned he was, according to the Boston Herald, “Coma Boy” and that a local television station had begun a “Malcolm’s Miracle” fund for his medical bills which had nearly eight thousand dollars in it’s coffers.

The medical community hummed with discussion of Malcolm’s survival. For a good week afterwards, specialists from across the world made pilgriages to Malcolm’s bedside to fondle, poke and scrutinize his head as if they were checking an exotic fruit for ripeness. During a lull in the showcase, his father pulled a chair up to Malcolm’s bed.

“You got the Orange Skull, son. The skulls of all of the men in the Orange family are anywhere from an eighth of an inch to, in the case of your uncle Stan, nearly two inches thicker than the average human skull.”

There were many traits which Malcolm would have welcomed as a genetic legacy. Musical ability, the skill to run a four minute mile, the rugged good looks of a Russell Crowe, for example. Hallelujah, he had the “Orange Skull”. It was only a matter of time before the carny circuit beckoned.

“Step right up and watch the Amazing Malcolm stop a for - ty five caliber bullet with his Notorious Noggin! Huh - ry! Hurry! Hurry!”

But, as his skull smashed into the tile and brain matter ricocheted within, the three - quarters extra inch of thickness did indeed make a difference, turning a life - threatening concussion into a mere bump on the head. After about fifteen minutes, Malcolm’s eyes opened.

He propped himself on his elbows, trying to piece together what had occurred. All he knew was that his head was pounding and he felt like an asshole. He stood and looked into the mirror. Shit. Still forty.

Malcolm desperately searched for a cliché’ to comfort himself.

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

Uh huh. If today was the poster child for that little bromide, Malcolm figured he should chug his wife Carolyn's Vicodin while chasing it with a Nyquil shooter. Except Malcolm knew he could never commit suicide at home. It seemed to him the ultimate “fuck you” to off yourself where loved ones could find you. Why not go the whole nine yards and pin a note to your corpse, reading “And how was YOUR day?”

Malcolm opened the door of the shower and turned on the water, which sprayed contemptuously,

“Fourrr - teee.”

He calibrated the hot and cold faucets which squealed,

“Fffooouuurrr - tttyyy.”

At precisely eleven and two o’ clock, optimum temperature was achieved. As the steam billowed over the doors, he stepped inside.

He tipped his head back and closed his eyes, letting the water run down his face. In about an hour, he and Carolyn would walk into Harry’s Kung - Pao Pueblo for a birthday dinner. Harry’s was a funky joint which served some of the best Thai - food in Los Angeles. If the only indignity he suffered was the singing of a loud, off - key birthday ditty by the kitchen staff, the evening would be painless. His only goal was to usher his fortieth birthday through the front door and into a dark back room quieckly and quietly, locking it away like some mentally defective relative.

Malcolm shot a squib of Pert Shampoo For Normal Hair into his palm. As he lathered up, he realized that a bottle lasted a lot longer than it did a few years ago, when his hair was longer. He rationalized that styles have changed, it wasn’t a balding thing. He calmed himself by calculating his shampoo savings since 1988.

It wasn’t a bad life, really. He loved movies and was paid to write about them. He was known at the paper as a stylish writer, but it was an ongoing source of amusement that no one could recall the last time he panned anything. It wasn’t unusual to read newspaper ads for the most reviled movie of the year carrying a quote from one of Malcolm’s raves.

“Little Nicky” - “Adam Sandler is a a national comic treasure!” Malcolm Orange - Burbank Times.

“Freddy Got Fingered” - “Tom Green is this generation’s Adam Sandler” - Malcolm Orange - Burbank Times.

“Town and Country” - “Comedy, thy name is Warren Beatty!” - Malcolm Orange - Burbank Times.

Malcolm loved movies. With a capital L. With a “I know he hits me but if you really understood him, you’d see he’s under a lot of stress” devotion. He was the perfect doting parent and each movie was a drooling newborn, flawless, perfect and beautiful in it’s own stumbling, mewling, shitting way.

There were grumblings at the paper that Malcolm gave everything raves simply to see his name in print. He was a “studio whore” in it to suck up to the big guys for the perks.

Malcolm didn’t care. He was well - liked. In fact, at the paper, Malcolm realized he was pretty much universally considered a nice guy. No one had a bad thing to say about him. When push came to shove, no one had anything to say about him.

The water pressure fluctuated briefly and the spray hissed.

“Nniii -sssssseeee.”

Nice. Maybe it was the shampoo seeping into his scalp, but the word resonated. Nice. What did that mean? Memorable? Beloved? impressive? Nice. Unobjectionable. Not bad, not exceptional. Nice. Inconsequential. Liked, maybe, but certainly not loved. Ignored, possibly, but not important enough to be hated. “Have a nice day.” Don’t have too exceptional a day, I don’t want that for you, I just hope your day will be ordinary. No peaks too high, no valleys too low. Nice.

The lather oozed down his forehead and stung his eyes. Malcolm squeezed them shut and held them closed. God, it was true. He was a nice guy who did an unimportant job. Who just turned forty. In Burbank.

Malcolm stopped in mid - shampoo. He had lost track of how many times he had lathered, rinsed and repeated.

Downstairs, Carolyn Orange wondered what Emeril Legase was like in bed. Every time she saw him on The Food Channel, her thoughts drifted from the Crawfish Etoufee he was preparing, tossing dashes of his “essence”, a spice combination known only to him, with cries of “bam” to imagining herself as the recipient of those very same “Bams”.

Her evening with Emeril always followed the same scenario. He would prepare a sumptuous meal like Oysters Canou. Carolyn would listen to Emeril tell the story of Dallas “Canou” Toups, the Louisiana fisherman the dish was named after, as he shucked the two dozen oysters necessary for the dish. She’d prop herself up on an unused section of the granite countertop (her fantasy kitchen) crossing her legs to flash a milky white thigh. (her fantasy complexion).

Laughter, conversation and wine flowed freely through dinner. Then Emeril would surprise her with a special dessert for the occasion. Tonight, it would be a praline pound cake as decadent as the evening promised to become.

The bedroom was warm and dark. A ceiling fan rotated languidly, lending atmosphere, though not any coolness which was fine with her. She reclined nude among the voluminous pillows. A slow Dixieland waltz played in the darkness.

“Carolyn?”

“I’m waiting, Emeril.’

The curtains around the bed parted, Emeril embraced her. Their sweat mingled as he kissed her deeply. Was that an andouile sausage she felt or ---

A voice from upstairs snapped Carolyn back to Burbank.

“Carolyn, where is my cashmere sweater?”

God, where the hell else would his cashmere sweater be?

“On the top shelf of the closet in the cedar box. Where it always is.”

“Oh. Yeah. Thanks.”

Carolyn closed her eyes and tried to transport herself back to the French Quarter, but to no avail. Shit. After eight years of marriage, sex with Malcolm held all the fire and spontaneity of well, anything done several hundred times exactly the same damn way. A nice loving way, certainly, but sometimes a girl just needs a “bam”.

Malcolm strode downstairs.

“How do I look?”

He gave a fashion model spin, showing off his black cashmere sweater, which he wore over a navy Brooks Brothers shirt, with gray cords and L.L. Bean loafers. It was a look he hit out of the ballpark.

“You look nice.”

Malcolm stared at her for a very long time.

The Art of the Meet and Greet

When you reach the lofty heights of sporadic employment in show business that I have people make several assumptions about you. You must have cracked a code, learned the secret handshake or sold your soul to the devil to have achieved even your level of modest success.

(For the record, Satan and I have not done business together, although we have been trading calls.)

For those of you imagining the wild Malibu parties and drug fueled orgies we of working Hollywood are constantly enjoying, I won’t discourage that impression. Just give my regards to President Carter and the rest of the 1970’s. The truth is that day-to-day life of working Hollywood is much more mundane. Most of it pivots around an odd, deceptively simple sounding ritual, The Meeting.

The Meeting can take on several forms, the most common of which is the “Meet and Greet”. Think of the Meet and Greet as a job interview where there’s no specific job involved and the person you’re meeting has no power to hire you. You are there, whether as a writer, actor or director, to meet an executive at a network or studio so when their superiors are discussing prospective writers, directors or actors, the executive can say,

“Yeah, I met him.” And so the wheel turns.

“Meet and Greets” are all pretty much the same. Let’s say you are a new writer that CBS has requested to meet in preparation for staffing season, when new shows are hiring their writers.

The phone call comes from your agent. (How to get one is a tale for another day) You have a “Meet and Greet” with a VP of Comedy at the network, who loved your “Two and A Half Men” writing sample. You hang up the phone, convinced that your rocket to the top has begun. You tell your manager at work that Starbucks can find another barista; you have a “Meet and Greet”!

Your manager smiles enigmatically, wishes you good luck and turns back to typing on his laptop. While leaving, you glance over his shoulder and manage to catch a quick glimpse at his “Desperate Housewives” spec script.

The day of your meeting, you drive to the gate and give the guard your name. He pulls your pass up from the computer and directs you to a parking space, usually nowhere near where you’ll ultimately be going. You park the car and get out. As you walk across the lot to your meeting, you silently take it all in. “Wow, there’s Bob Barker’s parking spot”. “Is that Ted Danson?” “Maybe I’ll run into Leeza Gibbons! That’d be sweet.”

You’ll get to the office of the VP of Comedy. Understand that titles in Hollywood are nothing to be intimidated by. Think of them as ambassadorships. It’s a much easier meeting to take if you think you’re sitting across from the Ambassador to Luxembourg.

You walk into the reception area and give your name. The comely young receptionist gives you a dazzling smile that makes you melt and believe that you are destined to be together forever. That, in all likelihood, will not happen.

You, hopefully, will have arrived promptly. Always a good strategy if tempered with the knowledge that your Meet and Greet will never begin on time. The executive will have calls to juggle, other Meet and Greets that day and more. Like a doctor, their schedule can be thrown off by a single late call or unexpected event. (And like a doctor, the executive will also be suffering from an unwarranted “god complex”)

You will be offered coffee, soda of some kind, or water. Always take the beverage. If possible, have a subsequent request, just nothing exotic or obnoxious. A pedicure, for example, would be going too far. Simply request enough to make them remember you. If you ask for coffee, ask for creamer, but if all they have is the powdered stuff, change to a Coke instead. Show them that their job is to take care of you, even now. But, be charming, always.

Eventually, you will be ushered into the executive’s office. The first question you will be asked is if you need anything to drink, even if you’re carrying your beverage in from the reception area. Leave your first drink in the reception area and ask for another one. Allow the executive to make this gesture for you. Let them enjoy their power. They may not have it next week.

You will enter the office and be faced with what seat to take. Take the couch. Quickly note the personal items in the executive’s office, whether it’s movie memorabilia, sports stuff or pictures of their children and come up with one thing to say about them. “Hey, how about those Red Sox?” “Boy, I really loved Caddyshack 2” “Your daughter’s goiter is almost unnoticeable.”

This is the small talk portion of the Meet and Greet. The executive will ask you about your background, mostly because they like being reminded that people come from somewhere else and don’t pop out of a pod somewhere in the basement of the Writer’s Guild Building. Have a story about the time your crazy Uncle Ernie dressed up in your mom’s prom dress and held up a gas station. Just make it the funny version.

The conversation will inevitably turn to your career, or your aspirations if your career hasn’t begun. Two tips here: 1) Your career goal is to direct/write/act in something exactly like that executive’s most recent success. 2) Resist the temptation to break into sobs and say something like,

“I just want to work. I have no money. I have no other skills. My family thinks I’m crazy.”

(Unfortunately, I learned Tip #2 the hard way.)

The conversation will continue through vague banter about current movies or TV, to more specific discussion of the executive’s current projects. Your passion and desire to be involved in them cannot be oversold. Again, though, any weeping should be confined to tears of rapture that such a comic gem as “My Stepson is a Gay Alien” with Jim Belushi could find it’s way on to their fall schedule and how it would be the creative pinnacle of your career to be hired on that show.

Eventually, the conversation will start to double back on itself. Your first clue will be the awkward silences and the clumsy segues back to topics already covered. “So, from Boston, huh?”

In the real world, when called into an interview, at some point, the interviewer will have gotten all of the information they need and will close the meeting. “Well, thanks for coming in. We have a lot of people to talk to. We’ll let you know.”

That will not happen in Hollywood. Think of the Hall of Presidents in Disneyland. Like the automatons of past Chief Executives (or the denizens of Country Bear Jamboree, for that matter), the executives are on an internal meeting loop that will repeat until you close the meeting yourself, thanking them for their time and getting out of there.

If you don’t, you run a serious risk of an executive malfunction. While there is no actual record of what happens when one occurs, there is a rumor that a small fire at Universal Studios in 1996 resulted when a writer on a Meet and Greet with an executive kept waiting for the exec to close the meeting. The resulting short circuit and fire caused extensive damage throughout the Black Tower.

You will leave the office and drive off the lot. You will call your agent and tell them that the meeting went great. They will promise to check in with the network and get back to you. A couple of hours later, you learn that the executive thought you were “ A really nice guy.” You never hear from CBS again.

You are depressed. You go to your favorite bar. The bartender asks you what is wrong. You reply that you just had your first “Meet and Greet”. The bartender groans sympathetically and pours you a draft, even though you didn’t ask for one.

Always take the beverage. But just the one. You have two more “Meet and Greets” tomorrow.

SHAKIRA, FERGIE AND BRITNEY

For your basic red blooded guy, the greatest fashion development of the past thirty years is the return of the midriff. We who came of age in the seventies were met by the innocent, hippie "halter tops", which completely disappeared in the black leathered 80'. But, hallelujah, midriffs made a triumphant return in the 90's and show no signs of ever leaving.

They've become imbedded in pop culture fashion (which is a double edged sword for me, a dad of two girls) but with Britney, Fegie, Christine Aguilera and Shakira, among others, "Sexy" has a new standard.

You want "Pouty Psuedo Virginal Slut?" Meet Mrs. Federline. "Skanky, But I'd Fuck Her For A Vial of Pennicillin" Then Ms. Aguilera is more your taste.

Fergie is in her own category. The best singer and the most earned sexy quotient. She's not play acting or pushing it, like the first two women.

But, then there is Shakira. The ethnic quality adds to it, sure, she sings well, and is the most naturally hot, but this is all with a qualifcation. I'm not sure she is of the same species as the rest of the women on this list.

Let me explain. I love pizza. I am from Boston, a fine pizza city and now live in Los Angeles, a pizza wasteland. I recently spent some time in New York and had pizza all over the city, all of it spectacular. But at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge on the Brooklyn side is a place called Garibaldi's (I think)

I ate their pizza. I came to one simple conclusion. Their pizza was so astonishing and singular, that either no one else should be allowed to use the term "pizza" again, or Garibaldi's needs to call theirs something else.

Garibaldi's is the Shakira of pizza. Her unforced, smoldering sexiness, her uindenialable talent.

And that midriff. I'd wax poetic about its sinewy goodness, it's mind and agenda all its own, but that would make me sound insane. Remember John Hurt in Alien? How the creature burst horrifically from his stomach during that dinner scene? I watch Shakira gyrate thorugh a song and I easily believe that undulating somewhere between her rib cage and her navel is a cobra trying to escape.

Good god, she makes Fergie's belly look like mine.

A thought. Does that make Domino's the Britney Spears of pizza?

WHY FERGIE, WHY?

During the 2004 Presidential campaign I was lucky enough to attend a Democratic fundraiser in Los Angeles. The entertainment was the Black Eyed Peas. I was a fan going in. (And not just of Fergie's midriff) "Elephunk" was a great, infectious album with several cuts that were instant classics.

Live, they did not disappoint. Fergie looked seriously hot, sounded even better and the group as a whole not only put on a terrific show, but their rendition of "Where Is The Love" turned the entire theater into a church. Sensational.

I walked out of there thinking that they had me in their pocket for years to come. So, how did such a great group burn away all of the goodwill they built up with me almost instantly?

Well, a steaming piece of crap called "Monkey Business" was all they needed, as it turned out. The first single, "Don't Phunk With My Heart" was unmemorable except for a video that was more stupid than funny. "Don't Lie" a pretty good single and the video wasn't bad, so there was really no reason to expect the Peas to follow that with a single that combined the two essentials of being excruiciatingly awful and inescapable.

I saw the video - highlighting Fergie with a midriff enitrely covered - should have been a sign, in retrospect - and I watched nearly half of it before I realized that I was watching the Peas. And once I did, it was with the frozen horror of the little kid that approached Shoeless Joe Jackson at the height of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal and pleaded "Say it isn't so, Joe."

I pulled into my garage this afternoon and unloaded my two daughters 8 and 3. The eight year old was singing the newest song that was going through her little head.

"My humps.
My humps.
My lovely lady lumps..."

I closed my eyes and willed the noise to stop, but it was joined by her worshipful three year old sister.

And as they danced arounfd the garage their voices echoed...

"My humps, My humps My humps. MY HUMPS!!!!'

Jesus Christ. Say it isn't so, Fergie.

DIDJA MISS ME?

I had intended to do an Oscar recap, offering my take on the Awards and Jon Stewart's work...but sadly, I have the same window of interest the general public has...fervent through the first commerical break and dropping like a rock after that. And, once the show ends...by about noon the next day, just about the time Colin Farrell has risen with his hangover, my Oscar hangover is gone.

So, Stewart, very good....weird, tense crowd, Clooney rocked, great speech, coolest guy in town, Stiller, funny, good taped bits, too damn many montages, though and what the fuck?...Crash is best picture? Even threw Nicholson for a loop. Glad it's over - can't wait till next year.

MY OSCAR GOES TO...

First of all, I love the Oscars. With all of the self congratulatory, overblown elements that come with them, they do really attempt to (and largely suceed) in honoring some of the best work of the year. Sure, it's an imperfect, subjective, apples to oranges horse race, but if you care about good movies getting attention (as opposed to popular movies getting attention) It's a very satisfying enterprise.

(I will refrain for now, from addressing the Academy's blind spot for comedy and the very valid point that by nature of having five nominees that there are grievous oversights yearly)

My favorite element, while most derided by many, are the speeches. All of them in fact, because you are truly witnessing the peak moment of someone's life and that is unbeatble drama. I love watching the dweeb from Iceland accepting his Best Documentary Short Award as much as I love the human drama of the team from Iceland unexpectedly winning Olympic gold in the eluge.

And I love the "stars" speeches most of all, because no matter how big they've gotten or how warped by a career in Hollywood, they all began the same way, watching those Oscars as a kid and thinking about what they'd say if they won one. That is who walks up to get that trophy.

Of course, some of my fondness for that stems from having my speech written since I was fourteen. The categories have changed, the "thank you's" are constantly being revised, but the year my name is called at the Oscars, (or the Emmys or Tony's for that matter) I'll have a speech as tight as a drum.

And that is what life in Hollywood is like when all is said and done. "High school with money" is still the definitive quote but I'd like to add "Community theater on steroids."

My Oscar picks to follow.