GRADUATION

Greetings from Aspen, Colorado! I am here taking photos with my friend IMDB. She’s a multi-talented artist (painter, videographer, rapper) and she's using me and my homegirl T-Rock as models. Why? Because T-Rock and I are very in. Unfortunately, like St. Tropez, Capri, the Maldives, and Dubai, Aspen is beautiful but over, done with, kaput. Here’s why.

• Gas – There are two kinds of gas in Aspen. The kind that starts a fire in your fireplace via remote control and the kind that constantly pops out of your ass of which you have no control. For some reason, the height of this place makes you poot. I’m ready to deflate right back down to New York City. I’m a little bored of being in a town of full of embalmed women who walk in constant cloud of farm fresh farts. It’s like wrapping Bo Derek in a few layers of cooked Brussels sprouts and calling her an It Girl.
  

• Altitude Sickness – Aspen sits about 8,000 feet above sea level. When you get that much closer to God, creepy stuff starts to happen. Particularly to sinners like me. Dr. Barry Mink of Aspen Valley Hospital warns visitors to avoid alcohol. As a broke-ass drunk, I will avoid the advice of a “doctor” so rich his last name is mink. Yes, altitude sickness causes constipation, nausea, insomnia, and a fast heartbeat. But so will cocaine and anorexia and no one I know seems to be avoiding that. So if you must come to Aspen, by all means, drink up!

• The Rich vs. The Help – The Rich live in great big homes and have to hire The Help to take care of these homes. The Rich think they are helping The Help by giving them jobs. But The Rich only live here like six days out of the year and, my goodness, they can’t help it. They have twenty other homes to occupy! And so The Help spend most of the year helping themselves to cashmere sweaters, cable television, and expensive cheese while lolling around on other people’s 1,000 thread count sheets. Oh, shit. I’m The Help.
  

• Pictures of Politicos – Very often, the rich people display photos of public office holders to whom they have donated funds. This is great because you can quickly see who is a Democrat and who needs to be slapped.

• Sting – They love him out here. Particularly his later, more tabouleh-and-tantra inspired tunes. Like that song where he cajoles some Kurd out of his mountain cave to go “yodelly, yodelly, yeah.” No one should like that song except Sting and his lady. And only if it makes her want to have sex with him. If it doesn’t even do that, she should hate it, too.

• Audio Visual – When you touch a light switch in Aspen, the lights come up or fade out gently, theatrically. I think it’s meant to ease the blow of the rhinoplastic truth that is the face of today’s female gentry of the provinces. This is a fringe jacketed, turquoise jeweled marvel that cascades through her Western estate like a river through the desert. She operates racks of state of the art stereo equipment so that it endlessly yodelly, yeah, yeah, yeahs in every bed, living, and exercise room. Neither the bar nor the steam bath is untouched by these gentle sounds. Not that I’ve studied her every move or anything.

• Graduation – This happens when, say, a manicurist at a fancy hotel named Laura meets the owner of that and forty other hotels. She accepts his gifts, injects her lips, marries him, then births a baby which dissolves entire clauses out of the prenup. Congratulations, Laura: you have graduated! Personally, I think graduating is out. Who wants to spend the rest of their lives hiding the old man’s Viagra? Not me. I have always earned my own way. And I’m not too proud to start as a bottom. As a bottom? At the bottom. Whatever. Anyway, like I was saying, though I think Aspen is over, I did pick up a shift as a hostess in a member’s only establishment called the Caribou Club. Though several of the hostesses have graduated, I’m only doing it for the experience. And jewelry.

TOTALLY HOT

You guys, I know it’s 2007 but I’m starting to think the ‘80’s are back. Just a few minutes ago, I saw maybe one or two hundred girls are wearing off the shoulder shirts, mini skirts, and checkered Vans. I was like, “Gag me with a gnarly – I have to try this!”

It’s weird, because this morning, I thought the ’70’s were still here. But I think that’s because I woke up on a waterbed getting my yoni massaged by a mall security guard named Todd. So I’ve decided to take these bell-bottoms off, set them on fire, and usher in the dawn of an old era! So now that it’s settled, please allow me to share with you what I know is going to be totally hot.


Todd

• Great Big Eyebrows – Jane Wiedlin from the Go-Go’s , Brooke Shields, those chicks in the Robert Palmer videos. Each represented a proud, bushy brow heritage. It was as if fuzzy, black caterpillars had died on their foreheads. When I look at the tidy arches of today’s waxing addicts, I feel sorry for them. They think a well-defined brow means you’re rich and smart and care about what you look like. Well it doesn’t. It means you probably don't have pubes, either. Actually, I always thought of Mr. T’s mowhawk as a big eyebrow looking up at God and saying, “I pity the fool who sits on a cloud thinking he controls me!”

It was as if fuzzy, black caterpillars had died on their foreheads.

• Ricky Schroeder – Not Rick Schroeder. Rick Schroeder is a New York cop who thrusts his bare butt on TV. I want Ricky from Silver Spoons! Ricky from The Champ! Oh, Ricky you’re so fine you’re so fine when I’m tanked on wine. Hey Ricky! Hey Ricky! He should definitely put the Y back on his name. Hanging on to the kiddy version of their names has done wonders for the careers of Mickey Roarke and Tommy Lee.

• Moles – Some people think one should get malignant tumors removed. Honestly, nothing says “lick me, bite me, love me forever” like a lusty, fluffy mole. Cindy Crawford and Madonna, two rather homely midwestern girls, were both made utterly delicious by strategically placed moles. And kind of rich, too. A coincidence? I doubt it. Bring back the moles.

• Trendy Food - clear soda, square pizza, pesto, Smurfs. These were food trends that didn’t last longer than the next trip to the shitter. Most people don’t recall that Smurfs started out their existence on the planet as food. But they made themselves so Smurfin’ adorable that we as a nation wouldn’t eat them. Sort of like kittens do nowadays. But I don't buy it. I’m eating cat meat lasagna now – molto bene!

The shitter.

• The Jheri Curl – This was a hairdo so futuristic it required activator. I can't think of one reason why you wouldn't rehash this timeless, wall staining treasure. Only this time, I suggest white people and Asians try it, too. Particularly dentists. Wouldn’t that be awesome? A Korean dentist dripping Jheri Curl juice in your mouth? By accident? I’m getting wet just thinking about it.

It required activator.

• Genital Herpes – What’s the big deal? So my junk’s a little scabby. But only sometimes. It all still works. Herpes isn’t going kill me and I fun contracting it. So call me. I really want to try that thing we talked about.

• Kitty Dukakis – It makes me so angry to be reminded that our country threw away the opportunity to have Super Lush as First Lady. Fools! Can't you imagine her at Presidential dinners, tastefully dressed, handing out highballs of hairspray and goblets of antifreeze? I say, “Meow, Meow vote for Kitty NOW!”

Amazing Hair!
How sweet the sound
of crunchy bangs all teased
My hair goes up
Then cascades down
Was bummed but now
I’m pleased

• Acid Wash Denim - Those filthy hippies in the 1960's went bonkers for acid. By the 80's, the stylish washed their clothes in it. Talk about fashion evolution. I suggest bringing this one back along with Cocaine Cotton and Smokable Thongs.

• Television shows about black kids living with white people – Diff’rent Strokes, Webster, Alf: each of these shows had nearly all white casts with a brother of another color banging out the bellylaughs. These sitcoms were groundbreaking, I tell you. They proved that the fair-skinned and the brown-skinned, the tall and the short, the human and the puppet, could all get along. On TV, anyways. If I see a puppet in real life, I lynch it.

WORD TO YOUR MOTHER

Slang is the new a way to let people know you are cool. It’s not about how many words you know but the kind of words you know. If it wasn't for slang, librarians would cooler than Morris Day, and that’s just not true!

• When your hair isn’t as stylish as usual, say, “I’m having a bad hair day!” This is the hilarious way help ease the pain you have caused your friends by going out with that frizzy, greasy, dandruff sprinkled, lice hatchery you call a head.

• If you're at party and you trip over the carpet, don’t say, “Ouch.” Instead, try, “I've fallen and I can't get up!” This is the funniest commercial on the air right now. You’ve seen it. An old man falls and is about to die so he presses a button and says, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” I don’t know what happens after that because every time I see it, I laugh so hard I soil myself and have to get off the couch.

• Call all the women in your life “girlfriend.” Your boss, your landlady, nuns: it doesn’t matter. Call them girlfriend. Say you’re on a train, and you see one of those young women who thinks she’s better than you because she’s carrying several bags of health food and a yoga (pronounced “yoe-gah”) mat. Don’t offer her a seat. Say, “Girlfriend, why don’t you use your third eye to levitate to the next stop?” She’ll think you guys are best friends! Note: never call your girlfriend “girlfriend.” Call her your “old lady.” It’ll make her feel special and a little bit horny.

• For years I have been wondering, “Who da bomb?” Well, I’m da bomb. You da bomb. Robert Smith of The Cure – his hair is so da bomb, it exploded. It is then that I find myself trying to figure out who is NOT da bomb. Condoleezza Rice is not da bomb. She is closer to being da bomb when she goes by Condi and wears those boots, but still, most definitely not da bomb. While Marilu Henner from Taxi is not da bomb, Judd Hirsch, from the same show, totally is. It’s so confusing!

• I am not sure what “word to your mother,” means but if Vanilla Ice coined it, it’s gotta be cool. Use it for the title of just about anything or when people say things you don’t quite understand. Recently, I was at a convention of brain doctors, and Robin Goldman, PhDuh, said to me, “I suspect that individual differences or mutations in mitochondrial DNA in the cytoplasm may contribute to the pathogenesis of bi-polar disorder” and I was all, “Word to your mother.” She was so startled by my response that she had no choice but to quote me in an article she wrote for Brain Doctor Weekly. I was flattered but secretly, I have my doubts whether or not she’s da bomb.