Stories

Note: Jon and I will be leaving Southern California on Friday, so pardon the next few posts while I reminisce about living in this big, bad, botox-laden Promised Land.

Calista Flockhart on San Vicente Blvd in Brentwood pushing her son in a stroller. She’s extraordinarily and not surprisingly tiny, yet she can push a stroller like an ox can pull a plow, as if that were her job in life, pushing a stroller, and she wanted to push that stroller better than any other stroller pusher on the planet. I’ve never seen a more devoted or tenacious stroller pusher. The most striking thing about her was the space between her thighs, the space or non-space every woman obsesses about. It’s the non-space on well-endowed women that makes corduroy jeans sing, the space on Victoria’s Secret lingerie models that catches stray sounds and echoes them back and forth between opposite thighs. On Calista the space was as broad as a king-sized headboard.

Cindy Crawford eight-months pregnant ordering salami in the lobby of Canter’s Deli. She was wearing spandex work-out leggings and a white tanktop, breathtakingly radiant and sweaty just enough, her belly bulging straight ahead. From behind I couldn’t even tell she was pregnant, and at that moment I felt an overwhelming sense of inadequacy, that every other creature in the world was an evolutionary mistake. I bet that woman has never been bloated in her life.

David Spade eating sushi at Café Sushi on Beverly. I’ve seen him there at least four times. Nothing to report except that he really is that short and that cute and you just want to fold him up and stick him in your pocket like a little blonde gummi bear.

Andy Dick everywhere: at the mall, at the movie theater, at the grocery store, at every shop on Melrose Ave. He’s got this sickening ability to show up unannounced wherever I go, blonde curls jiggling and his glasses perched just so on his nose and those little bony fingers dancing around as he talks. And he doesn’t ever really talk, he just sort of makes this high-pitched squealing eek! eek! sound like he’s been let out of his stall and can’t find his way back. He’s omnipresent, like God or something.

Usher at the Beverly Center mall playing some sort of shoot-em-up game with what I suppose was one of the dawgs in his posse. He and his dawg were using their hands as fake guns, and they were hiding behind those mall-directory stands peeking their heads out, making “pow! pow!” noises with their mouths. I remember thinking, that is the worst fake gun sound I have ever heard, and I considered letting him know that I thought it was the worst fake gun sound I have ever heard, but then I remembered that he was Usher and that I am not Usher and that Usher probably didn’t care what I thought.

Judd Nelson screaming obscenities at a man in a car stopped at a red light right outside of my old apartment in West Hollywood off Sunset. I only caught the tail end of the argument, but it appeared that Judd was upset, or perhaps mildly not happy, and had gotten out of his car, approached the car in front of him and was about to break through the driver side window with his bare hands when the light turned green and the man in the car sped away. It was totally a scene straight out of the The Breakfast Club had the The Breakfast Club really been an episode of “The Sopranos.”

Keri Russell, Scott Foley, Scott Speedman and Jennifer Garner at the “Felicity” First Season CD Release Party which I attended not only voluntarily but with such religious exultation that I almost scared the curl out of Keri Russell’s hair. Keri was wonderful and beautiful and utterly disgusting in her cuteness. I wanted to pinch her little button nose until she shrieked. Scott Foley had really sweaty palms but I forgave him because he looked me in the eye when I told him that if Felicity didn’t choose him I was going to fucking cut that bitch. Jennifer Garner was wearing a pair of kahki pants, pleated at the waist and tapered at the ankle. Pleats! Tapers! I remember thinking, this girl isn’t going to go far in this town, not with those pleats, not with those tapers, and now she’s starring in her own prime time drama opposite Michael Vartan. That woman is a dark horse and I could not love her more. Scott Speedman, lordy bahgordy, was sporting a blonde beard matching his thick blonde head, and his jeans had holes in the knees and strategically close to his ass. He is the best Canadian import since Strange Brew.

Renee Zellweger at the Burke-Williams Spa on Sunset. She looked about 120 pounds lighter than her Bridget Jones character. I was afraid I might crush her itty-bitty body just by standing near her, through sheer gravitational force alone. She had recently been featured on the cover of Premiere Magazine and I couldn’t resist the urge to cross that unspoken celebrity/non-celebrity line, so I sort of mumbled, “Just thought you should know that you look fabulous on the cover of Premiere,” as if she didn’t already know that, as if her lawyer, publicist, manager, agent, personal chef and postman hadn’t already told her that. And she looked at me, gleaming, and gushed, “My god, thank you,” as if I were the only person in the world to notice that. I’m pretty sure I made a total impression on her and that she thinks about me and that moment all the time.

Jules Asner walking outside the E! Entertainment building on Wilshire. You know the other day when I was talking about how Britney Spears has the best tits ever? Well, I totally wasn’t thinking correctly. If I had been thinking correctly, I would have been thinking about that day when Jules Asner was walking toward me in that white t-shirt, two-sizes too small, and how for the first time in my life I had found religion.

Carrot Top browsing the porn section at a newsstand on Fairfax.

Jennifer Lopez and P. Diddy in the lobby of the offices of eCompanies. He was in negotiations at the time with a “start-up company” called Icebox, a “company” with no “revenue model” whatsoever to create a P. Diddy-themed online animation series. I really can’t tell you much about Mr. Diddy because Jennifer Lopez’s ass was in the room. She was wearing a flesh-colored lycra bodysuit that fit her like a coat of paint, and you know how they say that actors are much shorter in real life than on screen? That’s totally true, but irrelevant. What’s relevant is that her ass, if at all feasible, is bigger in real life than on screen, or in magazines, or even in your hottest, wildest fantasies, it’s that big. You can’t possibly imagine how big it is. Huge. Enormous. Elephantine. And all the little dot com robots at eCompanies, all pasty-white, myself included, we could do nothing but instant message each other over and over again: CAN’T BREATHE. ASS IS IN THE ROOM.

Perry Farrell walking down the street in Old Town Pasadena. He looked very Italian. I have no idea what that means.