blah blah blog

My Holiday Essay

AN ANGEL GETS HER WINGS

40 years ago I was a small girl in a small town experiencing my first season of schooling. I was in Kindergarten at Holy Angels Catholic School in Aurora, Illinois. I was four.

There are two significant things that happened to me in this place of education in what should have been a forgettable year. The first story has been told so many times by family members I feel like I remember being there, though I think it’s just a matter of repeating it so many times, I picture myself there, like a dream, like after so many tellings OJ convincing himself he was somewhere else. Continued...

AN ANGEL GETS HER WINGS

40 years ago I was a small girl in a small town experiencing my first season of schooling. I was in Kindergarten at Holy Angels Catholic School in Aurora, Illinois. I was four.

There are two significant things that happened to me in this place of education in what should have been a forgettable year. The first story has been told so many times by family members I feel like I remember being there, though I think it’s just a matter of repeating it so many times, I picture myself there, like a dream, like after so many tellings OJ convincing himself he was somewhere else.

That was the story of the nun deciding to put me on a bus two weeks earlier than instructed. On a bus to our new house that wasn’t finished yet. To a barely there subdivision in the middle of cornfields. A bus to nowhere. While I cried and told them that they were wrong to put me on this purgatorial big yellow sarcophagus, my father sat in the parking lot of Holy Angels eventually figuring it out when I didn’t show up, then racing through town to beat the bus to the middle of nowhere. Did I mention that I was four? It was like in today’s times being snatched by the creepy neighbor guy and taken to the mall - but in this case, it was masterminded by a nun.

The second incident I DO remember like it was yesterday. Albeit forty years of yesterdays. This is the tale of a typical Catholic persecution – a little virgin princess in dire need, turned away at the door to solace. There I was, a cute pixie with a pixie and a tiny, curled smile that didn’t leave till high school. I was shy and timid and sweet. Sweet and cute – a little angel dammit!

It was the last day of school before Christmas break. It was snowing while we were crafting our last oh holy of holy Christmas projects. Twenty or thirty four-year-olds, a stack of paper plates, a pile of pinecones, some glue and some snowy, glittery stuff. We made “center pieces” for our family’s mealtime celebration of the birth of Jesus. A snowy, glittery pinecone glued to a snowy glittery paper plate. Maybe there were crayons involved – I picture an early Jackson Pollock, Crayola scratches, swirling around the pinecone on paper. Oh, holy day, the stars are brightly shining on these masterpieces.

On this day for some reason, there was a Father So-and-So visiting the classroom. And for some reason this did not make Sister Mary Ratched behave any nicer towards these little waifs. Or maybe it was just me she had it in for – the little angelic smiley kid who quietly did her work and didn’t ask questions.

At the end of the day, the blizzard began. Maybe this pissed off Sister Mary Ratched because this meant she wouldn’t be able to go ice-skating later. Whatever it was, it seemed that I was going to be the subject of her habit-wrapped fury.

While Father So-and-So stood silent, Sister Mary Ratched lined us up in two rows, waiting for that final bell to let us out for the holidays. We were wrapped up in our tiny parkas and mittens attached to the sleeves by little elastic cords and clasps. Some of the boys in full snowsuits and tiny hunting caps. We were little lambs with glitter in our hair and on our faces bundled for the blizzard.

Snow just meant snow to kids - the most important thing to these wee future disciples were the “center pieces”. No doubt we were so proud to place them in the middle of Christmas dinner not knowing till years later that our mothers couldn’t wait to throw them away or say shucks when our bigger, older, brute of a brother destroyed it before it ever made it there.

Picture two lines of kids puffy from padding and our grandma’s knit scarves, carrying their day’s creation, like an offering to the baby Jesus. A precursor to First Communion and Confirmation, everything was done in order. But damned if we were going to let a blizzard ruin our hard work! Unfortunately there was something awry in that plan for me.

Sister Mary Ratched had a stack of plastic bags and began to hand them out, slowly walking down each row, handing them to each child to put their “center piece” in the bag. Wait! She passed me up! Wait! I wasn’t invisible! I know I was tiny - and feeling tinier by the second but she couldn’t possibly have not SEEN me! Was this another ceremony I didn’t know about? Some kind of order to things that would make sense later? No, wait, she’s given them to everybody. Except me! It seemed like forever while we waited for that bell. I know I gingerly nudged my paper plate out so she could see that I was missed, like Oliver Twist asking for another plate of slop. I was an orphan left INSIDE in the cold. She ignored me in the most obvious way. She gave Father So-and-So the rest of the plastic bags to hold. He hovered over us saying nothing. No one was supposed to say anything. My pinecone fell over. It was no longer jutting out from the plate welcoming Christmas. I put it upright, it fell over. Put it upright, it fell over. Sister Mary Ratched paced up and down the rows, hands clasped behind her back, watching my breakdown out of the corner of her wrinkled brow. I started to sniffle and then tears just rolled down my cheeks uncontrollably. I could FEEL Father So-and-So watching me, standing there with a handful of bags, doing nothing. All of a sudden Sister Mary Ratched was beside me, shooting me an evil eye, spinning towards Father So-and-So spewing in her worst Tom Waits-in-a-giant-penguin-suit whiskey voice, “Ah, give the little brat a bag!”

*
After that it was a blur in a blizzard. The next thing I remember I was at our new home, in the new neighborhood in the middle of cornfields, going into my mother’s sewing room in the back of the house where she hid from us all. She’d probably deny it, but wouldn’t you have a sewing room in the back of the house if you if you had six kids? No complaints here – I got a lot of really cute clothes out of it. So there I was pleading with her however sheepishly, to not send me back to Catholic school – I was HER little lamb, not theirs, after all!

I’m sure the cute factor was on my side, but that wasn’t the only thing that got me into public school the next year. My next older sister was pleading the same thing from the hallows of fifth grade suffering Sister Mary Witch-Of-The-West. My oldest sister was creating havoc at Rosary High School, soon to be kicked out for coming to school in jeans and bare feet and possibly other indiscretions we weren’t told about. My oldest brother was also soon to transfer over to public high school from Marmion Academy. I guess I was their last holdout of pious hope. They didn’t even try the religious route with my younger brother – he went the way of the latest trend back then, Montessori.

Only a couple years ago I was having drinks with a male friend that went all the way through Holy Angels and then we met up again at high school. He claims to remember me from that year in kindergarten and thinking to himself, “oh, she’s not going to make it.” And I didn’t. I never had First Communion or got Confirmed and I never went to Sunday school. All along I figured the only thing I missed was the fancy little white dress and the pictures of the ceremonies like my siblings had. And now, looking back on this Fortieth Anniversary of the death of the pinecone centerpiece and the birth of my first rejection - I have to wonder if Sister Mary Ratched knew what she was doing, however inexcusable. Did she have a sense that I was going to grow up to be an artist and constantly face rejection for my art? Did she have a sense that I would grow up and move to a town that is based on rejection and serves up thousands of doses of it a day? Did she have a sense that I needed some toughening up? A spine? Little lambs can’t become sheep without a little unsympathetic shepherding?

Sister Mary Ratched gave me my first bitter pill and it has left an everlasting gobstopper of an aftertaste. I can honestly say that I wasn’t a brat back then - but no, no angel am I now, it’s true. I don’t suffer fools gladly and maybe Sister Mary Ratched didn’t either. Maybe she was just setting me up for a lifetime of rejecting the rejecters.

From now on, I like to think of Sister Mary Ratched in her penguin suit, ice-skating in her heaven - I hear her exclaim, ere she flies out of sight,

"Happy Christmas to all brats, and to all a good-fight."

Clowns Don't Scare Me, They Just Freak Me Out

He was at the Hollywood Hair Guy's Christmas Party too. And apparently in the Clown Hall of Fame I'm told.
As I download, and resize, and save to file and upload and this crap that takes forever, I am reminded of the myth (or is it?) about the kid on Bozo's Circus who, during a bad try at the Grand Prize Game, told Bozo to, "Cram it, Clownie!"

I love and use that expression all the time when I can.

Christmas With The Hollywood Hair Guy

There was Mrs. (in drag) Claus with her giant welcoming busom.
Pictures with "Hot" Santa - in other words, man in santa hat and tiny stretch briefs.
Bottomless bar, including the Veuve Cliquot which did run out, but we were able to have a glass.
Enough food to fill me up plus the sweets I don't eat.
A Christmas Fairy who I happened to know from years gone by!
Bartenders and BusBoys going topless by 9PM.
Paula Abdul looking uh...very...uh...tan.
And elves, elves, elves everywhere in their red converse chucks.

And it snowed about every 15 minutes - in Hollywood on a Monday night.

More pics at my Buzznet:

Too Cool For Yule

Last week I had some blind motivation and a couple hours to myself so I decided to get a haircut at Rudy's at The Standard. Rudy's doesn't take appointments except that you can call in and put your name on a list and request a certain stylist if you know one and they happen to be there. I was told it was about a half hour wait according to the current list, I put my name in, hopped in the car and got to the Sunset Strip in a half hour. The skinny, skinny twenty-year-old boy in $200 ripped jeans drinking iced milk told me when I arrived it would be about fifteen minutes. During the HOUR that I waited to be seated in a stylist's chair, I watched and listened and fumed and made a couple phone calls.

There were four stylists and the twenty-something girl who reminded me of my noisy neighbors was talking to her client about skiing. She was going on about how scary her last outing was, doing imitations of her poor skiing and said she wasn't sure if she'd ever do it again. The stylist and the client were both obviously going to snowy type places for the holidays but I didn't catch where at the time. When the client was paying at the counter and the girl was cleaning up, the client told her to have a great holiday and to be careful. She said, and I quote, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna have to notify the mountain coast guard or whatever it is up there."

Of course this girl is the one I get for a haircut, but that part was okay because she did a fine job. She chatted the ENTIRE time and I learned that not only is she going to Alaska for a week, but then goes right to some sunny island the next week.

Is every girl in Hollywood in her twenties living and talking like Paris Hilton now? I came home and had an anxiety attack.

R.I.P. Richard Pryor

Okay, I had aN indiscretion or two back in the day... and I was ordered to visit a few AA meetings. It was 1984-ish I think and I had no choice but to try and find the most amusing and entertainmng AA meetings in this hollywood of ours....

So it was at a very popular meeting that I found myself amongst the most celebratory of non drinkers on a Sunday morning. The place was packed! Wall to wall. Had to get there early if you wanted to get in. Anyway, I found myself against the back wall, SRO. Next thing I know Richard Pryor is next to me. Me, a small Irish white girl next to Richard Pryor! I still smoked cigarettes back then and so did (does) everyone else in AA. This is also back when everyone smoked inside public places. Once we were seated on the cold marble floor, he pulled out his Marlboro Red box and offered me one. I gladly took one then we fumbled for matches and we finally got lit, so to speak. We didn't have an ashtray and we certainly didn't want to soil the marble floor so crafty Richard Pryor gave me a crafty Richard Pryor look and he pulled the Marlboro Red box out again and opened it up so we could tap the ashes into the lid of the box. He offered me a couple more smokes over the next couple hours and we also shared a laugh or three. Like a wink here and a wink there and a down with that kind of chuckling. During all the sober story telling, and Happy Birthday singing, and cake and chip giving, Richard and I were only concerned about being comfortable. It was like he adopted me to be his AA mate for those two hours. He was really mellow, no doubt wanting to be as inconspicuous as possible, but impossible when you are Richard Pryor at an AA meeting or anywhere else for that matter.

Neither one of us stuck it out with AA over the years - obviously - but I guess I'm grateful for the story to tell and I'm REALLY grateful for the many laughs Richard Pryor gave us through his comedy. He will be missed.

Guest Blogger Ron Zimmerman, Ladies & Gentlemen

If you don't know the comedy genius that was Richard Pryor in the 1970's, then go to a record store and buy his recordings as fast as you can and learn why many people are grieving his loss. Not because he died. The man was terribly ill for many years and I'm glad he has finally gone to his reward. Because this was an artist that had earned one.

The 70's? That sounds like a long time ago. It is. But the fact is, NO comedy ARTIST has yet surpassed his work to this day. He is still remembered, even after being silenced for nearly twenty years, as the greatest stand up comedian that ever lived.
Richard Pryor had no peer. And he had no peer for the entire second half of the 20th century.
Like Bob Dylan's reinvention of songwriting, there was Richard Pryor and then there was everyone else.
His work is as relevant today as it was then.

When I was 14 I got a record album for Christmas called, "That Nigger's Crazy." It changed my life. It changed a lot of lives. We will not see his like again in our lifetimes.

Richard Pryor changed our entire idea of what could be funny. He showed us that there was humor available in places, about subjects, that we had not thought to look at. He painted pictures with his words that were so vivid, so lifelike, you were there.
So educate yourselves to his work. Educate your kids and friends. Give his gift to us, to others for Christmas. Respect is due. Pay it. Every single contemporary humorist, male and female, that you enjoy from Howard Stern to Jerry Seinfeld to Sarah Silverman was touched by his influence. If you don't yet know....you have no idea the power this man possessed. Find out. Then celebrate that he is in pain no more. Then mourn because we have lost the greatest, most powerful, influential comedy voice of the 20th century. If you don't agree, you simply haven't listened to enough of his work.
Thank you for your time.
Ron Zimmerman

For Unto Us, Only In Hollywood

In answer to Brian Flemming's question to the exsistence of Jesus...
I can tell him - "YES! He is alive and swell and he was at Runyon Canyon on Saturday!

On the way into the canyon, we passed a gal wearing a "Jesus Hearts Hollywood Hellhouse" t-shirt and I gave her a shout-out, "yeah, Jesus hearts Hollywood Hellhouse!" On the way out, we passed her again after having seen Jesus praying over the city of Angels. I asked her, did you see Jesus? He was at the plateau!" She passed, without breaking pace exclaiming, "no, but praise the lord."

I think she thought I was crazy. Oh, Mary! But I did! I did see Jesus!

Reason To Bereave

Fifteen Reasons Why My Back Is In Constant Pain:

1. Schlepping and dressing mannequins for 15 years.
2. Schlepping Christmas trees for 20 years.
3. Lighting and decorating a thousand Christmas trees.
4. Climbing a million ladders.
5. Painting a thousand walls.
6. Climbing in and out of the windows which were three feet off the floor with no steps, at Saks 5th Ave for four years.
7. Schlepping furniture, props and mannequins into the windows three feet off the floor.
8. Schlepping furniture, mannequins and Christmas trees across Wilshire Blvd. from workroom to Neiman Marcus for three years.
9. Moving furniture, rugs and display cases from one side of a store to the next and back again a thousand times for 20 years.
10. Falling off a ladder while hanging a Christmas wreath at Neiman Marcus, and breaking my heel.
12. Standing, walking and schlepping on marble floors for twenty years.
13. Bad posture.
14. I like barstools.
15. Walking too many f*ing unruly dogs.

Last Show Of The Year

The Pamela Skinner Gallery in Sacramento invited me to participate in their 7TH ANNUAL DOG & CAT SHOW...
So I sent them two pieces including "Star" (above).

Part of the proceeds will go to the Sacramento SPCA.
Second Saturday Reception December 10th, from 6-9 pm.
The show will run through January 7th.
Preview Party on Thursday, December 8th, from 6 - 8pm

Hollywood Swingin'

So, I walk into a client's house the other day and in the kitchen is standing Anthony from American Idol. (I knew it was an Idol, but I DID have to look up which one.) Anyway, he was on his cell phone saying, "No, I'm not doing Hairspray....no...no...I'm not going to be doing Hairspray....." Whoever he was talking to was very stubborn about it. And he wasn't talking about an aerosol.

Yesterday's sighting was Parminder Nagra of Bend It Like Beckham and ER. She was with another castmate, but I'd have to look that up too and who has time. They were gossiping about someone on the show but life is fast and they were going one way and I the other and anyway all I could think about was how cute her voice is and if she were ten inches taller she'd be the most gorgeous thing on the planet.

Seek And Hide

Suddenly my hangover doesn't seem at all bad. The World Wide Web also suddenly doesn't seem so infinite. Only two random clicks and I find something so close to home and so funny I am tickled pink. So good, for now I'm keeping it to myself...Makes me want to turn up my Sirius Satellite and dance. Instead I shall eat my leftovers from Barney's, shake off the Absolut from Mo's and run errands.