Song du Jour. Desperately Seeking Seymour*

"Somewhere that's Green" - Little Shop of Horrors (original cast album)

I know Seymour's the greatest
But I'm dating a semi-sadist
So I've got a black eye
And my arm's in a cast.
Still, that Seymour's a cutie
Well, if not, he's got inner beauty
And I dream of a place
Where we could be together at last

A matchbox of our own
A fence of real chain link,
A grill out on the patio
Disposal in the sink
A washer and a dryer and an ironing machine
In a tract house that we share
Somewhere that's green.

He rakes and trims the grass
He loves to mow and weed
I cook like Betty Crocker
And I look like Donna Reed
There's plastic on the furniture
To keep it neat and clean
In the Pine-Sol scented air
Somewhere that's green

Between our frozen dinner
And our bedtime, nine-fifteen
We snuggle watchin' Lucy
On our big, enormous twelve-inch screen

I'm his December Bride
He's Father, he Knows Best
Our kids play Howdy Doody
As the sun sets in the west
A picture out of Better Homes and Gardens magazine

Far from Skid Row
I dream we'll go
somewhere that's green.

*Not really desperate at all. Just liked the turn of phrase.

Other trivia:

I signed on to accompany this musical in college on keyboards, but the band got cut at the last minute cause the singers couldn't be heard. Bah.

In the cast album, it was 'play Howdy Doody' and in the movie it was 'watch Howdy Doody.'

Smooth...creamy...ummm.....

Silly, but not for the faint of heart.

So, I'm at my local, slightly pricier than Duane Reade pharmacy, and I'm in need of shower gel. I spot a rather large bottle of "Skin Milk," slightly fancy, but not much pricier than that overscented cheapish "Swiss Formula" crap I get at the DR in bulk. It's clean white, has a fresh sugary-vanilla scent, and comes in an aesthetically pleasing pump bottle. Lovely. I grab it without thinking further, along with some trash bags, some random shampoo and Synthroid, and head cheerily home.

I use the stuff for a few days. It's moderately lathery, requiring a few more pumps on the old shower puff than I'd like, but not as bad as some pricey tiny bottle of English crap that is lovely and soft and rosey but basically lasts four showers and costs ten bucks. Keep in mind, I am nearly stone blind in the shower without contacts. It's not too harsh on my winter-dry-chloriney skin, and it smells pretty without being perfumey.

But, one day, after some energetic, rushed pumping, I notice the splatter on the wall. And, suspiciously, look closely, squinting, at the opaque white drizzle on my shower puff, before vigorously squeezing it into lather-oblivion. And then, horrified, I realize...

This stuff looks like ejaculate. But exactly.

I've been soaping up every day with porno-pudding. Man-juice. Splooge. If I had a Dirty Sketch to compose, I wouldn't need to mix up fancy frosting or thinnish cornstarch paste, because Here it Is. Come in a Drum.

If I were that Sort of Girl, I'd do something whacky with Skin Milk and my digital camera. But I'm a Lady.

Splooge. I shouwer with scented, foaming splooge.

And I've got at least eighteen ounces left.

Blog Plugs

People do this, right?

Sunday 1/29
Ampersand - 2 person improv
"early bird special" w/Marian Rosin. Appearing with "dirt dawgs" (Kevin Hines & Dave Lombard) and Warth & Todd (Dave Warth & Betsy Todd)
8 PM
Magnet Theater (29th between 7th and 8th)
$5

Tuesday 1/31
Laugh Lounge Stand Up - Hosted by Chris Griggs, Featuring Jodi Wasserman, Frank Vignola, a bunch of other funny people, and me.
151 Essex Street
830 PM
$12 + 2 drink minimum. BUT if you call/email me I will waive the cover charge! I am mad, mad with power I tell you!

Ever so charming!

How could I have forgotten this?

I may post this on Missed Connections:

"Monday night, in a cab on Sixth Avenue. You were puking out the window in the cab next to mine, and my cab was passing yours, but you kept catching up. You kept puking. I felt bad for you. Then, you looked up and smiled at me, sticking your tongue out in such a charming way. Look, No Puke! What a cutie! I was thinking, boy, seven o'clock is so early to be that shit-faced, but maybe it was food poisoning or something. Hope the train ride back to Jersey was swell!"

He was kinda cute. The puke clung to the cab. The driver's face, impassive.

I heart New York. I wished I'd have taken a picture for someone's New York photo blog.

RIP Barrymore's

This unassuming pubby-type place on 45th and 8th was where my buddy Jessica and I would go, pre or post theater, to grab a drink (or a few), or some food (or not), and see major or minor celebrities (the cast of the Producers sans headliners, Jon Lovitz and Larry Miller looking morose during their play's run). It was where I defaulted to when I had to meet a friend in the west/midtown/theater area, that wasn't wretchedly overpriced, touristy and lame.

Closing at the end of the month, its building is owned by the Shubert organization and not stating any explicit reasons why. Probably to make a boatload installing some TJ O'Pootertoots or something hideous. I don't know if the building is staying or going. I don't care. I loved the waitrons and the atmosphere; hell, I used to fucking smoke there, it's been that long.

Playwright's Tavern can suck it. I don't even know what I'm saying. I'm just bummed. Like the email I just got a few minutes ago, "noooooo!"

Fuckers.

Sleeping-in dreams

So I was 'working' in an ER (passing myself off as a med student), but the doctors were Anthony Edwards and George Clooney. And the outfits (I shit you not) were by Project Runway. And I'm not sure they were really working as doctors, or just 'consulting' cause they were lying on gurneys most of the time, looking superhot and dispensing sage wisdom about differential diagnosis. I think we all knew we were frauds, somehow, yet not.

Outside the hospital window there was a circus fight. Two clowns on stilts really got into it. There was collateral damage. Fortunately, the trapeze woman was actually an intern. George cuddled one of the circus clown kids and checked him for head injury, but I think he may have been retarded. I asked him lots of questions about differential diagnosis, which he answered sagely.

I crawled into bed with Anthony Edwards who mumbled that he was going to London, but wouldn't take me with him. He wanted me to help find someone to write an Agatha-Christie-type mystery novel for him - someone who knew England, mysteries, writing and medicine - but somehow I wasn't suitable. I almost told him to fuck off, but swallowed my pride and proposed slightly unsuitable candidates.

I went back to the ER, but curiously, it was a large guest house at that point. Everyone was asleep and I watched people's cell phones ring, and tried to hand them to people I kind of knew from different walks of life.

A friend left his cell phone at my house. It was a garish girly pink brick that I didn't remember but I knew was his. I called and said I had his ridiculous pink cell phone, and that I was keeping it; he had already replaced it somehow, and was cooking stirfry with his girlfriend, he had to whisper. I hung up.

I was forced to make an outfit out of orange and brown stretch fabric. I kept cutting the orange fabric into large rough squares. A couple of Project Runway like designers kept coming over and pointing at drawings of neckline ruffles, hopefully, and looking up at me.

Whiskey, 300 AM

Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick,
And think of you
Caught up in circles confusion -
Is nothing new
Flashback - warm nights -
Almost left behind
Suitcases of memories,
Time after -

Sometimes you picture me -
I'm walking too far ahead
You're calling to me, I can't hear
What you've said -
Then you say - go slow -
I fall behind -
The second hand unwinds

If you're lost you can look - and you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you - I'll be waiting
Time after time

After my picture fades and darkness has
Turned to gray
Watching through windows - you're wondering
If I'm OK
Secrets stolen from deep inside
The drum beats out of time -

If you're lost you can look - and you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you - I'll be waiting
Time after time

You said go slow -
I fall behind
The second hand unwinds -

If you're lost you can look - and you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you - I'll be waiting
Time after time
...Time after time
Time after time
Time after time
Time after time

******

You know why I keep posting song lyrics?

*******

You with the sad eyes
Don't be discouraged
Oh I realize
It's hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

Show me a smile then,
Don't be unhappy, can't remember
When I last saw you laughing
If this world makes you crazy
And you've taken all you can bear
You call me up
Because you know I'll be there

And I'll see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

***********

Cause I really don't want to talk about it.

***********

Swaying room as the music starts
Strangers making the most of the dark
Two by two their bodies become one

I see you through the smokey air
Can't you feel the weight of my stare
You're so close but still a world away
What I'm dying to say, is that

I'm crazy for you
Touch me once and you'll know it's true
I never wanted anyone like this
It's all brand new, you'll feel it in my kiss
I'm crazy for you, crazy for you

Trying hard to control my heart
I walk over to where you are
Eye to eye we need no words at all

Slowly now we begin to move
Every breath I'm deeper into you
Soon we to are standing still in time
If you read my mind, you'll see

I'm crazy for you
Touch me once and you'll know it's true
I never wanted anyone like this
I'ts all brand new, you'll feel it in my kiss
You'll feel it in my kiss because
I'm crazy for you
Touch me once and you'll know it's true
I never wanted anyone like this
Its all brand new, you'll feel it in my kiss
im crazy for you,
crazy for you
crazy for you
crazy for you

its all brand new, im crazy for you
and you know its true, im crazy, crazy for you
its all brand new, im crazy for you
and you know its true, yeah, Im crazy for you
Crazy for you baby

Haunting.

Thru And Thru - Rolling Stones

You know that we do take away
We deliver too
Open 24 hours babe
Just waiting on a call from you
Waiting on a call from you

Well I'm in the yellow pages
You just take a look
Look me up under services
You know it's just an open book
Babe it's just an open book
It's just an open book
Well baby

Any minute, any hour
I'm waiting on a call from you
And you know this heart is constant
I'm your lover, baby
Thru and thru
Lover, baby, thru and thru

I only found out yesterday
I heard it on the news
What I heard really pissed me off
Cause now I got those fucking blues
I got those awesome blues
Babe I got those nothing blues

Any minute, any hour
I'm waiting on a call from you
And you know this heart is constant
I'm your lover, baby
Thru and thru
Lover, baby, thru and thru

You know that we do take-away
That we deliver, too
We're open 24 hours, baby
We're waiting on a call from you
But any minute, baby, any hour
I'm waiting on a call from you
You know that this heart is constant
I'm your lover, baby
Thru and thru
Lover, baby, thru and thru
Lover, baby, thru and thru
Lover, baby, thru and thru

Digital Cable, thou hast undone me.

If you're at all low in the mind, try not watching this particular late-night maudlin-cable-trifecta:

Harold & Maude
Spanking the Monkey
What's Eating Gilbert Grape

with a side order of:

Celebrity Poker Showdown.

Stolen from my emails, bitch.

Fascinating, no? Yes. See how it works for you. I'm still chewing on it myself, actually.

"here's an old allegory, either Native American or Lebanese -- I've
heard it both ways -- about a frog and a scorpion. You familiar with
it? The frog is about to swim across the river and a scorpion stops
her and asks for a ride to the other bank. "No, I can't," says the
frog. "If I let you climb on my back, you'll sting me."

"That's ridiculous," says the scorpion. "If I did that, we'd both drown."

Convinced, the frog let's the scorpion climb on her back and, right
when they get to the deepest part of the river, the scorpion plunges
his stinger into the frog's neck.

"How could you do that?" cries the frog, as the poison begins to take
hold and the pair starts sinking.

The scorpion shrugs and says, "You knew I was a scorpion, bitch.""

stolen from yet another blog.

Interactive fun! Thanks, Jen!

Take My Quiz - on - QuizYourFriends.com!

For the aging seafood lover in you

I didn't feel old on my own birthday.

But my baby brother is THIRTY-FIVE (35).

ouch.

If i had a fancy scanner, I'd put in some adorable kiddy pictures of us as completely non-resembling non-combative little siblings. But now he's a working man, married man, dad of a sweet comical three-year-old. But to me, he's still that kid....insert your childhood cliches here.

THIRTY FIVE. I nearly puked up my viciously awful Red Lobster dinner. (not like that wasn't impending. I'm still digesting that meal. Oh but those 'cheese' biscuits...oily amalgams of salt, flour, vaguely greenish vegetal flecks of what I hope was parsley, some kinda cheese product, some kinda fat product, and more salt. Yum! I had about five, cause my 'stuffed flounder' was a strangely layered flatfish covering a pasty licorice-tasting pile of mock-crab-laced library paste, next to an overbuttered-and-creamed and twice-nuked baked potato. The artichoke dip was nuclear hot and laced with pink seafood surprise. So, my dinner consisted of a desultory tossed salad, no dressing, about five tentative bites of this fish surprise, a couple of my brothers' shrimp and soaking wet king crab legs, and far too many cheese biscuits. And a monstrous iced tea.)

I want a recipe for those biscuits. I think they're laced with crack. Salty, greenish crack.

Stay gold, Ponyboy.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay

- Robert Frost

...or, "The Outsiders" if you take your pop culture 80s style.

Now that's deep.

Because it's true.

Stay gold.

I loves me some G-Mail ads

Ads found next to a raging argument conducted via G-mail today:

"A Positive Attitude is Everything.....ThinkTQ.com"

"Daily Thoughts for Women.....www.medidationsforwomen.com"

"Get 105 Positive Thoughts.....www.sunnythoughts.com"

"Positive Thoughts?.....www.icreatereality.com"

When someone, somewhere, out there, tells you to f**k off, G-mail is there for you. Thanks, G-Mail!

"That's not a hand, that's a height"

- Penn Jillette, folding a 6-4 offsuit.

This has gotta be the most smokin' and interesting Celebrity Poker Showdown table ever.

Ever.

Jeff Gordon. Sure, NASCAR dorky on the outside, but a total devil.
Kathy Griffin. Stealth, surprisingly.
Ron Livingston. Quietly hot. Remember The Cooler?
Penn Jillette. Loudly, dorkily hot. Like I believe he's never played before.
Angie Dickinson. Classic hot and a killer player.

Man.

I want to play more poker in 2006.

Eternal Question #37 and commentary track.

With all the suffering in the world, and the pain in ones' soul, and the trying times of ones' loved ones....

why must one spend one's therapy time talking about boys?

Boys.

I curse you, IM! For planting the seeds via an especially delightful conversation about boys, no doubt.

Boys.

Aren't I a little old to refer to them as boys?

Well, no.

Boys. What's the matter with boys today? (In the style of Bye Bye Birdie.)

When I was about five, I developed a huge crush on Paul Lynde. Go figure. How sophisticated!

I'm tired.

Seriously, seriously tired. I wish I knew why.

I'm going to bed now.

Some things are just scary.

Billy Fucking Joel

Did you see him on Conan tonight?

Man, that guy's been through hell. Make fun of him from being from Long Island, the Christie thing, the poppy-cheesy stuff, the car-crashing nightmares. Whatever.

But he can play. He can sing. And he can write a fucking song.

It's amazing when you've followed someone from the beginning of their career to their later year, singing a song they sang so many years ago. And what the fuck does that song mean now?

His voice is deeper, more careful, more controlled, almost angrier. Controlled and deep and carrying a different sort of intensity.

He's thinner, balder, but definitely intense.

Try listening to "Everybody Loves you Now" sung from the fiftysomething perspective, rather than the twentysomething perspective, and you won't be the same for it.

This was the second song:

Slow down you crazy child
You're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart tell me why
Are you still so afraid?
Where's the fire, what's the hurry about?
You better cool it off before you burn it out
You got so much to do and only
So many hours in a day

But you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want
Or you can just get old
You're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through
When will you realize...Vienna waits for you

Slow down you're doing fine
You can't be everything you want to be
Before your time
Although it's so romantic on the borderline tonight
Too bad but it's the life you lead
You're so ahead of yourself
That you forgot what you need
Though you can see when you're wrong
You know you can't always see when you're right

You got your passion you got your pride
But don't you know that only fools are satisfied?
Dream on but don't imagine they'll all come true
When will you realize
Vienna waits for you

Slow down you crazy child
Take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while
It's alright you can afford to lose a day or two
When will you realize...
Vienna waits for you.

But you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want
Or you can just get old
You're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through
Why don't you realize...Vienna waits for you
When will you realize..Vienna waits for you


I don't have that many childhood heroes.

On demand, oh on demand.....

For my money, you can't find a better-written series than "Oz." Once you get past all the killin', rapin', assaultin', druggin', man-butts and such.

Seriously, amazing narratives. One tends to forget that.

FYI, Christopher Meloni appears in the latter part of Season 2, for man-butt-watchers.

So far...(FIRST BAD HAIKU OF 2006)

throat closed, ears burning.
Cannot swallow a darn thing.
(insert cheap joke here).