CUTTING YOUR HUSBAND'S BEARD: BLOCK OF ICE

 

me: I'M FREE!!! but i'm still stuck.

Melissa Maker: yeah your body is chair-shaped, your body is a giant L.........do i have to do everything here? because you're a loser.

me: yes. so i'm gonna need your help to get me normal.

Melissa: shit. that's gonna take forever. i don't have that time. okay look, here's something i picked up when i was shopping at Kohl's, it's a neck exercise that could screw you loose. SAY yes while shaking your head. SAY no while nodding your head. 

me: this is way harder than it looks. this is a true mindfuck, your head and your brain are not meant to work together this way, the mixed signals are frying my synapses.

Melissa: now you know how i felt on our dates.

me: thank you. just place my block-of-ice body on a slant against our marital bed so i can gaze up at the ceiling which is awesomely painted dark purple. you know, this is like the G-Rated version of Boxing Helena...

scrubbing buggles: a Monty Python thing...

Dreamscape.

Christopher Plummer: without nukes, America is Africa!!!

Kate Capshaw: the old lady's having a heart attack!!! 

Max von Sydow: see the thing is we never thought this would happen. there's no crash cart in the building. i could rob William Shatner's house for medical supplies.

David Patrick Kelly: let go of me or you'll pull out a stump.

Dennis Quaid, puzzled: what does that mean? your penis is a nub?

Chris: here Tommy, take this cocaine, it'll make you feel like a Bruce Lee ninja.

George Wendt: whaddya mean, i LOVE this clandestine spy stuff!!! okay i'm taking a chance here but i'm removing my St. Louis Cardinals cap and putting on this Montreal Expos cap...

Dennis: X-Files men!!! quick!!! let's pretend we're cheerleaders!!! damn you!!! you killed Norm!!! you canceled Cheers!!!

George: you cannot kill Norm, the spirit of Norm lives on in every entrance...

Dennis: it's a good thing these old Buick Continentals have a backseat footswitch that opens the backdoor...

Kate: president of the stamp club. 

Dennis in a phonebooth: i love you.

Kate: let's see if we have a 4th date first.

Dennis: i'm getting you a Yamaha bike for your birthday.

Dennis: hay will not get in my way. my horse pics are so good they were featured in an episode of It's a Living...

Jen R: don't you miss a college campus at night? the QUIET, the grasshopper stridulations, the WIDE grey paths illuminated by ball streetlamps.

Freddy Krueger: that's disgusting, dude. i take Qunol for heart health.

DPK: dream warriors, come out to PLAY-YAY!!! wait, how did you heal from my snakebite?

Dennis: Orihime.

DPK: wait, psychopaths don't say sorry...

Blair: i'm assuming this big-titted woman is not my wife...

conductor: and i do mean TRIP...

Jimmy Connors: a Tuesday tennis final? tennis is weird now.

Gene Rayburn: you should play Mario.

Avery Schreiber with Dorito bits in his mustache: who's Mario?...

Gene: when the contestant guesses the Super Match right by herself rejecting all 3 of the celebrities' answers, she kisses ME!!!

Patti Deutsch: i went to the same mime college as Debralee Scott...

Melissa stays with me in my frozen condition in the room as she flips through a Back-to-School Magazine.

Melissa Maker: tell me your dreams.

me: that is such a corny line. very well. if you must.

Melissa: before you forget.

me: Judge Judy accosts me in the parking lot where they film Match Game '74 and tells me she misses me.

Melissa: you know Judge Judy is my aunt, right? i mean Judge Judy does kind of look like Brett Somers, so i see you working, AI. AI controls our dreams now, right? and the other one?

me: well there was this whole love campaign in Hollywood, these two reality stars were on every magazine cover, Keith and Kerry, they had every single one of their dates at the mall, it was all filmed at the Sherman Oaks Galleria for the American public to consume like rabid dogs. even after having a baby the couple still had all their dates at the mall. 

Melissa: all they ate was Gerber's pizza.

me: apparently Kerry was more into it than Keith. now Keith looks like Luke from Luke & Laura but if Luke's perm was straightened. and bald.

Melissa: and Kerry looks like if Susan Sullivan had stayed on It's a Living instead of messing up her hair permanently for Falcon Crest. and a potbelly.

Piccolo: i'm getting too old for this shit.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: but i'm older than the universe.

Madame Pons: there's gotta be a way to gin-up sales of cold cream at LUSH.

Ear Horn: choose a nice witchy name, dearie, call it vanishing cream...

Jan: why do you fall in love with all the chefs?

Nancy Beebe: because they're there. OF COURSE you're gonna fall in love and marry your coworker, who else do you spend time with?!!!

Nietzsche: who else is there? i'm tired of the Paris cafe scene...

Anya Taylor-Joy: see it's fun being an actress and everything, but when you have to play Joni Mitchell, THEN suddenly it gets nerveracking, my heart's in my throat, and i start biting my nails...

energy vampires: we're not goth...

Jen R: me? Barrie Youngfellow? Jan, Jen, oh NOW i get it...

Laraine Newman: i play Barrie Youngfellow in The Ann Jillian Story...

Billy Corgan: i got the title for Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness from the Tales from the Darkside episode "Everybody Needs a Little Love..."

divorced man's refrigerator: empty. one bottle of scotch where the milk should be...

divorced man: the meaning of life is woman.

divorced woman: i'm still picky but i don't want to be alone...

Melissa Maker: okay i gotta run.

me: don't leave me.

Melissa: not in the macro sense, i gotta go to the store to pick up some parsnips and Trader Joe's lemon-lime drink. want anything?

me: i'm getting used to being a statue. i want to hug you and hog you for all your kindness to me but i can only shake your hand with my long flowing beard.

Melissa: i'll take it!!! i've been waiting for our marriage to be this. this is so Robert Crumb.

Robert Crumb: and you thought anything in a Robert Crumb comic couldn't be done live-action...

 

CUTTING YOUR HUSBAND'S BEARD: CHAIR SLEEP

Melissa Maker and i have settled into the mansion in Canada. for a cavernous space, it's quite cozy.

Melissa Maker: like cozy crime. those cozy-mystery shows on PBS where you have to use your noodle to solve them, no swear words, no fighting, no kissing.

me: sounds like our marriage. why am i in a chair?

Melissa: i read in Harper's that the most comfortable place to sleep is a chair, not a bed.

me: i have mattress issues.

three hours go by unaccounted for in my brain, but not my dream brain.

me: i feel like i've slept in this chair. but i'm STUCK!!! i can't get out of this chair!!! it's like my body is MOLDED into the groove of this wood chair!!!

Melissa: that is so '70s. hey can i cut your beard?

me: only with scissors. is this a Jewish ritual?

Melissa: it could be a Tolkien thing. huh, i thought something magical would happen, but the beard just grew back in 5 seconds to its previous long-monk flow. 

Violetta Laze: that's because of Violetta Laze flow.

Melissa: and now i have a mess of little bitty HAIR BITS to get out of the carpet!!!

me with Velcro rollers in my beard: i love how i'm one of your girlfriends at the beauty salon.

Melissa: and i'm like, what's the 411, sister? you know? what's your dealio? women are easy: wine, chocolate, roses, that's it.

Micherre Fox drying a pebble under the hair dome: NOBODY has my name...

General Zod: i now kneel before God...

God: your soul is worth a penny, just because you have a penny that's one-storey high, that BIG-ASS penny is still just worth 1 cent.

General Zod wearing a Swinging London shirt: i never wanted to be Superman's father, i never wanted to be a bigshot, i just wanted to be on General Hospital.

Frankie Muniz: i have to drink milk for this Smiths album cover? look at me, i don't drink milk. and i'd rather drive a car than listen to music. 

hardly: very hard...

Jenny Baranick: you hit the nail with a hammer hardly, you hit the nail with a hammer with great force...

Dreamscape.

two words: George Wendt.

all together now: if you die in the dream, you die in real life.

Dennis Quaid: Kate Capshaw, let's make a deal: if i don't fuck you, can Steven Spielberg get me a film a year the rest of my life?...

Steven Spielberg: why is the Dreamscape poster the Goonies poster?...

George Romero: it's a 2-hour Tales from the Darkside episode.

George Wendt: i'm an author from Maine, hint hint.

Max von Sydow: i'm not Christopher Plummer...

Com Truise: the VHS special effects tho.

Stanley Kubrick: those 1973 Fantastic Planet color tunnels...

Secretariat at the racetrack: the only time Robert De Niro played an extra...

Suzy Lu: people still wore those tam o' shanters in the '80s?

Dennis Quaid: i'm entering the jockey's room, i'm covering my eyes, i'm covering my eyes...

Dennis wearing a Dream Corp LLC speedo: dating? sorry, Debbie, i'm practicing my sax to be the Tonight Show bandleader. San Francisco in the '80s, drop me off here and leave me forever.

biofeedback machine: only plays the Spinal Tap II soundtrack. don't piss away your talents!!! learn about them.

the President: give me a piece of your mind. feel better? now i have peace of mind. i'm gonna get world peace at the UN by making sure the USSR stays intact...

at the Kiss Me Kate therapy session: Kate Capshaw here. you're a grown man who wears pajamas? why are you having crazy dreams?

patient: besides the '80s cocaine?

Father Navin: that's a new one, a priest in hearts boxer shorts...

Dennis Quaid: should i open this misshapen triangular door?...

father at longtable: little bastard, i wanted a daughter, an heir!!!

Dennis: don't be scared, buddy, it's just Ray Harryhausen animation.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: so that's where the Conan the Barbarian snakehead went. drinks at the Don's Plum lounge!!!

Zalman King: why is there so much white powder in the air in this sex scene?...

Dennis: i didn't enter your sex dream!!! you hear that sax? i'm practicing for The Tonight Show.

Richard Dawson: you know i learned kissing everyone from you.

Gene Rayburn: yeah but i kissed the female celebrities, you kissed the female contestants!!! 

Richard: calm down, Gene. the contestants were always more interesting than the celebrities. think of the one that got away.

Gene, haunted: that one woman from San Diego State, pretty but not beautiful, she was different, she wasn't a housewife, she was 20 not 43, and her voice was from the 1990s.

Richard: why was i dubbed the surly sex symbol of daytime television?

Gene: because you're British. when i kissed Joyce Bulifant, i wanted to leave my wife. that kiss, that Joyce Bulifant kiss on the mouth was PURE.

Joyce Bulifant: it's known as mouth magic, Gene. the television audience at home FELT it when i sighed "that's nice" after you kissed me on the mouth...

me: you're my nearest and dearest friend.

Pam Hiltunen: and you do mean NEAREST friend...

Blond Rambo: we couldn't take the godawful relentless NOISE POLLUTION of Carmel Car Week. so Jackie Fitzgerald and i put on our matching pink helmets and motorcycled outta town...

Jackie Fitzgerald: see? he's Catholic.

Dirg: you can FEEL when a girl on the other side of the planet likes your Instagram post.

Laertus: without the Like button...

Talia: cats think their human is their child. i'm your mom. that's why when you start talking to me in a singsong voice, i take it as a juvenile child's blather, i turn my head away from it, i close my eyes to it...

bud vase: a Tennessee Williams/Sylvia Plath vase.

Roger Federer: you're a doctor? i thought i was the only doctor here...

Rollie Wesen: i'm a doctor of food.

Japanese beats: at Darling River...

Pluto TV: WORST INTERFACE EVER.

Suzy Lu: look at the state of me!!!

Steejo: i can't, i'm trapped in the Time Chamber.

Olmec: i just realized, we need ATHLETIC kids to be on Legends of the Hidden Temple, we can't have kids who like donuts, we need kids who like to ride horses!!!

dinosaurs: we come from chicken eggs.

Colonel Sanders: but what came first?

Terrence Malick: i did.

Blue Exorcist: unlike other anime, this show really is a love letter to Japan...

Melissa Maker: wait, i might be able to help. read some Newton's Apple Magazines while you wait. 

me: can i throw the Costco Magazines away?

Melissa: the answer to all of life's problems is the dryer ball.

me: not this again.

Melissa: stay with me. please. on this one. not the dryer ball that's a soft grey baseball, the dryer ball that looks like a PUFFERFISH.

me: those spiky blue plastic balls freak me out, and this is coming from a man who likes Japan, Mario, and New Order.

Melissa: remember the spa that we went to? that we wet to?

me: that we enjoyed together.  

Melissa wrenches back the spikes of the dryer ball to reveal not a pufferfish but one of those mystic EELS that still does rather good work when not underwater. the eel has just enough magic, which is more than strength, to PRY ME out of my chair.  

 

 

THE WATER: FLOATING FROM THE COUCH

 

Roger Federer: i always liked that Bert Convy.

i can't believe my eyes. my floating eyes. it's Roger Federer. but we're in a psychiatrist's office. Roger wears a deep-burgundy robe and brown bunny slippers, sitting on a sofa-chair smoking a black dad-pipe.

Roger: the key to preventing tragedy is to not take anything too seriously.

me: how did the patients fare? they're your patients i presume.

Roger: my sessions usually help.

Roger: so for Rollie i sat him down with Jacques Pepin at a face-to-face table and the two talked to each other for the first time. they are related you know. 

Rollie Wesen: that BIG-ASS bottle of champagne you carry around with you is so stupid, it's so silly.

Jacques Pepin: i know. i'm sorry. but is it any sillier than a baguette lightsaber?

Rollie: are you ready to drink a can of Coke in front of me?

Jacques: only if you drink this big-ass bottle of champagne like the frat days along the Seine. don't worry, it's just Perrier, all champagne is just Perrier water.

Rollie: did you know meditating is better than drinking coffee to help you wake up in the morning?

Jacques: that's some American bullshit.

Roger: Mo was a harder case. you see Mo actually IS Mel from the TV show Alice.

Mel: yeah. i'm ashamed. i had an episode, a dissociative bout, where i forgot who i was and pretended to be someone else to mask the pain.

Roger: nothing to be ashamed of, my friend, depression is just another form of cancer.

me: so the towels were dirty dishrags...

Mel: see i asked Vera out. you know Vera the waitress? i mean she's the nicest most EMPATHETIC woman i know, if she said no i'd die. well she rejected me and my brain broke.

Vera: just a little too greasy for me.

Mel: she was my last hope, the soprano calming the whale with her LOW voice, you know? 

Little Buu: the original fat pink Majin Buu who acts like a little child.........good wordplay, Suzy Lu...

me: so what's your secret? talk therapy is a thorny thing, if you say the wrong thing: disaster.

Roger wearing a greasy dishrag as a dress: look under your couch.

me: i like lying on this couch face-down, i can float to galaxies from here.

i sense two large cans with my fingers. i pull them out.

me: omg it's Hawaiian Punch!!!

Roger with a grandfatherly smile: yes, the greatest gameshow prize there ever was.

me: you know as an '80s kid when i'd see Hawaiian Punch on the shelves, those LARGE TIN CANS of Hawaiian Punch were mystical to me in L.A.

Roger: it has a calming effect on my patients, it destroys their affect. they look at these cans and instantly relax. it has the same effectiveness as coffee or meditation...

Roger Ebert: no 2000s movie can ever be the BEST ANYTHING...

Monica Pro: sometimes in life you gotta poo.

the back of the lime-green Sparkletts water truck: those dark-green glitters are the tassels of an '80s Vegas showgirl...

tea: when the tea starts to look like apple cider, it's time to change the teabag...

Wednesday Addams: my Meal of Misfortune at Wendy's is not a real meal, there's no burger, it's just chicken and fries. see mostly girls will get this, and goth girls like to remain skinny...

single actors REALLY struggle...

Tales from the Darkside: all our apartments have fine art hung up on the walls...

every '80s show: one brown bag with 3 boxes in the bag carried into the apartment: the groceries.

Coldplay "Viva la Vida."

be my mirror, my sword and shield

missionary position far afield...

Chris Martin: see? vanilla sex is worth waiting for. all kings end up goth. like the king in the Depeche Mode "Enjoy the Silence" music video...

Dave Gahan: that crown was two sizes too small for my head. my red cape was fuzzy but itchy. the dalmatian spots on the white fleece of my cape made me cry. the gloomy cliffside mountains were filled with overcast mites.

Michael Jordan: i should have played for the Knicks!!! i was born in Brooklyn after all. the '90s, NYC, hub of pop culture, it would have been too much. i could have been in a serious culturally-relevant Spike Lee film, not Space Jam!!!

Samuel Beckett: make my jacuzzi in my bedroom a cold-plunge.........but not like the ocean, i can't swim...

Danielle Spencer: i'm gonna tell mama, that line was used as a lyric in a Michael Jackson song in the '80s. what are we doing at papa's house?!!!

Dean Travers: i wasn't actually the dean of a culinary school, i just pretended to be to get chicks who cook. my first name is Dean. i was the only person who ever believed in Jack Tripper, i mean where was his father?!!!

all the women contestants on Match Game '74: i'm married to a super guy...

Rybakina: after Mary Pierce we can never be too careful...

Mark Twain: has anyone seen my rouge?...

Marilyn Manson: you don't need to backmask my songs, the Satanic lyrics are in the FRONT.

me: this is all very impressive. can i use your bathroom to take my 2 Vanquish pills?

Roger Federer: when have you ever been motivated?

me: i'm assuming your bathroom will be strange enough. your work bathroom at least.

Roger: oh sure.

i float to a feast for my eyes. and i am hungry no more. this bathroom has a new-car smell. this bathroom has elevator carpet where the wallpaper should be. 

Prince: the best elevators don't have carpet, they have marble...

me: why are all mirrors, no matter where they are, dirty? the bathroom cup is made of Flintstones pumice. and by the front swinging door there's a Victrola playing a Rachmaninoff LP record next to a fern that ISN'T hanging. 

water grips my brow.

Roger: but you can't. your session isn't over...

 

 

THE WATER: ROLLIE

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