GINA IN THE GRAND SHADOWS: WHEN YOU SAY BABY

 

over the phone Gina Little keeps saying, "i hate to have to cut this short, but i have to get back to my baby."

Blood and Donuts.

Helene Clarkson: my face is a beautiful guppy fish.

David Cronenberg: didn't think i could act, huh? Maury Povich is such a nice guy he'd make for a scary crime boss.

Andrea Kremer: i'm covering the golf in this movie for ESPN...

Maude from Harold and Maude: that grey wolf in Mendocino is me!!!...

Kelly Osbourne: Kurt Cobain didn't offer me my first line of coke at the bungalows, he offered me my first line of strawberry NesQuik powder...

in an airplane in the air bound for Hawaii.

Jaclyn Smith: Tanya Roberts asked me to join her and her husband in a threesome. i declined, i only do stuff with my two other Angels.

Bosley: want some salt?

Jaclyn: to put in your wound?

Bosley: nobody ever understands me when i talk...

Poison Ivy: you're not really in a hospital unless it's raining outside...

Poison Ivy: everyone in life needs a goth clown driving a crazy bus to come along and pick you up when you're drenched in the rain. everybody's just bussing each other home.

Sara Gilbert: in fairness, having a teenaged Drew Barrymore as my new mom would have been pretty cool.

Bush "Glycerine": no drums...

Nic Cage: i caused the gaping sinkhole under my Malibu home. because i am Nic Cage and that is a Nic Cage thing to do.

Blood and Donuts ending.

woman: the bullet grazed me.

donut man: so you want a glaze?

man: what are you looking at, young lady?.........see i was a vampire, too, all this time...

Doing Time on Maple Drive.

dad: is that your third bowl of cereal?

Jayne Brook: um, yeah, what's it to you?

dad: you're gonna gain weight in your vagina.

closet-gay son reading the last letter from his secret lover Kyle: can we be friends in a year? i guess that's not gonna happen. oh and thanks for bringing back my dirty underwear. love, Kyle.

'80s/'90s B movies: cozy movies.

Michael Weiss: it doesn't matter which post you like on Instagram, only that you like a post. you let the person know you're still here, still around, you still care to help them.

Omaha Steaks: because despite these apocalyptic times everyone should eat well? everyone should have steak on a Wednesday?

Michael Weiss: when a woman drunk-DMs you on Instagram, it means she's thinking about you...

Barry Melrose: i was Don Cherry but cool, not hated.

Time Magazine article writer: i have to write about dating apps? sigh. oh who am i kidding, i would drop my solo ski trip in a SECOND for a partner!!!

Paris Hilton: money brings stability but i hate costume parties...

Killer Klowns from Outer Space: 3 large brown bags filled with full cans of beer...

Big 5: we build community by everyone on the soccer pitch---the players, the coaches, the parents, the hot orange-slices mom---coming together to boo the refs.

Lucio Rossi: ICEE isn't ice-ee, it's short for Italian ice, the recipe for which my mafia godfathers taught me in Sicilian secret. the silence of the grey rabbit's-foot. loose lips sink slush. i had the first homemade ICEE machine in the '80s, the Sherman Oaks Galleria had an extra and i FREQUENTED their Lazer Tag every night after school. the ICEE machine was INSIDE my front-projection TV...

Italian directors: we don't mind examining Satanism on film...

Father Navin: some fled to the army to avoid becoming Catholic priests. they wore fatigues under their black cassock and white clerical collar. don't call it a dog collar, that's really disrespectful.

Danica Patrick: the reason i was so depressed was i was having sex with Aaron Rodgers, not my car-repair soulmate Ludacris.

me: Gina Little is a mother?!!! she has a child? the thought of shy retiring Gina Little actually getting naked and having sex once is unfathomable to me. did all that time really get away from me? the passage of time is cruel. maybe she meant her fur baby. her dog?... 

GINA IN THE GRAND SHADOWS: I DON'T WANNA HEAR ABOUT YOUR LUIS!!!

 

as i continue spying on my sister's phone call to Gina Little, Gina starts mentioning the word Luis in every sentence she uses...

Lipton unsweetened iced-tea powder: dad iced tea...

Jillian Clare and her boyfriend Jasper are naked in nothing but flip-flops atop a rockface at Yosemite overlooking a rapidly calm river.

Jasper: do you see how desperately i suck onto your face when i kiss your cheek? i ain't losing you.

Jillian Clare: the goal is to breathe heavy at the same time.

Jasper: think of me not just as a black man, but as a slack man. as a man with hair like Frank-N-Furter's fro from Rocky Horror.

Jillian: don't worry about all that, you have me. 

Jasper: my concern is lifted. and my cock is in your butt. i'm sweating bullets over here, boss woman!!! i never thought my body would be in this position!!!

Jillian: let's keep it down, we don't want to alert all these rock-climbing tourists around us.

Jasper: let's not give all the stupid climbing TikTok influencers no work!!!

Jillian sweating lady bullets: rockfluencers? sadly, it's not music.

Blood and Donuts: kiwis became a thing in the '90s...

Morrissey at Jen's deck party: Zima was 7 Up but weird. the first cooler? I was the first cooler!!!

cactus: you don't need to take care of me and i give you soda, i'm like your hippie aunt in Fresno.

Michael Weiss: okay here's the Instagram trick: send that meme to her at 6:30AM, it's the first thing she sees in the morning. she's in bed, in bra and panties, negligee blowing in the wind, her hair sexily disheveled...

Nirvana: you don't hate us. you can't hate us. everyone subconsciously likes this band.

Richard Gere: meditation.

Cindy Crawford: mediation.

Embrace of the Vampire: it's the Price Is Right yodelayheehoo Alps mountain climber!!!...

Grace Jones: when i have sex with you, we're done by 10PM...

Madonna: where did all that grinding get you? huh?!!! nowhere, that's where.

Lucio Rossi: i lived in the actual Knots Landing, Granada Hills. there are donkeys in Devon?

Carlos Alcaraz: look at my tank top, when i play tennis i'm really going swimming...

Lucky: our donuts are sandpaper but there are two of them. this donut tastes so bad but you stare at those TALL Lucky aisles munching on that hard-as-rock donut on the side of the good guys...

Michael Weiss: there is such a CHASM between talking to a woman on Instagram and actually being in her life...

Michael Weiss: this is how i start off my conversations with women on Instagram: "how's your marriage going?..."

He-Man singing the He-Man intro song: "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10..."

Poison Ivy: unlike Twilight, we had the guts to have a forest sex scene!!!

Emma Navarro: i am Jes Pegula.

Jessica Pegula: and i am Em Navarro.

Celebrity Cruises: you burn your poached duck in the oven, so you decide to have your date night on a cruise ship: this is a problem that affects all couples.

Round Table Pizza: every high school student learns to drive in our parking lot doing donuts in their Pinto.

Aryna Sabalenka: listen, i am not a pothead. but i do carry in my tennis bag two dimebags of Wimbledon grass for the number of Wimbledons i want to win.

Monroe Ficus wearing a striped shirt: where's Waldo? right here, in your heart.

me: it's just so strange to picture Gina with a man, Gina with her own fella. she never had a boyfriend as long as i've known her, she was always the odd duck out.........oh, i suppose she was saying San Luis Obispo? where she lives now? yeah i wish she hadn't moved down there so far away. 

GINA IN THE GRAND SHADOWS: PHONE CALL OUT OF NOWHERE

 

Gina Little calls my sister out of nowhere. i'm watching Starchaser: The Legend of Orin and the walls are thin. my sister is crying because she's been unceremoniously let go of her Safeway job for the crime of caring too much. taking too long on her breaks because she had to feed our dementia-addled cancer-stricken 90-year-old mom dinner. 

Gina Little: i heard you're having a hard time.

sister: where'd you hear that? how can a rumor break free of the friend chain upstate?

Gina: word gets around, mysteriously.

sister: which is to say I MISSED YOU. when's the last time you called me? ten years ago? why did we drift apart? you were my one and only. i wish you hadn't moved to L.A forcing me to find friends on a farm. why aren't friends forever?

Gina: once a friend, always a friend, secretly. the glamorous life of a pharmacist. i go where the drugs are needed most. just wanted to chime in and say quickly: you're worth it. you'll get another job, it's just a job. this isn't the end, my friend, it's the beginning. how about Lucky?

sister: love you. i never said that to you when we were in school...

being intimate: can be intimidating...

Starchaser: The Legend of Orin: remember the bubbling EXCITEMENT you felt as a kid when you were about to put on the glasses and watch a 3D movie? all those starships and lasers and invisible swords and a female robot's butt in your face?...

Bender: literally her shiny metal ass.

John Moschitta Jr.: this is shit. i'm more than just a fast talker. they call me Motormouth but i hate cars. i hated my Transformers toys on Christmas. i haven't been able to keep a wife because women think i make love in under a minute. can i do that Slow commercial with Usain Bolt? why wasn't i Mario?...

Jen R: i start my job the day before my birthday.

me: your new coworkers will throw you an office birthday party!!! strangers do that you know.

Jen: calligraphy is RIDICULOUS for Christmas ball ornaments. i'm just gonna letter them in BLOCK LETTERS. 

Labor Day: when your white socks turn dingy from playing football in the rain on the field of the muni high school you flunked out of...

Al Bundy: you play football alone with me on a Saturday on this field, nobody in the stands, just the two of us on campus, quarterback and receiver, as we do crank together the two of us hanging bottomless from the goalposts. 

Richard Estes: my greatest street paintjob was making Indiana a football school. my son Fernando Mendoza had the biggest paintbrush.

Fernando Mendoza: and i'm bringing back NEW live-action adult-swim content. finally!!!

humans: bacon, the world's most perfect food.

pigs: this is why we uprose in 1984!!!

a dolphin at Lucky: i know you hate that the only six-pack you can get is the bottle six-pack, not the can six-pack, but recognize that that saves me...

rocket scientist from Alabama with a Southern accent: weird.

Burger King: our next project: our fries. we're gonna make our french fries taste better. we're gonna make our french fries taste GOOD, they've always been awful...

Blood and Donuts: you try wrapping your donut in newspaper to carry back from the donut shop. get back to your place, take the donut out of the newspaper, and eat it...

French cruller: this just doesn't look right.

Jim Carrey in Doing Time on Maple Drive: see what i did there? for the family-portrait photo i ALMOST turned around and did the Ace Ventura Talking Butt. i'd been thinking about that character for two years...

Cape Codder: the drink of those who spend their lives THINKING and SLEEPING.

Cricket taking one acoustic and one electric guitar down from the wall: tell your friends about our wireless deal.

Indian with long straight black hair, cleanshaven, black leather jacket at Guitar World: musicians don't have friends, that's the point.

Madison Keys: tennis is hard right now. the fear took over. the shakes in my serving motion. it ain't got that swing. i'm scared. but i'm not mentally ill, tennis is just a hard sport, it's hard for everyone. i need a couple days away from tennis in Upper Montclair.

Stephen King: i poured my HEART AND SOUL into my latest novel about real gremlins living under the Earth and my publisher said their computers determined it was AI slop!!!

the '80s: the last time people went to costume parties. grown men dressing up as Robin for fun.

the hosts of a tennis podcast: no matter how hard we try, we will NEVER be cool. we will ALWAYS be lame.

the wallpaper inside an '80s Toys R Us: if Shel Silverstein and Gallagher threw up together because they ate the mushrooms rather than took them on Sesame Street.

Gallagher: give me back my hat and suspenders!!!

Shel Silverstein: that's MY hat!!! keep the suspenders, they're stupid.

Robin Williams: come now, my children. i'm playing Jesus in Godspell...

Safeway: day after day after day. then one day it ends.

soccer: the ball really scores when it goes into a volleyball bounce in front of the goal...

Katy Perry: my missing puzzle piece was Canada. alls i was missing was Canada. my missing puzzle piece was in the shape of the whole country of Canada.

Justin Trudeau: does this mean i get to be in the Raine Maida/Chantal Kreviazuk documentary sequel?...

TOM: no matter how mean and cynical the world gets, Toonami will always be WHOLESOME.

Gina Little. wow. i had always wanted to be her husband. because Gina was quiet. she moved in a space apart from the daily loud dramas of the world. in the shadows, silent. never calling attention to herself, anything she did. accomplished, unaffected. nobody ever knew what she was up to, not even her mom. moving through life balanced on a pin, a pin that never pricks. it was a tragedy for me, too, when she moved away. hell this is the first time i'm hearing her voice!!! as you can imagine Gina Little's voice is soft.

THE QUESTION IS, DO YOU STILL BELIEVE IN LOVE?: FACE-PULLING FOR THE BIG DATE

 

Gordon Ramsay is at his face-pulling machine in his kitchen exercising away.

Shorey Wesen: what are you doing?

Gordon Ramsay: face-pulling my face wrinkles away for our big date.

Shorey: i feel this will only make your mental health worse.

Gordon: the face is the only body part of mine that's not buff. madam would you stir that tin pot of tomato soup over there with a wooden spoon? it has to nurse at low flame and i'm doing two things at once.

Shorey: *sigh* sure. pronounced to-MAH-to, right?

the large slab of wood over the trash/recycle/lawn bins: it's not to keep the polecat out of the trash, it's to keep the FLIES out of the trash!!!

flies: come on, man, we're just in the lawn bin, we just want some grass.

Jim Carrey: my name in Doing Time on Maple Drive should have been Buck.

Jim Carrey: have you ever in your life had your father call you a dirty drunk?...

Atom Egoyan: this is by far my best acting job in front of the camera...

Minolta: in the '90s everyone had rectangular photos...

Drew Barrymore in Poison Ivy: you're a vixen only if your blonde hair is TOUSLED.

Starchaser: The Legend of Orin: now you know where Ioz from The Pirates of Dark Water came from...

Michael Weiss on Instagram: just floating around.

Vanquish: your sneeze comes from too much pepper in your chicken noodle soup. in the olden days you didn't take a pill for a headache, you just rode it out.

movies: we need to make more movies, we need SOMETHING to fill all those TV channels 24/7...

Charles Nelson Reilly: my father made the boneheaded decision NOT to work with Walt Disney. he had to be institutionalized after that. just think, i coulda been Tinkerbell!!!

Trent Reznor is backstage clutching the woolly curtain at his first-ever live show. he's sweating bullets.

Trent Reznor: i can't go out there in front of all those people!!! look at the tight leather pants i'm wearing, you can see the outline of my COCK!!! "Down In It" is the opening number? i'm not a rapper!!!

ok ru: i'm okay, are you? from Russia with love.

Edith Noble: did you see that? i SUBTLY pat Gene Rayburn's back when we're doing the Super Match...

Todd Solondz: so long, Dragon Ball Z.

Andy Warhol: it all starts with moving to New York City...

Andy Warhol: you can't cosplay in jeans.

Just Between Friends.

Christine Lahti removing the sheets from Mary Tyler Moore's bed: alright, up and at em, let's play tennis. you can't be a mopey widow your whole life. get your ass out of this bed.

Mary Tyler Moore: i don't have an ass.

Sam Waterston: after the movie this could turn into a sitcom where i take care of these two broads' baby and Ted Danson comes back as a ghost to warn us of earthquakes...

watersnake: our Kwisatz Haderach is Kaka. robot evolution is evil-ution...

Shorey Wesen: don't you read profiles? i said i like when a man has a bulldog face.

Gordon Ramsay: sorry, mah dahlin, i was too busy looking at all the winter photos of your arse. i want to put my cock in your butt and leave it there like a Victorian spoon in sticky toffee pudding. 

Shorey: it won't stay, your dick as your life will fold one day. like a napkin in the wind.

Gordon: you intimidate me, i never graduated college. i should have stayed in soccer school.

 

Shorey: who's this cute guy on your Instagram?

Gordon: that's my lost brother Ronnie. 

Shorey: he looks like Eminem but good. heroin addict?

Gordon: yeah, Ronnie watched Trainspotting and took it WAY too seriously. i'm trying to slide into your family so i can get that Jacques Pepin money to break him out of gaol and get him clean with tomato soup.

Shorey: jail isn't so bad. prison food is my favorite food. i got a crush on Ronnie Ramsay!!!

Gordon: okay but when you see him walking alongside his bicycle in an alley don't approach him and call him Ronnie Weasley, he hates that.