TV is my friend

Dear Don Draper, Yes. 

We didn't have a tv when I was growing up. So the story goes. We had this little 9 inch black and white set that I think was on the kitchen counter, so I have vague memories of watching Welcome Back Kotter while my my mom washed dishes. The kitchen had avocado green linoleum floors and a national geographic map of the middle east on the door that led to the dining room. You get the picture.

My parents finally broke down and got a tv just in time for the 1984 olympics. I call this period the beginning of the end. I had watched tv at friend's houses. I remember the dawn of MTV, the astrounaut, the guitar riff. Al the neighorhood kids would be crammed into the Osborne's living room watching it. They had 8 kids so they had to have tv... But there was no laying around in pjs staring at the tv in our house. We read books, or played records, or TALKED to each other (I know!).

Who shot JR? Oh Sue Ellen, put your drink DOWN!

The 1984 tv was quickly followed by a vhs machine. Hello world. Like any person who's been deprived of something, I latched on like a starving newborn. Saturday morning cartoons? Yes. Facts of Life (my first crush on George Clooney)? OH Blair! The Cosby Show? I wanted to BE a Huxtable. Kate and Ali? I'm embarrassed to say that the day of the Challenger explosion, I got ants in my pants about watching the non stop video of the event, and told my parents I thought maybe it was time to turn the channel, but secretly I was just afraid of missing Kate and Ali. TV made me a monster!

I went to boarding school in Maine, and then didn't have a tv in college, so there's another large pop culture tv gap in my brain. I sort of missed the whole Beverly Hills 90210 and the beginning of the Friends era. When Nipper Knapp and I got married, I did have a tv, but no cable. This would not do. We got cable, the full monty, movie channels and all. During certain times of the year we have special sports packages that allow him to watch every minute of every game in the world. We don't have a tv in the bedroom because I think that's bad juju. But for as much as I grouse about there being too much tv in this house, and that reality is killing good tv. I still love it. We almost put our cable on hold for the summer after the Tremé season finale (I know I've said this before, but, Tremé is the best show on tv since The Wire). But then True Blood Started. And Hung, and Madmen is starting any minute. We watch Deadliest Catch, and United States of Tara, Nurse Jackie, and 30 Rock, and until it cancelled (BOO) Parks and Recreation. We tivo all kinds of documentaries, and American Experience on PBS. Jack is pretty much learning to read by watching Super Why and Curious George. It's not all bad.

Tabitha enjoys her first pall mall of the day

I went on the AMC website and made a Madmen version of myself this morning. I don't smoke, but my Madmen self does. Her name is Tabitha, and she's wearing a dress that looks like something out of my grandmother's (my mom's mom) house. Tabitha doesn't take any guff from anyone. She listens to Maria Callas on the radio and drives herself to the salon on Saturday. She doesn't have a junk drawer in her kitchen, but she does have a jadite green pantry. There is a missing year in Tabitha's past where she may or may not have been shacked up with a painter named Juan Pablo in a villa in the south of France. Know one really knows. Every June 7th, she calls in sick and ties one on in a dive bar near that place by the train. She's been known to get in fist fights with men twice her size. Tabitha is an animal lover and has 2 goldfish and a chinchilla. She hates pedants, but loves a good matzo brie. Like who doesn't?

Tabitha's first day at Sterling Cooper was a doozy'

Kit Kat Gaga Tacky Tan

I don't know if it seems like my posting has been erratic, but it's felt erratic. I'm just sort of treading water to keep my little nose from filling up with the floodwaters. It's been a raining and a raining round here. Sorry, I'm watching Treme. Which btw is the best show on tv, hands down, and makes other tv shows look silly. We were planning to cancel our cable, but then Treme started, and you can't watch it on Hulu or HBO.com or anything, and so we are basically paying $100 a month to watch Treme. Great financial planning. Ok back to this episode of morning becomes eclectic. 

Are you totally excited ? I am. 

I'm working on editing the Lady Gaga parody video. Should be done in a week (if I don't sleep) or two (if I do). I think it's going to be great, and the photocinenews guys are going to do a 24 hour exclusive premier on their site once it's done. I feel like I'm learning so much so fast. It's like finals week, and I'm cramming an entire semester into my brain in 72 hours. Last night I was editing in my sleep. I was having dreams that I was editing live conversations I was having in my kitchen with Nipper and Jack. It's going to be so good. I swear you're going to laugh at least twice. 

In the meantime, I managed to get a little bit of work done around the house. Some spring cleaning, some planting, some laundry. I booked a commercial that I didn't audition for. Not too shabby. I cleaned the fridge. Like CLEANED it. I found this clock that I'm 99% sure my grandmother had in her kitchen, or maybe in the little room off her kitchen where she did her sewing. The same company has been making these Kit Kat clocks for over 70 years. The eyes and the tail go back and forth, and Jack has named it Fiona, Lightning McQueen, and Doc Hudson. Did your grandma have one? I feel like almost everyone had one of these clocks in their childhood, and now so will Jack. 

The Parker Palm Springs. My ideal lawn and garden, and I my ideal place to get a tan.

Oh and I got a spray tan. What? I know. I'm have a secret trashy side. I only reveal it when very tired or you know every summer, when my urge to have a deep dark hawaiian tropic tan, and a lush green grass yard in the middle of the desert. I know that's akin to saying that I feed my child bisphenol for breakfast, but I can't help it. I love tan skin, and I love green grass. Sue me. So I tried to go to this French salon in West Hollywood where I went years ago. It was quick, painless, not messy, and I looked tan for a week! This is something I don't experience in the real world. In the real world I am pasty, pink and freckled. 

The lovely front desk at Point Du Vue where bad things don't happen to good people. (minus the time a girl who was trying to fix my bad home dye job, dyed my hair cherry red by mistake, and then stripped it until it was cantaloupe colored, not very practical for playing tv mom) 

I tried to go there, but they don't do it anymore. Maybe because they realized it wasn't French to be fake tan. Did I give up? No ma'am . I looked up airbrush tans near me, and found a place that won some kind of "best of" award. I arrived at the place which was a little further from my house than I hoped. I don't mean to malign strip malls, because a lot of good stuff can be found in them, (fact) but this was in a pretty tacky one, in the middle of nowhere. Did I leave? No. I needed to get well, and this place was the only place with the cure. 


I went inside, and found no one at the desk. There were two old men speaking Armenian and fixing something in one of the tanning rooms. I waited 3 minutes, until girl who looked like she moved here from Ohio three weeks ago came out from the back carrying towels. She was extremely tan, minus her moonpie face which was a pale pinky bisque color. All Maybelline. Her blond hair had been teased into an incredible high ponytail. If there wasn't a bumpit under all that hair I'm a monkeys uncle. It was her first day, and she as being trained by a teeny tiny Armenian girl, also tan, who was all business. She said she'd be with me in minute.  I ducked into the bathroom which was filthy, and smelled disgusting. I'm sure you thought, that's when I left right? No, I did not. I'm not a quitter. 

The images you are about to see, are going to blow your mind. Looking at them now, I can't believe I was there. I don't know why I didn't run. I don't know why I sat through every freaky thing after another. Midwestern politesse? Morbid curiosity? Here's the room where she took me to do my spray tan:

ick

It was more Bolivian prison than tanning salon

You see the hair dryer in the picture above? After the girl airbrushed my nakedness to roughly the color of a mighty oak, she informed me that I needed to dry. Huh? She turned on two fans, and handed me the hair dryer. She told me I should focus it on my face and chest and she'd be back in ten. Did I mention the door didn't close properly and we had to push a chair up against it to keep it (mostly) shut. Did I mention her old Armenian dad and his friend were now (of course) hovering around outside it. 

So there I am, naked, sticky, BROWN, wearing a shower cap, drying myself with a hair dryer in a dirty room in the back of a strip mall in Pasadena. Oh how the mighty have fallen. After nearly 20 minutes (the girl never came back), I got dressed and left. 

Here's the thing though, after the shower, it looked awesome. I mean, just natural normal tan. I was supposed to leave it on for 8 hours, but I was so skeeved out by the place I took a shower as soon as I got home. So it was on for maybe an hour total. Maybe if I'd left it on, I'd be an ebony princess. The world may never know. I'll never know. 


Ok, I'm going to lay down now.