ASKED AFTER: COOKING LUNCH

Liza and i are in bed. my bed.

Liza: tell me your dreams.

me: the Knicks have won for the first time in 50 years. i'm celebrating along with everyone else at night across the Five Boroughs. but it's strange, as the mob creates a din of noise outside, inside Little Sal's Pizzeria all the Knicks players are gathered at one table DEADLY SILENT. their faces are quiet, no one makes a sound. not a peep, not a ref's whistle. Little Sal the local owner is a one-foot-tall man of Sicilian heritage with tiny hands kneading the pie dough.  

James Gandolfini: not Tony hands.

Liza: a lot for waiting to celebrate inside. symbolic. it's taking forever...

Warsaw: we're Hollywood East, that's what the Warsaw Pact really did. Hamnet was filmed in our woods. Atlanta scares us. 

Jillian Clare: all of this makes me sad.

Gene Shalit: i was the unlikeliest of Titans, the Titan that flew under the radar. i made it to 100 years not because of my magic handlebar mustache that came from an '80s woodshop, but because i invented old-timey boxing...

Nessa inals Ealsch: think of an angels; Halo as a ring light...

Trent razor l look at me, if I dodntl form a band is be you freshman roommate at BYU with the long black hair the music major in the pigeon blue NYU swag part.

Liza: fill my holes with soul.

me: you're the only woman who's elongated my penis like this, that thing is STRETCHED AND BALLOONED.

a mountain of cum sits on Liza's face.

Liza: this has seasoned the both of us.

Jesus: never jealous.

Peso Olumal IPM Beyer than i hale JK can, and that;s no boat.

LifgyL jy straw hat is the official hat of Dpain...

Pele: why dprsn;t the Units Dyaes soccer team Ave a nickname?

Jasper Pepin naked in  the stands: e apse they;re stupid. eat a mince pie i made with boyer, you fucking Yanls.

Alecia Lalas: just call us Tje Gauchos and let;s move on. why does everything jet Ian revert balc to the cowboy hat?

Pele: the beautiful game is most certainly nOT ice hockey...

R,a Taco any:l not grown? naw. hel sloshy a forensic...

R,a: yeah that's my Yogi who looks like Micket opponent...

Mbappe: do you play the Legend of Zelda ocarina like me?...

Atom Egoyan: video-rental stores and hotels...

Fannie Flagg: i hate sex.

Gene Rayburn: that is a jarring concept considering your tits.

Fannie: the whole no-bra thing isn't a '70s thing, it's a Southern thing...

Fannie Flagg: i hate sex.

Brett Somers: how come?

Fannie: that's just it, i don't cum.

me: i was just about to make a sandwich, would you like one?

Liza: where have i heard that before?...

Liza: i'm gonna cook lunch. Spaghetti-Os.

me: meatballs?

Liza: no the ones with the chunk of hot dog for the nose...

   

 

ASKED AFTER: TOTEM WEED

 

i couldn't deny my attraction to Liza from Safeway. i saw her every day as i made my morning walk and got my 4 items that never amounted to over $20. she was always my check girl, the old man on the bus bench from Ghost World, reliable, there. sure she was friendly to me but she was friendly to everybody. i had to make my move, the lust was overwhelming bubbling in my innards. there were ants in my spirit.

me: are you attracted to me?

Liza: no.  

me: before you say no...you're fast.

Liza: i'm old enough to be your mother.

me: i like mommies. you think someone like me could hang with some 18-year-old airhead?

Liza: i had my stout baseball son then stopped dating. got in a groove of being alone. watching The Sandlot alone. i dunno, don't want to upset the balance. but you are kind of a cool someone to watch soccer with at a bar, nothing more.

Liza: let's see if we're compatible. what is the greatest injustice in the world?

me: that they made Travolta evil in Carrie. Travolta should always be cuddly, huggable, derpy Barbarino with the kind smile.

Liza: poverty.

Liza: okay, what makes you cry?

me: the intro song to Deep Space Nine.

Liza: flowers. you're strangely derpy for being so intelligent.

Steve Buscemi in Ghost World: i should have been the bus guy. bus-cemi, huh? huh? perfect casting. me playing a strange suicide spirit? no, just an old man waiting for the death bus. not all old men are weird. i'm that guy who gets excited when he puts spicy mayonnaise on his chicken sandwich.

Jaleel White: Flip Side is an impossible game show. not only does it bring in-laws together, it brings EX-in-laws together!!!

Melissa Maker: ...

Flip Side crew: there's a lot of moving questions. we move a lot, a lot of movers at our various houses...

Enid in Ghost World: have you ever been born. and then once you were born, you just wanted to die?...

Borders bookstore: THIS was a warehouse store, not Costco.

the Australian nurse: g'day from Canberra. i will help you with your mom the way Lucy Lawless's sunny disposition is in My Life Is Murder...

Max Rose, smiling: i'm not running for office again, i'm just a New Yorker.

Trent Reznor: we have nails so we can type on a computer. push buttons on an electronica machine. although it would be cool if your fingers were just these squishy sticks like hot dogs, very cartoony.

Ms. Swan: no beauty shops if no nails.

Billy Howerdel: my bald head is shinier than Billy Corgan's. nails are for protection.

Trent: but my nails, however long, never protected me from my feelings...

YouTube: it's just the latest toy. it's the 2020 version of the Nintendo Greybox. parents are getting their kids ring lights like they did new grey Nintendo railroad-track game cartridges back in the 1980s that cost $89 a pop.

Michael Weiss: on Instagram the women aren't just eerily beautiful, they're HORNY.

Brooke Trantor: ...

Michael Weiss: he doesn't need to look at her Instagram anymore, he knows what her art is gonna be!!!

Eggo: this waffle will only brown golden after ONE toast if you LAUGH with a loved one while it toasts.

Zalman King: think back to a slow Saturday morning. you take a soothing shower in the middle of watching the dreamlike Red Shoe Diaries episode "Weightless." soothed and weightless you pee in the drainhole. the soft waterfall hitting your open eyes midstream you have the thought you have to finish rushedly to answer the doorbell for the Meals on Wheels guy.........but you don't, it's Saturday...

Morrissey: i had the velvet voice but i wanted to rock out like Johnny Marr. have my flower garland be my guitar strap. i'm jealous of songwriters, they go on my shit list. i'm the spokesman for Malefactor Vitamins.

Scarlett Johansson: i am really FADED with my performance in Ghost World. that was either what the character called for, i didn't want to be there, or i was too young to be acting serious stuff...

Atom Egoyan: there is no more sensuous feeling than eating rice with your fingers.

Arsinee Khanjian: more sensuous than nutty sex.

Frank Oz: i played Robert Crumb in the '80s for a local NYC theatre production of Fritz the Cat with my fiend Jim Henson.

Jim Henson: i made all the Fritz the Cat Muppets, i was trying to get back in the good graces of SNL doing the hardcore stuff again...

Enid and Steve Buscemi are clothed on Steve's bed in Ghost World.

Enid: don't you like me?

Enid and Steve Buscemi are naked in Steve's bed.

Steve Buscemi: we do make a cute couple. two lost souls who like weird art. let me just see here, half my age plus seven...

we walk back to my house.

me: obviously i'm a loser who has no car.

Liza: you see that Bank of America sign up ahead? i think about you walking past it each day. that's a total fucking blind turn!!! the wild speeding cars of our parking lot just turn around that corner and could ram into you without them even knowing!!! they'd still be listening to their godawful talk radio. Bank of America sucks.

me: Bank of America used to be cool when i was a toddler playing on their LONG green carpet under a TALL 3-story window while my folks were trying to get a loan. 

Liza: Chase sucks, too.

me: you see my backyard?

Liza: the lawn is so pristine and level.

me: used to be full of sharp-angled crabgrass. there were weeds shooting up like bamboo totems which is the type of plant i would be if i were a plant: a weed totem. but my gardener Super Mario cut them all down to prepare for summer.

Liza: that's too bad, all that symbolism gone. and i look like Barbara Walters :) 

Liza: i brought two Sprite Pints for the occasion.

me: Mexican Sprite?

Liza: i work at Safeway, not Erewhon. we only make $38,000 a day.

we sit by the TV in the living room. it's Inside the NBA after the Knicks win.

Liza, smiling: i haven't had sex in 50 years!!!

me, smiling: me neither. 

Kenny the Jet Smith dropkicks Shaquille O'Neal out of the studio across the Five Boroughs.

Ernie: what the fuck was that, Kenny? i've never seen you like this before.

Kenny: i don't know what came over me.

Charles Barkley: i blame the street meat. New York fans are annoying but the street meat is worse. jeezus, remind me never to get on your bad side.

Kenny: i don't get mad at anything. i'm always joking around. i wanted to see what it felt like to get kicked off a show for paying a hooker.

ANDY WARHOL'S PUBLICIST: BBQ BRUSH

 

me: the hospital?

Basquiat: Andy was at that big outdoor open-air neighborhood block party being thrown by Salman Rushdie. 

Jen R: how long does he have?

Basquiat, crying: something about food poisoning.

me: i guess i'll go visit him in the hospital. but after i go to Burger King and get some grilled burgers, i'm starved.

Andy Warhol at the hospital: this thing i'm wearing that opens in the back, can i add it to my permanent wardrobe?

Andy hocks a loogie on the 3rd Floor vinyl floor.

surgeon: you gonna pick that up? i hate party animals. do you know how lucky you were to survive that, you white-haired freak?

Andy: thanks doc. from now on when it comes to summer soirees i'll take a dip in that one swimming pool that leaves me with an unknown sumptuous vibe. i'll stick to hot dogs like i usually do...

Michael Weiss: the worst is when someone's "got you figured out" on Instagram, they don't need to see your pics anymore, they know what you look like, they don't need to read your posts anymore, they know what you're gonna write. occasionally they'll send you by DM a strange meme that relates to your causes...

Karen Carpenter: i was the original drummer for Led Zeppelin. but John Bonham left me at the vanstop in Miami. there i went on that talk show with that Catholic priest who looks like a male model. i had a voice like a whale back then...

hot priest: your voice caused me to live on air defrock in front of my studio audience and everyone out there in TV land. i wanted to marry you, slim chica.

Karen: but i wasn't into Catholics, i needed to be free, baby!!!

chocolate prime: the chocolate you eat for breakfast...

Tim Allen: i want to do a Home Improvement continuation but the kid actors have personality problems now. the boys are either in jail or one quit acting to go to Harvard, can you believe it?!!! Harvard is a dangerous place. nothing involving a porch, okay?

Tom Hanks: wow you really are a caveman. you just want to squeeze those boys for as much money for you as you can, you see how successful Fuller House is...

Tim: come on it'll be a fun summer party for them. what else am i gonna do? nobody believes in Santa Claus anymore.

Tom: you want me to wring your neck with this toolbelt?

Atom Egoyan: i wanted the brother and sister in Next of Kin to REALLY kiss, but Toronto said that old wave was dry...

luter: the end credits of Next of Kin are like a Storybook International local-theatre production.

Elon Musk: i'm now wealthier than most countries. i'm the Earth's first trillionaire. this is not good for the world. i blame you. if my mom had let me play with her Monopoly board game as a kid i'd be an actor now...

Andy Warhol is wrapped in wet sheets in his hospital bed.

Andy Warhol: well i'm glad you finally made an appearance, you honeysuckle half-virgin!!!

me: sorry, Andy, i was walking the streets of Brooklyn at night thinking about things.

Andy: understandable. 

surgeon: do you know how lucky your friend was? the President removed Secret Service protection from this room when he learned it was Andy Warhol.

Jen R: doesn't the man have a hole in his stomach? 

Andy: i look cool now, i look hard, single-bullet theory, the one bullet cross-stitched my whole body, leaving me with stitches all over, my chest is a darning tuffet. 

surgeon: no, what caused the hole in your stomach was you unknowingly ate one bristle off a barbecue brush that cleans the dirty grill grate before cooking the next batch of meat. 

Andy: i gotta stop tripping balls with JFK.

surgeon: you swallowed a hair and almost expired.

Andy: i had to have that rib roast, it makes me feel like a caveman.

surgeon: you almost died from eating barbecue, do you know how fucked up that is? 

ANDY WARHOL'S PUBLICIST: THE CONCERTS WE MISSED

 

Andy Warhol: i'm thinking back to that one summer.

Jen R: 69?

Andy: lewd. okay well maybe it was 1969, that was my fertile period. what's your one concert?

Leslie Sbrocco: Vanilla Ice, his first non-Florida event in Mississippi, those were the days. that exciting mix of dance, putting your hands behind your head, shaking your dick, rapping without a mic, and improv lyrics about my mother.

Mackenzie Phillips: for me it was personal. i was a coke fiend and i really needed help. the Wilson Phillips song "Hold On" to this day has saved countless lives, at least 30,000 would-be suicides. by the dulcet tones of my relatives' voices, rhythms, and harmonies. 

the fat one: mostly the lyrics.

Mackenzie: BUT that song didn't work on me because i was related to the singers. how stupid is that? so i dove headfirst into the street sugar in Indianapolis.

me, crying: my dad used to call me Alien. so i'd like to see Victor Wembanyama play live at Madison Square Garden at least once... 

Beyonce: what's the best concert you ever went to?

Andy: Solange Knowles. period.

Beyonce: *smirking* oh behave.

Mordecai and Rigby: if you're losing hope, if you think the only thing the country cares about anymore is how masculine you are, picture us getting a box of boba at Costco, THIS is the world you want to inhabit...

Jacques Pepin: if i knew swordfish was to be my last-ever dish, i'd've given that swordfish nose to Gene Rayburn to play with instead of that stupid little silly thin microphone.

Gene Rayburn: the nose of a swordfish is called the bill. can i call you Pepper? i was light on my toes, i coulda been an Olympic fencer...

Arsinee Khanjian: i am to Atom Egoyan what Isabella Rossellini was to David Lynch...

Mr. Kotter: if the Knicks win rename them the Kotter Knicks. i'm wearing my urban gritty mean-streets Walt Frazier fedora from Bonnie and Clyde as i play blacktop basketball at Rucker Park.

Boom Boom Washington: you'd look better with a headband, dude, white with red herringbone...

Charles Barkley: as part of the Knicks pregame i went out into the mean streets and sampled some of New York City's finest world-famous street meats.

Ranger Rick: that's raccoon. but a little white rice, a little white sauce, and it tastes like chicken.

Charles Nelson Reilly: in 1973 i was a serious actor doing SeaWorld specials with porpoises and cute summer-job girls in wetsuits. the girls like the wetsuits were slick. i was a man who didn't joke on Match Game...

Trading Places: in the '80s rich people's stuff looked like Fisher-Price toys: the car phones, the jacuzzi tub, those cute little flowers in suction vases sticking to the Rolls Royce's windows...

if you're a dude: you have a beard. that's it.

Match Game: the BLANK is always a cock.

Charles Nelson Reilly: do you know why i wear no socks? i do commercials for Macy's...

Brett Somers: do you know why you have no cock? because you wear no socks.

Charles, crying: and do you know why i visit you in the sanitarium? because i'm lonely.

Brett: because the nurse won't give you dinner in your room.  

Charles: i have to eat with the others, what a crock!!!

Danke Schoen: a German Foot Locker.

Andy Warhol: i don't know, man. i am so tired. i'm trying to do art that matters again, that haters hate again, but it's not happening. my art sucks, i suck, and my life sucks.

Jen R: but you're not gonna kill yourself, right? that is so cliche.

Andy: no, but. can you believe i'm never gonna fuck Michael Jackson? i need to get away...

an hour later Basquiat calls from the street below, he shouts at us as we're all leaning out the high-rise Factory window.

Basquiat: Andy's in the hospital.