Godammit, I’m Mad!

Twenty years on, I am still rattled by my husband’s fucking ex. Not only has she opened a tiki-themed restaurant too close to my neighborhood,  she has recently written the following:

“There was a time in my youth, those long gone halcyon days, when it seemed I spent a large part of my life in front of a camera. In the pursuit of an acting career it was standard operating procedure to continuously update and change the 8-by-10s that were the calling cards of all of us who tramped the mean streets of Los Angeles in constant and often futile rounds of meetings in the offices of agents, photographers, producers, directors and various unsavory characters.

“Perhaps in retrospect it is the smiling [photos] that fare the best, as I was innately happy, clear of eyes and had good teeth. For my fiftieth birthday and retired at that point, I pulled out all the old headshots and plastered them over a large wall at my parent’s house, creating a sort of gallery. They made a remarkable display and told a story of my own evolution, not to mention hairdos. The one topless shot, though artistically done and revealing but a modest bosom, shocked my brother. Frankly, I was rather proud to shock anyone.”

There was one thing that each photo had in common, one through-line, one essence captured. It was youth, my youth. And youth is hope. There it is, around the curve of my smiling lips, in the gleam of my eye, in the open expression.”

Jesus. Christ.

I brought up the subject of her uniquely annoying existence with my husband, who flipped out. Why can’t I be normal, he wants to know. It’s easy for him to talk about normal: My ex, though a cunt, stays quietly in his corner and doesn’t open restaurants or write about his modest bosom.

Some things are just awful and they stay awful. Some things fall away in the stark awareness of what really matters.  I am waiting for the ex-wife to move from the first category into the second.

I’ve finally caught up with Homeland, after skipping the first season in a private protest against Claire Danes as a CIA agent. Now I’m cool with Claire, but Brody’s wife is a major irritant.

Whenever the wife is onscreen, I find it hard to stop critiquing her face. Her acting is awful, too, don’t get me wrong. She’s incapable of portraying any emotion with conviction.  Her character is badly underwritten but a decent actress could still bring something to suggest a life form.  Instead, she just strikes a pose and raises or lowers her voice.

Her head is too small for her body, making her look life a dinosaur of maybe a giraffe. But in profile, she looks like a duckling, thanks to that augmented top lip. Stop it with the lips, actresses! Remember Meg Ryan! In fact, I’m going to name Meg Ryan ‘The Alamo’ just to help keep the memory alive.

While looking at pictures of this actress (Morena Baccarin, who I see is considered a super-hot hottie) I learned from an observant stranger that she has the same nosejob as Ashley Greene. I don’t know who Ashley Greene is but let’s compare noses.

Ashley above, Morena below. I wouldn’t want this nose, although you could probably use it as a can opener.

Obviously, I’m feeling cranky and shallow but facts are facts. I love Homeland for its suspense and the tension of the thwarted love story, but that fucking wife is a pain in the ass.

Opinions or objections?

I had lunch today at an Indian restaurant where my friend and I were regaled by the wisdom of a guy I’ll call Mr. Know-it-all.

Mr. Know-it-all (see above) is one of those guys who knows everything. And I mean everything. He reminded me very much of my friend’s ex-husband, who also knew everything. The ex-husband once insisted on telling me something about screenplays, even though I had been reading them professionally for ten years.

Anyway, Mr. Know-it-all had one of the cooks in his thrall, at one point telling the man something about India, the cook’s birthplace. The cook managed to say “India is a place of great diversity” before Mr. Know-it-all ceded the point and moved on to the subject of Pakistan. In his authoritative monologue, Mr. Know-it-all held forth about the economy, manufacturing, Russia, the Rockefellers, the Carnagies, Fidel Castro, Israel, Iran, and my personal favorite, where to get the best bagels in China.

Why do these people exist? Why are they always men?

I have to admit I was fascinated by Mr. Know-it-all, and had to fight an urge to interact with him, just to make him spew forth more information. I suggested to my friend that she offer to marry him, since she’s had so much experience for the position. Sadly, she gave it a pass. We may never know the full scope of his knowledge.

The food was great, though.

Here’s a beaded cat-ear headband for $1,290 at net-a-porter, but that’s not the problem.

Here’s the description:

There are so many things wrong in this one paragraph! I counted six word crimes, and you may find that I passed some over in a fleeting moment of generosity.

My favorite is “a set of bold red lips.”  Who has a “set” of lips? Not me. Would a “pair” of lips be better, or is it wiser to just assume that everyone has two lips, as opposed to a single lip or a trio of lips?  If these are the notes of an editor, god help us.

Would anyone like to try making the editor’s notes even worse? (hint: I noticed they omitted  the word “sans,” which is usually a hallmark of this kind of crap.)

Did anyone find more than six grating word crimes? Show your work.

What the fuck is up with the “big boy pants?” It’s such an annoying expression that after hearing it three times, I need it to go away.

Did everyone hear Debbie Wasserman Schultz tell Romney and his staff to put on their big boy pants and big girl pants? I love Debbie, but I can’t endorse her word usage. What’s wrong with “man up,” even though I hate that one too.

Man up! It’s like everyone had to reach for a stupider way to accuse someone of being weak or unmanly. Big boy pants was also used by ex-CIA head Jose Rodriguez to defend the use of torture during interrogations:

Jose Rodriguez: We needed to get everybody in government to put their big boy pants on and provide the authorities that we needed.

Lesley Stahl: Their big boy pants on–

Jose Rodriguez: Big boy pants. Let me tell you, I had had a lot of experience in the agency where we had been left to hold the bag. And I was not about to let that happen for the people that work for me.

What a fucking cunt!™  He needs to be water-boarded, then we’ll talk about big boy pants.

Earlier this year, some idiot elected to leave a comment here, regarding something I had written about grief, and advised me to put on my “big girl pants.” I was so offended that I deleted the comment. I never censor my comments but I had to make an exception. My pants are big enough and I’ll wear whatever pants I want, Mongoloid, Esq.!

How do you feel about big boy pants? Are you ready to nominate it for worst jargon of the year?

One day last week, I had the clever idea of paraphrasing Shakespeare with a post called “First we kill  all the something,”  But now I’ve forgotten what the Something was.

You’d think if I really hated it, I would remember it but you wouldn’t be factoring in my severe memory problems. I’m hoping someone can remind me what the Something is, and presumably it is a group.

Going through my brain’s rolodex of hated things, I have already ruled out:

Republicans
Christian fundamentalists
Fashion bloggers
The members of Cream
The members of Steely Dan
People who say “Everything happens for a reason”
Child molesters
Racists
TV chefs

Godammit, what am I leaving out? This is really bothering me! Please help, if you can.

~

*(My husband just responded to my question with “It’s too big a category for you.”)

Last night I realized that one of my favorite earrings is missing. It so happens that I only wear one of the earrings at a time, because Keith Richards is still my fashion muse. It’s a long safety pin earring and it would look stupid to wear one in each ear.

Nevertheless, I want that missing earring! Where did it go? Why is it missing? Who would take it, besides Keith Richards?

I’ve looked everywhere, and I mean everywhere. It’s not with my other jewelry and it’s not in that little tray in the bathroom where I sometimes put my earrings.   When I looked in the tray for the third or fourth time, I recalled the story in The Boy Who couldn’t stop Washing about a woman who slashed her couches in a manic search for a lost hairbrush or something. I don’t want to be her. But I feel the seeds.

Saint Anthony is the patron saint of lost things, but as we all know, he never helps. You can pray your ass off but he won’t return your lost thing. I can’t even count the socks he has failed to return.

Remember when I lost my gold watch? Still missing. I have a hunch that it was stolen by a crazy Chinese nurse, but that’s a whole story on its own. This is about the earring.

I remember buying the earrings at Macy’s, where my purchase was rung up by a tired elderly black woman who was missing a critical tooth and couldn’t calculate the 20% sale discount. I bought the earrings at full price rather than give her more stress.

If I practice The Secret, will my earring manifest itself? Does Saint Anthony know about The Secret?

When I chose the image above from a rudimentary google search, I was startled by its projected violence. Can everyone see that he’s about to throw that baby into a river or cut it in half on that table? It’s so obvious! Maybe god told him to sacrifice the baby a la Abraham and Isaac, or maybe Saint Anthony is just nuts.

Maybe he’s nuts because he can’t find the lost things and he finally snapped, like the hairbrush lady with OCD.

Questions or advice, anyone?

I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this picture and thought, “Who the fuck is this guy and why is he everywhere?” I have just now inadvertently  discovered his identity: Francois Verkerk, a model.

I was pretty sure that he was a vintage guy but now I know he’s contemporary, I don’t know what to think. I think I hate him. What an ass.

On the other hand…. I do like a dandy when he has the goods to pull it off. But no, no. I want to kill him.

What’s your take?

I didn’t need Pantone to tell me their choice for Color of the Year. There has been nothing but orange around for months. You can call it Tangerine Tango or whatever you want, but it’s still orange and we don’t need so much of it.

Try looking for a red t-shirt, for example. A few weeks ago, I went to every store in a big mall, trying to find one. All the sales people led me to something orange, explaining that this was “the new color.”   Each time, I insisted on red, declaring in a bossy voice that “Red is a neutral.” I vowed to boycott orange,  although  I nearly caved to an overpriced t-shirt by  James  Perse that was a deep orange I will call “persimmon.”

I also looked at some jeans called “lipstick” even though they were orange.   Today, my husband took me to a huge Nordstrom which stimulates my endorphins no matter how depressed I am. We recently saw Jermaine Jackson there in the cosmetics department, clearly high on his own endorphins.

Everything was orange! It was an assault. It’s like a military take-over by orange. Even the nice sales assistant, Amanda, agreed that there was an orange “domination” underway.   I tried on some dark blue jeans but to my horror they were not skinny jeans but “skinny legging jeans.” It’s a slippery slope to “jeggings,” I believe.

Here is a dress I bought last year, thinking it was “coral” when in fact it is a salmon pink (and not this hot pink in real life.) As you can see, I am right on trend with lace. You could even say that I started the trend, all by myself. I am thankful that it isn’t actually coral, which is a shade of orange, just like mango, paprika, papaya, or god forbid, Tangerine Tango.