Sometimes They Give Me The Opposite Of Money

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

READ MORE - Sometimes They Give Me The Opposite Of Money

Yes, I Was On Card Sharks

I wore a green dress. I found a picture of it and spent the better part of an afternoon wondering why I was buying black and white film back then when if I'd bought color I could wait until 2011 and photoshop it to black and white.

That's my then best friend Matt sitting next to me and my mother is next to him. Notice how I was a big fan of tanning. And peroxide.

I had no idea how to play Card Sharks. A friend of mine had gone on the show and won a pickup truck and that was all the incentive I needed. It didn't occur to me that it's hard to pay rent with a pick-up truck. Although it's great to haul around the groceries you can't afford to buy.

During commercial breaks someone would come up to me and say, "Could you smile more? Or even just ONCE?" I'm not a smiler. Because of this I have none of those laugh lines around my eyes that make women look 105 years old and make men look distinguished.

Five minutes into the game I lost track of what I was doing and started playing to the audience. I was an entertainer, getting an audience to respond to me was what I did. So when I got this question: "If there was a choice between being a hooker or being a maid, what do you think the majority of women responded?"

I calmly replied, "Hooker." (big gasp from the audience) (seriously, huge gasp) (idiots)

I was asked why I guessed that and I said, almost disdainfully: "A maid is on her feet all day. A hooker is just on her back."

Yeah, I lost that one.

The guy I was playing against was really good. Apparently he actually knew how to play the game. It was a flashback to taking my 11th grade History final, when everyone is writing furiously and I'm bowing my head in prayer. And sobbing.

But unlike the history test, there's no one to copy off.

During a commercial break I turned to him and said, "You HAVE to stop winning. I have no money and I'm in a rental car and staying at my sister's and I have to move here because my agent told me to."

"Well, I'm in med school and have $200,000 worth of loans to pay off."

GAME SET MATCH.

READ MORE - Yes, I Was On Card Sharks

We're With The Band

This is another picture of me and Alain. He had a band with the guy on the left, Jean-Pierre. I made Alain let me and Lindy sing with them because two people in a band is not a band, Alain.

At 15 and 13 Lindy and I owned the same dress. She always wanted to do everything I did and wear everything I wore. She probably begged my mother to buy her the same dress she bought me. And I probably yelled at her and said We're Not Twins You Stupid Moron. Because I have an incredibly sophisticated vocabulary from reading all the thick books in our library.

We entered a Battle of the Bands at the Casino de Royan, the next town over from Meschers on the west coast of France, and came in second. I was devastated but I remembered that it's not whether you win or lose but how you play the game. I bet I know who coined that phrase. LOSERS. Here we are singing at the Casino de Royan. As you can see, we just had the one performing outfit. We're even wearing matching shoes. Sure it's a horror to look at now but check out Alain's shoes. I hope to God we did not all plan to wear white shoes for the contest because if we did I have to turn in my subscription to Vogue and move to Bulgaria.

Three years later I was in college in Paris and dating a German named Karl, below. Karl devirginized me. I can still see the trauma etched on my face as it finally dawned on me why he kept pushing my head down to his crotch. I probably looked like someone in The Blair Witch Project. I saw Karl only once more, in New York, many, many, years later. His brother took me aside and said "Karl no longer speaks. He got tired of talking."

At dinner I kept up a steady stream of chatter and eventually he answered one of the forty hundred questions I asked him, Why did you give up talking? He said he had talked enough and was going to spend the rest of his life listening. Because I have excellent taste in men.

Why are some of my pictures oddly shaped? Because I used to put my photo albums together like this and yes I have a disease.

The next summer we were in Canet Plage in the south of France and my sister looked like this in a bikini: Horrifying.

She was 14 and had longer hair but I convinced her to let me cut it all off because A. I'm a terrible person and B. Not one boy found me remotely interesting while she wore that fucking bikini. But the only thing shorter hair did was call more attention to her body. She always had spectacular boobage until she lost them in a tragic aerobics accident many years later. No body fat? No boobs. Run and hide, A Cup, run and hide.

Meanwhile I can increase my cup size just by looking at pudding.

READ MORE - We're With The Band

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

I'd like to talk about my favorite subject, me, but the news is just too dishy to pass up.

I love what Letterman did last night. I'd been hearing for years about his philandering and he once tried to pick up a flight attendant friend of mine on his way out to LA. I don't think he was with his girlfriend Merrill, the one who created Stupid Pet Tricks, but he might have already been with his future wife Regina. There is something very attractive about a man who fucks up and then, albeit under the threat of 2 million bucks, comes clean about it.

For one million dollars I'll confess to sleeping with MacKenzie Phillips.
Roman Polanski? I think a rape by any other name is still a crime. Those days were so wild and drug infused. Lindy and I had dinner with him once in Paris, at his house, and he gave me a Quaalude which I might have cheeked. I can't remember. He is one of the brightest men I've ever met, interesting, charming and polite but no I didn't have sex with him. How do I remember he was all those things if I had just taken a lude? Ahhhhh, you've obviously never had a lude. I did try to bring up the rape charge but he changed the subject thinking I worked for a newspaper. Remember them?
The Olympics, in Chicago? Yeah, let's stick the gangs on those poor tourists. And Oprah, take it down a notch will you? You can sell a book but WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Michael Jackson is still dead. And with help from Dr. Feel Good, yes, but homicide? No. You've heard of Suicide By Cop? I think this was Suicide By Doctor.

End of chat.

READ MORE - It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

SuckedIn By LinkedIn

Even though I've accepted invites to LinkedIn, I never used it. Then I broke down recently and invited people.

This is a picture of me and Janette Barber from the 1996-97 Comedy Issue of Dancing Bear Productions. I pinched her contact info off another friend's LinkedIn profile. I hadn't seen or talked to her in 8 years. It's hard to read the copy below but she produced the Rosie O'Donnell show and is now working on Rosie's new variety show. She has lots of Emmy's. For followers of Rosie's old show, Janette was the "Ja" in Jahero.

The profile next to my name says 'Hates Everybody.'

My favorite Janette story happened in Buffalo, NY when we were both working for Airborne Eddie. I was headlining but was panicked because Janette killed everywhere and I now had to follow her. So I called her and shared my fear and she pooh poohed the idea that I couldn't follow her. I then called my manager and shared with him and he dismissed me with "I only handle headliners so deal with it."

So of course I got laryngitis the hour after I got to Buffalo. I consulted my Louise Hay immediately (I travel with the book) and one of the things it said was laryngitis was "fear of speaking up." HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Ya think?

During the week my voice got worse and worse until I sounded like Lauren Bacall smoking Cohibas. Then there was a fire in the hotel and they sounded the alarms and Janette didn't come out of her room, which was next door to mine. I pounded on the door until she casually opened it.
"What's up?"
"WE'RE ON FIRE!"
"Really?"
"No, I'm lying because I need the attention." I said as a fireman ran past.
"Oh, okay, just let me get my book."
"JA - NETTE." She ran back into the room and then reappeared at the door.
"Wait, I need a sweater cuz it's cold out."
"Yeah, you can wear it to the MORGUE."

As we waited outside, I didn't see a book.
"Where's your book?"
She held up a spinal notebook, where she kept all her jokes. She was risking her life for a bunch of jokes. I, on the other hand, would've gladly watched mine feed the flames.

ANYWAY, by the penultimate day of the gig, I could barely talk and asked Janette to switch with me since her spot required 30 minutes while mine required 45. Janette said she'd gladly do it to prove to Eddie how good she was because up until then Airborne Eddie wouldn't book her as a headliner. But he agreed to the switch as I was begging him to give me a break.

Janette killed.

Eddie only booked her as a headliner after that.

End of chat.

Janette Barber Rosie O'Donnell's Variety Show

READ MORE - SuckedIn By LinkedIn