by Walter Witty
JOAN) Frakin’ right. I’m having my weekly face and tummy touchup this afternoon around three-ish.
WITTY) Hello. Can we talk about me, now?
JOAN) Who are you? Where the frak did you come from?
WITTY) This is my session. Our book. You’re both supposed to ask us questions.
JOAN) Feces.
PHIL) Frak.
Witty) Well? I’m waiting. I mean we’re waiting.
Dr. Phil explained to us that life wouldn’t resemble a Twilight Zone episode if we only tuned the tube away from PBS toward ESPN, and tried to pick up waitresses at sports bars (instead of aiding NASA by tracking near-Earth asteroids), or played Asteroids on a Game Boy (instead of trying to save mankind from various annihilations.) I thanked him for his advice, asked four more questions which were never answered, and then Joan weighed in on TV reception in the Great Beyond.
JOAN) I told Steve Jobs I like the 4DHD, but I’m not paying for Leno, even if it is basic. That wuss is too nice. Letterman, though, he’s one frakin’ mean-ass son of a bitch, and nuttier than a Phyllis Diller-recipe fruitcake. Feces, he tried stabbing people in the back with a felt tip pen! I loved it!
DIEry ENTRY 9: Nip/Tuck/Frak
Joan Rivers once wrote a plastic surgery justification titled “Men Are Stupid, and Like Big Boobs.” Maybe so, but I think it really depends on which singles bars you frequent, and how big the boob tubes there are. Like most Hollywood types, Joan became pissed at getting old, and right before she penned her book “I Hate Everyone, Starting With Me.” In truth, she hates the fact that face lifts and tummy tucks are necessary to maintain one’s career in Tinsel Town. Or rather hated. I’m going to assume Joan has died of old age by the time anyone is reading this, and address Joan in the past tense. . .not that she would have minded even when she was alive, since she said she hates men in general and Me in particular. Just read that title!
Hey, Joan? Did you know Scientists to the Stars are even now zeroing in on a formula to extend life via genetic manipulation, hoping to aid plastic surgeons in avoiding all those Nip/Tuck lawsuits from Basketball Wives? Within another decade, in fact, a drug may be developed that can add a decade or more to anyone’s life, (as long as you’re alive), delaying those inevitably slack-jowled, alligator-skinned “golden years.” Too bad you kicked the bucket list early, darling. How’s that shroud fitting? Or did you wear a Fashion Police Armani to your designer funeral?
FYI? I love Joan. Don’t hate her at all. What I hate is sports. As did my Saint Joan.
By the way, unless you regularly appear on the cover of PEOPLE, and tailgate other plastic surgery victims in your Jag or Mercedes up into the Hollywood Hills, you’re not getting the life extension formula alluded to here. Sorry. Youth pills are expected to cost $445 per pill, and a minimum six month every-two-hour supply is needed before results start to kick in. (I know. I tried to get in on the ground floor as a lab rat to the Scientists to the Stars, just like Leno.) Most non-players can only pray for an illegal trade in this drug, with China knocking off copies of the formula and mixing it with Peruvian nose candy for import through Mexico, (although God would probably not grant such a prayer, since She’s already pissed about pseudo-scientists playing God, and not just Bruce Jenner’s wife.) To clarify, mostly it’ll be Lindsay Lohan types who’ll survive to their 100th rehab session, while you wouldn’t be mentioned on Entertainment Tonight unless you happen to assassinate Tiger Woods or Charlie Sheen. . .(while killing me wouldn’t get you on Leno unless I was sleeping on his couch first.)
Don’t sweat it, though. Being young wasn’t so wonderful the first time around. Unless you’re above (or below) the middle class, not only were you saddled with crippling student loan debt, but when you weren’t flipping burgers you were being nagged by your mother to clean your room. Topping this psychic anchovy pizza is the fact that, even after you graduated from college, you weren’t willing to take the advice of counselors ten years older than you, much less date them, because, well, they were, like, old. Unless they’re, like, rich.
They say youth is wasted on the young—all those dead philosophers do—and also that you can’t really enjoy being young again until you’re really, really old (i.e. invisible). So if, because of this book, I never make it to the kick-in (or kick-off) point, it also means I’ll never experience the joys of dementia and Alzheimer’s. And man, does that suck. Because there’s so much I’d really, really love to forget.
CHAPTER 8: Witty Deal with the Devil
Welcome to Hades, Mr. Role Model. Let me introduce you to your new coach, Mr. Tony Robbins. He’s achieved such astonishing success with players such as yourself that his fire walks come recommended by Beelzebub himself. Now, I can’t tell you whether you’ll be traded high or low on the draft this round, but I do recommend that you study the “lossary” at the end with diligent alacrity, because failing to score high on the finals may put you in company with top company men from Goldman Sachs, Enron, Bain Capital, Con-Agra and Halliburton. Yes, yes, I know you’ve been told that, once here, you’ll be able to purchase your way out for $11 or the equivalent in yuans. But the bad news is that the money you earn combing the wormy braids of various prosperity gospel preachers can’t be deposited in any ATMs to the side of the river of fire because these simply rush by too fast, and also out of reach. Forever. As far as meeting up with your buddies, I’m afraid you’ll have better luck finding your mother-in-law or the guy who said “I’ll see you in hell first.” For any rap lovers among you, know that they play the melodic stylings of Wayne Newton here, along with Swedish yodeling medleys, at 350 decibels. If by rare chance you love Mozart, it’s gonna be Marilyn Manson at 666 decibels while—on the big screen—50 Cent drinks Coke, Britney snorts Pepsi, and William Shatner gets fed Big Macs by hermaphrodite hookers while dressed as Heather Locklear. Too bad you did those endorsement deals before you kicked that bucket into the End Zone, huh.
DIEry ENTRY 10: The “Real” Thing
Remember the scandals involving Jayson Williams, Darryl Strawberry, and NBA terrorist/superstar Allen Iverson? I don’t. Remember when Indiana Pacers forward Ron Artest charged the stands to wrestle a fan who’d doused him with soda? Not me. They tell me (against my will) that ten players were suspended a total of 146 games in the incident, and lost $10,000,000 in salary and bonuses. I took their word for it rather than counting ceiling tiles aloud. . . although I do recall sports jockstrap-filler Don Yaeger’s advice that, “Coca-Cola’s brand is worth $67 BILLION, but you don’t have to be a Fortune 500 company to be a brand. Today, in the Age of the Individual, every one of us is a brand. . . and so just as executives at Coca-Cola must do, it is your responsibility to increase your brand value daily.” I remembered this because I also recall reading that Cola-Cola executives need to protect their “open happiness” image due to being complicit in crimes overseas, outlined at KillerCoke.org, and because their lies to consumers were detailed with sixty pages of footnotes in the book “The Coke Machine—The Dirty Truth Behind the World’s Favorite Soft Drink.” Of course it’s “the real thing.” But so is sodium cyanide. Regarding being an “individual,” I’m not sure if one lemming thinks any differently than the contestant next to him, dredging a furrow toward the cliff with his webbed feet at a speed-walkers pace. But we’ll let the following transcript from a recent radio show suffice to establish the relevant truths here:
HOST) Well, you know, I have to agree with you about winning at the State level, and not just the Division. I know we all want to win badly, and it really means a lot. The more you win the more coverage you get, the more people follow you on Twitter, so on and so forth.
CALLER) Yeah, that’s true.
HOST) And if you got a ring, that means something. You show that ring, people look up to you. It’s gold. You went for the gold. You’re golden.
CALLER) So true.
HOST) I mean, come on, who doesn’t want gold? A medal. A trophy.
CALLER) A wife.
HOST) Ri
ght. There’s women too. Girls. But look, if you’re a champion, hey, not many people can say that. “I’m a champion.” How does that sound? Sounds fan-freaking-tastic to me. And I’m not even a player.
CALLER) Me either.
HOST) Imagine being one of those guys. All the work and time they put in. All the effort, blood, sweat, and tears. And then it pays off? Man, that must feel great.
CALLER) I know.
HOST) Imagine going national, having millions of fans listen to you talk.
CALLER) Shopping on Rodeo Drive.
HOST) What was your question again?
This call was followed by a commercial for a diet program:
NARRATOR) Stop with the excuses, get up off the couch, and get with the program, dude!
CHAPTER 9: Getting Personal
PERSONAL ADS— Archaic pre-booty-call print entries made by those who fear gamers-turned-identity-thieves (or spam marketers) on the internet. Sometimes leads to actual phone calls.
GISELE: How old are you?
WALTER: Thirty-four. Is that important?
GISELE: Depends. So, what do you do?
WALTER: I’m associate director of the SETI project out of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and interim professor of cosmological evolution at Princeton. What do you do?
GISELE: I’m a Sports Illustrated supermodel.
WALTER: Really.
GISELE: Yeah. I was in Puerto Rico once for a cover shoot. I like St. Barts better, though. I meet Gwyneth and Naomi and J. Lo there all the time.
WALTER: You know J. Lowe?
GISELE: Sure.
WALTER: So you read The Methuselah Gene and The Instant Celebrity, and now you’re contributing to The Umpire Has No Clothes?
GISELE: What are you talking about? I’m talking about dressing up, not down. . . about jewelry, movies, parties, and hanging out with Jennifer Lopez.
WALTER: Oh. Well, I imagine lots of guys ask you to “hang out.”
GISELE: Not really. They’re afraid. Wimps. Can’t handle rejection.
WALTER: So, that’s why you put an ad in the personals? “Professional lady seeks intelligent man for stimulating conversations?”
GISELE: A friend put in the ad for me. What do you look like, if you don’t mind my asking?
WALTER: Well, I’m not a model, if that’s what you mean.
GISELE: Are you ugly?
WALTER: That’s subjective, but thank you for asking. No, I’m not. May I ask your I.Q.?
GISELE: You’re funny. Are you fat?
WALTER: What?
GISELE: And what’s I.Q. stand for?
WALTER: Intelligence quotient. And no, I’m not fat, either.
GISELE: Are you short? And what’s quotient mean?
WALTER: Uh, can you read? And no, I’m six feet tall. You want that in centimeters? I weigh eighty kilograms, by the way, if you can figure that out. If you need a hint, it’s not quite a quintal. My I.Q. is 173. My job is to search for intelligent life somewhere in the universe, because it is obviously not here on this planet.
GISELE: Don’t get huffy with me, now! Do you know who I am?
WALTER: Gees, where have I heard that before. . .uh, an immature humanoid biped female whose delusions of dander are based on a lack of perspective regarding her place in the universe?
GISELE: So you think I’m stuck up or something, now??
WALTER: Bingo.
GISELE: Well, maybe I have the right to be stuck up. Ever thought of that, smarty pants? More people know me than know you. I’m better looking, got more money, too. I go to parties they would never let you in. But the ones you go to, I bet they would let me in!
WALTER: I don’t go to parties. When I’m not volunteering or giving guest lectures, I’m busy chronicling the planetary potential of supermassive variable stars within the M39 globular cluster in the constellation Virgo. If any one of those stars were where our sun is, you would now be inside it, burning at twenty thousand degrees Kelvin.
GISELE: I know how that feels.
WALTER: Excuse me?
GISELE: I’m not as stupid as I look. I have feelings too, ya know. Whatever you think ya know, you don’t know what it’s like to be me. To have your face and body displayed everywhere you go. . .on posters, in ads, in Drake videos. I can’t go anywhere without getting noticed and looked at, whistled at. Sometimes I feel like a piece of meat on a hook. Most of the time it’s fun, but sometimes. . . Anyway, don’t you ever have fun?
WALTER: Fun is finding a new asteroid or comet, like a speck moving against the vast background of galaxies. Fun is interpreting the radio signals of a pulsar or newly forming black hole, and imagining the forces at work in the creation of worlds.
GISELE: That’s funny, not fun.
WALTER: Listen, forget I said that.
GISELE: How can I? . . .What’s your name again? J. Lowe?
WALTER: No, he’s the guy put in the ad for me.
GISELE: Is he rich?
WALTER: Not by a long jump. Or leap.
GISELE: What about you?
WALTER: Sorry, no. But you know, I’m starting to change my mind about y—
(CLICK)
DIEry ENTRY 11: Players and Playees
Being a jock and a “player” has its perks, or so Wilt Chamberlain said. Actually, I wouldn’t know about that because good guys finish last. Plus I’m not sure how to finish something never started. Women do look at me, but only because I’m an obstruction, an obstacle around which they are occasionally forced to navigate. Being no more a potential date than an obese hunchback munching McNuggets at a bus stop, I’m well aware of that “look,” though. Once, when I escorted the beautiful wife of my boss down Main street, I felt every woman’s eye on me in quite another way. . . like I’d been suddenly transformed into a real person, worthy of consideration, and not a threat (i.e. pathetic loser). I remember one who even mouthed “hi” to me when I passed, as if I’d slipped into her alternate universe for a brief glimpse of that twisted reality show in which she succumbs to the most blatantly obvious lies ever told (excluding Dick Nixon’s or Dick Cheney’s.) So now, when I appear alone at restaurants or bars (and am invariably asked “How many?”) my whispered response to the pretty waitress is either, “Can’t you count?” or the more prescient “Can you count?” before she even asks. Alas, my toothy grin never seems to summon more than a tight-lipped curl of hostility at this mind-game. Because she just can’t get past the observation that I’m caught in the cold equations of being single in an us-versus-them world (plus my shoes are not designer Italian.) Which is why I’m led to the table nearest the swinging kitchen doors, and where, due to poor acoustics, I’m forced to read the lips of those at the next table:
HE) Do you like football?
SHE) I love football.
HE) What’s your favorite team?
ME, thinking) She’s probably wishing she’d asked him that first.
SHE) I like the Cowboys. Their cheerleaders are so talented, too. Do you mind if I use the powder room?
HE) Naw, go ahead.
ME, thinking) Powder room. That’ll buy her five minutes and a change of subject. Hey, see my smile, honey? Look, I’m waving now! . . .Gees, not even a glance. The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and the universe 14.5 billion in only its current cycle, but if you’re a couple dozen years older than. . .oh look, they’re bringing me my check already. Don’t I even get to order dessert?
The short of this is that brazen jocks with axe tattoos on their cheeks can attract the most beautiful women imaginable. Nasty rappers wearing enough gold medallions to anchor a battleship can lure even the most innocent girl-next-door with ease. Spoiled ego-crazed old farts like Donald Trump can date women half their age, and have the press gush. Me? I tell the truth, and get hammered with scorn. Thing is, I could never get with the program and buy a little black (play)book made of real (simulated) Machiavellian leather.
Ah, well. I suppose I should console myself that there’s a dark, flip side to all these dating
games. You see, unlike men, women are programmed by nature to want babies. This nesting instinct can overwhelm them (just as men’s scoring instinct is to fly in, knock up, and fly out like Bat Men.) “It’s in our genes!” they all say. (Killers on trial have used this excuse so often that it’s become a “fact” on equal footing with sports psychologists as using the phrase “perception is reality” is to sociopathic campaign advisers.) “Face it,” Walter consoles me. “Even jocks are forced to lie, aware that behind her sexy smile resides a relentless, mind-numbing, inscrutable biological urge to produce cute little barfing, farting replicas of humanity who will take time away from their TV viewing scores for the next 18 (or possibly 26) years, and will cost them $150,000 to raise (or the taxpayer $400,000) regardless of whether they have an inheritance heavy in Apple stocks. This equals many, many, many subscriptions to NFL Sunday Ticket. . . .not that either of us give a flying fry bread Frisbee about that.”
