Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts (22 page)

I think some of the guys in tight black bicycle pants wearing flashy form-fitting red-white racing shirts splashed with team names like “Sponzi” or “Verti”—names that sounded like ice cream or opera composers—actually took a ride on those $5,000 Italian bikes. But I knew all of them were single. A $5,000 Italian bike was just like vintage Japanese movie posters or a faux wine collection: single guy gear, the kind of things a single guy bought to make himself seem interesting before every extra dollar went into private schools or mortgages.

When it wasn’t too noisy with cell phones we went to the Coffee Joint Tehran, the Irano-chic coffee house across the street. It served this hairy cake, a white coconut cake with tiny lavender frosting flowers on it. The new coffee house, a San Francisco transplant located one block down in the location of the former Italian restaurant where Nicole Brown Simpson last lost her glasses, had not yet become a spot for us. It had tea but no sticky buns with icing.

“I didn’t know you had a nanny,” I said.

“Of course,” said Marcie. “Everyone has a nanny.”

“Why? You’re not working, Bettina,” I said. “Aren’t they expensive?”

“Of course,” said Marcie.

“I need time for myself,” said Bettina.

“Don’t you get about eight hours per day while your kids are in school?” I said. “How can you afford this? I thought the deal was that you quit being an artist so that you could stay at home and raise your kids.”

“Everyone has a nanny,” said Marcie.

“How much does this cost?” I said.

“The usual,” said Bettina.

“What does it usually cost?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Bettina.

“But your husband can’t be making more than $55,000 per year. Who’s paying for this?” I asked.

“That’s not important,” said Bettina.

“It’s not,” said Marcie.

“Not your in-laws.”

“You’re missing the point,” said Bettina.

“As usual,” said Marcie.

“They’re already paying your mortgage.”

“That’s not the point,” said Bettina.

“No, it’s not,” said Marcie.

“And they gave you the down on your house.”

“You’ll never guess who my nanny used to work for,” said Bettina.

“Who?” said Marcie.

“It better be Angelina Jolie for this to be worthwhile,” I said.

“Only the highest paid star in the known world—Tom Fricken West,” said Bettina.

Marcie’s mouth fell open.

“So? Is she any good?” I asked.

They both turned and looked at me.

“Did you hear what I said?” said Bettina.

“Yeah,” said Marcie, “and why are you wearing blue? And so much makeup? We’re going jogging.”

“The color thing,” I said. “C’mon. Every other week it’s ‘you should only wear blue,’ ‘you should never wear blue.’ And you know about the makeup, so let’s not pretend that you’re bothered by it in year 20 of our friendship.”

“But we’re going jogging,” said Marcie.

“No, I’m going jogging,” I said. “You two are going to sit here and eat cinnamon rolls while you babble about how thrilled you are to get Tom Fricken West’s former nanny.”

I hate celebrities.

But I live in a town where I see them all the time.

I hate seeing them in my dentist’s office but I especially hate that my dentist has their pictures plastered all over his office. Little Polaroids of himself with the stars—rock stars, movie stars, television stars, even sons and daughters of famous movie stars. I wonder if he’s taken down any of those dead celeb pictures yet.

And it’s not that being the dentist to the stars makes him a better dentist. It just means that you (not a star) are a second-class patient in his office, and even if you have an abscess the size of Jupiter in your mouth you will never, ever get an appointment with him and you
will
get bumped if any celebrity—ex-Baywatch babes, the son of the movie star legend from the ’70s, or—Oh My Gosh—a remaining member of the Fab Four with his horrible English teeth, and especially Tom Fricking West or any of his wives or children—wants to come in. And then you can’t even buy your way in, because even if you are paying 20,000 times the amount that the celeb patient is (since they never pay for anything, it’s easy to do), your money counts for almost nothing.

I hate it that the Thai dental hygienist in my dentist’s office feels compelled to tell me which friend of hers is trying to sleep with which barely-successful rock star who now has a T.V show.

“He has a thing for Asian women,” she said.

“Is there any man alive who doesn’t have a thing for Asian women?” I reply.

“You need to floss more.”

“I floss like a demon.”

“My friend wants to get pregnant with him,” she said. “Maybe you want to show me how you floss?”

“Why does she want to get pregnant with him? Please, I stopped showing people how I floss around the time I lost my baby teeth.”

“He has a TV show,” she said. “If you don’t floss right you’ll get gingivitis. Look at this picture.”

“His show is on basic cable, so he doesn’t make squat. Tell your friend to go after a starter in the NBA. And I’ve seen that stupid picture on every visit to every dentist I have had since I was seven years old and I’ve still never gotten gingivitis. If I floss any more, my gums will disappear into my brain. Stop trying to scare me.”

I hate seeing them at my hairdresser’s, but I especially hate that my hairdresser claims to be done with “the star thing” yet seems to have a client base made up exclusively of the actresses who played moms in ’70s and ’80s sitcoms. And none of these actresses have worked since 1987.

Somehow, being an ex-TV mom meant that I could sit for 90 minutes past my appointment time and if one of those
Family Ties
,
Family Affair
,
Facts of Life
TV moms were to walk in, wanting my appointment, my hairdresser would give it to them. It’s sad. My hairdresser prattles on about the TV moms with words like “mystical,” “magical” and “spiritual” when what they truly are is entitled, and he regularly confuses playing a good person on a TV show with being a good person in real life.

“See,” I say to him, “on the TV show, they play a mom who shops, cooks, cleans, chauffeurs, visits their children’s teachers, and knows how each of their three children is doing in each subject in school.
On the TV show.
In real life, their nannies shop, cook, clean, chauffeur, visit their children’s teachers, and know how each of their three children is doing in each subject in school.”

What makes me nauseous is when my hairdresser imbues his TV moms with the heroic characteristics of Greek gods or saints for the same behavior which we civilians follow to stay out of jail.

Star Philanthropy

“My God, she’s generous,” said my hairdresser.

“Oh,” I said. “Did she give a $1,000,000 to charity?”

“She believes charity starts at home.”

She’s remodeling her house again.

“What did she do?” I said.

“She paid me,” he said. “Today.”

“Doesn’t she usually pay when you do her hair?”

“It’s not about the money.”

“This is what you do for a living,” I said.

He shrugs.

“Any tip?” I said.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said. “She told me where she buys her green tea.”

Star Wisdom

“I’ve learned so much from her,” he’d say with a sigh.

“Really,” I said.

“Today she told me how to make vegetarian chili,” he whispered back.

“That’s just chili where you don’t put the ground chicken or beef in,” I whispered.

“But it’s her recipe, and she told me how to do it.”

“Did she write it down?”

He looks at me for a moment.

“That’s not what she does,” he said.

Star Maturity

“I’m so proud of her,” he said. “She’s just celebrated her sixth month of sobriety.”

“She just had a liver transplant. Isn’t that part of the deal?”

“Yeah, but she really took the bull by the horns and turned her life around.”

“Did she have a choice? She was almost dead.”

And despite choosing a hairdresser with such a low profile that he works in a shop which is dominated by two gray parrots from Pluto who rap “Baby Got Back…” when approached by customers, I, despite being my hairdresser’s “favorite person,” will regularly be passed to his 19-year-old assistant at every conceivable opportunity, especially if he senses “TV Mom approaching” on his radar.

I hate going to parties that I think are going to be fun—non-celebrity—civilian events that evolve into faux celebrity events with people who have the attitude but not the status of a star. Events like a baby shower, where you think it’s going to be relaxed and fun, and then you see the director of those absolutely horrible movies who married the rock star, the producer who just made the movie which nearly sank both a major actor’s career and a studio, or the development exec of the low-budget studio unit which never produced a movie. Then the party becomes a delicate dance of “Forgive me for breathing the air that you breathe.” I don’t want to be there and don’t want to talk to them, but they can’t believe that. Maybe I just wanted some chips and a place to sit down. But that meant that you had to enter the room that they were in, and then they worried that you might want something from them—a job, to give them a script, a referral to an agent—when all you wanted was an extra chair and some blue corn tortilla chips.

I hate seeing them when I go jogging, but I especially hate that I invariably run into a former supermodel whose face was plastered on every magazine, monthly, for ten years, and that my brain involuntarily forms the syllables of her name—like it does right now because there she is, not 50 yards in front of me. And because I’m staring straight ahead and running forward, I see her, her personal trainer, someone I presume to be her muscle, her bodyguard, and a guy I recognize to be her new husband—because I have read much too much about her, her fabulous modeling career, her fabulous new marriage, her fabulous Los Angeles home and the way that she miraculously managed to get back into a size 0 within four weeks of having her second baby.

I know that they assume that I will be excited, thrilled, or at a minimum interested by seeing them. But in reality, what I am is nauseated and bored, but mostly bothered, like the way you feel when you discover that you have acne on your butt and can’t do anything about it except wait for it to go away.

They see me.

Go. Go away. Go back to your own planet.

It’s like that moment in
The Matrix
where those alien-scanner things which have enslaved and deluded the human race have found the dump mother ship from which Keanu Reeves (“Neo” and more likely Very Luckio to have gotten that part), Carrie-Anne Moss, (Underpaidio, the chick who looks good and can move in tight black leather), and Lawrence Fishburn (Maxium Luckio or Oblio or whatever his name is) are attempting to save the free but boring realistic world.

Very Luckio, Underpaidio and Maxium Luckio can’t move, breathe or have a heartbeat because if the alien-scanner things detect them, they will sense that dump mother ship’s occupants are a threat to alien-scanner things’ existence, meaning Very Luckio, Underpaidio, and Maxium Luckio will become enslaved and all hope for the free but boring realistic world will be lost.

About the alien-scanner things—the alien-scanner thing does not recognize the needs of other life forms. The alien-scanner thing does not want a connection with any other life force other than other alien-scanner things. The alien-scanner thing does not have a shred of humanity in it. The alien-scanner thing exists to use and destroy other life forms so that it may perpetuate the existence of itself and other alien-scanner things.

Alien-scanner thing fabulous ex-model has her alien-scanner thing Muscle move to the edge of the entourage to face me. He scans me to see if I am a threat to their existence. He puts his arms on his hips and slightly leans in. Oooo… big, bad boy. How menacing.

I stand very still and hope to blend into the neon blue-purple flowers which have erupted in this grossly over-built neighborhood—an area where the former one-story, 1600-square-foot, 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom homes with both a front and back yard have been leveled and replaced by three-story, 7000-square-foot behemoths—homes that look like a cross between a former Soviet bloc embassy and a Southern antebellum mansion.

It’s not easy to blend into the neon blue-purple flowers because today I have chosen to jog dressed in a bright orange color which makes me look like a pumpkin, a pumpkin which would be visible at dusk to every motorist within 100 yards. If I were cool enough to be able to stop my heart, like Very Luckio, Underpaidio, and Maxium Luckio, I would. But I can’t even hold my breath for very long.

And I’m bored.

Please Go. Go Away. Shoo.

I hate it when the Royalty of L.A.—celebrities—go to public places that are frequented by civilians, and bring their muscle. But I especially hate it when they—bless their little alien-scanner thing hearts—show up with their Muscle in Places Where They Are Not Supposed to Be.

They are not supposed to be at Best Buy, buying some electronic gizmo, using their 375-pound goon Muscle to create distance between themselves and the civilians who actually watch them portray a “teenager with unearthly powers” one night a week (5 nights on cable), when it is two days before Christmas.

And they’re not supposed to be at a beauty supply store buying hair and skin care products when they have spent the last 12 years playing a tough-but-sexy cop/‌stud on a network primetime cop show.

A MEMO

TO: Stars, Celebs, and Anybody Else Who Goes to BEST BUY with a Bodyguard

I hate it that you’ve spent every day of the last 20 years trying to become a star and now that you’re 23 and famous you seem to resent that fact that I, or anyone else in the civilized world, can recognize you in public. We wish that we couldn’t.

But you do acne commercials. And you do hair color commercials. And you do lipstick commercials. And you star on a quirky television show that somehow got very popular—which we don’t watch—usually.