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.