"Your name is Gilly, but since we are good friends, I get to call you Jesus."*

   I got an iPhone 4S last week and my life is now complete. I’m so in love with iPhone that I take him everywhere and dress him in different, cute little outfits. He’s adorable and the closest thing to a child I can ever imagine owning (you do own children, right? If you have them yourself out of your vagina or adopt them legally?).

   Anyway, iPhone is great and I’ve never been happier with an electronic device (thanks, Momma and Steve Jobs!).

   But you know who’s a huge bitch? Siri.

   I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get Siri because I’d talked to her on Chad’s phone in the past and found that she didn’t particularly understand anything I had to say. It was like talking to the automated voice system on the phone with the bank or fucking stupid AT&T: it hardly ever knows what you’re talking about and keeps saying, “It sounded like you said, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ Did I get that right?”

   Anyway, I was convinced by Ouisa to go ahead and get Siri anyway (Ouisa’s like a cartoon drawing of a devil on your shoulder whenever you’re wondering whether or not to buy something), because she can do so many amazing things! You can text without typing! You can look for directions! You can have her play a song from your phone!

   While I was working this weekend, I let the kiddos I watch play with Siri for a while (a truly annoying thing to listen to) and I started to feel kind of bad for her. One of them was telling her she was stupid and the other was saying "I hate you, Siri!" (what have I done to these children, btw?) and Siri’s responses were sort of calm but hurt. She kept explaining that she hadn’t done anything wrong or that she didn’t understand why they would say that kind of stuff to her. The whole thing made me feel kind of weird, like how when I was a kid I use anthropomorphize my dolls and toys and worry myself to death making sure they were all in comfortable positions at bed time (I'm talking even toy tractors or Lincoln Logs...I was a weird kid). I started irrationally defending Siri to the kids, saying stuff like, “Hey, that’s mean! Don’t say that!” I was aware as I was speaking that I sounded insane, but I genuinely thought maybe Siri would get fed up and turn into a murderous monster like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Maybe she’d smother me in my sleep or—far worse—trap me in an elevator. How was she to know it wasn't me talking to her but those devious children?

This is Siri all bent out of shape because people were being mean to her.

   I put Siri into a random Google search just to see what kind of technology I was actually dealing with and found something shocking:

Something Shocking

   This article talks about how when you ask Siri for an abortion clinic or a pharmacy with the morning after pill or a RAPE CRISIS CENTER for gods sake, she gives you none but instead directs you to pro-life pregnancy counseling centers. What’s even more disturbing perhaps, it seems that she willingly gives out info on Viagra or “penis mightier” drug sources. So…she’s apparently only opinionated about women’s sexual health issues.

   This made me feel a lot less sorry for Siri. And a lot of other things started falling into place, too.

   For instance, if you ask Siri where to dump a body, she’s full of suggestions from metal foundries to crematoriums. And that seemed funny as hell to me at first. But since she doesn’t have any advice about where I can get a rape kit, it seems fucked up that she’s so eager to help me dispose of a corpse.

   Also, when I asked her who was the fairest of them all (yes, I’m a dork, move on), she asked if she was talking to Snow White. But when one of the kids asked her, she basically said, “You are.” Huh? She’s MY Siri, so how come she’s nicer to other people?

   And she keeps popping up when I don’t want her services (also eerily reminiscent of HAL) and asking what she can help me with. She can help me with minding her own goddamn business!

   She has her uses, don’t get me wrong. I’m learning how to talk to her so that she understands and actually helps me rather than frustrating the shit out of me. It’s a lot like a dating-type relationship. I repeat myself ad nauseum, she doesn’t understand. I get mad and she gets confused. I apologize and try again, she’s turned herself off. Yep, we’re dating alright.

   I will continue to be nice to Siri, despite our fundamental philosophical differences, because she scares the hell out of me. But iPhone I will love forever. Beautiful iPhone. IPhone, iPhone, iPhone. 

Siri is the Devil.

*This is a quote from Siri on my iPhone. Hmmm...
More news on Siri...

"In the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."*

   Okay, so I know Halloween weeks away, but I’ve been trying to brainstorm an amazing costume idea for two weeks already because a. I have a fun Halloween party to go to and I already know about it so I am obligated and at leisure to plan and 2. I want to have a great, non-slutty costume all ready to go so I don’t get caught with my pants down (literally or figuratively).

   I tend to lean towards movie characters or Golden Age movie stars—I was Holly Golightly last year (and ended up having the sluttiest costume at that particular party, ironically).  But I would like to shoot for the stars this year, since Halloween really does matter to me. But I’d also like to avoid buying a wig, since, having disposed of my handy wig collection many years ago, I don’t really feel like heading down that road again. Wigs are expensive, so you end up keeping them, storing them, thinking you’ll use them again. And the next thing you know you’re a senior in college with a box full of wigs and no place to put it so you bust it out at dinner parties after you graduate and your landlord drops by unannounced and thinks you’re some sort of “dominatrix” weirdo when all you were trying to do was put your hair pieces to some good use. For an example.

   So I’ve been doing some scrolling through the Interwebs and hoping for inspiration to strike me. I’ve considered 80’s icons (Cyndi Lauper, Prince [Prince, Prince, Prince!], Freddie Mercury, and Pat Benetar). I’ve thought about 80’s movie characters (Baby from Dirty Dancing, Mrs. White from Clue). I’ve even considered revisiting some of the classic horror films (Regan from The Exorcist, Rhoda from The Bad Seed, Jane Hudson from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Melanie Daniels from The Birds). 

Scary Rhoda from The Bad Seed.

   It was when I started really thinking about scary movies that it occurred to me that you SHOULD be scary on Halloween. If at all possible, your costume should have some element of horror or science fiction or thriller about it. And the more horror films and SCI-FI classics I thought of, the more I realized that most of those evil women characters, or even the female victims in those movies are BLONDES.

   Maybe you’ve already thought of this yourself, but if you haven’t, consider this:

REGAN, The Exorcist (Blonde—and later greenish, but mostly blonde)

RHODA, The Bad Seed (Blonde. Very, very blonde.)

JANE HUDSON, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Scary, haunt-your-nightmares blonde.)

NELL, The Haunting (Annoying, hope-she-dies-soon blonde)

LAMIA, Stardust (Gorgeous and also hideous blonde)

CLAUDIA, Interview With a Vampire (Still blonde)

THE CHILDREN, Children of the Corn (Holy god, they’re blonde)

HITCHCOCK, Separate category (yeah, I know, he was obsessed with blondes)

Joan Fontaine (Suspicion, Rebecca)

Grace Kelly (To Catch a Thief, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window)

Doris Day (The Man Who Knew Too Much)

Eva Marie Saint (North by Northwest)

Janet Leigh (Psycho)

Tippi Hedren (The Birds, Marnie)

Blonde. Melanie Daniels.

   What the what? Why are all these scary ladies (or leading ladies in scary movies) blondes? Admittedly, blondes have more fun, but I thought being a brunette was supposed to be especially awesome because we are the embodiment of evil (you know, dark forces and what-not…and aren’t witches usually brunettes?). Cinema is saying otherwise, however, and unless I want to go as a Disney version of a bad lady (Malificent, Ursula, Snow White’s Stepmom—most recently portrayed in the movies by Charlize Theron, a blonde—or one of the Wicked Stepsisters), I’m stuck buying a blonde wig.

   Which bums me out a little bit.

   I should quit complaining. I guess as long as I don't dress like a whore, I'm okay. Unless I decide to go as an actual whore, in which case I can (and should) dress as one. They're usually not as pretty as you'd think, though, from my own personal experience.

   But I'll probably just go buy a wig.

   And, if you want to know the truth, I do look pretty scary with blonde hair. 

*Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004).

"You need a license to drive a car. Hell, you need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father."*

    Sometime in high school, and maybe again in college, a teacher (or four) told me (or the class at large—I can’t remember anything, I’m a goldfish) that I should be aware of starting every paragraph of a paper with the same word. It occurred to me again recently because I’m pretty certain that I tend to start most of my blog posts with the word “I.” I’m a complete and utter narcissist, so okay. I’m aware of it, don’t worry.

"And they say goldfish have no memory, I guess their lives are much like mine."**

    It’s hard to write these blog posts sometimes because they require me to be somewhat more honest than I’d really like to be, and for that reason I don’t always feel like contributing. Honesty in writing is hard but largely necessary if you don’t want to write about the beauty and magic of rainbows and butterflies or bore everyone to death (or both). That’s why writing can sometimes blow as an art form.

    Unlike acting or painting or music, I can’t really pretend that the things I express are anything other than what they are, because I’m not writing fiction, which also kind of blows because my life ain’t all that interesting. (Shut up, Word! I know I’m not supposed to say “ain’t”!) But the following may offend/annoy some people, and for that I'm truly sorry. And for the record, I love (some) kids!

    Anyway.

    I don’t want to shit on parenthood or make it seem like child rearing is an easy job because I know it’s hard and it IS a job. I know firsthand how keeping a toddler alive all day long is the opposite of fun. And I know stay-at-home parents have to want to hit the bottle pretty hard after a day of zero adult conversation. I know it sucks to have a 12-year-old ask about sex or naughty parts or “hair down there.” I know how awful it feels to watch a kid you love get treated like shit by his school friends and how irritating it is to feel like you’ve been turned into someone’s personal maid/chef/bodyguard/chauffeur. All these things I know. (And I did manage to use the word “I” about 47 times in this paragraph. Narcissist.)

    But none of these things change the fact that (some) people with kids tend to be assholes in public. They run their strollers over your feet, take up four times the room a person is supposed to have, refuse to hold doors, and believe that somehow their adorable little assholes are goddamn royalty.

    In short, many parents of young children seem to feel entitled.

    In the past week or so I’ve witnessed the following:

1.     A young, Beverly Hills mom pushed her $8000 stroller and her $10,000 ass directly in front of my line of vision as I shopped at Trader Joe’s. (I would’ve received worse treatment from a mom at Whole Foods, but still.) I gave her one of my classic, huge, passive aggressive sighs as a thank you.

2.     A man in the Pacific Palisades crossed the street in front of my car with his two sons. It wasn’t a cross walk or a stop sign and these were not toddlers on bicycles. He just put his hand up, gesturing for me to stop and walked as slowly as possible in front of my car and across the street.

3.     I held the door for a harried looking mom with two kids, one in a stroller, at the Coffee Bean. She acted like that was my job. No “thank you,” no acknowledgement of any kind.

4.     At Toppings, one of those self-serve frozen yogurt places, a woman’s kid was throwing the tantrum of a lifetime. This little asshole was screaming her head off and the mother’s friend or sister tried to calm the kid down but she did those crazy, writhing, full-body kicks that make it impossible to hold them. So the friend/sister looked at the mom like, “Are you gonna handle this or what?” But the mom just acted like it wasn’t happening. “Not my kid!” Great. The rest of us will just sit here and enjoy our yogurt while your kid shrieks like the little shit she obviously is. She must’ve inherited her bitchiness from you.

    I’m not trying to be a jerk, here. I know it’s hard. I KNOW.

    I remember when my friend Regan’s son, Jimmy, was a baby the three of us went for a ride somewhere and the kid was just screaming his head off. Of course…he was a BABY. But what I most remember is Regan’s*** sense of resignation. She turned to me calmly and said, “It’s times like these when I want to drive my car into a brick wall.” And while I laughed, I felt sorry for her, too. So I try to be patient, I really do.

    But it’s not the kids that drive me nuts. It’s the parents who act like they’re so much better than me because they have a kid. They get on the airplane in front of me**** and they get inoculations I want but have to wait for. They get to take up entire aisles of eating establishments and they get crayons at their tables. I’m pretty sure they get tax breaks, too.

    That’s fine.  Have your babies because I know it’s rewarding in many ways and it’s romantic to have a baby with someone you love and it’s cool to get to invent a name for somebody. But do you have to be so rude about it? (Disclaimer: I’m not talking about ALL parents, just a huge chunk of them. None of my friends has ever been an Entitled Parent in front of me.)

    Just say "thank you" when I hold a door for you. Try not to run over my feet with your stroller, because I don’t do that to you with my shopping cart, so I know it’s avoidable. (When my family was at Disneyland in March, my sister Elizabeth was nailed by no fewer than 3 strollers and only one parent said he was sorry, and it wasn’t even very sincere.) If your kid is screaming, slap him or her in the face and say, “Never again! You got me, jerk?” Just kidding.

    You don’t have to be like the mom I saw at the movie theatre yesterday buying $50 worth of concessions while her kid waited over in a corner, and then when the kid tried to ask a question the rotund (I’m being generous here) mother yelled, “Shut up!” and proceeded to order three more boxes of nachos...presumably for herself. But seriously, take the damn kid outside of the eating establishment until he quiets down. And maybe just be courteous. Parenthood hasn’t given you a free pass. Some of us have gone years intentionally NOT having children so that our lives might be a little simpler, quieter and less “rewarding.”

Rick Moranis and Harley Kozak represent one of the many ways to f**k up a kid in Parenthood.

*This is the second time I've quoted Keanu's character in Parenthood (Ron Howard, 1989). I've loved this movie since Gabe introduced me to it in high school. And, of course, it's no reflection of my feelings for my own father who is a dynamite parent and errs on the side of excessive politeness. 

**Ani DiFranco's "Little Plastic Castle."

***Link to Regan's blog.

****I can't stand that families with small children get to board before the rest of the airplane passengers. Why? Just because they've intentionally made their lives a huge pain in the ass doesn't mean I should have to suffer. Old people and the handicapped I get: they aren't slow and feeble on purpose (except for fat people who ride in wheelchairs because they don't feel like walking because their knees hurt because they're fat: unfair). But just because I didn't have four kids in the last 5 years I'm expected to wait behind The Brady Bunch? I paid good money for this ticket and I got in line BEFORE YOU!

"Rolled in from another town. Hit some gold, too hot to settle down."*

I worked for a famous person one time.

He is a musician and he actually isn’t that bad of a dude really, but his wife is THE DEVIL. He's not that great, either, to be honest.

I wouldn’t have brought it up in the first place, but I was once again reading through some old Doogie Howser-style computer journal entries and this hideous, angry bile must come pouring out of me now.

I’m somewhat convinced that leaving the entries as they were originally written is the best plan. But first, I must give some background.

I was hurting for work and had spent nearly a year babysitting my good friends’ Rebecca and Marty’s children. They couldn't keep me on. So, in order to keep my ship afloat, I applied at a nanny agency (more of that later).

Long story short, the agency hooked me up with a famous musician. His much-younger wife and two (new) young children needed a nanny, and I got the job. He had a three-year-old son named Conor and a 9-month-old daughter named Sophie. (Not their real names, okay?)

During the interview, his charming wife Beth asked me if I’d be willing to travel with them when her husband went on tour. I said “Of course!”

Who doesn’t want to travel?

So there I was, one month later, all set to fly to New York with the family. First class tickets, even. But just so we're all on the same page with what went down: Lacey had her period.

The following is excerpted from my computer diary of 2009:

• All of the baggage arrives, except for mine. The man at the lost baggage counter says it got delayed during search at LAX and he will have it at JFK by the 9:15 p.m. flight. We ask him to deliver it to the Essex Hotel, Central Park South.

• In the Escalade that takes us to the hotel, Beth asks the driver to stop at Duane Reade so we can pick up some essentials. (She knows about the period situation, FYI. I told her. Twice.) They all go in, but tell me to wait in the car. I guess I’m expected to fight the driver if he decides to drive off and leave them there.

• He and I have a nice talk. I tell him I saw Shirley MacLaine on the airplane. He thinks that’s cool and tells me about some of the celebrities he’s driven. We should've taken off into the sunset together. But we didn't.
  

• When everyone files back into the car (I was hoping she'd hooked me up with some tampons; she hadn't), I help fasten Sophie, the baby, into her car seat. Apparently I buckled the seat belt wrong, because in no time, Beth is yelling at me. When I apologize, she says next time, if I don’t know what I’m doing, for god sake, ask. I don’t cry, but probably just because I’m too tired to cry.

• In the hotel room, we eat tiny little cucumber, chicken, and crab sandwiches, which were provided by the hotel, along with a butt-load of garbage (chips, pretzels, popcorn) that Beth got at Duane Reade. This is the first time Lucia (the other nanny) and I have eaten since the morning.

• My bag hasn’t arrived by 11 p.m., and we’re all going to sleep. I call the front desk and ask them if they could bring the bag the next day if it comes any later. I don't want to "disturb" anyone (Beth).

The Essex House at Central Park South.
I liken it to The Dakota in Rosemary's Baby.

• I go to sleep in the shirt I’m wearing and my underwear. Then I think better of it (it was my only pair!) and clean my underwear as best I can in the sink and hang it to dry (my Mom taught me that). I luckily remembered to pack a couple tampons in my carry on, so I’m able to change at least that.

• Sophie (who is bunking with me--god forbid Beth have to parent during the night) wakes up every single hour starting at 12:45 a.m. Oh, except for once she slept for 2.5 hours (1.45-4:15). She is up for good at 8:30 a.m. I want to die, just so I can get a little extra sleep. At one point I bang my head against the bars of her crib.

A crying baby. Not Sophie.
Sophie was actually much cuter than this.

• Beth lets me sleep until 11:30 and is mad I’m not awake earlier.

• I put on yesterday’s jeans and unfortunately, the filthy, blood-drenched underwear that I attempted to clean is not dry yet. So I stick my last panty liner right on the crotch of my jeans and cross my fingers.

• We get the kids in the double stroller and go to Central Park Zoo—I am impressed by the fact that the women’s restroom smells worse than any of the animal cages—and the animals are pretty lame, too. The most impressive sight we saw was a polar bear taking a leisurely swim.
  

• While there, I attempt to buy a tampon or pad, but the machine in the bathroom is just for show—there’s nothing in it. It looks like an abandoned building.

This is too much. If you’ve made it this far, I applaud you. And I apologize.

I will fill you in on a later post.

*ELO lyrics from "Evil Woman."

Read Evil Woman Parts II, III, IV, and V.

"It's so good that you're feeling pain, but you better get yourself on board the very next train."*

Evil Woman Part V

           The never-ending saga of my trip to New York City with the middle-aged famous "musician" and his beastly wife twenty years his junior goes on. If you are new to this story, please find the previous installments here, here, here, and again here. 

From computer diary entries written in 2009:

-Monday

-Do not leave the hotel all day because Conor is sick. Just like Lucia’s been sick for days, but unlike Conor, she didn’t get to be sick in a bed. All she got were couch cushions on the floor.

-I mention I like doing laundry and that it is the only chore that gives me a sense of satisfaction. So Beth gives me a shirt to clean. Isn’t that sweet? I wish she’d quit spoiling me!

Tuesday

-Lucia tells me a story in front of Beth and I ask about the story using the word “murder” (it was a story about a murder!) and Beth snaps at me in such a way that I can’t help it—I start tearing up. She says in her serpentine, litigator hiss, “I am really not okay with those words! Don’t ever use those words around them!” 

-I try to control myself but the tears start coming, and I have to leave the room. I really don’t want Beth to have my tears. Part of me knows I’m crying because I’m tired and afraid of her and tired of being afraid of her, but I have to cry a little.

-Beth apologizes for snapping at me saying, “You didn’t know. I’ve never told you before that I don’t like those words. “Murder” and “kill” are just not okay with me. Something can “die” but the action of murder just isn’t okay.” It seems like a mostly semantic argument, but I understand the point, I guess. I just didn’t need to be snarled at. And it’s odd to me that treating human beings like garbage in front of your children is acceptable, but using words like “murder” and “death” is verboten.

-We go to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. Beth asks the driver to stop in front of the Dakota (knowing my obsession with all things John Lennon related) on the way so I can look at it, but I’m too cowed by Beth to bother to get out of the car. I look out the side of the window and thank her for stopping (it’s on the way to the museum). She asks if I’m sure I don’t want to get out of the car, but I don’t want to end up owing her anything, so I stay put.

The Dakota. John Lennon lived and was killed here.

-Lucia and I are made to wait in the lobby of the museum with the baby because Beth doesn’t want to pitch an extra $20 so we can look around too. She says it’s because they might make us check the stroller by the door and Sophie’s sleeping. I’m sure that’s it. It’s not that she’s an unbelievable skinflint or anything.

-Sophie’s stale bagel falls on the floor. I pick it up and give it back to her. I feel very evil about that, but I also feel that germs are important. She'll probably be eating gold the rest of her life, so it's good to build up resistance to germs now.

- We eat at Artie's Deli and Conor throws a pickle at my face. He starts laughing maniacally and I can tell that Beth is trying her best not to join him. It would be funny if I didn’t have the feeling I was in an alternate universe and might actually be able to murder a child. (And would the act of murder make Beth as mad as the word does?) I get up and walk Sophie around the restaurant. Lucia eats quickly and comes to replace me, but I tell her to go back and enjoy her meal—neither one of us has had a chance to sit down and eat an entire meal in over a week. And I don’t want to be around Conor. Or Beth. 

Artie's Deli. Where I decided I didn't care anymore.

-Beth finds us after 10 minutes or so. She apologizes for Conor. Beth is worried now—I can tell. She wasn’t sure how Conor's behavior had affected me. She’s been really nice to me all night. The part I don’t understand is why she didn’t reprimand her child for throwing food at another person—an adult, no less. The other thing I realize is that as long as I can get a flight home, I really don't care what happens to me anymore. I'm feeling more clearheaded than I've felt in years, somehow.

*ELO's Evil Woman.

"I've got eyes to see with, ears to hear with (or fly with), arms to hug with, lips to kiss with, someone to adore. How could anybody ask for more? My needs are small, I buy them all at the 5 and 10 cent store. Oh, I've got plenty to be thankful for."*

   You know what the world really needs? More movies about Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving could also use some more songs. I’m really trying to think of songs about Thanksgiving, but aside from “Plenty to Be Thankful For” from Holiday Inn and the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, I’m coming up empty. And it sucks because all the radio stations and department stores stomp right over Thanksgiving and start acting like its Christmas the day after Halloween.

Post-Halloween, pre-Thanksgiving: see? At Em's in Chicago.

   And oh Christmas with it’s terrible songs. (I wrote about that last year so I won’t go into it again.) It’s a travesty because Thanksgiving is AMAZING. It truly is AMAZING. It’s an entire holiday devoted to eating wonderful food and begrudgingly acknowledging your blessings between bites of turkey and pie. All kinds of pie! (Seriously: apple, pumpkin, rhubarb, chocolate, pecan: whatever kind of pie you want, Thanksgiving’s probably got it! Pie!) And after that you take a nap and maybe you wake up and watch football, or maybe you go meet up for drinks with friends who are in town for the holidays just like you. And you don't have to go to Church!

I made these out of pumpkin! Why is it only available for 2 months of the year?

   I did a little research on the Interwebs and came up with a few familiar movie titles, and some not-so-familiar movie titles that will allow me to start celebrating Thanksgiving really hard now that we’re in the final stretch to my favorite holiday of the year. (This is, of course, not including the much-anticipated post-Thanksgiving premiere of Liz and Dick starring my arch-rival Lindsay Lohan.)

   Here’s a familiar one: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (John Hughes, 1987). I’m really fond of this movie, even though it kind of tugs at my heartstrings towards the end, and I don’t like movies that try to make me feel stuff. But I love me some John Hughes, so this gets re-watched every now and then. And now the time is just right. Plus, I love just about every movie John Candy ever made. Steve Martin’s all right in my book, too.

   Here’s a not-so-familiar one: ThanksKilling (Jordan Downey, 2009). Now this movie sounds fascinating. It is described on imdb.com as follows: “A homicidal turkey axes off college kids during Thanksgiving break.” What’s not to like about that premise? It’s high time the turkeys of America got their revenge. And college kids suck, everyone knows that.

   Familiar: Holiday Inn (Mark Sandrich, 1942). Granted, the focus ultimately ends up being on Christmas (largely due to the musical finagling of the decidedly Jewish Irving Berlin: goddamn that song “White Christmas”!), but it is a musical about EVERY holiday and there is that whole delightful musical number where sad, lonely Bing Crosby talks about all the things he has going for him.

   Not-so: Son in Law (Steve Rash, 1993). Remember when Pauly Shore was a movie star? I do, because Encino Man was one of my favorite movies at that time (and I was planning to marry or seriously befriend Brendan Fraser), and also I thought he (Pauly) was wildly talented and seemed very sweet deep, down inside. But this isn't about how I have terrible, near-constantly bad judgment about men. Anyway, this truly raucous, awful film came out during those few short "Pauly Years," and it is vaguely tied to Thanksgiving. So…there’s that.

   Familiar: Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986). This is one of those really awesome Woody Allen movies from the eighties that doesn’t seem to be about anything, and maybe isn’t, but still somehow keeps coming back to the same Thanksgiving celebration at the same house each year and somehow winds up seeming really good and fulfilling. Like turkey and potatoes and PIE! Plus, Dianne Wiest is always amazing. 

   Not so: Boogeyman (Ulli Lommel, 1980) is vaguely centered around the Thanksgiving holiday. Without watching this movie again, I can’t tell you much. I think that perhaps the 1980 version that I saw is not the one that takes place at Thanksgiving, and maybe that’s the remake that happened in 2005. I will tell you this: the Boogeyman haunted my childhood. I slept with the closet door firmly closed until 2011, and I will NEVER WATCH THAT MOVIE AGAIN, despite not truly knowing to this day what the fuck a boogeyman even is. But do you want to know the best part about the Boogeyman? It's the definition: “An amorphous, imaginary being used by adults to frighten children into compliant behavior.” And what more is there to be thankful for than the power we adults wield over unsuspecting, ignorant children? Mwah ha ha ha ha! That’s really what Thanksgiving is all about. I guess. What was I even talking about? I think I’ve gotten away from my point…

I made this from pumpkin, too. It's pumpkin soup. So good. Pumpkins for the whole year! Thanksgiving keeps pumpkins alive past Halloween! Thanksgiving is the vegetable's answer to the no-kill animal shelter.

   Some of the Internets tried to say that Pocahontas was a Thanksgiving movie. Yeah, maybe if you love bad music and you really want to feel remorseful about all the shit that went down in the 17^th Century that you can't control and had nothing to do with. I say: move forward. Let’s not remember too hard about the shenanigans that went down at Plymouth Rock and try to focus a bit more on being grateful that we have so much pie to eat. 

*This song is from Holiday Inn and written by Irving Berlin. It's kind of cheeky and not altogether sincere, but it is one of the only Thanksgiving songs that exists. And I'm super grateful for it.  And for Holiday Inn (the movie, not the hotel chain...okay I'm grateful for both. It's Thanksgiving, for chrissakes).

"But a fool and his money soon go separate ways, and you found a fool lying in a daze."*

Evil Woman Part II.

            This is continued from my earlier post, which you can find here, in which I describe my glamorous journey to New York City with an aging rock star and his evil young bride.

            Continued from my journal of 2009:

-We walk over to FAO Schwartz and Beth buys a bag of candy—at this point I’m so sticky and wet I’m making a conscious effort to widen my stride. (I know, it’s gross. Forgive me, especially if you happen to be a man and can’t handle hearing about these kind of realities.)

- I make several comments in the course of the day’s outing to the effect of “I feel really gross” and “I have to buy some tampons…and underwear,” and Beth keeps saying cheerfully that she fully plans to stop at Duane Reade on our way home. I don’t understand why I couldn’t have run off and done it while they were at the toy store (or at any other point) but I think I forfeited my complaining rights when I slept those two hours this morning instead of playing peek-a-boo with Sophie (like I did all night long).

-We do FINALLY stop at Duane Reade and I buy, on accident, the largest underwear I've ever seen in my life. I mean, these go up to my boobs. But who cares? I buy other (clearly) mentionables and when we get back to the hotel I feel better than I've felt in ages.

Heaven?

-John and Beth take Conor to dinner somewhere nice and leave us to watch Sophie. Beth gives us money to buy dinner—telling us that one of us should run out and get it. I volunteer because I am so excited to have a few minutes to myself.  So I ask the concierge where to go and he sends me out the back of the hotel onto 58^th and I walked half a block to the deli on 7^th avenue.

-I contrive (somewhat unintentionally) to spend the entire $50 bill Beth had given me. But mostly, I just didn’t know what to get for Lucia. She’s a bit of a picky eater and she doesn’t tell me much about what she wants. So I fill three containers with different kinds of salads, potatoes, chicken, ribs—all kinds of yummy stuff. I really like walking around New York by myself. I wish I had more time to do it.

-My bag finally arrives at about 9:45 pm. I am so happy.

-John rather discourteously, and with many a disgusted gesture and facial expression, says I should clean up the dinner dishes and put them outside for housekeeping. I start crying (no one sees but Lucia).

-Wednesday morning at 7:30, after another wakeful night, Sophie wakes up. I try repeatedly to get her to go back to sleep, but no good. It’s probably because she hasn’t pooped since Monday morning and it is now Wednesday morning. I would most likely be crying too. I did bang my head against the bars of her crib again in exhausted frustration, but believe me: it didn’t solve anything.

-At nine a.m., Beth comes to get her for nursing. I tell Beth to bring her back when she’s ready for me to take over and I lay back down. I sleep until 10:30, and feel much better—but I’m scared to find out what’s been going on. Fortunately, all is cheerful because Sophie is sleeping in Conor’s room and Conor and Lucia are playing quietly in the living room.

-Beth buys Starbuck’s breakfast, explaining that room service is so expensive and it’s not that she doesn’t have the money, it’s the principle of the thing. So I eat a stale bagel and drink a delicious coffee and feel great.

-We go back to Central Park and take Conor to Heckscher Playground to run around on the equipment. Lucia and I push Sophie in circles around the playground while Beth and Conor go on the slides and jungle gym. She likes to take these opportunities to play “fun mom.” We talk about how upsetting the trip has been so far.

 Heckscher Playground, Central Park.

-Beth said we’d get some lunch at one of the copious restaurants along the way to Dylan's Candy Bar. But as is often the case in New York, once you need a restaurant, you can’t really find one—especially one with chairs. So we ate at Subway.

-It was good until I got in a weird sort of argument with Beth about the peppers on my sandwich—I could’ve sworn there was a third kind of pepper I’d never had and she was adamant that they only had two kinds of peppers at Subway and I felt sort of like she was being a little unreasonable—I mean, I saw the man get peppers from 3 different bins, and I suppose the jalapenos could have been sliced two different ways, but it was weird that she was arguing about what I was tasting on my sandwich. Sort of like how she consistently argues with me about people who live in cold climates. She says they can’t do anything when it gets cold outside and snows—that they have to just stay in. Since I come from a place where it frequently snows, a place far colder than New York City, I feel like I can speak intelligently to the fact that people can do plenty of things outside when it snows. But she knows I’m wrong.

-We go to Dylan’s Candy Bar and Beth and Conor go on a crazy shopping spree. Who cares? It’s just overpriced junk food. But she’s Ralph Lauren’s daughter, so she gets to have her own store. Nice. I will say she’s a marketing genius. Way to take a really simple idea and make a fortune out of it. She’s the Willy Wonka of the new millennium.

Willy Wonka.

Dylan Lauren.

-I take a moment when we get home to check my email—I do it in the living room so that I can still supervise the children (makes sense to me, considering Beth and John do it all the time and both Lucia and Beth are there). Conor, being the shit he usually is and hopped up on the pound of sugar Beth gave him on the way home, got into the baby aspirin and spilled it on the floor and Beth flipped out at me saying, “Lacey, can you help? Maybe you can just be here now and there will be time later to play on the computer!”

-I cleaned up the mess and when she came back from her panic in the next room over Sophie’s spit-up (oh my sweet lord! a baby spit up!), I told her I was just checking to see if my rent check cleared and I was sorry and it wouldn’t happen again. I’m starting to think part of the problem is the way she acts as though her children are combustible or fragile—like they’re different than other kids and we have to treat them like we would baby Jesus or a king’s kid or something. They’re fucking kids—and sometimes they get hurt (of course, not when they have 15 care-takers surrounding them at all times) and sometimes they get dirty. That’s life.

-While Beth and John are out to dinner, Lucia and I play with Conor and Sophie. When they come home, we're all dancing to Madagascar’s “Move it, Move It” scene. Beth likes this and imitates it the next night. She can't come up with these things on her own.

-The following morning, I learn that Lucia is sleeping on a four-foot-long LOVESEAT because Conor thinks it’s cool to sleep in a “big boy” bed. Beth allows this—does not stand up for Lucia or attempt to discipline her child so that the grown woman can have a bed to herself. But then again, I’m now sleeping on a couch NEXT to a room with a crib (Sophie’s) and two EMPTY queen size beds—because Beth is afraid Sophie will be kidnapped if she sleeps in a room with a door leading out to the hallway. And if Sophie sees me when she wakes up in the night, she won't stop crying (at least this much we've figured out). But at least my couch is long enough to fit an entire adult human body.

Loveseat.

Sofa.

-I go to get the coffees the next day, and Beth says she’ll meet me down there and help carry them back. She doesn’t show. And it’s raining. And there are five coffees, a bagel, some granola, and a muffin.

-We get picked up by a car and go to the three-story Toys "R" Us in the middle of Times Square. It is a hideous monstrosity.  Beth and Conor ride the Ferris wheel while Lucia and I walk around each floor with Sophie and talk shit about Beth.

-When she can’t find us, Beth begins SCREAMING Lucia’s name (I was playing with the baby while Lucia went to the bathroom). It was mortifying. I called to Beth so she’d come find us (and shut up).

-She makes me feel like I’m in high school and I’m about to get caught doing something bad--like I used to get caught smoking cigarettes in the parking lot. But I’m not doing anything bad! It’s like I was saying to Lucia, she makes you feel so crazy because she acts like everything you do is so atrociously wrong that you start to think that maybe it really is atrocious. Maybe you are the horrible, idiot monster she’s making you out to be. But the truth is: she’s completely insane, but has courtroom experience and a law degree, so it’s like she’s a debate Samurai—but though she will win, her argument is asinine. Does that make any sense?

-She sent Lucia to a touristy shop next to Stage Deli so Lucia could buy presents for her family and then got mad when she wasn’t back in 10 minutes and asked me to call her. Lucia got no chance to eat, since Beth was acting like we were in a mad rush to get back to the hotel. Why? So she could go shopping. (Oh, poor Beth! She hasn't had ANY free time with all the parenting she's been doing!)

-Beth made me climb over the back seat of the Escalade because she didn't want to move Conor. (This ended in me losing my cell phone for a day, thereby cutting off all my contact with the outside world.)

-I ask about Lucia and I having a brief chunk of time to ourselves each day—she assumes we mean to have it inside the hotel. With her children. I gingerly explain that we'd each like what some people call "a break." Which is legally required in a work environment. Especially when one's work day is 24-hours long. She is silent. (I think at this point she is REALLY mad that she hired an American-born nanny who knows to what she is entitled and isn't afraid to ask for it.)

-We wash the kids’ clothes in the bathtub with Woolite from the drugstore because it’s “too expensive” to have the hotel do it—and she’s got cheap labor in her suite! It works out okay, though, because I’m able to wash a few things of my own. And laundry gives me satisfaction the way few things do.  I heard from Lucia later that Beth bragged to one of the roadies that with all the money she’d saved having us do her laundry, she was able to buy herself and the kids new clothes at Barney’s. Nice.

*********************************************************************************

Okay, this was another long one. If you're still with me: many thanks! I know that the verb tenses are varied, but I was high on misery when I wrote these entries. Lighter and shorter entries in the next few days! I promise.


*Yet more lyrics from ELO's "Evil Woman."

"You know schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It's accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics. When an adult sees things that aren't there, we consider him ready for the rubber room."*

     I probably shouldn’t have started reading The Shining again in the first place. I’ve had bad experiences with it in the past. 

     One time I read it while I was staying in an old hotel (The Mark Hopkins) in San Francisco BY MYSELF and I was too afraid to use the bathroom because it had a shower-curtained tub (I guess they all do) and I was sure that the dead woman from Room 217 was in it. Then I was convinced I heard the shower curtain opening on its own. But nature won out and I had to screw up my courage and go pee or else pee in the bed. And I haven’t peed the bed once since I was eleven-years-old. So I marched right in and pulled the shower curtain open and peed (in the toilet—not in the shower). Then I left the shower curtain pulled open for the remainder of my stay, just in case. 

The Mark Hopkins. Not so scary.

        But I really like The Shining, so I read it every year, despite what a huge weenie I am. And there have been multiple occasions when I convinced myself mid-book that some small ghost child was looking in the window at me or Jack Torrance was trying to open the door and surprise me (in the bad way) in the shower.

        But I’ve never read the book while living alone, and it was really, really dumb of me. For one thing, I live in apartment #213, so I’m merely a few doors down from #217, which seems to be abandoned. Scary. And the elevator is old and creaky, and sometimes I think I hear it when I’m in bed at night (reading The Shining) even though it’s way too far away for me to hear. And I’m convinced I hear footsteps in the apartment above me, even though the building manager told me no one is living there yet. And the plumbing in this old building makes weird clanking and humming noises sometimes, so maybe it’s that old, dead lady trying to heat up her bath.

      Yeah, it was dumb.

      And then my friend Kathryn and I went out the other night for hamburgers and she mentioned how great the movie version of The Shining is.** And I almost choked. I started wondering if maybe I have the shine and somehow she was tuned into my extrasensory frequency. Which would be even worse for me if the dead lady from Room 217 is actually in my shower.

      I want to be proud of myself for how incredibly fertile my imagination is, but at the same time I’m wicked angry with myself for having the ability to imagine someone is chasing me or standing outside my door (despite the fact that I'm nearly 30 years old and I should know better).

     When I was a kid, we lived in a really cute little house with an unfinished basement. Lizzy and I would lay out blankets and pillows on the area rug and watch episodes of Who’s The Boss? and Family Ties down there on Friday nights, and eat pizza and drink Coke. It had exposed piping and light fixtures, but the family computer and dot matrix printer were down there and it smelled good because the washer and dryer were over in one corner.

      The only problem was that you couldn’t turn the lights off from upstairs. You had to pull the cord that dangled from the naked light bulb. And while that was perfectly doable at 4 p.m., it was a horrible after the sun went down. Usually our shows would end and we'd race each other up the stairs without turning off the lights and then fight over who had to go back down. When it was my turn, my brain could imagine any kind of horrible thing chasing me up the stairs after I pulled that cord. I could even hear the footfalls behind me.

       But now I’m a grown-ass woman and I still can’t shut out the voices of imagined bogey men hiding in every crevice of my apartment. And now I live utterly alone. And I thought it would be really great to read The Shining again.

     It was just plain dumb.

     The good news is: I’m trying to read as much as I can while the sun’s still up. I don’t have a shower curtain, but rather a shower door, and I leave it open. My imagination is slightly less incredible than it once was. And I’ve read this book about 10 times.

     But if I don’t post again for a few weeks, it’s because the Overlook got me.

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO. The inspiration for the Overlook.

     Or because I just bought Stephen King’s On Writing. Next time I write, it’ll probably be so amazing you’ll poop your pants. 

*The Shining by Stephen King.

**I don't care for Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining (Kubrick, 1980). He makes the lady in Room 217 hot, he adds in ex-caretaker Grady's daughters as weird twins, there's blood in the hallways and Danny is a wack-a-doo hippie with the voice of a gremlin and the hair of Dorothy Hamill. Plus, Shelley Duvall is Wendy in a heinous bit of bad casting (though to be fair, I hate her in almost everything except as Olive Oyl:the roll she was born to play). Sucky movie, if you ask me and not very scary. Nicholson's good, but he's always good, isn't he?