DAD WRITING FOR ZALMAN KING: I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S YOU

 

Jen and i are invited to the house of Zalman King and Patricia Louisianna Knop.

Jen R: it's not a house, it's an art house.

me: let's take this opportunity to explore.

Jen: i'm sure they won't mind.

we see the entire square area lined with TINY red-clay pots. 

Jen: and sword ferns. you know it's a hip pad when the front door SLIDES.

me: see i've always wanted this for you and me. a husband and wife not just of love but of art.

Jen: GIANT marble statues in every color in the living room. with faces like Mayan gods and goddesses yet also strangely the faces of our family, friends, and neighbors...

Kevin Costner: the Color of the Year is Cloud Dancer White. remember when i was Dances With Wolves? i was more genial towards and accepting of people who didn't look like me. integrative of different cultures. one with the Indians, not the cowboys. i gotta stop doing those Fox specials...

Apple phones: we took a VapoShower...

VICKS: should have been called VapoHaler.

Clint Eastwood: the musical song should have been "Paint My Wagon" to have it be the gay anthem we all wanted it to be.

Cindy Bear: i should have stayed in my cave to avoid covid...

tidings: only on Christmas.

Blue McDonald: how many times do i have to say it? even if you're a whore the meaning of life is FRIENDS. sometimes you only find friends at school...

Blue McDonald: my favorite song? "Rock Around the Clock," i guess. i hate farms. poodle skirts are so chintzy, i'd rather have a poodle.

Bart Braverman: i have the standard Native American name. so what am i doing on the set of Vega$? i should be doing Dances With Wolves and Northern Exposure. oh, the casinos, that's dirty rotten lowdown.

what's the meaning of this?: nobody says this anymore.

Sophie Throckmorton: you thought i was gonna be the villainess, huh?...

Zalman King: so what? so what if i offer you a writing contract? what episode will you contribute to add to the Red Shoe Diaries lore? 

Zalman: wait, let me turn my back to you. not out of rudeness, so you can sign the contract.

Jen: this is such a '90s thing, remember when people used their backs as tables?

dad: well i was thinking of the Amber Smith episode.

Udo Kier: why must i always play the weirdo? look at my face. do i look like i'm hiding something?

dad: the Bulgarian revolutionary, remember?

Patricia: oh yeah.

dad: picture it: a Bulgarian revolutionary. barechested in a silk shirt on a hill. and the single mother in peasant garb who's forced to flee her cow farm after her soldier husband dies in the war. what happens when these two literally bump into each other, bump heads, when they're both running away fleeing their country...

Zalman: milk farm, i get it, i like it. lots of milk everywhere. 

Patricia: the open fields. we'll have a lovemaking scene next to a cow.

Jen: another stupid war. war is stupid, it has never solved anything. not even a cold snap. the only thing war is good for is war romance...

dad: i'll write THAT episode...

DAD WRITING FOR ZALMAN KING: DINNER?

Jake Winters invites Jen and me into the famous diner for his next batch of letters.

Jen R: those golden cluster mailboxes are ICONIC. i know your number is 114.

Jake: good eye, i didn't know that. i cared more about X-Files. who gets their mail at a diner? why would there be mailboxes at a diner? you have a dog's eye. right, Stella?

Stella the dog: i'm Lassie if she had been an atheist. right, pal?

me: why are you called Red Shoes?

Jake: don't want to talk about it. suicide. 

we slowly migrate to the park.

Jen: yeah see, i liked Season 2, i liked the location change, because the Red Shoes address is Canoga Park and now you really were AT Canoga Park!!!

Jake: i told the producers my longcoat needed space to stretch its legs. 

Jen: what were all those trains in Season 1 carrying?

Jake: pesticide.

me: did you like how your story was wrapped up?

Jake: no. the movie was a serious existential meditation on suicide for love. but then in my follow-up episode they have me just butt-fucking Sheryl Lee...

loft: the only place with a sliding front-door...

Wild Orchid 2: Two Shades of Blue.

brothels: for virgins...

me: it's an honor to review this, i am obsessed with this film. the autograph i want is Nina Siemaszko, as in a physical B&W photo with her signature, not a stupid selfie.

Jen R: me too. just wish i could have been there in that Dick Tracy-lit red room of an indie theatre on Hollywood Blvd. to pay for a ticket to boost its sales.

Mona: i'm going to a live taping of Match Game 1979 in Vegas...

asshole frat guy: not only am i an asshole frat guy, i'm the first man to wear frosted tips.

Lance Bass: it's called a little lemon in the hair.

Blue: see? i can scream.

me: that whole scene made me uncomfortable. that's how you know it's good Zalman writing.

Blue: Don's Plum waitress is respectable. ANYTHING is better than frat life...

Robert Davi: i have permission from the President to shoot up this whole room...

Zalman King: aha, now the diner isn't so much Dick Tracy as it is Zalman King, as in all the rain.

me: SEE?!!! i wish more movies would do this, have two strangers become a family, Blue and Sully, the whore and the bodyguard, just another daughter and dad.

Jen: who go to the daughter/dad dance. who have eggs in pajamas. ironically, they'll only wear pajamas from now on...

William Shakespeare: King Lear is about prostitution.

teacher: tell us a little bit about yourself, new student.

Blue: let's just say i was doing customer service in Chatsworth.

Brent: you like Perfect Blue the anime? sorry i'm nervous.

Jen R: buddy, you got your heart broken by a girl at a Sacramento Greyhound station and that girl shows up at your school?!!! do you know the infinitesimal chances of that happening?

Zalman: and now this transitions into a high-school movie called Lucas For Girls.

Blue: i do the wheelbarrow a little different, but.........anyway our PE teacher is Mrs. Felt? i knew a Mrs. Felt at the brothel.

Brent: this old vineyard was rooted by two brothers who hated each other, the Picard brothers.

marriage: not talking to each other for 40 years.

Blue: exactly!!! i look like one of those K-pop bands.

Blue's high-school chum: this was the best day of school i've had. you don't get good days in high school. you get days where you don't cry. you survive days. they made me jog 10 miles around the school for no reason.

madam: you know as i'm inspecting these 3 new naked women, maybe i made some bad life choices. all i wanted to be was Blue's mother...

Joshua: okay but why is the championship game being played at 1AM in the morning?

Paul Tagliabue: from now on all NFL games will start with the firing of a starting gun.

Blue: i mean, this movie really isn't about losing a high-school football game, you know?

Brent: it's okay, dad, i don't care that she was a whore. you love who you love. why do i get the feeling there's only one of this reel?...

Tom Skerritt: Blue at the white picket fence, symbolic, she can't achieve the white-picket-fence dream of domesticity. remember when i was on Picket Fences on CBS?

madam: Blue, i destroyed your dream because i was jealous. my British high-school-quarterback boyfriend dumped me for a quarter-pounder with cheese...

Sully: i drive a car like i pilot a plane...

Sully: i wasn't a good guy. i was a GREAT character!!!

Blue: it's just this book report on Harriet Tubman i did is REALLY good, i want to show it to someone.

Blue: the GED is for suckers. i'm gonna graduate college, become a vet, then prepare for the Summer of Love...

Merry Clayton: an ending of hope, compassion, hidden joy, and haunting tenderness.

Blue: i want to live. i want to start my life over with you.

Yogi Bear: look, i don't like Yellowstone, okay?

Taylor Swift: but why didn't i become just like Sophie B. Hawkins?...

gee whiz: please bring back gee whiz.

me: Match Game 1979 in Vegas!!!

Jen R: yeah but that was expected. they should have had Match Game 1979 live in Palm Springs for one week, that would have been cool!!!

Del: female?

the Arthur cartoon: the best way to start the rest of your day after school...

Double Indemnity.

Walter: i'm crazy about you, kid.

Phyllis: i know. i wanted you to be fresh.

Walter: crazy as in i'm willing to do crazy things...

Olivia Newton-John in her "Physical" leotard and John Travolta in his Perfect testicle-showing short-shorts dance. 

Jack Tripper: .........sometimes you feel like a nut. i like cashews.

John Travolta: we were destined to become Olivia Newton-John-Travolta.

Millie Bobby Brown: call me Mille Bon Bon. this sets me up to do the live-action movie of Adventure Time...

Caplyta: when the depressed person is a mom, that makes it more depressing...

me wearing red high heels: how would you describe the music on the show?

George Clinton: spicy jazzy to start. then the wailing sax at the end when the woman makes the realization.

Jen R: are you related to Bill Clinton?

George Clinton: of course, Bill Clinton was the first black President.

DAD WRITING FOR ZALMAN KING: HOW TO HARNESS A FALLEN ANGEL

dad: so i've always had this dream.

me: what's that got to do with me?

dad: for the BOTH of us, son, pay attention, stash that weed under your bed. we'd write TOGETHER for a show.

me: in tandem?

dad: yeah. but i've always wanted to write softcore. that's kinda something i have to do alone. solitary dream. waiting for you to turn 18 of course. then you don't go to college, you go with me down to L.A.

me: okay, dear old dad. i'll wait for you. or you'll wait for me...

dad knocks on Zalman King's modest corrugated door. it's a garage in the arts district of Pacoima filled with bloated Aztec, Mayan, and Jewish fertility statues.

Patricia Louisianna Knop: IT'S FROM THE WOMAN'S PERSPECTIVE!!!

dad: i gathered. that's why Red Shoe Diaries is so cool.

Patricia: heroine's journey.

Zalman King: it's not softcore. i prefer to think of it as Erotic Romance. 

dad: i loved the series finale, it was so atmospheric. not really a story to speak of, it was more a mood piece. i loved the fallen angel right out of a Harlequin paperback with the Russian muscles.

Zalman: the chest. people criticized that he never actually flew on screen. like flying through the air in the clouds, floating in the sky with invisible wings.

dad: oh no, i loved your choice there. you had him on a harness with two rawhide stirrups under his armpits, he was the man on the flying trapeze, or angel on the trapeze as it were. the two strings were visible throughout, you weren't trying to hide them, he "flew around" the sky in this way.

Patricia: flew around the studio on the stirrups. like a barechested Roman soldier on a swing.

dad: that was so symbolic, the harness was his broken wing, the angel unable to get back to his Heaven powers, couldn't be invincible and invisible anymore, had to be vulnerable and flesh for love. man that episode was mythic, it was great, a great way to end the series in an epic evocative brooding mysterious Joseph Campbell/Kobe Bryant way like that.

Mars: ironically it looks like Mrs....

Jen R: when you think of me as a time on the clock...

me: i think of 9:30AM. 9:30 is so WARM.

Wild Orchid 2: Two Shades of Blue.

piggyback ride straight to hell: that just doesn't sound right.

Brent Fraser: look at me!!! look at my face!!! i have to be Brendan Fraser's younger brother!!!

E.T.: no laws on my home planet, only plants. money is flowers. Elliott was the only good human.

Zalman King: there is only ONE palm-tree-lined avenue like that in the world...

Nina Siemaszko: i look like if Shirley Temple had been an atheist. i have to be a hooker to fix my teeth?

Tom Skerritt: no wonder you can't hear my trumpet, there's a mute in the hole.

Jules Smith: don't worry, i'm nice. and my daughter's Elle...

catfish: no, an actual catfish animal. in the aquarium tank.

Blue: that was my first time, I should be crying, but i left YOU in a puddle.

man, crying: turns out i have a LOT of emotional baggage from the '40s. next time don't show me a photo of you as a baby before we do it...

Blue: just reading his paperback of Childhood's End.

father: one more horn for the road. what i needed was a car horn...

gospel singer at cemetery: beautiful gospel song about the indecipherable puzzle of life.

Blue: *smashing plates* OPA!!! i'm one of Larry's cousins.

Blue: what's with the Dick Tracy lighting in this diner?...

Zalman King: RED SHOES, BABY!!!

acting: survival.

Blue: wait, this is an episode of JAG? 

Brent: you fell in love with my Charlie Chaplin dance.

Mona: i'm no longer the Cindy of the house, the Tootie of the house, the Brian Bonsall of the house!!!

Blue: don't you EVER kiss me on the mouth!!!

Brian from Family Guy: i like to play dead with twin hookers.

Mona: i'm Priscilla Presley...

Del: i'm the Harley Quinn of the hidden brothel.

passion: yes, but when you have to pay for it...

Jen R: nobody does scrapbooking anymore. nobody does pressed flowers anymore.

Prince Charming: i do exist but only in France.

Fortune 500: our wives don't do butt stuff.

Blue: you'll never see my new teeth because i'm never gonna smile this whole movie.

Nina: that's the second time i've had my panties RIPPED OFF for Zalman King!!!

Mamdani: but why can't the Senate be young?

Cigarette Smoking Man: the aliens are on the moon. tell no one. how much are you, Blue? like $135?

old man in wood Roosevelt wheelchair: scream. i'm preparing for my death.

Blue: i can't scream, i have a mousey voice.

Jen R: your soulmate lives in your city!!! what a relief.

Brent: um, can you put on this blonde wig? you look like my soulmate...

Blue in black wig: but you do love me.

Melissa Maker: you know that Taco Bell commercial where the couple meets at the bowling alley as kids, have a kid, their love story through the years is them enjoying one Crispy Chicken Taco after another.

Chad Reynolds: makes me sad. remember when we had that stale taco shell at the back of the cupboard as the symbol of our enduring love?

Melissa: we'll get remarried after the divorce, right?

Chad: for our kid. why can't love LAST?...

Omnilux: ladies, look like a creepy scary freaky future robotman for 45 minutes, but then FIRM SKIN!!!

Freddie Mercury: news of the world. i'm more a queen than you'll ever be, ladies...

Jackie Fitzgerald: it's different hanging Christmas lights when you have someone.

Walker: i keep a stone mug of coffee in my kei truck's cup holder...

Shenron: hurry up, i gotta get back to Hugh Grant...

Messi: have you ever seen a soccer goalie wearing a cap?...

Jesse: another hard one...

Pebble Grove: a Flintstones city...

nutrient bullet: a smoothie blender on Blue Exorcist.

Shura: blanks...

Wanda from One Piece: if you weren't a furry before...

Pedro: played by Pedro Pascal.

Bleach: unravel five hanks.

Tom Hanks: i'm sorry. i can't do the live-action anime movie of this. i don't know what anime is.

Zalman King: hey, if you're gonna write for me, remember: the word "fuck" must be uttered once every Red Shoe Diaries episode.

dad: right.

 

THE REAL WIKI: THE BEST SLEEP POSITION

 

Jen R: so we're obviously in Hawaii to help Terri out.

me: Terri Alden? oh yeah, that makes sense.

we reach Terri's bungalow in the jungle JUST as Mr. Furley is going apeshit.

Terri: i've managed to calm him down.

Jen: you have?

Terri: from before. he was climbing vines and shaking his loincloth at everyone like Brooke Trantor. now he's just hyperventilating and karate-chopping in the air.

Terri: cheer up, RF.

Mr. Furley: it's not that easy, Terri!!! you should know, you're a nurse!!! a psychiatric nurse, right? look at my life. look at me, i wear a brown ascot, mustard shirt, animal-print vest, and flared beige pants. pointy white dance shoes. i've wasted my life. i never met a woman for more than a few hours. never had children to carry on the cool RF name. nobody will ever know how smooth i was. i'm gonna die alone *cries WAMPUM tears*.

Jen: it's just not right for Mr. Furley to kill himself, he's too much of a kooky character, you know?

Terri: i have an idea.

Jen: we gotta get RF on a date.

Terri: bingo. i have the perfect woman. 

Ilene Graff: i went from hooker to housewife in two short years!!! Three's Company to Mr. Belvedere...

Terri: no not you.  

Lani Abraham from Match Game: me? i'm Anne Hathaway's mother...

Terri: no, you. Kathy Shower.

Kathy Shower: i have the perfect name for a Three's Company guest star...

Mr. Furley invites Kathy Shower to sit on his garish flower couch in his 101 landlord's apartment and the WIDE FRIENDLY TOOTHY Mr. Furley smile returns to his face.

Mr. Furley: i'm feeling much better about things. all it took was spending time with a woman who would hear my problems. a little checkers and wine. and cutting Andy Griffith out of my life...

Walton Goggins: Jim Carrey? ANYBODY can play The Grinch. because everyone looks good in that green Grinch face makeup...

Olivia Nuzzi: i've wanted to be a Kennedy since i was a little girl. he was the last one left, okay?...

blonde jokes: still a thing in the '90s...

Raye: i guess a guy's name?

Jen R: in the '80s, the mom and dad of the suburban family would "go upstairs" to have sex.

Alex: the WORST name to try to determine the gender of...

don't bullshit me: such a '90s phrase.

Hugh Grant: don't be absurd.

Sartre: ...

Sartre: are you like the modern Cary Grant?...

jalapenos in your Coke: experimenting one stressful Sunday afternoon in the '80s at El Pollo Loco...

Ralph Furley after drinking Jalapeno Coke: smooth.

Thanksgiving: from now on it's gonna be called John Madden Day.

Best Medicine: Fox can NEVER hope to come CLOSE to Northern Exposure!!!

Frozen On Ice: the only Disney On Ice thing that makes sense.

Peter Pan On Ice: doesn't make sense.

elf: the holidays are stressful for EVERYONE but even MORE stressful for elves. it's not fair.

Game Show Network: we go ALL FUCKING OUT for Christmas.

Seth MacFarlane: i need my teddy-bear thunder-buddy when i go to Mars.

Ellen DeGeneres: damn dude. and i went to Britain. but you win.

investigative reporter: investigating Black Friday deals at Macy's...

Nicolette Groome: such a goth name.

Jen and i are in our hammocks in Honolulu surrounded by Spanish moss.

Jen R: we need a key to get into Waikiki. we need rest for the test. a disco nap so we're not too tired to go to the disco, not the test. a power nap makes us weak.

me: what's the best sleep position?

Jen: picture it, in your bed at midnight: assume the fetal position, tuck your left hand in between your left leg and your right leg.

me: yeah that's the stuff.

Jen: let's go to the mall.

me: but we're in Hawaii.

Jen: but it's Black Friday, nobody goes to the MALL anymore on Black Friday!!! i'm gonna be wearing THREE Swatch watches on my left wrist because i'm cool. my purple Swatch, my black Swatch, my pink polka-dot Swatch.