love touchin' on the fun bus

let me get this straight. the idea is to transport young children from their home, to the dentist via a 'fun bus' equipped with video games! cotton candy! activities! and cool prizes!? is that the idea behind the dentaland fun bus, as advertised on t.v.?

who would master such a plan?

a. pedophiles
j. kidnappers/pirates/gypsies
d. the same folks who came up with the other 'casino buses' which help reno separate old folks from their social security checks, with cheap sherry and bingo
e. the guys from pinnochio who turned all the boys into donkeys. (has anyone noticed a big upsurge in the donkey populace recently?)

do many a parent want their children ferried, without familial supervision, to a marathon man session with dr. happy? is there a way kids could view this as anything other than an absurd form of torture?

"hey kids, come, get on a smelly bus full of strangers. destination, root canal! disclaimer- some drivers enjoy giving 'love touches' to the young travellers."

another neat thing is- "ages 6-18 are welcome." if i'm 18 and riding the fun bus, i beg you, pierce my skull with a surgical drill .

babe-raham lincoln

lincoln scholars (you've seen them, lanky and lurking at the coffee shop, stovepipe hat in hand, emancipating people) will tell you that as a young man, he suffered two major suicidal periods. his second breakdown is known as the 'fatal first of january.'

imagine a thirty-one year old man, depressed and drinking, ravaging out tortured poetry. he's a dostoyevsky without the epilepsy. a john kennedy toole who didn't go through with it. an elliot smith without a singing voice. he's a dark horse whose end run isn't guaranteed.

a snippet of a poem attributed to lincoln from the 1838 Sangamo Journal newspaper-

"Rip up the organs of my breath
and draw my blood in showers!
I strike! It quivers in that heart
which drives me to this end;
I draw and kiss the bloody dart,
My last, my only friend!"

feel that goddamned heart beat. the loneliness, the desire to put it to all rest. lincoln. he went right the hell through it and didn't. i don't know how much inner demon wrestling he had time for, later on, what with the being president and saving the country and all, but i'm glad he made it out of those early years alive.

abraham lincoln, number 3 on my all time list of 'presidents i could get my mouth on.'

steers, beers, and queers

one of the perks of being marginally employed in la, is the delightfully shallow entertainment focus group. i recently lied my way into one involving a major network pilot for a 'relationship based reality show'. (do you know a better way to make 75 clams an hour without lifting your skirt? sadly, we really were paid in clams)

i don't need to mention that it sucked ass beyond all measure of known suckiness. i must mention some of the other ideas the hollywood brain trust is contemplating for fall. (yes, we were able to vote on these, and so can you!)

*gay guy looking for his prince charming, he doesn't know it, but his choices are 1 gay, 1 bi, 1 straight

*gal looking for love, she doesn't know it, but her choices are 1 millionaire, 1 blue collar worker, 1 homeless guy

*virgin who won't mate before marriage, doesn't know it, but her choices are 1 swinger, 1 preacher, 1 guy with 2 penises

*then, something about a witches brew and human sacrifice.. i kind of lost interest after they brought out the pasta salad and shasta

which is worse, reality t.v. junkies or people who insist they 'never turn on the television'?

heartbreaker, drinkmaker

i wandered into this bit of information today-hostess producets hide a certain secret meatiness. as a vegetarian (and ding dong lover), i raised the alarm amongst my non meat eating comrades. they responded with a resounding ho hum. chris, blase, "yeah, everyone knows hostess is full of beef lard."

oh, everyone. as usual, that means " everyone minus me." it's a re-occuring theme. singing bad pat benatar "you're a heartbreaker, drink maker, love taker-"

w cut in- "drink maker? that doesn't even make sense. it's dream maker."

i stood my ground- 'dream maker, you know like he's always sexy and making drinks..." as they words fell from mouth i realized how moronic they were.

he just shook his head, laughing "my god, how do you make it through the day?"

third grade, my teacher said, in passing, "it's just like how your parents make you brush your teeth every day." horrified and hopelessly out of the loop, i looked at my classmates, happily nodding. 'yup, that's true.' i tried to process it. other parents demand teeth brushing. wow. "note to self, if ever invited to a sleep over, steal a toothbrush first." check.

this is how i cobble through life. haplessly underprepared. routinely blindsided by new information big and small. patched together with tape and bobby pins.

as my dad would say "seriously kid, the amount of shit you don't know."

did you guys hear cell phones can cause brain tumors?

comments are dead, long live comments

the old comments have been zeroed out. i'm sad to lose 'em, they were good, damn good, and i don't mind telling 'em.

but we got haloscan comments now. easier, with no pesky sign in.

please, enjoy.

put your worries on hold

it started the night al, from happy days, was bowling for the big championship. a strike meant victory, anything less, humiliation. i was sick and nervous for al, with his hound dog face and bad jokes. what if he lost and people didn’t like him anymore? unable to bear it, i turned down the sound and closed my eyes. when i dared open them, everyne was cheering and hugging al, and all were well. except me. i was sweating bullets.

to this day, i have a deep fear and hatred of seeing people shamed. even jerks, even the no good cheatin’ scoundrels on jerry springer, what deserve a comeuppance. i can’t watch. even those who are mostly to blame for all they’ve hurt, like courtney love. i can’t watch her self destruct on howard stern.

it’s bad, in general, but when i really care about someone, it’s hell. which leads me to the past two weeks. avoiding late night t.v., refusing to read music reviews. staying away from amoeba.

beastie boys were a big part of my life when they were young and I was younger. because they were bratty jewish boys- smart, funny, irreverent, in on the joke. because i honestly believed, one day, i might stand a chance with ad rock. because i know every rhyme and when we go to new york, i insist on rapping (so sad, so true) the appropriate passages as we hit the landmarks.

they sang “24’s my age and 22’s my guage” before i got there, and 24 seemed like a cool place to be. wherever the b-boys were seemed like a cool place to be.

there are bands i like better. music that resonates more deeply. lyrics that hit harder. but for me, no-one else grabbed the promise and fun and growing pains of being a kid and young adult (at this time and place), like they have.

i recently heard them referred to as ‘the rolling stones of rap.’ this filled my heart with dread. i don’t want the new album to be a re-tread. i don’t want people to say bad things about them. i don’t want to hear any pronouncements of their sun setting.

i want them brash and playful and evolving into really decent people. i want them to glitter and innovate. i want adam to retain his crushworthy sway with the ladie.

but instead of turning the volume down, i’m gonna shut the hell up, buy the album, and let the boroughs fall where they may.

sometimes she (wants to) get loose

*i took this post down, but a terrifically sexy emailed photo convinced me to put it back up*

salesman don's showing me his extensive sampling of nipple clamps- "this one's got rubber padding." "here you got pressure control." "you need something that vibrates?" - when i realized that don't want to give these clamps as a joke gift. no, i want to show up, clamp 'em on him, climb aboard, pin those hands above his head, and kiss him rough before giving him what he's got coming... but then, like the blond girl in the popular joke series, i become distracted by a shiny object. a couple, shopping for erotic toys nearby.

i'm instantly, swoonily crushtastic over them. "oh, look, they're buying a double headed dildo." "i hope they make out right here."

but that's the kind of weekend it's been. like spring fever's come late. or jungle fever's come early. or cat scratch fever's right on time. stray breezes rippling through my skirt leave me flushed and a tingle. stray comments from strangers leave me fishing for my phone number. imagine a virgin minutes before the a-bomb destroys the world, and you've pretty much got the feeling. how tough could it be? a young girl, lacking major deformity, having sufficient boobage, and very little gag reflex, to find a little love-like-action in the city of angels?

i'll ask you this. what happens when you want something too badly, so badly you can taste it, so badly you push for it? you end up screwing yourself.

which is pretty much what i did.

fakery for fun and profit

like a jury, we are twelve, sequestered, forced to subsist on nothing but stale donuts and broken dreams. unlike a jury, we have the potential to do some real good. for ourselves. in the form of winning cash and/or prize like items, in a televised setting.

on paper, we're a diverse and dynamic group- hailing from far flung burgs- utah, west virginia, pittsburgh, brigadoon. we are party planners, spinning instructors, teachers of shakespeare, skydivers. but really the towns, the jobs, are a clever ruse, designed to make us look (to the at home viewer) like a random sampling of americana. underemployed actors and writers from la, that's what you're getting folks. oh, and one young artisty dude from downey.

this is my fourth official game show. also rans- (ben stein's money (lost), chance of a lifetime (won close to $40,000, met a boy who told me he came home from college to discover his dad making homemade porn in his bedroom, boy became best friend), cram (won, spent the night locked in close quarters with corey feldman)

the folks at the temp agency won't tell you this, but there's a semi lucrative career to be had, as a fake game show contestant for pilots and run-throughs. you get to spend the day under an assumed name, having fake witty banter, winning prizes you can never claim. and all for dope pay (is $75+ per day cosidered dope?) add to that the fact that you get to see some of the worst ideas ever brought to life on a garishly decorated set with an orangey tanned, past his heyday host, and you've got a recipe for magic. who can forget 'the fence'- a show where you 'buy' stolen objects from a seedy underworld type? i can't. i wish i could.

back to the current show. mostly, we're hanging out in the green room (not green), people are casually competitive, but with forced energy and charm. i'm chafing under the weirdness of it. but then, john (an 'x-ray tech' from 'tuscon') takes his shot, a story ending with "i drank so much i peed all over the bed." and now i feel responsible for the guy. it's not bad enough that he's under thirty and already sporting a bad combover? now the men think he's a pussy bedwetter and the girls think..well you know what the girls think.

but i don't have too much time to worry about him because i have to pee. where i walk in on a woman- pretty and five months pregnant- giving herself a shot. she tells me, matter of factly, that she has a blood clot in her brain. and she strikes me as impossibly beautiful and brave.

you can give it a shiny coat of paint, change it's name, set it to cheesy music, even send it home with a case of turtle wax. but life will be. messy and bizarre and deadly and good.

and i won.

no cash no gash

you remember creed. god lovin' denizens of adled lyrics, overworked metaphors, and lackluster (if arrogant) musicianship? they're suing a florida strip club for using their 'music' during exotic 'dance' numbers.

i understand if, say, the ramones get in a huff over the john birch society co-opting 'kkk took my baby away.' i wish to holychrist that the clash would've told jaguar too screw themselves rather than bastardize 'london calling.' i even kinda get it if a bunch of card carrying jesus lovers don't want their melodies helping young, stacked girls to pole themselves through i.t.t. technical institute.

but these boys ain't suing on principle. they're suing for principal. you see these messiah loving rockers wants ta get paid for any and all erotic use of 'arms wide open.' apparently, it's cool to show pink, but only if you flash creed some green first.

which makes me proud to be red, white, and blue all over.

gay porn

he ended with the punch line "can you imagine me, gay porn?" it was funny, so i laughed. but inside, i felt a jumbly sort of aching and awakening. whatever this boy was selling i was buying. in a major, no looking back way. and i, who made it a habit of keeping both my jugular and soft underbelly unexposed, heard myself saying-

"maybe you don't need another friend."

he looked at me with those eyes- blue, blue, open, full of undemanding need.

"i do."

it dawned on me that there was nothing he could do or say that would make me run away. four years later, he's a chamber in my heart. i can't imagine a version of my life without him that doesn't completely suck ass. there ain't a grown up alive whose company i prefer. (if martin van buren were still with us, he might have some competition)

happy birthday, boy.

pencil neck geek brain

that’s what kahle christened me, when he was 4 and i was 11. his mom, terra, is the softest fruit on our already dangerously bruised family tree. her name evolved from dorothy, to terry, to terra lynn, and now, simply terra. in her younger days she was leather mini and thigh highs, screwing rockstars hot. she had a headshot, from a bassist called ‘the general’, autographed, “to terra- tight pussy, i like that.”

now she’s all growed up, with a teenage son. and she’s forcing him to make an offering to the tree gods. this was a family picnic, not a native american or other shaman type festival where offerings were expected. and the offering she was pushing him into making was a dixie plate piled with spaghetti. poor kid. stuck giving thanks to the tree of life bearing nothing but a clump of limp noodles doused in prego.

but kahle is good and game and loves his mom. so, schemes or no, crazy or no, he plays it like she wants it.

terra complains that the fairies stole her car keys. again. he helps her call out to them “okay, fairies, you got me, can i have ‘em back now?”

terra feels guilty when a past life reading reveals that in a former life she was an egyptian temple whore forced to abort a past life kahle. he assures her that the life of a temple whore’s kid probably wouldn’t have been that hot anyway.

terra decides to abort a present life pregnancy, but apologizes to the unborn fetus through a spirit mediator and then saves some of the blood on a crystal, which she throws into the ocean with a wing and a prayer. he doesn’t know about that one. thank god.

so many kids are just entitled and angry and bitter. and okay, fine. but then there’s kahle, who manages, despite having a mother who once complained loudly that my dad didn’t enjoy receiving oral sex from her enough (she dated my dad during my teen years), to be the sweetest goddamned kid on earth.

without even knowing it, he shows me daily what it means to be human.

mostly, i’m still an ass. but at least i’ve seen the grail. and it calls me pencil neck.

he has been down a long time

on a dark desert highway, I saw a shimmering light. hold up, can't start this story with an eagles quote. my bad.

i struggled to stay awake. sunny had already jostled me several times-

“What’re you doing?”
“nothing.”
“don’t sleep.”

she was pretty relaxed about my nodding off, considering the fact that I was hurtling a cheap toyota down a desert blacktop in the middle of the night. we understood the possiblility of slamming into a retaining wall at 75+ mph, and yes we got it (in a general sense) that this would be bad and oh, right we weren’t seat belted. but what were the odds that something truly catastrophic could happen? We were still teen invulnerable. not to acne, embarrassment, or heartbreak. just to the life’n’death crap.

but now, with sunny sleeping soundly, i was on my own. windows rolled down, i tried to invigorate the blood by singing loudly along with “search and destroy." I read a hilarious road sign-

“maximum security prison zone. do not pick up hitchhikers.”

i repeated it in my mind so that i could tell it to sunny when she woke up. then I noticed a red light blinking on the panel. gas guage below empty. should’ve checked that earlier. oh well. there was an exit was a mere 2 miles away. 'fine fine, pull over, gas up, grab a diet coke, and… holy fucking shit. the exit’s closed.'

next exit, 29 miles. now i’m no brain surgeon, or even a functional literate, but even I could figure out there was no way we’d make it to that exit. we didn’t. sunny woke up sleepy and disbelieving. i said-

“it’s cool, we’ll just hitch a ride to the gas station.”

sunny didn’t know about the no hitchhiking sign, but the few and far between drivers passing us by at 4 am sure did. i felt so shitty about the whole thing that I offered to jump up and down in the middle of the highway until the next car stopped.

she seemed vaguely concerned, but let me do it. luckily they stopped. a mom, dad, and two sleeping girls in a station wagon. when we approached, the mom said

“we’ll pick you up but not the guy with you.”

“there’s no guy with us”

“whose that?”

we turned, and somehow, magically, there was a guy. tall and fat and carrying a mesh bag. asking for a ride to rosalind. said his girlfriend booted him out of the car a few miles back. dad told him no and told us to get in the car. i had to brush by the guy to get in, and when I did, he smiled at me.

at the gas station, we found out from a police officer that there had been a prison break that night. three escaped violent convicts were on the loose. he showed us a picture, and sure enough, right in the middle was our guy.

the officer said that he probably had one of the others with him, waiting in the bushes. for...ambushes... i suppose. when I gave the policman my statement, I told him how, at the end, the guy smiled at me. he said-

“well, you know, he has been down a long time.”

that sentence held all of our young, stupid, weak mortality. we could feel the other ending in our bones- the rape, the murder, the being stuffed in a trunk. sunny looked at me with tears in her eyes.

"that family who picked us up were guardian angels."

and i, who never met a heartfelt moment that couldn't be deflected, had to agree with her.

how could you say she was wrong?

brought to you by the booze council

the shlubby guy sits, wincing and puffy faced at the kitchen table. his perky girlfriend, dressed in an unfortunate spectrum of orange, finishes her coffee and chides him about being late for work. he's resentful and pissy with her because she got her drunk on just as much as he did last night, yet she feels good this morning.

that's because she took chaser. finally, a chance to enjoy binge drinking more. without those lousy hangovers the next day. now chaser can't help out if you end up in say, a car crash, or if you kill someone in a black out rage, but if you make it through till moring, you're golden.

finally, a responible option for drinking ourselves into sweet oblivion.

i think my favorite 'bots ever said it best "booze makes you popular and heals all wounds."

live! nude (not quite)! girl!

i ‘act’ in much the same spirit as I surgically remove warts from will's feet with toenail clippers. reluctantly, rarely, and with much fear of bloodshed. but this was a really good script written, by a dear friend. plus, i had my first love scene.

in one slender action line lay miles of promise.

int. jeremy’s bedroom – day
Doris and Jeremy knock boots.

the usual sex scene suspects can be heard spouting off to letterman or conan about how erotic scenes are patently un-erotic. not hot, not wet, just hard, technical work. But me always thinked that they protested too loudly. like they didn’t want us less attractive people to feel jealous that we weren’t having filmed sex with men we’d never get for vast sums of money. now I was finally going to see for myself. I was finally going to spread my…wings.

it WAS hot. africa hot. sweltering los angeles, no a.c. hot. the kind of hot that makes you sleepy like a kitten, not sexy like a tiger. it WAS wet. because our set dresser kept spraying us with water in order to make us appear more ‘dewey.’ it WAS technical. we took great pains to look sexy and yet not have any actual groin grinding action. (philip, my love scene partner, is gay and neither of us wanted a pesky erection giving him doubts about his orientation) that said, I guess it wasn’t really ‘hard.’ but it did involve many hours, many takes, many positions and very little fun. i wish this weren’t true. i wish it had been fuckfest.

at one point, during a long break, philip and I became very drowsy. cuddled up, we drifted off, me stroking his arm. our d.p. turned on the camera and captured this lovely moment on film. in the movie, we look just like spent lovers should look- drowsy, sated, and sexy as hell.

now, i go back to normal life, hang out with all the other ‘artistic’ love scene survivors, master the secret handshake, and hope not to find myself pixilated and naked on the net.

if i were jack the ripper would you still kiss me?

there's a smidgen of a chance you're wondering about the mackin' picture recently posted under my links. tune in tomorrow for a full accounting.

the lonesome death of michael jackson auditorium

we were the kids who walked to school, past the hookers on sunset boulevard. they sipped 7 11 coffee and smoked. their day ending as ours began.

they’d wave, “mornin’ babies.”

we’d wave back “morning, sparkles. morning valencia.”

most of the kids i went to school with didn’t have much of anything; cash, promise, home-life, beauty. mostly we ate a lot of government cheese. there were a few bright, affluent kids there, too. but we could never figure out what the hell they were doing at gardner. punishment? cosmic joke?

we didn’t have much, but we did have the gloved one. michael jackson. he was the apex. and we could claim him. years before any of us were born, he went to our school. briefly. (i found out later it was only for 11 months) but so what? he was the most famous man in the world, and he went to our school. And then he came to our school.

among a chorus of kids singing “we are the world”, he dedicated the michael jackson auditorium. festooned on the outside with huge silver letters. it was shiny and new and forever linked our lives to the shooting star that was mj. if all the world was a stage, then we were suddenly players on an elevated one.

i wasn’t ever a big fan of his music. prone to melancholy, i preferred the clash, the cure, the Smiths. jackson's deal was awfully optimistic. awfully american dreamy. even still, i was sincerely, un-ironically proud of that auditorium.

i moved away to a small town in utah and worked the auditorium story into the mythology of my hollywood upbringing. it helped to create a mellow glow of celebrity around me. i may have lived in the only apartment building in town (which also happened to be welfare housing). i even exited my divorced dad’s pickup truck each morning reeking of his pot smoke. i should have been a social pariah in the land of the squeaky clean and bland. ah, but i was the girl from tinsel town. i had stories to tell. thank-you, mr. Jackson.

by the time college rolled around, my friends were too smug and ironic to be impressed by the story. now it was good for a laugh. how funny, how ridiculous.

“michael jackson, my god. too bad you couldn’t get someone good.”

“yeah, like that dude from benson.” even so, every time we took a trip to la la land, i squired my mates by the old school. showed ‘em the fabled auditorium.

the intervening years have been sad, strange chapters in the michael jackson story. he’s become a bizarre circus mirror image of himself. i moved back to l.a. this Christmas, my visiting cousin asked to see the auditorium. i agreed to drive him by, even though i felt kinda weird about it.

and then, it wasn’t there. the words “michael jackson” had been covered with plywood and painted brown. i heard that parents complained. they didn’t want creepy mj associations linked beloved kids.

i understand that. but I also remember a time when we welcomed the association. when it meant promise and possibility. and i don't mean the possibility of inappropriate groping. what do the kids at gardner have now, instead of the michael jackson auditorium? a good story, i guess.

same as me.


following quiz.

i don't want him, you can have him

driving down highland today, i passed a large billboard- stark, black with white lettering- which read

GO AHEAD, KEEP TAKING MY NAME IN VAIN, I'LL MAKE TRAFFIC WORSE
-GOD

let's just take it at face value, that god has taken time from his busy schedule to communicate with we, the unworthy masses. this is his message? this pissy, picayune, bratty piece of trash? we take the lords name in vain and are punished by his fucking with our ability to get to work on time? he can't think of any larger, more important admonishments? he's got nothing else on his godly mind? i'm practically an idiot, for godsakes, and i can think of better things to get on the human race's case about.

seriously, folks. if this is god, and this is how he uses his, well, god given powers, then screw him. i'd rather be a heathen than follow that petty bastard.

(unless he can absolutely promise me there will be unlimited amounts of cake, strangers with candy, and cursing in heaven)

the summer of our (culinary) discontent

eating in taiwan was an adventure. a series of escalating dares, in which stacie and i were more than ready to engage.

"will you eat a hardboiled egg marinated for 5 years in a green tea solution?" "will i ever!"

"coagulated pork blood squares and rice?" "bring it."

"boiled, skewered chicken feet?" "does that include the claws?..well..okay......"

three months in and the adventure was turning more into an elaborate endurance test. a losing proposition. we dreamed now only of the simple things, cocoa pebbles, cheese pizza, soup that didn't contain intestines. we found ourselves invited to the home of a wealthy family whose young daughters we tutored in english. a bowl of white rice sat in front of each person, with main course dishes in the center of the table. stacie and i scanned the assortment, looking for landmines, but so far, so good, fish, a cabbage dish, pork short ribs. then the mom took each of our rice bowls and efficiently popped a fish eyeball into each. before our stomaches could even sink, the little girls began complaining loudly that they wanted the fish eyes, that she was a mean shrew of a mommy for giving the lovely fish eyeballs to the teenage american girls. we happily passed them over.

later, the girls said they had a big surprise for us. real live american ice cream popsicles. now, taiwan is a small island without cattle, and i never met a taiwanese person who didn't think anything involving milk, cheese, or yogurt was gross gross gross. fish eyeballs, yes. grilled cheese, ew. so we were surprised but thrilled at the offer. they gave us each what looked like frozen skim milk on a stick. i took a bite- cold, sweet, and..chock full of peas. a milk'n'pea pop. for stacie, milk'n'green bean. for the girls', milk'n' shredded carrots.

you know what? they were pretty good.

strangling puppies, redux

i ain't the sort of gal to go on at length about how we americans are over indulgent consumers, lazy, arrogant, solopsistic and self-involved to the point of awfulness. but, just in case you need further proof that this is true- at least the part where we (meaning me) are narcissistically interested in every last tiny detail of what is means to be 'us'- i offer up the following quiz.

yes, you get to find out what breed of dog you are. apparently i'm a chihuahua. wouldn't have chosen to be the taco bell dog. a friendly lab or frollicky spaniel maybe. but i'm a chihuahua. good news is, they're "loyal, sociable, and able to hotly debate an issue." they are? chihuahuas are? or the human version of chihuahuas are? it's all very confusing. is this one of those eugenics 'keeping the races clean' things where you should only date within your breed?

god, i hope not. i've got my eye on the great dane down the street.

strangling puppies

the other night, john stewart made a joke that if you left donald rumsfeld, dick cheney, and dubya in a room together, someone would strangle a puppy. this struck me as simultaneously awful, funny, and prescient. i can think of several people i know or run into on a daily basis who probably strangle puppies in their spare time. now, when someone cuts me off on the road, i think 'puppy strangler.' it reminds me of the terrific book which warns against people who too readily confess their small sins. you can bet dimes for dollars, if they admit to being chronically late, what they're not telling you is how they like to squash gerbil's skulls in their free time.

did i mention how untidy i am?

amatuer pornography done cheap

the coolest thing about serena's mom was that she managed the apartment building they lived in. the coolest thing about that was it enabled serena and i to rifle through recently vacated apartments, iin search of booty. mostly we found crap. but once, we hit the motherload. hot, hardcore, porno mags. not more than 9 or 10, our experience with porn was limited to my stepdad's glossy playboys and a showtime 'after hours' gem about an uptight girl whose horny vagina unexpectedly starts singing 'get out your wang-dang-doodle.'

repulsed, intrigued. we secreted them away to my sundeck, where we soaked in both the rays and the life lessons 'miss cocksucker' magazine had to teach us. we learned that housewives often find themselves sucking off random maintenance people. we saw an op-ed piece by a satisfied gal which read "the fisherman's penis was the biggest i ever saw, at least 12 inches.' we had no idea, at the time, of her tremendous good fortune (or maybe not, i have faulty spacial relations skills, is 12 inches too much man?) by far, our favorite thing was a pic was of a big stallion of an hombre wearing only a cowboy hat and boots.

we decided to each draw a copy the cowboy picture. being retarded, mine resembled a stick insect with an extra branch protruding from it's mid-section. always artistic, serena's was delightful. she gave her dude these really nice red lips, and added a flourish of a lasso twirling around his erect penis. she was the coolest.

we hid the pictures and the magazines in a special spot where the berry bushes met my sundeck. a treasure trove lying in wait for the next generation of wayward children.

i forget what 8 was for

my favorite badass cowboy says it's time to update, so here goes.

when the phone rang at 1:32 a.m., i picked up before the first ring ended. this was becoming a ritual. me, lying on my bedroom floor, waiting for the phone to ring just as late night with david letterman signed off. mike on the other end, waiting to recap the show's hijinks, talk music, make me laugh. mike novaks, of the slow, loopy smile and easy charm, had rolled into our suburban utah junior high a month earlier and caught the attention of my best friend, sunny. yes, sunny, and with all the name implies, summergirl tan, blond hair, blue eyes, the whole deal. what the hell else? in the casually cruel yet pragmatic fiefdom that is junior high, she sent me- her less attracivie/non threatening coutnerpart- as a her dating emissary to mike. i was to befriend the boy and negotiate a 'going together' situation between them. easy peasy.

a week later, he and I were talking less about sunny and more about anything else. he made me a copy of violent femmes 'add it up' and tonight we were listening to it on either end of the phone line. we were young enough to be genuinely psyched about the swearing and naughty innuendoes "why can't i get, just one...' i told him about my secret crushes on david letterman and beastie boy king ad rock. he told me i was weird. then he asked me if i wanted to go to the femmes concert with him. i could't add that one up. "you mean, with you and sunny?" "no, just you and me, my dad could drop us off." "but what about sunny?" i was scared witless. i knew my place in the scheme of things and could not make it jibe with his invitation. it was as if accepting his invite would set in motion some sort of cataclysmic rift in the early teen universe- cool boys dating weird girls, cats and dogs living together- and i refused to be responsible for it.

so mike didn't become my first boyfriend, first kiss, or first love. but he did become the first guy to call me at one o'clock in the morning. and that's something.