Lu Lu Eightball by Emily Flake

for tina and eve...

(click comic for larger view)

gone acting

re: my last post. i just meant that i wish i could feel confident and good about myself without also feeling self-righteous and angry at the world around me for not living up to my own high standards. it's the anger that creeps in and ruins it all and my own self confindence seems to go hand in had with righteousnes and anger. i was just scolding myself for being up on a high horse. being on a high horse feels good though, doesn't it? You know, like you're on a horse and you're really high up.

sorry i haven't posted in a while. thanks for all of the comments. i'm opening a show tomorrow night and i'll be in tech all day. everyone is really grumpy in my cast about it but i'm like, "hey it's a day off work assholes!"

to personify my feelings

Confidence, anger and righteousness are just so tight aren't they? I’ll take confidence but he refuses to come without righteousness and righteousness and anger are practically joined at the hip. Not only that but they often invite entitlement along just for kicks.

I tell them all to just go away and leave me alone. They oblige but then here comes old self-doubt, moseying along, “uhhh, wich way did dey goh?” Of course pity shows up with a bottle of something; she wants to party and shame isn’t doing anything tonight can he come over? These emotions just won’t stand alone.

Contentment shows up days later, always unexpected with a warm, familiar smile. “You didn’t think I’d forgotten you?” Of course not, of course not. Deep down, I knew you were with me all along.

But contentment knows confidence really well. They go way back. I think you can see where I’m going with this...

Lulu Eightball by Emily Flake

(click on comic for larger view)

Gobble Gobble

This year I am cooking my first turkey. It makes me feel very grown up and married (in a good way). Dup's parents are coming in from Virginia and we are having Thanksgiving Dinner at our place. Our kitchen isn't that bad for a NY apartment. It's actually quite open. I'm sort of looking forward to just being in the kitchen and cooking all day by myself. It's not unlikely that I will be completely drunk by noon.

Dup is going into the city to meet the folks at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and also to stand in line to buy tickets to a Broadway show at the TKTS Booth. I much prefer my task of staying home and wrestling a bird to doing either of those things. I can't believe they are actually going to the parade. I would rather pour hot lava into my ear canal. Dup's mom told me that she is especially excited because this year they are going to have a Mr. Potato Head Balloon. This is to celebrate the fact that people are eating potatoes again. Even though the potato is packed with evil carbs, people re-recognize that it does have nutritional value and is worth consuming now and again. Upon hearing this news, I celebrated by eating an entire plate of fries.

We got our turkey from this organic farm in Upstate New York called Dines Farms. They have a booth in the open market which is at the park by our house every Saturday. We always buy chicken breast and chicken sausage from the guy who runs the booth; Larry is his name. Their meats are far superior to anything I've ever tasted, so fresh and juicy and I like knowing that those chickens, turkeys and pigs live such lush, free range lives before they are KILLED AND EATEN BY HUMAN BEINGS.

We placed an order to get our thanksgiving turkey from Dines about a month ago. We thought we were going to pick it up this Saturday but when we got to Larry's booth he said we would have to pick it up on Tuesday night. They are trying to time it so that the turkey is super fresh and you don't have to freeze it at all. This is great except that I'm in rehearsal on Tuesday and Dup has class. We spent about fifteen minutes standing there, trying to figure out how Larry could possibly get this turkey to us, while the people behind us, who could care less about our thanksgiving, got more and more pissed off at us for holding up the line. Finally he said he'd call us later. We were pretty sure we'd end up with some crappy Butterball from the Associated.

Then, last night we got his call. He was in our neighborhood, up by the water, about 12 blocks away making a delivery to a local restaurant, Queens Hideaway. "I know right where that is," I told him (very good restaurant if you are ever in Greenpoint btw). He explained that we had ordered a nine pound bird but all he had on him was a twelve pounder. "I'll take it, " I yelped without thinking twice. We agreed that he would call again when he finished his drop off and then rendezvous at the corner of Nassau and Manhattan Avenue, about four blocks from my house and on his way back to the BQE. Dup handed me the cash. I put on my shoes. When I got out to the corner I finally realized how absurd the whole thing was, standing on a street corner waiting for a turkey. It so resembled a drug deal. The corner we chose is action packed and although well lit and not scary per se, just a little seedy. I waited there for about fifteen minutes and while I stood there I got a lot of looks, some honks and one disgusting comment, all par for the course but I kept imagining the police stopping me once the transaction went down.

"Mam, were going to have to look inside the bag if you don't mind."
"It's a turkey officer and twelve pound, free-range, organic turkey."
"We're going to have to do a cavity search."

Finally Larry called me on my cell and it turned out that he had been waiting for me on the opposite corner for like 10 minutes. I turned around and there he was. This guy is so nice and we always chat it up with him when we get our chicken on Saturdays but last night he was out of his mind. I was like, "You doin okay Larry?" He explained that he had barely slept the last 3 days because he's been so busy with the turkeys. He was driving all the way back up to Albany that night only to reload his truck and turn around and come right back to Union Square bright and early. "But," he acquiesced, "that's the business." He was refering to the turkey business the week before Thanksgiving.

I put the big bird in my canvas bag and hoofed it back to the apartment. The cops didn't didn't catch me coming or going, suuuuckaaahhhhs....

Gosh, I hope I don't mess it up. Why is it so hard to cook a piece of meat? What could possibly go WRONG? Cut to me lying on my kitchen floor under a half cooked turkey with a baster in one hand and an empty bottle of wine in the other.

Wish me luck!

la Ketch Confessional

I am 31 years old and I don't know how to use a semicolon.

If someone can explain the use of a semicolon to me in a way that I can understand well enough to actually employ it in a sentence correctly, I will give them a dollar*. I've been trying to use the semicolon on this blog and now I realize, I've been using it all wrong. If you are connecting two complete sentences with the thing, then why would you not just put a period or a conjunction? That's my question I guess. What is the special circumstance where the conjunction or the period will just not do?

*I have a feeling that the Great Rambini is going to be the first to pipe in on this one but that's only because FW doesn't comment. Also, I'm not entirely certain if FW reads this blog. If FW did read this blog and did comment and did explain the use of a semicolon to me in way that I was able to understand well enough to employ it in a sentence correctly, I would not give him a dollar; I would take one dollar off the $10 he already owes me.

(Did I do it?)

Thanks for Sharing: Chocolate

I know this happens in every office but in our office it's particularly bad because we work on the "buy-side" of an asset management company and the "sell-side" is always trying to court our analysts and traders for their business. I could explain the logistics of these relationships further but this entry is already so boring to begin with...

My point is that we get loads of free shit all the time mainly in the form of food and especially around the holidays. We have this big credenza in the center of the office and in about one week it will be covered with loads of crap: cookies, cakes, chocolate, wine, hams, fruit, you name it. The stuff just sits there in a giant heap, radiating calories. It's all bad for you; except for the wine which is good for you and disappears immediately (usually into my handbag) and the fruit which is rare.

This credenza I speak of sits directly in from of my desk. I stare at my computer and in every direction of my periphery is the mound of temptation. Last year there was a huge, huge, huge box of chocolates, gourmet chocolates, like as good as Godiva or better. I swear that box was regenerating. Every time we thought we were at the bottom of the box another layer would appear. Of course, every woman in the office is insane about goddamned chocolate like we are living in a Cathy cartoon or something. It's such a cliche but what can you do? Chocolate is good. When you are bored out of your mind and it's 2:45 and you are falling asleep at your desk, you're going to have one... or two or five. It tastes so good at first that first bite especially. Sometimes you even have to make some sort of sound to go along with it like, "mmmmm, ohmygodsogood." Then you get this great sugar/caffeine rush and you FEEL so good for about, say twenty minutes. Then you crash down off that rush and you want to kill yourself. It's very cyclical, like smoking crack.

So today we got our first holiday thing. It's a huge box filled with 15 round tins of shortbread cookies, one for each person in the office. I have officially worked in my office for one year now because I remember opening the same box of shortbread cookies sent from the same company just before Thanksgiving last year. I put those cookies up on the credenza just now and it generated a bevy of conversation. The same conversation it always generates. It's so boring that I just have to share it with you:

Some Jock Trader: Ohhhh, whatya got there the shortbread cookies?
la Ketch: Yup.
Another jock trader: Hey, they send those every year who are those from?
la Ketch: Name of sell-side company that sends the cookies
Female analyst: Those are like pure butter.
Another female analyst: Ohhhh, remember those chocolates?

and so on....

I swear to you, everytime i put something new on the table it will be the same conversation all over again and when we DO get the box of chocolates...

AAAck!!!!!!

Lu Lu Eightball by Emily Flake

(click on the comic to see an enlarged, easier to read version)

The sun will come out...

I’ve had this theory for a while that the reason there is such a disproportionate number of women in my generation wanting to be actors compared to the men, is because we girls were all obsessed with “Annie” when we were little. The play was popular but the movie that came out in 1982, with Aileen Quinn as Annie and Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan, was a phenomenon. With the VCR becoming affordable to every middle class home in America around this same time, us chicks watched that movie to death. In my family there were two girls and we didn’t just watch it, we WATCHED it like a million times. We had the record too and of course, we acted it out.

That’s the wonderful, wonderful thing about Annie when you are a little girl. The main character is a little girl too. All you need is a bucket and a mop and BLAMO - you’re in a God damned musical! Orphan wannabes across the nation were taking up housework in droves. Slamming our buckets down, scraping into the linoleum, screaming at the top of our lungs, “Empty belly life! Rotten smelly life! No tomorrow life! Full of sorrow life…” How could we have known that we were describing our own future lives; the lives of the struggling actors we would eventually become…

As I’ve mentioned before, my sister and I grew up very close to our cousins. The cousins who lived right next to us were like siblings to us but we had other cousins too. C. and N. were my mom’s oldest sister’s daughters and they are about five and six years older than us. They were such beautiful girls (still are!), very energetic, smart, fun and creative. They were GODS to us but they lived about two hours away and we only got to see them two or three times a year. The one day we could always count on seeing them was Christmas. We would have our regular Christmas morning which consisted of opening a SICK amount of presents and eating this pastry called “Monkey Bread”, which is a family tradition. Monkey bread is basically a bunch of Pillsbury dinner roll biscuits cut up into triangles, smothered in cinnamon and sugar, thrown into a bunt pan with about 3 sticks of melted margarine and more cinnamon and sugar poured on top of it and cooked at 375 for 45 minutes. It is really good but it is also sort of gross and expands in your stomach all day long. We would open our gifts, eat this crap (We still eat it. We will eat it this year. It tastes good.) and then play with our toys and wait for our cousins to get there.

When they would finally arrive it was mayhem. My sister and I would literally scream and run around the house waving our hands in the air because not only did we get to open another present but we got to play with our cousins for the rest of the day. WE LOVED PLAYING WITH OUR COUSINS!! They always created these really elaborate, interesting games for us to play. One game was called "Detective" and it would take too long to explain. There were two teams and many many rules and you could play it for HOURS. We also played "School" and "Hospital". All of the games would be played for hours really and they all involved a lot of play acting.

Then there was this one stretch, three Christmases in a row actually, where we put on full length productions of “Annie” for our family which I directed. All three years the casting was the same: my sister played Annie (She has the better singining voice), C. played Miss Hannigan, N. played Grace plus various Orphans & Hoovervillians, M. played some Orphans & Hovervillians and T., our one and only boy cousin, played Rooster and Daddy Warbucks. He hated doing it but he did it all three years. The reason he hated it so much, besides the singing and dancing, is because Daddy Warbucks had to hold Annie’s hand in the last scene. He begged me not to make him do it. “Do I have to hold her hand?” He would whine desperately. “YES! YOU HAVE TO!” Was always my tyrannical response. I filled in for the extra parts where I was needed: Orphan, Reporter, Rooster’s Girlfriend, etc. The thing I remember the most about these productions beyond the fact that they were so much fun to do, was this hamper we always used to sneak Annie out of the orphanage in. We had this huge pink hamper that was round and plastic and shaped like a pig. It was a big, pink, pig hamper. It was more than large enough to sneak a small child out of an orphanage in and it also took up most of our playing space and we never cleared it from the stage. It was the main set piece but it was only used once for about two minutes. What is a big pink pig doing in the middle of Annie? Our audience was very forgiving.

After the third year of doing this, we decided to play something different with our cousins at Christmas because our elementary school was doing an actual production of “Annie” which dwarfed our own production by comparison. There were these two teachers that put on really great plays every year, pretty extravagant for elementary school. You had to be at least in the fourth grade to audition, which I was the year they did “Annie”. I couldn’t believe my luck. Here they were doing a play I had been rehearsing for years. I didn’t care what part I got, I just wanted in. I was always very small for my age and I was cast as “Molly” the littlest orphan. I had the fist line in the play which was, “Annie, Annie, Annie!” Molly is having a nightmare and wants Annie to read her the note again. The note Annie's parents left with the locket when they abandoned her. The note in which they promise to return one day to get her. Little does Annie know, THEY BURNED TO DEATH IN A HORRIBLE FIRE AND THEY ARE NEVER COMING TO GET HER!

I think that most actresses of my generation could tell you a story similar to mine. It all started with Annie. I’ve shared my theory with my husband and he came home from his first night of his MFA playwrighting program with more supporting evidence. “When we went around the circle to talk about ourselves, four out of the seven girls mentioned “Annie” as an early influence,” he admitted.

I recently learned that my niece and nephew will be acting in their school production of “Annie” this Christmas. My niece, who is five, will be playing an orphan and my nephew, who is seven, is playing a Paper Boy and Hoovervillian. They are SUPER into being in this play and of course, it’s bringing back memories and tugging on the heart strings of everyone in our family. My sister is relaying all of the cute stuff they are doing like practicing the songs and dances. My niece walks around the house with the script “memorizing her lines” (she can’t read) and periodically asking my sister, “Am I Annie?” My nephew is very theatrical. He has the DVD of “Cats” and he’s been obsessed with it for years. He especially loves the “Rum Tum Tigger” number. Rum Tum Tigger is a curious cat alright. He’s a sex machine! He wears this huge cod piece and his hair is all spiked out and he crawls and gyrates on the floor like John Travolta. My nephew watches this number over and over and over again; jumping off the couch and mimicking the gyrations. He’s quite good actually.

I fear for them both, that they will come to believe that there is no business like show business and follow in my footsteps to the land of make believe, heartache and office temp work. But, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. If they fall they fall. It’s a hard knock life babies!!

My mom is flying up to Seattle to see them in the show. I keep fantasizing about getting a ticket last minute so I can see it too but I’m afraid that if I sat in the audience, I would start to itch. I would critique the work of the director. I would mouth the words of Molly the littlest orphan, “A-n-n-i-e, A-n-n-i-e, A-n-n-i-e! R-e-a-d t-h-e n-o-t-e a-g-a-i-n...” I’m afraid I would stand up and grab a scrub brush out of some poor unsuspecting orphan’s hands, so strong would be my desire to go back in time. There’s no feeling like it in the world, pretending to be an orphan, screaming those songs at the top of your lungs, scrubbing that floor with that pissed off scowl on your face. I believe I will spend the rest of my life trying to get that feeling back.

Oh, Annie…….

you little bitch.

too little too late...

i just found this:

Another show apparently not getting picked up for next season: the persistently near death "Arrested Development." While there's been no official announcement, TV Guide reports that the third-season order for the show has been cut from 22 episodes down to 13. It's a cruel world, as the magazine notes: "How's this for stomach-churning irony: The Bluths got the hook the same day that ABC extended a full-season order to 'Freddie'"

Arrested Development

DEAR GOD PLEASE SAVE THIS SHOW!!!

Don't they realize some people are living for it?
The season is postponed AGAIN until Dec. 3rd so that they can run back to back episodes of goddamned piece of shit "PRISON BREAK". Prison Break can suck it hard.

If they do cancel Arressted Devlopment, someone like HBO or Showtime will pick it up, right? Can they do that? They won't just let it........ END WILL THEY?!

DEAR GOD PLEASE DON'T LET IT END!!!!!

I love Gob (pronounced Jobe). The actor that plays him, Will Arnett, is married to Amy Poehler in real life. Is she not the luckiest? I guess he is pretty lucky too because she is FUCKING FUNNY and CUTE. Bog Face and I were talking about this over the weekend and we were just imagining what their marriage must be like; how they must just laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh! But wait, Arrested Develpment is filmed in LA and Saturday Night Live is filmed in New York and so when do they ever see eachother? They must send each other funny cards and things.

sigh.

I shouldn't be jealous because my husband makes me laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and I get to see him every day. Also, his TV show isn't in jeopardy of being CANCELLED.

Please for the love of all things good. Watch it!

TGIF

-If the past and the future exist where are they?-

I don’t know who said that but I like it. I have realized in this past year, that most of the joy I experience comes from the anticipation of things to come.

I know. I'm not the only one.

Conversation between my 21 year old self and my 31 year old self:

21 year-old La Ketch: That hat is cute.

31 year old La Ketch: Thanks.

21 year-old La Ketch: Where did we get it?

31 year-old La Ketch: Um, yeah. uh…. J Crew.

21 year-old La Ketch: What about that sweater?

31 year-old La Ketch: Oh this? Um….we got this at J Crew too.

21 year-old La Ketch: I can’t believe we shop at J Crew. That is sofuckingpathetic. Those pants are nice, “businessy”. Why are we all preppy? Did we get those a J Crew?

31 year-old La Ketch: The pants? Oh, well we got these at …. yes, at J Crew.

21 year-old La Ketch: How much did that set us back?

31 year-old La Ketch: Well the pants are lined and they’re wool, so they were expensive but they were on sale, they have good sales….

21 year-old La Ketch: And, how are we affording this stinking yuppie wardrobe?

31 year-old La Ketch: Um, well we work at this type of finance company.

21 year-old La Ketch: No we do not.

31 year-old La Ketch: Yeah, yeah we do.

21 year-old La Ketch: I hate you.

31 year-old La Ketch: Sorry.

Lu Lu Eightball by Emily Flake

Thanks for Sharing: Floozie

This is the first in a new series on "La Ketch" called "Thanks for Sharing". Enjoy!

Just now, a good friend of mine, also co-worker and reader of this blog sent me this exchange between herself and this guy she went on two dates with a few weeks ago. This morning she decided that he was just too young for her (he's 26 she's 33) and not really responsible enough for her (lives in squalor, doesn't make any money) even though he's really funny (only real reason she went out with him in the first place) and cute (the only reason she went out with him a second time). The too young thing was only made more apparent when she received this e-mail from him this morning:

hey [my friend's name]
just dropping u a line to see how ur trip was (if you've decided to come back to NY that is :)
what d'you do on halloween? I had an interesting time at China 1, verrry interesting story, ill tell it 2 u sometime
but yeah--drop me a line, i'd like 2 hear from u
cool
peace
[this guy's name]

Peace? So she was like, "La Ketch, how do I get rid of him? He so nice but it's just not going to work." Per my counsel, she decided to send him this which is sort of true:

Hey you. I know, sorry it's been awhile. I have been reluctant to write to you you because I have been seeing someone and it seems to be getting more serious. I felt weird about chatting with you - like I'm misleading you.

Now before I tell you what his response is, you have to know that the another bone of contention with this dude is that both times when they went out he made this big deal about her paying for half of it. Now here's what he writes back:

Wow, well you didn't seem to feel weird about draining my pockets but I expect that type of shit from people (floozies) like you. And don't apologize, I know that you're not sorry. Im not sorry either, I'm just gonna go out and have fun with the 2 girls I met over the weekend...

Floozie? Oh my god. This guy is hilarious. I just had to share it with you. hahahahha! My friend just added, through peals of laughter that all they did was kiss, for not very long, on the street before she said good bye.

Floozie?

What a dork-wad.

babies on bikes

One of my favorite stories of all time, takes place back on the cul-de-sac in So. Cal when I was about four years old. Shockingly, I am not the star of this story. Rather, my sister is. My sister who I have yet to tell about this blog. I keep meaning to tell her and then when I’m talking to her, I just forget. Mostly, I think because she is a single working mom with two kids and she will never have time to read it and so why should I give her one more daunting task to complete? She might enjoy reading this entry though...

My sister, our neighbor S. and this kid S's mom was watching for a friend of hers, G., were all hanging out together in front of S.'s house. Mind you, they were each about three years old at the time. Who would let their three-year-old kids hang out in front of the house by themselves? These were different times I guess. I was there too but I really barely remember all of it happening. The story goes that G. had these orange Tic Tacs he was eating and he refused to share them with S. and my sister. They really wanted some and they began to argue with him. Finally, S. decided that she and my sister would go to the store and get some orange Tic Tacs of their own. They got on their tricycles and set off on an amazing adventure. G. accompanied them. He had his orange Tic Tacs but he didn't want to miss out on the action. I got out right away. I wanted nothing to do with this debacle. I knew the rules. We were strictly forbidden to so much as step one foot off the edge of the cul-de-sac unless we were accompanied by an adult. You would have thought that I might go to my mom and tell her what was going down but like I've told you before, I'm not a fink. Also, I don't think I understood really that they were putting themselves in any danger besides the harm our respective parents would cause them later when they got back. This trouble they would get into would only make me look better and knowing this, I went back into the house and played in my room by myself.

Meanwhile, our little trike riders were more than a block away, peddling their stubby legs down a VERY BUSY STREET toward "the store" aka the Seven Eleven, which was about twelve blocks from our house. This is very far when you are three. S. was the clear leader of the group. Not only did she peddle them twelve blocks along the very busy street but she somehow got them ACROSS the very busy street without getting them squashed by the cars that drive very FAST down said busy street. In the countless retellings of this story, S. has told us that she remembers that they actually stopped traffic. Cars were screeching and honking and slowing down so that the little ducklings could cross. Did anyone bother to get out of their car and ask these TODDLERS why they were riding ALONE on their TRICYCLES down such a BUSY STREET? No, but they didn't run over them either.

By some miracle, they made it to the Seven Eleven. They had been there countless times before. As a three year old, you really do thank heaven for Seven Eleven because that it where all of the CANDY is kept. Aisles of it! S. remained focused however. She waddled up to the counter and pointed at the orange Tic Tacs which the man behind the counter handed to her. Here's where the first unforeseen obstacle presented itself. They had no money. That didn't stop S. though. Where do you go when you need to get money? That's right, you go to the bank. She had seen her mom go there many times to do just that and she remembered that it was only two blocks further down the way. Did the guy working the counter at the Seven Eleven bother to ask these small children where their parents were? No, he didn't.

Outside of the Seven Eleven the first dissention amongst the ranks began to occur. My sister started to question S. and her motives. She was getting tired and scared and thought they should start heading back. S. wouldn't hear of it. She was going to get those Tic Tacs come hell or high water. What cracks me up so much is that G. is still with them and he HAS the damned Tic Tacks in his pocket! He just won't give them up! S. probably wouldn't have wanted them by then anyway. She wanted her own. My sister refused to go to the bank and so what did S. do? She did the only logical thing that a three year old girl in a position of power could do in that situation. She locked her in a phone booth.

S. and G. moved on to the bank where they proceeded to march up to the teller and ask for some money. Finally, FINALLY an adult had the wherewithal to ask these little geeks where their frigging mommy is. The crazy thing is that they are all wearing ID bracelets with their names, addresses and phone numbers on them. All the adult would have had to do was call, which is what the bank teller did. She called S.'s mom who jumped in the car and tore down to the bank to pick up S. & G. Of course she was FREAKING OUT ON THEM. Did S. & G. bother to mention to S.'s mom that they had left my sister back at the Seven Eleven locked in a phone booth? Um, would you?

During the time that S. and G. were traveling to the bank and getting apprehended, my sister was finally noticed. A woman saw her crying in the phone booth and opened the door asking her if she needed help, where her mommy was, etc. Then she looked at my sister's ID bracelet but instead of using the phone booth that my sister had been locked in to dial the number on the bracelet, she decided to just drive her around and try and find her house. My sister says she remembers being put inside of this woman's car and driven around for a while. The woman couldn't find the street we lived on to save her life. Finally my sister blurted out, "My daddy is a policeman!" Ah ha! That was something this woman understood and so she went back to the Seven Eleven, back to the phone booth and dialed not my mother's phone number but the Police Department. Those days, my dad was working in a patrol car and he happened to be on duty blocks away. He came and got my sister immediately and brought her back to the police department with him. THEN he called my mother. I'm told the conversation went something like this:

phone rings

Mom: Hello?
Dad: M.?
Mom: Yes?
Dad: Where's your daughter?
Mom: She's right here in front of me, why?
Dad: The other one.
Mom: P.? She's over across the street playing with S. and G.
Dad: NOOO SHEEE'S NNOOOTT !!!

And then he told her exactly where she was. Needless to say, my mom was totally busted and completely mortified. Even to this day she shudders when that last part of the story is retold. “Why, oh why did that woman have to call your father and not me?!” Still, there was a certain level of forgiveness from everyone involved because nothing bad happened to the little pip-squeaks when so many bad things could have happened AND it was such a hilarious sequence of events. No one could believe they had done it.

I still can't.

la Ketch's great adventure

I haven't been able to post because I'm so slammed at work because I took two days off this week but I just have to tell you about my trip...

I've been planning it for months but I couldn't tell you about it because it was a secret surprise. It was my cousin's birthday on Tuesday (Nov. 1 - the day after Halloween) and I flew out to California (back to the OC bitches) to surprise her. Boy did I ever too. Her husband JB, the funniest, most rockinst dude on the planet, was helping me mastermind the whole thing and he was convinced that she knew because my step aunt almost blew it when they were all out for breakfast by saying, "When is La Ketch getting into town?" They covered it up by scoffing at her and reminding her sternly with kicks under the table and extremely dirty looks that I WASN'T COMING UNTIL CHRISTMAS - wink wink shut your face. My cousin didn't consider that I may be coming for a special birthday surprise visit because why would I? It was on a Tuesday night. There was nothing special going on.

OR SO SHE THOUGHT! Little did she know that there was something very special going on indeed. ..

My cousin and I are best friends, we have been since we were very small. We grew up with our houses back to back and there was a gate in the fence seperating our back yards. We also grew up loving Pee Wee Herman. Love is not a strong enough word. We were... ahem, ARE sort of obsessed with him. We would watch "Pee Wee's Playhouse" every Saturday morning and then we would watch "Pee Wee's Big Adventure". We still watch it all on DVD. We have the talking dolls and the figurines from the show and the bed sheets and My cousin has "Chairy" the stuffed chair that is also a puppet.

So when my friend Lauren, who is an actor living in LA and knows about my fanaticism, told me that her manager just started representing Paul Ruebens and that there was going to be a big screening of "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" (the best movie ever made) to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the film and that HE was going to be there doing a Q & A and would I like tickets? I was like, "Can I please have three?" The reason I wanted three is because my cousin's husband JB is also a fanatic. That is in fact pretty much how they met. Someone introduced him to her as, "this guy who loves Pee Wee as much as you do." It was a match made in heaven. The clincher about all of this is that it was happening on November 1st, my cousin's birthday. Holy Jesus. It was too much.

For two months I've been sitting on this. I bought my plane ticket right away and JB and I began scheming on the best way to surprise her. We finally decided on an old standard. I would pop out of a box and scare the crap out of her.

JB picked me up from the airport on Monday night. He had crafted this huge box and covered it in polka dot paper, put a huge bow on it and a tag that said, "Happy Birthday". Then we drug the box into the entryway, I got into it and he brought her out. She said she thought it was going to be a bike. Then she started opening the box. It took forever to get open but as soon as I saw a little bit of light streaming through, I burst out screaming, "SURPRISE!!!!!" I was laughing so hard that I fell over and JB was hysterical laughing too. My cousin was not laughing. She had turned totally white. She said that she had never been so freaked out because first she had to process that a bicycle had just morphed into a human being and jumped out of a box and then she had to process that the bicycle morphing human was me. Then we told her about Pee Wee.

It was so awesome. We had the best day together the next day. We went out to lunch with my Aunt and my Grammy, JB and the kids and JB's mom. Then we drove up to LA and drank a ton of Margaritas and went and saw Pee Wee.

We didn't get to meet him. He's very shy with the public and the media (for obvious reasons if you've followed his story at all). We did get to meet Simone though! She was there and she talked to us for a while and we got our picture with her.

We were sort of disappointed that we didn't get to meet Paul. I sat next to a friend of his and I explained our story: that we are his biggest fans, that I flew in from New York and that I was my cousin's birthday, etc. "Please tell him, just tell him that we love him." I said. He promised that he would.

Lu Lu Eightball by Emily Flake