You're on an Airplane

by Parker Posey

  I did a movie about the Coneheads called The Coneheads. Michelle Burke (from Dazed) was cast as Connie Conehead, and I convinced Lorne Michaels that she needed friends, pitching my best girlfriend, Joey, and me. We both got our SAG rates up 15 percent, and celebrated by drinking Big Gulps of iced coffee from 7-Eleven that were as big as our heads. While shooting, we rode the bus with Ellen DeGeneres and chilled out with Dan Aykroyd, whose brother was a real-life ghostbuster. Dan told tripped-out stories involving multiple dimensions and time travel. I should try to track him down. He’s got great stories and he’d be someone to be stranded on a desert island with.

  But yeah, so a few years later, Christopher Guest called Lorne Michaels and asked him if he knew any actresses who could play eighteen and improvise, and Lorne suggested me. “Close encounters of what kind?” you ask.

  When I finished my story, Shirley said, “Oh,” unfazed. “Steven believes in UFOs. Lots of us do. Hollywood and the CIA and FBI. It’s all a huge cover-up.” She and Brie had even UFO-hunted together. Fun! I asked Shirley what she thought of my Coneheads dream, and she said, “Oh, honey, there are so many species, too many to count,” and she stepped out of the trailer, for effect.

  My friend Craig was with me on that trip and we had an interesting dinner with Shirley and Brie. We were talking karma, showbiz, past lives, love, sex, therapy, and gurus—astrology, Atlantis. Shirley knew a lot about things like reincarnation, and explained it further: that anything in this life could be dated back to something in a past life, so that if we figured out what that connection was, we’d figure out why we had to go through whatever we had to go through, and if we did it right in this lifetime, we probably wouldn’t have to do it again in the next one.

  Craig had a story that needed karmic riddling and took center stage. He had a condition called “long face syndrome,” where his jaw grew faster than the rest of his face. When he was sixteen he had to have his mouth wired shut and his chin reconstructed. It was a whole ordeal, to say the least. He couldn’t speak for three months, and on his birthday, his mother blended up brisket and birthday cake, which she fed him through a straw. A great story, which Craig would turn into a book aptly called Why the Long Face?

  The next day, Shirley went up to him and said, “I’ve been thinking of your story all night, and what it means. You have so much karma in this lifetime for that to have happened to you, and I just want to know . . .” Pause. “Did all that surgery interfere with your cock-sucking abilities?” And then Craig quipped, “No, because I suck cock like a vegan.” Like he’s not good at “eating meat.” It was an utterly tasteless joke and I stepped out of the trailer, for effect.

  Speaking of fruits and vegetables, Shirley had a giant raspberry on the roof of her mouth, some kind of a birthmark. I’ll never forget seeing it when she opened her mouth wide to show us, there on a tiny hump of grass in front of one of the only hotels in Winnipeg. She said that a shaman told her that this raspberry on the roof of her mouth was an indication that she was also a shaman. Then she said it was also great for blow jobs. Ha! Come on! She is one funny lady!

  She tooled around with Craig thrift shopping while I was working, and she told him which Frank Sinatra records to get. She spoke about her Rat Pack days, and how Dean Martin—“Dino”—was into her, and how she wasn’t really into him. She was that cool. The one that really pulled at her heart, though, was Robert Mitchum. She said he had the soul of a poet and was into astrology. Hey, when you’ve hung out with the Rat Pack, you can go out on a limb and be as far out as you want.

  The last night of work, Craig and I were in my room packing and watching TV when a show about UFOs came on. It was around two in the morning, and there on the screen appeared Brie talking about UFOs. We started screaming, “Oh my God! This is crazy! What are the odds?!” And then, I’m not kidding or making this up: the TV went out—it went to black.

  * * *

  –

  They’re here, everybody. They’re here on this flight.

  25

  Mom and the TV

  My mom loves making things beautiful. I think it’s because she’s very beautiful but was never told so by her own mother. Nonnie was jealous of her daughter’s looks and her youth, but my mom developed a great sense of humor out of it. Her sense of self comes into play when she’s making things aesthetically beautiful, whether it’s herself, in her own style, or in the continuity of beauty and harmony in the rooms of our house. There are always things to mend and make whole again, things to organize and put in their right place.

  I loved going to fabric stores with my mom. There was a buzz she’d get when she was in the zone of seeing possibility in something, and I dug that. And of course I loved shopping with her. My brother and I favored the department stores that had circular racks, where we’d use the hanging clothes for a game of “blind man’s bluff”—closing our eyes, with our arms out like little zombies, going clockwise, then counterclockwise. And yes, hide-and-seek, where a few times I hid too long and had to go to the front to page my mom over the intercom. Kmart was prime for this number.

  Both my parents were great-looking, but compliments were foreign to their natures and upbringing. Compliments were withheld or “not believed in,” as my father would say, for my brother and me. This was mainly in regards to “appearances,” despite the both of them looking like movies stars and kind of acting like them, too. They said things like “Looks don’t matter, it’s what’s inside that counts.” Years later, when I was in my teens, my dad realized how weird this was and said, “Ya know what: Looks do matter. They’re the first thing you notice about a person.” By that point I didn’t like brushing my hair or looking in the mirror much. In high school I’d leave the house and my mom would ask, “Are you going to a funeral?” And I’d say, “Yeah.” And the screen door would slam for effect. But wearing black clothing helped pull that look together.

  It’s how the limbs are cut that makes a tree blossom in a particular direction. Both my parents had some harsh pruning that trained their growth, making them very colorful people. Maybe that’s why my mom started a gardening program at the elementary school in Laurel a few years ago now—we’d had a garden in the early seventies that she loved tending to. She taught cooking classes at Viking, in Oxford. This was in Mississippi, in Greenwood, which is in the Delta, but also simply referred to as “Oxford.” When she’d say, “I’m going to Viking in Oxford,” it sounded like a trip to Camelot or some other mythical kingdom.

  When my family got a microwave, my mom invented “Cheese Crisps.” She sprayed Pam on a plate and grated cheddar cheese onto it and put it in the microwave for three minutes. When it came out, she’d pat the oil off with a paper towel, and because the cheese had hardened, she’d lift it off the plate in one piece, like a giant communion wafer. Sometimes she put jalapeños, from a jar, on them. I remember my mom and her friend Susan putting Worcestershire sauce in their palms and licking it off like dainty cats.

  Cheese Crisps

  by Lynda Posey

  Spray a dinner plate with cooking spray.

  Grate cheddar cheese and sprinkle evenly on the plate.

  Put it in the microwave for three minutes.

  Watch it bubble and turn into a darkened orange crisp.

  Remove it from the microwave when you hear the “ding,” and let it cool for about a minute.

  Pat it dry with a paper towel and then lift it off the plate with your fingers.

  If you like it spicy, add however many jalapeños from a jar to the plate beforehand.

  Other toppings include cracked pepper, Parmesan cheese, and, I suppose, anything. But I don’t believe in microwaves.

  * * *

  –

  While I’m at it, my mom’s friend Claudia makes the best “Trash” at Christmas. Before you could buy Chex Mix in the store I had it homemade at Claudia Woods’s house. We’d pop by and visit when she was making it, which took all day, but she’d
start late so it would take all night. She simply calls it “Trash,” but you may know it as “party mix.” Claudia’s a brazen beauty and I loved when she’d belch loudly and say “excuse me.” It was hilarious because she was so glamorous, with her add-a-bead gold necklace and other gold chains and gold bangles and bracelets heavy with charms from the days of yore.

  Claudia Woods’s Trash

  1 box Wheat Chex cereal

  1 box Crispix cereal

  2 boxes Honey Nut Chex cereal

  6 5-ounce bags of sesame sticks (or a 30-ounce bag)

  2 pounds honey-roasted peanuts

  5 sticks butter, divided

  ⅓ cup of cayenne pepper (less if you don’t like spicy)

  ½ cup of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce

  1 tablespoon lemon juice

  2 cups raw pecans

  Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Pour out all the cereals, sesame sticks, and peanuts into a tall kitchen trash bag and gently shake it around (you don’t want to break up the mix). Melt 4 of the sticks of butter with cayenne pepper, Lea & Perrins, and lemon juice in a saucepan. You’ll want to strategize how to fit as many pans in your oven as you can because you’ll have a lot of trash to slowly roast (I used six 15 × 10-inch pans to fit snug in the oven). Make sure the pans have a lip, and don’t use flat cookie sheets, or you’ll have a mess. You’ll also need to get space ready for when the pans come out of the oven. There’s lots of tending-to with this recipe. Get your spatula and spoon ready, and a little cup for the butter mixture. Get an apron, too, because you’ll be using your hands a lot. For the ratio of butter to trash mixture, I’d say it’s 2–3 tablespoons of butter per pan. Drizzle it onto the pans, slide it around evenly and then add the trash mix.

  Slow-bake it all at 250° for 3 hours, taking it out to toss around every half hour. When all that’s done, take it out and let it cool. This will go into the trash bag and get mixed up again but not now. Now it’s time for the pecans—break them up in halves and quarters. Turn the oven up to 275°, put the pecans in a roasting pan, and cook them for 45 minutes. This will give the pecans enough time to cook the oils off of them so they can hold the butter and salt. Then melt the last butter stick, drizzle enough butter onto the pecans to coat them, and salt it all. Put it in the oven and take it out every 15 minutes, moving the pecans around and salting them again each time. You want the pecans almost burnt, and that takes a little over an hour. When all this is done and cools to room temperature, put it in a trash bag and shake it all up. How much does all of this make? Enough to fill around seven tins. Or five large Ziploc bags. You can store it in Ziploc freezer bags as well, and it’ll keep forever. Marcia’s review of the recipe was “This is disgusting.” Which means it’s delicious. “I can’t stop eating it. What’s it called again? I keep saying ‘mush.’ Is it ‘garbage’? ‘Shit’?”

  * * *

  –

  My mom had a groovy and crafty friend in Shreveport who I stayed with for a weekend. We made God’s eyes out of sticks and yarn, and she made one so big she put it above her couch. The color palette of the seventies was great and so much better than black, with the earth tones of burnt oranges and browns, true greens and bright yellows. She had a shag carpet so everyone could just relax for a minute and chill out on the floor—that was a real take-your-shoes-off time, the seventies. Years later, some reporter asked where I got my style from, and I said, “I dress like the woman I want to save me, a version of my mother from the seventies when she was happiest, making things.”

  * * *

  –

  When The Mary Tyler Moore Show would come on, we’d run up to it and say “Mommy!” and kiss the TV. We’d tell my mom she was more beautiful than Mary Tyler Moore, because she was, or just as. “Well it’s you, girl, and you should know it. With each glance and every little movement you show it . . .” That theme song inspired so many girls. When Family Affair’s theme song came on and the boy/girl twins, Buffy and Jody, ran and hugged each other, so did my brother and me. TV was an extended family for all families back then. All in the Family was the ultimate, though. That show had true genius in it, and pushed the whole country forward—it got small towns thinking bigger. And then Roots was a much-needed phenomenon that inspired everyone to look at racism. I remember teachers talking about these shows in the classroom. Can you imagine teachers talking about television shows in classrooms today?

  I loved the Zen of Mister Rogers—and very much wanted to be on that Neighborhood Trolley to the Land of Make-Believe. My mother was so affected by the powers of entertainment and cinema that she actually became a Catholic after she saw The Exorcist. You could say I hail from Fantasist’s Island, but you could also say we all do. “Mr. Roarke! The plane, the plane!”

  I think, also, that the thing I loved about Lost in Space as a kid was that it starred a kid my age—Bill Mumy, as Will Robinson, and I was already a fan of his work from The Twilight Zone. In Lost in Space, his most trusted friend was the robot. It was the first close relationship on television between a kid and technology and brought into our collective reality this new intimacy between ourselves and the television—this box, this frame. That the robot only said “Danger, Will Robinson” was so prescient—the dangers we’ve seen from technology and the weird brainwashing of mass media, how sad it is no one talks to people on airplanes anymore.

  Is he on this flight? I thought it was but it’s not.

  * * *

  –

  Our mothers show up in so many ways, in powerful images we never forget that play like stopped images in films. I see my mom all the time in other people, passing by, and tell her I love her. But one of the images that comes to mind from my childhood is of my mother sitting in the passenger seat of the car on one of our trips to Shreveport to see the family.

  She had a Styrofoam cup stained with dark red lipstick in her hand. My brother and I sat in the backseat with a Playmate cooler between us. I remember this moment clearly, how she turned around and said, with such earnestness and praise and beauty, “Chris, you make the best Bloody Marys,” and how my brother beamed. She looked like a movie star then, while Chicago’s “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” played on the radio.

  26

  At the Wheel

  In the early aughts, or as some say, “the early ought-nots,” I learned something that ought not to have been so difficult: pottery. There was a studio around the corner from me, called La Mano, and when I wasn’t working I didn’t want to spend all day in my apartment. So I was at La Mano (Spanish for “the hand”), and that’s where I learned to “throw.”

  “Throwing” is what they call the action part of pottery. When you’re sitting “at the wheel,” you’re “throwing.” In woodwork, at the lathe, they call it “turning.” I would lose fingers if I wood-turned.

  Clay is safer and distinctly malleable, as well as having different “clay bodies.” The amount of grain within the clay determines how difficult it is to hold on to when it comes time to center. Brown clay has thick grains, so that’s the easiest; gray clay is much smoother, with its finer grains. Porcelain is for the advanced and has no grain at all. When I tried to throw with it, after a year or so of being a student, I’d think of the clay as a difficult but beautiful actress—someone you had to work hard at getting to know, who was unreliable and impossible to hold on to.

  Different clay bodies have different personalities, so it’s good to know what you’re getting into when deciding to take your clay to the wheel.

  The first thing the clay must be is the right size and shape, which, at first, is a ball. As a beginner, the ball should fit into the whole of both your hands when they’re cupped and closed together. It needs the right firmness for stability. When the clay is fresh from the manufacturer, it comes in about a four-pound block, about a foot in diameter and a few feet high, and the firmness is perfect.

  Then you can unw
rap the plastic around it and, taking your string of wire, section off the amount you’ll need.

  After you do this, you’ll have to wedge the clay. Think of it as exercise: you have to do it. If you have a fresh bag of clay, you won’t have to work it out so much, but if the clay has been recycled from the re-con bucket, it’s bound to have specks of dried clay, the odd piece of hair, or some kind of grit in it—or air bubbles.

  Bubbles in your clay can cause your piece to collapse, so if they’re not popped with a pin tool before your clay goes into the kiln (before it’s “fired”), your piece might explode and ruin other people’s work.

  Check for air bubbles and wedge further if you find some. If your clay is too soft it will also need to be strengthened by wedging.

  Wedging is like kneading dough: Have a strong stance, with your preferred leg in front. Now rock your body back and forth, like a runner at the gate, or like you’re holding a baby and about to rock it, but with force and intent. Bend forward a bit and stand in front of the wedging table, contracting your stomach muscles, both physically and mentally.