There were also other priceless doll collections. Her Barbie collection with their many accessories alone must have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if the sealed packaging had not become the food source for the rodents that were then cozying up to the Barbie Dolls at night while they slept.
Having a slight touch of ADHD myself, this kind of disorder and disarray overwhelms me. And the truth is that I am not qualified to handle clients who need a certified therapist. I’m too sick myself and I’m so empathetic that if I go into a hospital to visit a sick person I immediately have to find a bed next to them to lie down in. This particular client needed a serious intervention. She needed Oprah herself to arrive on her doorstep with a dump truck and her favorite organizer, Peter Walsh, to save her. No matter how willing I was to serve, I just wasn’t large enough for this job. Unfortunately, my pressing need to pay my rent was a strong motivator and, back in those times, I said yes to every request that came my way.
Like the time I had the challenge of de-cluttering hundreds of cardboard boxes that contained twenty years of files, along with the client’s inherited clutter left to her by her hoarder mother. Since she could not afford a storage unit, this client kept everything from her mother’s accumulated illness and her own in her one-bedroom apartment in West L.A. She slept on a small couch because there was no room in her bedroom for furniture. She had little money and was in crisis because her landlord had given her a twenty-four hour notice that she was coming into her apartment the next day to inspect the premises. Apparently her neighbors were complaining about bugs coming from her place.
I felt sorry for the old girl, so I gave her a discount and after assessing her situation I realized that any attempt to organize her would be like rearranging the furniture on the Titanic. So I came up with a brilliant solution to at least keep the landlord from evicting her. Knowing that it was impossible to go through decades of clutter in one day, I decided to use her boxes to build her a beautiful bedroom suite. I arranged the boxes into a queen-size bed with a head board, two end tables and a dresser. The bedroom suite gave new meaning to that song that Pete Seeger used to sing, “Little boxes made of ticky tacky.” I used all her mother’s bedding and fabrics to cover everything to make it all look real. As long as you didn’t lie on the bed, no one would be the wiser. Of course it didn’t solve the bug problem, but considering she was paying half my rate I performed a friggin’ miracle. I bought her some time to figure out how to eventually get rid of it all.
Another trait I’ve observed in my hoarder clients was that they were all obese. By far the worst of the worst jobs that ever came to Tell Mama came from another obese woman, who just happened to also live in Thousand Oaks. This poor woman topped Ms. Barbie’s weight and her illness. She tipped the scale at about 650 pounds. She hired me for the skill listed under the letter C for chef. I was beginning to think that the suburb of Thousand Oaks should have been re-named a Thousand Pounds, the burb where hefty wives hide. If I added the weight of Ms. Barbie at 350 and my new client at 650 it hit the mark. It’s too bad reality shows like the Housewives of…. weren’t popular back then, I could have pitched these two for a series.
For the sake of her anonymity, I will call this client “Turkey Lady.” Actually she was not a housewife, but lived alone unless you counted the two Mexican maids who doubled as her 24/7 caregivers, alternating shifts of bathing, dressing, and wiping her ass. I’m not exaggerating. Due to her size it was impossible for her to do it herself. Turkey Lady had no problem with clutter since she was too large to leave the house to shop and could not even sit up long enough to use a computer or read a catalogue. The maids kept her home spotless.
Turkey Lady was willing to pay me $200 a day to be her private chef. She would have had her maids cook for her but she told me they lacked the sophisticated skills for a woman with her sensitive palette. Besides, she believed in the old adage that you don’t shit where you eat. It was immediately obvious that Turkey Lady had an eating disorder that challenged my culinary skills like no other client before or since.
When I interviewed for the job she told me there was only one food that her digestion could tolerate and that food was turkey. She also had allergies to most spices and condiments and had been through a roster of high-end private chefs trying to please her for months. I was the last chef on the block from her list of recommendations. All of them had failed her. I took on the job, convincing her and myself that I was creative enough to deliver. I figured for $200 a day I could turn that grand bird into endless dishes. After making batches of turkey meat loaf, turkey tetrazzini, turkey meat balls, turkey hot dogs and sausages, turkey stew sans most spices, on my first day for her sample menu, I was then expected to set up a formal dining service at the foot of her king size bed with the television blaring for dinner ambiance. Apparently it was too difficult for her to sit up or leave the bed for longer then it took to use the bathroom so most of everything she did happened in the bedroom, which left the rest of the house looking like a model home.
When I served her dinner on a silver platter with her matching silver place setting, she asked me to place it on the antique mahogany coffee table that sat at the foot of her bed. Then with the help of her maid, she would roll over from her back on to her enormous stomach and shimmy herself down to the edge with her head now at the foot of her bed. Turkey Lady was no taller than 5’2” and most of her weight was all in the middle of her front side, making her look like an oblong sea creature with a very small head and little feet. She would then lean over the bowl and eat from it like a dog; that is if a dog could use a silver folk. I myself have struggled with overeating, but I must admit that the sight of her eating was by far the best appetite suppressant I ever experienced in my own attempts to find recovery.
I was spared from having to finish out my trial week when on day two I showed up for duty and she accused me of using pepper in the turkey stew. It would have been considerate of her to call in advance before I made the long drive up to Thousand Oaks from my home in Venice, but that was okay since I got paid for the day anyway. It was such a relief to know I would not have to return to the horror of that house again with its walls and heavy dark draperies reeking of turkey odor or witness the abuse her maids took for one more day. That Thanksgiving I gave many thanks for my life without the main course and went out for Chinese food. It was a long time before I could eat turkey again.
I admit that my desperate need for cash led me to these ungodly employment situations and the only thing that made me feel esteem about my work was the fact that these unfortunates had far worse problems than my own. In some cases I believed that I actually helped some of them get better. There was a time when I worked for two clients who were both close to dying, and both of them had extreme eating issues. One of them was a famous fashion photographer who was in his last days of suffering from HIV infections and the other was a woman who ran a successful commercial production company.
I had served as a part-time production and personal assistant to the producer on and off for over three years. She would hire me whenever her business or personal chores got too much for her to handle. By my last assignment with her, she was dying of throat cancer. Still fighting desperately to hold on to what had been her successful normal life, she brought me back to work after her last surgery.
At this point she could no longer eat through her mouth due to the large tumor that had been removed from her throat. One of my chores was to prepare all her meals and then put them into a blender and feed her through a feeding tube that went directly into her stomach. Where I found the strength to do this I don’t know. I had always liked her and felt loyal, since she had been an easygoing boss and I felt good that she trusted me to do such an intimate thing for her. I was not a trained nurse and on one occasion I overfed her through the tube, causing her to vomit all over me. At that point it became clear that she no longer needed a personal assistant but a full-time nurse. She passed away shortly afterwards. I know that all
this experience was leading up to some reward, and the Universe did deliver big time.
Not long after my client passed away, I was approached by my friend Patrick McGuire, who had been a fan of my performance work in San Francisco back in the ‘70s. By the mid ‘90s he owned a small boutique PR firm in Seattle. Patrick asked me to create a comedic spokesperson character that he could pitch to his client Shurgard, a national storage company. Patrick was challenged with the difficult task of getting media coverage for the boring business of storage. “How do you sell empty space and cardboard boxes?” he asked me. By bringing me into the mix, he had hoped I could find a funny solution to his problem.
And humor I did deliver. I used my writing, performing, wardrobe-styling talents, and all the knowledge and work experience I learned in the field and came up with the alter ego: Iona Place, the Diva of De-Cluttering. Iona Place was the next incarnation of Tell Mama and with Patrick’s help I became the new spokeswoman for Shurgard Storage.
I styled myself in workman’s overalls, put my hair up in big bubble curls, and tied a printed hanky around them. I looked like a glamorous Josephine the Plummer, a commercial character played by Jane Withers in Comet Cleanser TV ads of the 60s and early 70s. Then I had my friend Phillip in San Francisco, a master prop maker, construct a large leather utility belt with every imaginable tool hanging from around my hips. Iona’s utility belt was a character in itself. With my trusty belt I was armed for any dirty job around the house: it included a plunger, gardening tools, work gloves, packing tape dispenser, spray cleaning products, and even a note pad where I kept my to-do list in case I relapsed into disorder.
I wrote a script based on the concept of clutter and disorganization being a disease and used a twelve-step program model for Iona’s twelve tips to getting organized. Patrick and I brainstormed and came up with kitsch names for the maladies like “jamitistis in your drawers” and “stuff infection” and I fed the interviewer one liners like, “I’m a graduate from the school of hard knick knacks” and I made jokes about my imaginary husband, Ines Place, and my twenty year old daughter, Anita Place. These punch lines all led to media coverage for Shurgard on several TV Talk shows and news segment in the major markets across the country. I made more money than I had ever earned acting or in any other day job. So in the end, the Diva of Desperation’s hard work paid off. I only regret that the Shurgard campaign didn’t last longer or lead into a commercial campaign like Josephine the Plummer, the Snapple lady, or the “Where’s the Beef?” lady. But, alas, Iona had to come down off her media high horse and be put back on the shelves of hard knick knacks, and eventually find another day job in the real world of a struggling actress.
Chapter 8
I Love Lucy, Who Doesn’t?
I grew up on Lucy. Lucy and Ethel get jobs at the candy factory and get fired when they can’t pack the candy fast enough as it comes down the conveyor belt. I can relate. My first job was at a conveyor belt in a collating factory.
I can relate to all of Lucy’s harebrained schemes as she struggled to be a part of the glamorous world of show business.
Lucy goes off to absorb local color in Italy to prepare for an audition with a famous Italian movie director. At a winery she ends up crushing grapes with her bare feet and gets into a brawl in the vat of grapes with a local Italian grape crusher who looks a lot like me. I’m Italian and I love Italy.
Lucy fakes amnesia to get away from having to explain her antics to Ricky: “Who am I? Where am I?”
I faked amnesia too while trying to get out of going to jail for unpaid parking tickets. Just like Lucy with Ricky, it didn’t work for me either.
But my favorite Lucy gig was when Lucy does a TV commercial for Vitameatavegamin, a nutritional elixir which contains vitamins, meat, vegetables, minerals, and 23% alcohol.
In take one all goes well for Lucy as she delivers her lines: “Do you poop out at parties? Are you unpopular? So why don't you join the thousands of happy, happy, people and get a great big bottle of Vitameatavegamin.”
Then Lucy holds the extra large bottle up to camera and pours herself a giant spoonful. She gulps it down and with a big sour puss expression says, “It’s so tasty too.”
“Cut!” the director screams. “Do it again, but look like you mean it this time.”
Unable not to gag at the taste, Lucy is forced to test the sponsor’s product over and over again, until the alcohol kicks in and she starts to like it so much she licks the spoon but screws up her lines: “Do you pop out at parties? Are you unpoopular?”
Well, if it weren’t for my poopularity in the San Francisco’s gay counterculture, I would have never met my Ethel, but I didn’t recognize her at first.
I barely noticed Roberto, a brown, skinny art student who roomed with Bob Reccio, a wig and prop builder for my musical, Broken Dishes, a comedy I co-wrote and produced. Roberto tagged along with Bob to our out-of-town premiere in 1976 at the Mendocino Art Center in northern California. While I was busy opening the show, Roberto hung out and bonded with my gorgeous little Viva, who was only six at the time. It wasn’t until 1977, when I decided to move my act to Hollywood that my friendship with Roberto Juarez began. He had just graduated from the Art Institute and decided to shift his fine art focus toward a master’s in film. His acceptance to UCLA coincided with my need for a roommate in my new Venice beach home, and thus began our Lucy and Ethel reenactments.
Since I was the only actress Roberto knew in L.A. at that time, he decided to make me and Viva the subjects of his first student film project: a short biopic he titled Dolores Viva. At first I was flattered as he followed both me and Viva around the house like Fellini, at all hours of the day or night, interviewing us as we went about our daily living. Viva was a willing subject and loved the attention she got when Roberto would cook her favorite breakfast, megas, a Puerto Rican dish with corn tortillas fried into scrambled eggs. As she ate, he would hold the camera on her and ask her about her own dreams of stardom.
Soon after the filming began, Roberto’s esthetic became the cause of spats not unlike the ones Lucy and Ethel would have from time to time. At this point our roles reversed, and he became more like Lucy and I the reluctant Ethel. He would wake me at dawn with the camera in my face, capturing a five-minute close-up of my nose. Then he would follow me into the shower and shoot me naked while firing personal questions before I had my first cup of coffee. I told him, “R.J., you need to call this film ‘Too Arty Too Early’,” but my insults never discouraged him. He was relentless about getting his shots. He filmed me putting on my makeup and would direct me to do something totally ridiculous like, “Stick those cotton balls up your nose,” he demanded. I would argue that his ideas were ridiculous and we played out the roles of the difficult actress vs. eccentric film director. Roberto was no Alfred Hitchcock, but I felt as tortured as Tippi Hedren did while filming The Birds. All and all, however, things worked out and Roberto was happy with his first project. Although I had my criticisms, I was still thrilled to have my first L.A. film in the can.
Things grew tenser between us when Roberto came home one day with about twenty cinder blocks that he found in an abandoned construction site. At this point he suggested that I throw out all my comfortable thrift store furniture and the precious couch I lived on and allow him to replace the living room furniture with his collection of cinder blocks. By his second semester at film school, Roberto had yet to discover another out-of-work actress, so he asked me again if he could make his next UCLA project with me. He wanted to shoot a video of the new musical, Primetime, which I had written and was in the middle of producing for a theatrical run in Los Angeles.
Even in the days before YouTube, I thought a video would make a great marketing tool for me to sell my show to bigger houses down the road. So I agreed to let him direct the three camera shoot at the UCLA studio, using my material and performances. At the campus studio we had access to green screen backdrops and other wonderful advanced technology to enhance my live number
s. When the shoot was done and the editing began, the real trouble between us started. Roberto’s ‘too arty, too early’ editing style clashed with my vision of a slick commercial tape to sell my show. This time our riff got vicious and we ended up not talking for a while. But just like Lucy and Ethel, we could not stay mad at each other for long.
During the two years we lived together, Roberto continued his painting in between film projects. He made hundreds of small 12x12 abstract paintings, and after each one was completed he would hold it up with pride and say, “One day these are going to be worth a fortune.”
I rolled my eyes and replied, “Yeah, dream on!” I’d further criticize him because I thought he’d never succeed as an artist. In my opinion he couldn’t even draw well, but what did I know of fine art? Just a few years later when he started to emerge as an art star in NY, I had to eat those words. Roberto taught me a valuable lesson in how important it is to have vision and to believe in yourself, no matter what the world thinks of you.
In my youthful arrogance and ignorance, I admit I was not the best supportive friend, but our friendship grew in spite of our differences. You might say Roberto became my ambassador to the world of fine art. Growing up in Jersey, all I knew of culture was the stuff they put in yogurt. One of my show collaborators, Martin Worman, who knew me back in high school, wrote the lyrics of a song for my first musical performance in San Francisco in 1974 that put me on the map there. The song started with the lyric, “There was never time for lessons, in piano, French or horse. When you’re from a family of eleven, survival, not culture, is the course.” I knew counterculture and pop art, but without Roberto in my life I might never have stepped inside a museum or gallery.
Blow Jobs: A Guide to Making it in Show Business, or Not!: A 'How Not To' by The Counter Culture Diva Page 6
