LUCID OLD MAN: DIRTY WATER

 

i was FLOORED when i opened my front door that crisp morning and he was standing there on the welcome mat right in front of me.

me: DAD?!!! is that really you?!!! where the hell have you been the past 24 years?!!!

dad: out. you know, going to libraries and stuff.

me: you look good. your mind is a steel trap that's been treated with wine.

dad: i'm smarter than when i was 14.

dad: look at you, son. only a dad can tell the truth to his son without consequence.

me: what? i just woke up.

dad: that's the problem, you always look like you've just woken up, both meanings. even at noon. do you really want a wife? it's not about a job, it's about looking like an artist. look at your shadow over there, you look like Big Bird. you look like a bird, not a human.

Doing Time on Maple Drive: the emotional scenes in this are used by suburban acting lessons to teach the students how to display crazy anger...

another old man, not my dad, knocks at my door from Meals on Wheels. he looks like Santa.

old man: how's your mom doing?

me: she's taken to the infusions well. only thrown up once.

old man: and how are YOU doing?

me: thank you for that, Santa man. it's been HARD. nobody ever inquires about caregiver stress.

old man: see? Santa isn't a creep for knowing all about you. he just wants to know if you're okay.

Embrace of the Vampire: the woman photographer who seduces Alyssa Milano, she was an ancient siren. 

Alyssa Milano: too bad she didn't bite my glorious breasts, that would have been hot.

the wearing of pajamas: family-structure stability in the '80s...

Moby: my ENTIRE music career was so that by some miracle someone like me would end up with Natalie Portman. when that didn't really happen, boy was i lost...

Jennifer Capriati: why not an indoor tennis Grand Slam tournament? on carpet. i'm trying to get back in the game here, you know? if i become tennis commissioner i can salvage my life: get a man, have a kid, put black D.A.R.E. stickers on my minivan.

Catholic priest: as long as you don't become a Catholic pest...

Killer Klowns from Outer Space: it's the Engine Room from Star Trek: The Next Generation, that blue warp core that looks like a giant baby's circle-stack toy.

Sundays: are for soccer now,  not football...

the last line of New Radicals "You Get What You Give": you're all fakes, run to your mansions, come around, we're Lech Walesa!!!

Disturbia day dress: goth sundress.

Nikki McCann Ramirez: i'm your Janeane Garofalo '90s boho best friend in the sneakers navigating you through modern politics...

a dentist at Fedco: you can chew Clorets gum instead of brushing. they're green so they're good for the environment. they're pillow-shaped so you can relax.

Jackie Fitzgerald and Walker: we had a party last night to celebrate the weather getting cooler. sorry for the noise.

me: no worries, i like New Radicals "You Get What You Give" being played by a house band for 6 hours.

Jackie: i'm more into Bach and opera but because Walker has long straight blond hair he is required to play a black bass guitar in an electric band.

New Radicals: we are not Third Eye Blind...

Embrace of the Vampire: our vampire teeth are subtle...

Martin Kemp: boring ending for Alyssa Milano to go back to her milquetoast boyfriend. if she had taken a sumptuous chance and went off with me, we would have lived forever, so there would have been a sequel like those godawful Twilight movies. i look like if Chris Kattan was sexy.

Alyssa Milano: sorry but ballet is boring. spandau sounds like a stretchy yoga nylon.

Prince: it's weird how this movie was filmed in Minnesota...

Adam Levine: you were a dead frog in bed.

Maria Sharapova: that is scandalous, Adam. okay, you know what, i'm gonna pay tribute to Debbie Harry: i'm gonna go on The Muppet Show---the good one, the '70s one---and kiss Kermit the Frog in his sockhole.

Clint Howard: the next time you see a buffet pan with ONE tater tot in it, think of my face.

army cook: i'm if Anthony Bourdain and Adam Arkin made a man.

Love Death + Robots: cartoon Black Mirror...

Lucky: our Coinstar is quiet as it gives you your slip for all those jangly clanging coins, the buttons you push are QUIET. we're not rowdy. we're a dignified library. i mean where else can you get the PARTY SIZE of Funyuns?...

Billy Corgan: Neath the Darkest Eves, it should have been Neath the Darkest Eaves!!!

Allen Ginsberg: you will NEVER spell my name right...

Downtown Carmel: tiny NARROW sidewalks...

me: i can't believe you're 90 years old like mom, dad.

dad: i have all my faculties. i can run a faculty at any cozy college.

me: you can FINALLY write that book. the book you REALLY wanted to write...

dad: i play marbles with the neighborhood kids and whip their asses before it's time to go inside for dinner and Pac-Man.

me: that's the first time you've ever said the word "asses." it's rad how you have a long flowing white beard now like Gandalf the first wizard you taught me about.

dad: especially since i have curly hair... 

dad: i am a creature of the world, creature.

me: i miss your nickname for me.

dad: i am an animal of Earth, son. i sense all around. clearer than i ever have before. i smell. i SMELL things. i don't wanna talk about Trump, he'll give me a heart attack. i can smell the dirty water coming from your sink, your dishwasher, and your washer.

me: the kitchen sink smells funky, the bathroom sink smells like mint. i washed my clothes for the first time in ten years after your visit.

dad: i am at one not with the life on this planet but with its death...

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.