THE LAST MARTINI

No, no, there's no reason to panic, dear reader. I have not given up the Blessed Vodka to join the rest of my gay brethren aboard that grimmest of train rides, The 12 Step Express.



While I admire those who have made it through "The Program" (and frankly, I'd LOVE to be able to blame my sometimes appalling behavior on SOMETHING other than my own stupidity!) I'm afraid my addictions sustain me and, in return, I them; besides, there are dozens of bartenders around the world depending on me to put their children through university, and who am I to deny the wee tots their education?



I am merely preparing for tomorrow - Day One of filming on my latest epic HARRIET THE SPY, featuring the utterly adorable Jennifer Stone -



- and a cast of "exciting newcomers" who are probably at this very moment tossing and turning in their little nuns' beds, memorizing their Oscar (tm) speeches in the hopes of being the next Marisa Tomei.



After four weeks of endless meetings, hours of driving around exotic Hamilton, Ontario in a mini-van to try to find locations which bear at least a vague resemblance to the upper east side of New York City -



- (we've done our best, but I'm afraid the expression "mutton dressed as lamb" does come to mind) and the seemingly boundless energy, talent and goodwill of all concerned, we are about to set sail on the good ship "Principal Photography".

Thus, to mark the occasion, I am having my final martini for the duration of the shoot as i pore over my copious notes for tomorrow's shots.



As is my habit, I do not raise even a single one of these little darlings until the final night of filming on a project is done, rather like the prize a long distance runner is given for making it to the Finish Line, or the piece of cheese a rat gets for ringing the bell at the end of the maze. For those of you who know me, can you imagine how good THAT martini tastes?

I know what you're thinking - "my GOD Ron, what kind of will power must you have?" Well, to misquote "that venomous fishwife" Addison DeWitt in "All About Eve" -



- I live in the cinema as a Trappist monk lives in his faith, and if those little hooded fellows could take a vow of silence in honor of a Higher Power then I can certainly put aside the martini shaker for a few weeks in honor of HRH Mickey Mouse.



Of course, the Monks had their wine, didn't they? So I suppose....



I mean, let's not be crazy about this.

Follow along, dear reader. For the next four weeks, we get to ignore Balloon Boys, Murderous Muslim Soldiers and all the rest of the drivel that gets pumped into our lives by the wretched mass media, and live in the FantasyLand which is A Movie. Fasten your seatbelts, to steal another quote from Mr. Mankiewicz.



The fun is about to begin...

LOCKER ROOM WHANG

For decades, people on both sides of the 49th parallel have argued about the difference between Canadians and Americans.



Some say it’s social, others say it’s political. I think it’s simpler than that; I think it has to do with underwear.



- VS., say -



More specifically, I think it has to do with how underwear is removed in gymnasium locker rooms. I saw evidence of this just recently at the “Extreme Fitness” in downtown Toronto, Canada -



- where I’ve been getting myself into fighting shape for the upcoming shoot of the movie “HARRIET THE SPY” –



- based on the classic children’s novel - for the good people at Disney.

(Sidebar note: while it’s a terrific gym, and I highly recommend checking it out if you’re ever in Toronto, I would suggest going on Sunday mornings when all the religious kooks are in church.



It is no secret of course that Christians are, as a species, wildly overweight -



- while atheists tend to be much more physically fit, likely because instead of spending all their time praying for good health and a trimmer waist-line, they are, in fact, working out.)



Anyway, there I was, desperately trying to negotiate the control pad on my iPod – am I the only one who can’t seem to get the damn thing to comprehend the difference between Frank Sinatra and Franz Ferdinand? – when suddenly there came the most startling ‘crash’ from the other end of the Men’s Changing Room.

It sounded as if someone had driven a 1986 Volvo into a crowd of pre-schoolers - not that I recommend that sort of thing, but really, given the current state of youth crime in our culture, for example, those three boys who recently set fire to a fourth over a $40.00 video game debt, which may result not only in significant jail time but also the strong possibility of future careers in the Credit Card Collection Industry -



- perhaps it’s not a bad idea to “nip it in the bud”, as it were - and I couldn’t resist following the noise to its source.

To my surprise I saw a swarthy and heavily muscled gentleman of Middle Eastern descent writhing naked on the floor next to a locker, a towel clutched in his hand and a pair of mustard colored briefs twisted hopelessly around his ankles.

Thinking that perhaps with a single kind gesture I could make up for the horrors of Abu Ghraib, I considered offering some help, but thought better of it as he glowered at me, muttering something in one of those artificial sounding Arabic languages one used to only hear in the movies – often uttered by the Bad Guy as he swing his scimitar over his head and threatened a loin-clothed Victor Mature with the “death of a thousand mongeese” or some such nonsense.



As I backed off, watching him slowly pick himself up and begin gingerly rubbing his head, I suddenly understood what had happened. In fact, I had seen something like it many times before.

Now let me make one thing utterly clear; this is not a rant against Canada.

Indeed, it’s been a year since I was last here, in my home and native land, and while I was certainly in no hurry to return, even I – die hard Beaverphobe that I am – must admit I have been having a disturbingly good time during this latest cinematic project.

The marvelous Grand Hotel – although plopped unceremoniously at the corner of Crack Whore Boulevard and Homeless Person Urine Stain Drive – has been as gracious and as accommodating as always, with a wonderful breakfast every morning and a nightly Belvedere martini so perfectly constructed as to make me re-think the ten year contract I’ve recently signed with my houseboy Panton.



(Granted, Panton has other attributes which even a five star hotel can’t match, but then again the staff of this hotel speaks fluent English, unlike Panton’s indecipherable blend of Peruvian and Sanskrit, so perhaps it’s a draw after all…)

It must also be said that the team assembled by My Producers is one of the best I’ve ever had, including my darling First Assistant Director ROBYN -



- who deftly maneuvered us through the treacherous waters of our movie “Bridal Fever” two years ago -



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQzYjjNvuS8

- and who has the kind of obsessive attention to detail that would make an autistic child feel like an under-achiever.



Then there are the actors – including the beyond charming JENNIFER STONE



- and the distractingly wholesome ex- Abercrombie and Fitch model WESLEY MORGAN -



- and of course national Canadian treasure JAYNE EASTWOOD, without whom I simply cannot imagine making a film on this side of the border –



- all delightfully enthusiastic and talented and clearly worshipful of the ground upon which I stand, which is a very admirable trait for people who wish to have their own close up shot from time to time.



Even our Writers – in this case a mother/daughter team so adorable that to just look at them is to develop a case of diabetes - have delivered a charming and deliciously ironic script which not even a GIFTED director could screw up.

Taking into account the usual bouts of homesickness for my loved ones back in our desert paradise - including of course Crawford The Dog, whose recent portrayal of a Chicken during Halloween has been the talk of the town for weeks –



- and the occasional idiots lumbering through the Hotel Bar in search of "Miller On Tap" (the mind reels; how DO these people find their way all the way here from the Bus Station?), I must admit that things have been going remarkably well.

So obviously, with all this good energy circling me, it’s only natural I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m just surprised it made so much noise when it did.

And that it sounded like a homophobic nincompoop slamming his head against a locker door.

One of the fascinating side effects of Canada’s rather liberal social construct, in particular, its embrace of the Civil Rights of its Gay and Lesbian citizenry, has been the imposition of a form of “tolerance” onto its people. Canadians, as a nation, may not necessarily “like” homosexuals, but they are forced, by law, to accept them.



This probably works for Joe and Mary Snowmobile, coming from that delightfully innocent era "before" homosexuality -



- and for whom it now exists as a kind of rare bird, seen on occasion in the wilds of downtown Vancouver or, perhaps, on the dock of a rented cabin in Ontario's “Cottage Country”. As is the way of all good Canucks, if it doesn’t interrupt Hockey Night in Canada, it really doesn't bother them.



But for the heterosexual men of a place like downtown Toronto, the Gays surely must seem to be EVERYWHERE. And in classic “straight man” fashion (and by “straight” I mean "STRAIGHT-straight", not “well, I used to be gay but then I found Jesus-straight")-



- they are apparently convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that, regardless of the fact that they may bear a resemblance to the sort of thing one normally finds living beneath a bridge and terrorizing passing Billy Goats -



- they are in fact the targets of Godless Homos who clearly want nothing more than to lead them away from the path of righteousness-



- and right down Sodomy Lane.



Thus, the Jockey brand ankle bracelets around the afore-toppled Gym Goer.

Desperate to protect himself from the staring eyes of what must have been, in his mind, a Night of the Living Dead-type hoard of Butt Pirates intent on checking out his manhood -



- this deluded fellow had, while still semi-dressed, secured his club-issued towel around his waist and then, with bodily contortions that would have put a Czechoslovakian prostitute to shame, attempted to remove his underpants from beneath the towel, thus shielding his delicate private parts from public view.



Of course, gravity always outweighs modesty and it must have got the upper hand here too, with a single misstep causing the poor fellow to slam his thick noggin against the metal locker with a resoundingly appropriate “WHANNNGGGG!”, knocking himself down to the tile floor where, ironically, his legs spread far enough apart to not only reveal his precious genitals to the entire locker room but also turn the rest of the nearby patrons into amateur, if unwilling, proctologists.



But what, my reader must wonder, does this have to do with the American/Canadian question? Fair enough. Let me continue.

Having spent the past twenty-five years circumnavigating the world, and working out in gyms on five continents, in twice as many countries, I’ve seen a lot of interesting things. Most of these I cannot share, even with you, dear reader; while I have a Sainted Boyfriend who not only endures the stresses of life with a B movie director but actually embraces them -



- even ONE of these stories would likely guarantee me “single man” status for the rest of my life. At my age, this is not only undesirable but probably fatal.

But let it just be said, in all my travels, I have never before seen such a silly and potentially life-threatening display of puritanical penis-cloaking in my life as I witnessed that morning. While the poor fellow was obviously trying to allay suspicions about his own sexuality - rather like the "rap" world's favorite new slang "NO HOMO", used anytime they inadvertently brush up against the turgid prod of homoerotica-



- and which frankly, has been asking more questions than it answers -



- he actually did the exact opposite; laying naked on a gym floor with your legs in the air is basically Gay Porn 101.



Upon further exploration, I've even found a clever Entrepreneur cashing in on the apparently horrific idea of the naked human body being exposed to the world -



- and while I applaud his ingenuity, I suspect this ridiculous product won't catch on. Certainly not in California, where I have lived lo these past twenty years; such behavior would immediately attract suspicion of a terrorist plot. Everybody knows honest, flag-waving, red-blooded American men love nothing more than swinging their genitals around, whether called for or not.



While in this case the un-toweled “slamee” may have been of the Muslim persuasion, I don’t think his religion had much to do with his unfortunate gravitational mishap. More likely it was just a twist of fate – not to mention a fairly lax immigration policy - which catapulted him from the Tehran Gold’s Gym face first into a locker door in Canada.

There is, after all, a kind of insane logic to it; with gay marriage being all the rage up here, and an almost maniacal approach to political correctness running rampant in both the government and the culture at large, perhaps the delicate dance between locker room towel and boxer brief is the last thing that heterosexual men of any race, color or creed can truly call their own.

At least being ashamed of their own bodies is a tradition that they can adhere to without fear of breaking the law.

COLD NUTS

While the 20th century may have officially ended some nine years back,



- I think there is an argument to be made that the actual curtain dropped on that most American of eras about a week and a half ago. This was the moment that the “Crocs” shoe company –



- and calling those ghastly flower pots with soles “shoes” is rather like calling a McDonald’s ground cow sandwich a “hamburger” –



- officially threw in the towel and called it a day. Apparently when the people of the United States were faced with a choice between feeding their children and owning several pairs of those multi-colored podiatric insults, the kids won. And while it is unfortunate to see any business go belly-up, one is heartened to think that perhaps this event indicates a certain sanity returning to our shores.

There have been other indicators of the end of an epoch - the death of Walter Cronkite, the most trusted voice of the century;



- the death of Michael Jackson, the most danced-to singer of the century;



- the death of Farrah Fawcett, the most imitated hair-don’t of the century –



- all of which seem to point toward a relinquishing of America’s cultural grip on the world.

But it is in the sudden rise and fall of the craze of perforated plastic footwear that one can most readily observe the idea that maybe, just maybe, the much vaunted, and in many cases well earned, ingenuity of these United States has finally been forced to face the fact that a lot of its output is, frankly, crap.



Safely ensconced behind the protective fichus walls of our desert paradise, we at dear old Six Palms have been observing this trend over the past year with something approaching – to be blunt - delight. The drivel which has been served up daily for the past decade as “popular culture” -



- has left us on occasion literally gasping for air as we tried to understand the social urges which compel our fellow citizens to follow celebrity bowel movements on Twitter, and there is much to be said for the fact that the bottom of the barrel may well have been reached when it comes to what passes for entertainment these days.



After all, if that dreadful, overly-fertile couple featured on that hideous reality show can get a divorce and manage to sling their mud with such broad strokes as to soil all eight of their children in the process, anything is possible.



One is aware, of course, of the ever-present risk of sounding like some nostalgia-swathed “Delta Dawn” sitting at the end of an allegoric bar in an old dress with a dead flower wedged firmly behind her ear, especially living as one does in a town which embraces its past like a necrophiliac lover.



But to be honest, in spite of the monthly expenses of running an historic household – not to mention the care and feeding of One Boyfriend with a Sephora Habit -



- One Miniature Manchester with a Bingo Habit -



- and One Houseboy named Panton for whom I've thrown enough bad money into "English As A Fifteenth Language" classes over the years to buy a block of downtown Los Angeles -



- there has been nothing tossed over the wall these past twelve months which has appealed to us enough to slip into our “Dog and Pony” suit and make our way into Hollywood in order to convince The Great And Mighty Oz of the remaining studio overlords that we are the perfect Hitchcock for their epic.

Until now.

Roughly three weeks ago, whilst floating in the Martini Pool and with nothing more pressing on our mind decision-wise than just where exactly we were going for dinner that night, the telephone rang with a rather interesting offer. A bit of research and a couple of meetings later, we found ourselves onboard a plane, en route to commence production on a motion picture for The Walt Disney Company – one of the last remaining studios of Hollywood’s Golden Age – based on a marvelous classic children’s novel entitled “Harriet The Spy”.



We are, of course, delighted to be working in this economy and even more so to be working on a project with a pedigree from the early 1960’s which means, to our relief, it is well-conceived, well-written and well-loved.

Not to mention it features absolutely NO Lohans.



All of these things occurred to us as we walked along the bustling street of the city we are currently calling home. And as we passed the Indian women in their brightly colored saris – invariably smiling and laughing –



- or the Muslim women in their mud hued burkas –



- invariably grim and/or struggling to negotiate the crowded sidewalk with the limited vision granted them by the patriarchal idiocy of a tiny slit in their hoods, we were struck by the fact that we could go for literally blocks at a time here without hearing a single word of English spoken.

Even the turban-wearing young gentlemen of East Indian persuasion loitering outside the nearby industrial engineering college, arguing in that loud, highly strung fashion that turban-wearing young gentlemen often do, resolutely avoided communicating in anything approaching the Queen’s Tongue and for quite a few minutes we were actually relishing the fantasy that we had ventured to a foreign land, full of exotic mystery and intrigue.

But then we turned a corner and saw the CN Tower -



- that most un-sexy of all the phallic objects thrusting up out of the solar plexus of various cities around the world, and remembered that we were, in fact, in Toronto, Canada.

We have, over the years, had a love-hate relationship with this city. When we lived here for half of the 1980’s – back when it was on the verge of relevance on the world stage – it seemed like Paris, full of excitement and wonder. Keep in mind, of course, that when one comes from our kind of humble beginnings – having been born and reared in a white trash village sixteen feet from the North Pole - living in a place where fetching the morning paper doesn’t involve eleven foot snow drifts and the threat of wolves is a relief.

But the innate smugness of a city built entirely around the idea of “We don’t want to be New York!” eventually wore on us and we began to loathe the very idea of returning here for projects over the years. Stuck as it was in some sort of endless Robert Palmer video loop -



- Toronto represented everything we hated about our homeland of Canada.



This is, after all, a place which took the appearance of a couple of second rate nightclub comics on the legendary US tv series "The Ed Sullivan Show" as a sign that they were ACTUALLY funny enough to be given their own Canadian television series for something like 75 years...



And where else but Canada would have chosen as its national animal The Beaver, an oversized rodent as tiresomely industrious and absurdly put-together as the country itself?



To be frank, when we stepped onboard the Air Canada flight to depart my desert paradise - and were promptly told by the flight attendant as we handed him our boarding pass that “you will be treated no differently than anybody else,” – we had a sinking feeling that this trip was going to be just as dreadful as all of those in our past.

But nestling down into our first class seat (where, obviously, we WERE treated differently than everybody else), with a wonderful old film noir available to view on the video screen -



- and an extremely delicious Bloody Caesar in hand – the Bloody Mary is apparently too American for Air Canada, who insist that Clam Juice must be part of one’s daily diet – it quickly became apparent that maybe, again just maybe, an era had ended.

Granted, most airlines serve WARM nuts in first class and the ones we received with our cocktail were as cold as Nancy Pelosi’s stare -



- but given the generally positive experience we decided to simply rise above it.

The flight was, in a word, marvelous, long enough to be enjoyable, brief enough to be endurable. And from the moment we were picked up by Ryan the production assistant, to the arrival at my favorite Toronto hotel – The Grand, plopped unceremoniously in a rather down-at-heel neighborhood but possessed of enough elegance and style to make up for any number of circumnavigating winos and hookers – and all the way through the gracious, encouraging and completely delightful times spent so far with the Producers and Studio Executives, these past several days have led us to believe that, perhaps, it’s not just a Cultural Era that has passed.

Perhaps it’s the end of an era of our own selves as well?



One can only admit this to you, dear reader, but is it possible that, along with this City, we have grown up too? And instead of searching for the negative in all things Toronto – indeed, in all THINGS (which is ultimately a Fool’s Game), the influence of The Boyfriend and Crawford The Dog –



- arguably the steadying power of love - has brought us to a place in our lives where only the good things about a place, about ANY place, seem important?

Time will tell.

After all, those nuts WERE pretty damned cold...

THE DAY AFTER MANANA

At first, it seemed as though things were getting back to normal here in our desert paradise.



The steady stream of house guests we endured over the late spring and early summer had finally slowed into nothing more than a barely penicillin-worthy trickle -



- and such a sense of tranquility had fallen around our glamorous mid-century Alexander that even my houseboy Panton -



- still in a state of mourning over the passing of The Gloved One last month -



- was actually able to listen to a few bars of “Thriller” without collapsing into a sobbing mess.

So you can imagine my chagrin when, after an evening of literate conversation with noted author David Marlow -



- and famed screenwriter Barry Sandler -



- had devolved into a Margarita-a-thon of “Bill W.” worthy proportions -



- and left me rather, shall we say, "vulnerable" to violent sensations, the peace and quiet of the morning was shattered by the clang of the doorbell ricocheting painfully off my pounding skull and sending Panton, still not yet able to summon the courage to venture anywhere NEAR the front portico, scurrying to hide under a pool side chaise lounge.

I bellowed for The Boyfriend but he had already left for work - he is, as has been previously reported, a prominent local businessman and has little or no time for what he refers to as “your nonsense around here!” -



- and while Crawford The Dog has developed into a vital part of the household, he is still, as of this writing, unable to open doors. Thus it fell upon me to find out the identity of our unwelcome early morning intruder.

Slipping into a sarong and putting on a pair of Prada sunglasses for protection from the ghastliness of the early morning sun, I swung the front door open and was immediately accosted - “greeted” seems too genteel a word for the onslaught of blessings thrust upon me- by a pair of rather morbidly overdressed ladies with the sort of blank-eyed smiles one only sees in the devoutly religious or the recently lobotomized.



They had, so they said, some VERY good news for me.

Now MY idea of good news is a truckload of Belvedere vodka driven by half-naked Marines breaking down in front of my house, perhaps, or discovering that recent GQ coverboy and “actor” Channing Tatum can’t live for another moment without giving me a hot oil massage.



But from the looks of the two dears teetering on their heels before me in the housecat-disintegrating heat of mid-day, I had a feeling that they didn’t necessarily share my passions.

“Did you know that the world is going to end?” the slightly more generously proportioned of the two asked me. “Did you know it’s going to end soon?”



Now I have heard, as I imagine have you, dear reader, about the most recent “Doomsday” prediction making the rounds of the Supermarket Checkout Literary circles.



Apparently, according to the Mayan Calendar, the earth is going to come to some sort of shattering conclusion on or about the year 2012.



However, before you begin cancelling your magazine subscriptions and buying a houseful of new furniture on a “Don’t Pay A Cent Until 2013” credit plan, I would respectfully suggest that we have been down this road before.

Does anyone out there remember “Y2K”, for example?



That was the fin de siecle event with a soundtrack by Prince -



- wherein the world’s computers were all supposed to simultaneously seize up -



- thus thrusting the human race back into the pre-Internet Dark Ages, forcing us all to survive without email, free penis enlargement offers and Keyboard Playing Cats.



(A dear friend of mine actually went so far as to buy twenty acres of uninhabitable land somewhere in New Mexico and proceeded to build a self-sufficient compound in which he planned to ride out the Apocalypse on a diet of canned food, bottled water and pornographic videotapes; last I heard he was trying to turn the place into a “spa”, but it seems nobody was interested in traveling to a sand-blasted bunker seven hours from Taos just to have their blackheads squeezed.)

Going a little further back, the Jehovah’s Witnesses - surely the least attractive of all the Door Knocker Cults - promised the “World Without End” would in fact “End” sometime late in 1973.



This, like the time-traveling arrival of a spaceship full of verbalizing chimpanzees prophesized for that same year in the film “Escape From The Planet Of The Apes”, also turned out to be rather unfulfilled wishful thinking.



With the arguable exception of certain Republican politicians, we have yet to see talking apes.



But the creme de la creme of Armaggedeon harbingers surely must be the long-anticipated return of Jesus Christ Himself.



Three days in a cave obviously wasn’t enough time to get all the paperwork together for a global “sayonara”, so the faithful have been waiting lo these past two millenia for Him to return, Norma Desmond-like -




- and according to some religions flatten the place and start over -



- or, according to others, take the True Believers up to Heaven -



- and leave the heathens to stew in their own sinful juices for all eternity.



Frankly, one has to feel sorry for the Fundamentalist Christians; they’re rather like the Ugly Girl on Prom Night, sitting there all dressed in their finest, waiting for their date to show up and take them to the much-anticipated Big Dance In The Sky.



But after two thousand and some odd years of sitting around in an increasingly moldy gown, it’s starting to look as if they’ve been stood up.

One wonders if perhaps Jesus got a better offer someplace else.

But unfortunately for the Doomsday Brigade, this most recent "End Of The World" seems to be having a hard time capturing the public’s imagination.

Goodness knows all the usual fear-mongers have done their best; magazine covers, Internet reports, even an all-too-predictable Roland (”Day After Tomorrow”) Emmerich “film” is currently rumbling toward your local Cineplex with the pandering tag-line: “Who Will Be Left Behind?”



- (which begs the classic Horror Movie reply: “And what will be left of them?”).



But so far, people don’t seem to be up at night fretting about the possibility of having to spend the rest of their years roaming the burnt-out husk of civilization, fending off the sexual advances of renegade bike gangs-



- and dining on leftover neighbors.



Maybe we’ve got too much to worry about in our own lives - with unemployment, mortgage foreclosure and the divorce of that reality show couple with the eight kids all hovering over our heads, who has TIME to think about the planet blowing up?



My theory is simpler than that. This current End Of Times is, as I mentioned, based on a date provided by a Mayan Calendar which simply stops at the end of 2012.



Ergo - so the believers insist - that must mean we will too. But given the fact that the Mayan race evolved into, amongst other things, Mexicans -



- I think it’s safe to say we don’t have much to worry about. Having visited Mexico on several dozen occasions and having experienced first hand that culture’s rather “elastic” sense of time-



- I have learned that even though the word “manana” might literally mean “tomorrow”, in practical application it actually means sometime later next week.



So while the Mexican calendar may have scheduled the fin del mundo for 2012, you can bet nothing even remotely apocalyptic is going to happen until at least 2014...and even then only if you call in advance and remind somebody.

But I wasn’t about to argue all of this with the religiously inclined ladies standing in my doorway; I doubt they would've been interested anyway, given that all they REALLY wanted was to offer me salvation in return for a small donation to help with their Missionary work around the world.

They seemed so sincere that I didn’t have the heart to tell them, in my opinion, the best use of Missionaries was as a main course for Cannibals.



And so I simply smiled graciously and explained to them that as a homosexual with a hangover, I was likely not the best candidate for their sales pitch on this particular morning and, frankly, if the world was going to come to an end, could they please arrange to have it do so quietly?



I let the door close upon their rather startled faces and returned to my bed with a handful of Advil, some Gatorade and only the vaguest sense of guilt about not giving them a dime. But, I figured, if they were True Believers, they surely wouldn't let this small failure prevent them from continuing on with their Mission.

Manana is, after all, another day.

YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR LAST FUNERAL

Good grief, can I not leave you people alone for FIVE BLOODY MINUTES without having everything go straight to Hell in a Birkin?



There I was, undergoing some much needed therapy at the Musso and Frank Spa -



- located in the heart of Hollywood, when I received a frantic call from my desert paradise home. It was my houseboy Panton-



-who, bless his well developed abs, was barely able to sputter into the telephone “The King is no more! The King is no more!!” before collapsing into great whacking sobs and abruptly hanging up.

Now granted, Panton’s mastery of the English language is rivaled in its ineptitude only by that of noted classical guitarist Charo-



- but given the fact that he has been instructed never to interrupt me during one of my deep cleansing vodka treatments-



- especially not the ones administered by my qualified “spiritual masseur” Manny The Bartender-



- I knew THIS was an emergency.

And sure enough, after a phone call to an old friend of mine on the Los Angeles Police Department – the rather aptly named Officer Wang -



- a very well-armed young man whom I met several years ago whilst suffering the after-effects of a sudden rear-ending on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood – it was determined that yes, indeed, the unthinkable had happened. It was the end of an era. .

It seemed impossible to believe, but there it was, in black and white.



Christian Lacroix had gone bankrupt.

For the fashion illiterate amongst my readership – not to be judgmental, but with the size of my audience, it is safe to assume that there are a few dear souls out there for whom Old Navy is le ne plus ultra – M. Lacroix was simply a visionary. He instinctively knew what women wanted – which is to say, he knew what women thought men wanted them to look like.

Prostitutes.



And not the expensive kind, either…

As the first fashion designer of the late 20th century to ignore the rigid boundaries of taste, style or elegance, he somehow managed to convince an entire segment of, to be charitable, “evolutionarily-challenged” women that the only thing standing between them and the highest peaks of beauty and glamour was an inflatable spandex puffy dress and four hundred pounds of sequins.



This is the ultimate reason for fashion to exist, of course.

It enables the hideous first wives of Arab Oil Sheiks and International Sports Stars to - upon discovering that their wealthy husbands have been cheating on them with any number of models, actresses or recently Russian-abducted “white slaves” - blackmail same into spending several hundred thousand euros on designer clothing which they will wear once and then discard like so much used facial wax.



It is, finally, the only thing that separates us from the animals.



But even though Lacroix has folded his paisley and mylar tents and vanished from the world fashion stage for now, I suspect we will see him surface again sometime soon, like the Designer of the Living Dead, selling cheap knockoffs of his original designs on the Home Shopping Channel. I predict he will make millions, because to misquote Mr. Barnum, nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, and if what I’ve seen being worn on the streets lately is any indication, the women in this country don’t just want to “look” like hookers – they want to BE hookers.



This was brought clearly into focus for me the other evening while watching Sam Raimi’s film “DRAG ME TO HELL”, billed as the director’s “return to horror”.



I had unfortunately missed the private screening at the Director’s Guild of America and was forced to attend a public show at the local Cinemark “second run” theater.



I expected problems, of course; paying $2.00 to see a movie certainly doesn’t come without its tortures. But while the film has its scary moments to be sure, nothing onscreen matched the terrors I encountered in the theater audience.

Besides the constant and mindless chatter DURING THE FILM – apparently these Neanderthals were so dulled by the various drugs their parents must have scarfed down during the 80’s, they had no idea that they were actually IN a theater and not at home slumped across their imitation leather couches beneath the neon Budweiser signs and framed posters of Al Pacino as “Scarface” in their living rooms – I have not heard so much noisy chewing, slurping and swallowing since I spent a somewhat scandalous evening at a rather louche sex club in Berlin several years back.



(Strictly research, of course darlings.)

But all of this paled in comparison to the behavior of the two zaftig young women, who had barely squeezed into ill-fitting halter tops, shorts and – by extension – the theater seats directly in front of me.



Beyond their incessant talking, using the sort of dialogue normally reserved for an episode of “The Jerry Springer Show” (who knew that “respect” was such an issue for the lower classes?), and the continuous tossing of the hair extensions they wore which were so long past their "due dates" they had the consistency of raw wheat, I was utterly astonished to watch this pair of escapees from the spires of Notre Dame proceed to use their cellular phones NON-STOP during the film!

As if the bright light from their iPhones wasn’t enough of a distraction (and as a gentleman, one doesn’t want to venture as to exactly how many trips to the local truck stop were required for these two dolts to afford the things in the first place…), the constant “tap tap” of their “Lee Press-Ons” across the keyboard was enough to drive even the sanest among us to pull the loose armrest from our seat and beat the little darlings to death with it.

But as a civilized fellow, I simply leaned forward and politely enquired: “Pardon me, but will you be texting during the entire film?”

The one on the left turned to me as if I’d just shot her dog.

“What did you say? What?”

Startled by this somewhat aggressive reply – one expects an “I’m sorry”, perhaps, or an “I beg your pardon?” – I tried to continue.

“Well, it’s rather distracting and I was hoping to be able to watch the film…”

The one on the right cut me off.

“What if it’s an important call, huh? Maybe it’s an emergency?”

“Well,” I replied, “perhaps you should take your phone out to the lobby. I’m sure your friend at the other end of the line would prefer to speak with you in person about whatever has gone horribly wrong with her manicure.”

They turned back to the movie, and their texting. Miss Right murmured: “It’s not bothering anybody.”

But I wasn’t giving in. These were the kinds of girls whose mothers had obviously told them, between swigs of their Thunderbird wine coolers, "don't you take no shit from The Man!" And I was obviously "The Man" in question.

“Well, actually darling, it’s bothering me. Now please, if it’s not too much trouble—“

Finally, they both turned to me, flashing the kind of look they probably reserved for their parole officer when he insists they leave their guns in the car.

“We paid to be here!”

I pulled four dollars from my pocket and presented it to them.

“Here’s your money back. Perhaps you could spend it on etiquette lessons?”

At which point they both snorted – something they had clearly been raised to do – got up and stormed out of the theater. The patrons around me applauded and we settled down to watch the remainder of the film.

And then the Usher arrived. A squeaky little fellow with more flashlight than nerve, he sidled up to my seat, kneeled down and said:

“Sir, I’ve just had two young women say that you assaulted them, the manager would like to speak with you.”

Fortunately, the half dozen or so people around me who had witnessed the entire thing spoke up, told him what had happened, and said they would gladly speak to the Manager themselves. The Usher left, we all returned to the movie and that was the last we heard of it.

Of course I kept my eyes open on the walk to the car afterwards; those rat-tail combs can put your eye out.

But as I considered the situation later, while Panton poured me a much needed, nerve-calming martini, I realized that perhaps I’d been a bit hard on those poor creatures. They were, after all, probably still reeling from the death of that Pop Singer, the one with the Glittery White Glove and the Comeback Tour That Never Was.



I hardly need mention his name, and at this point I certainly have nothing to add to the endless commentary elsewhere in the world media, other than to suggest that with the recent spate of celebrity deaths – The Blonde Hairdo Icon, The Guffawing Sidekick, The Faux Martial Arts Master, The Soap Salesman – we’ve also seen a “Perfect Storm” of the ultimate PR Event.



While each of these deaths is tragic in and of itself, taken all together they have become a sort of endless Black Carpet walk of B and C list celebrities -



- each of whom have somehow managed, through their grief, to stop in front of a large poster “honoring” the deceased long enough to promote their latest album/movie/business venture.



I suspect, dear reader, we shall be seeing an endless photo-montage of black suits and dresses for the rest of the foreseeable Hollywood “future” – ie: six months - as every magazine on earth runs their very own “In Memoriam” issue, guaranteed to sell out.



Not to say that we here at 801 haven’t been touched by tragedy as well, but we mourn the old fashioned way – in private and with photographic evidence. Recently, I visited the nearby grave of The Chairman of the Board on the anniversary of his passing on to his eternal appearance at that great “Sands” hotel in the sky.



With only the groundskeeper as company, I placed my traditional shotglass full of Jack Daniels and single orange rose (FS’ favorite color) on the grave -



- and, although filled with grief and sorrow at the loss of a great talent, I still managed to smile for the camera.



Like Corey Feldman, I too understand that it is, after all, “SHOW”-business.



But things aren’t all doom and gloom around these parts. In fact, my terribly handsome BF and I were delighted to attend The Sister’s latest wedding here in our desert paradise and I can safely report that from all indications this third marriage of hers looks as though it may in fact stick.



Certainly this newest Husband, My "Brother-in-Lawlessness" as it were, may have bitten off more than he can chew by joining the Circus of Horrors we call “family” - his “bachelor party” consisted of myself and fellow lush Mr. Glaser barhopping the poor fellow all the way across the Coachella Valley to get him fitted with an appropriate linen suit for his nuptials -


- but I can’t fault his taste in film.



Unlike his blushing bride or my beloved Boyfriend -



- neither of whom share our passion for old, obscure crime pictures - "Hatsy" Bramble joined me at the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival - of his own free will, no less! -where we submerged ourselves in three solid days of margaritas, Jack Daniels and the kind of rain-soaked, back-stabbing, double-crossing, murderous-dame-starring movies that Hollywood seems to have forgotten how to make.

The hit of the festival for us, other than my getting a chance to chat with organizer and film noir guru Alan K. Rode -



- was definitely INSIDE JOB -



- a remarkable little “lost” film with the kind of plot which clods like yours truly wouldn’t dare ruin by trying to explain. It was the perfect complement to start our summer “off-season” here in the desert, that marvelous time of year when all of the out-of-town “riff raff” have fled for cooler pastures, leaving only the true desert denizens to soak up the 115 degree temps.



One must be careful, of course, to take the heat in measured doses, chased with a carefully constructed Belvedere martini every day at 5 30 pm.



Failure to follow these rules could be fatal and while I may be an Emmy nominee, whose every public appearance is breathlessly written about in the local press -



- I doubt that my demise would attract quite the same attention as the late King of Pop.

I can think of two nasty girls for whom it would be a dream come true, however. They’re likely sitting in a darkened movie theater somewhere, texting each other about it right now.