My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a daïs of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.
My nerves are shot. I haven’t slept in three days. My acid reflux is white hot I’d kill for the tiniest bump of blow. Scarlett arrives on the dot. She’s decked out from toe to head in coal black Demuelemester. She wears no lipstick. I think this altogether and entirely too sexy. Too much. Too much. We’re here on Pink’s patio doing her first official interview for her up-coming debut cd release. Scarlett seems a bit frazzled as I greet her dressed in Van Noten’s fall line. Vive Les Antwerp Six! A sudden screech tears through the alley as I look up and realize it’s Scarlett’s driver in a black 1969 Jag tearing down the back alley and onto La Brea. I see the hat the driver’s wearing and recognize him in a flash. A couple months earlier he was, for whatever reason, one can ONLY assume, driving Laura Dern around in the same 69 Jag, which I thought odd since Laura usually drives one of those real shit-pig road hoggin’ SUV’s that rot the ozone and murder our children’s futures. I remember the car, I remember the hat, but I remember him especially. It was in West L.A. at some crap Mexican restaurant where I heard him screaming at Ms. Dern about a 20 dollar bag of coke. I mean honestly, you are the academy award nominated actress daughter of academy award nominated actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, just pay the fucking guy his 20 bucks for fuck sake you cheap snarky cunt! I pull the chair out for Scarlet who smiles demurely as I notice a tiny sugar booger nestled and somehow defying gravity squarely in her right nostril. I’ve been in this sort of uncomfortable situation before, but trust, although certainly uncomfortable enough, Scarlett's blow hole, it’s nothing compared to listening to Richard Gere going on and on ad nauseum about his holiness the dali lama all the while doing your damndest to NOT notice the Scharffen Berger on the back sides of his white linen shorts whilst he serves you ice-cold mojitos in the library of his Aspen hideaway. Splurge on a little dry cleaning Richard or learn to wipe properly.
I decide to not mention it to Scarlett, her tiny white critter dwelling within, but before I even had the chance to say a single word, Scarlett bolts for the rarely empty line at Pink’s counter. I have a direct visual line and I can see her through the kitchen standing on Melrose and I think to myself, “My god man! You are about to interview the one and only Miss Scarlett Johansson!” I think to myself, “If only I were a straighty I would hit that shit fo sho!” Finally Scarlett, darling Scarlett re-appears after spending another fifteen minutes in the toilet out back, whose keys I had to fetch from the Salvadorian or whatever, queen up front who constantly flirts with me whenever I’m here….some nights…late. Whatever. But first things first, as Scarlett sits and the…oh goddamn! As if it wasn’t bad enough before, the nocturnal nose goblin seems to have grown exponentially now, twice the size it was before. I think to myself, “Girl! How big ARE your nostrils! Goddamn!” I think of a time when that syphilitic hag Babs Walters and I were having a contest, high on tequila and benzos, to see how many beans we could put up our noses. She wound up winning after sucking up enough legumes to make a lovely cassoulet. But I digress. Scarlett seems now suddenly…sad. Now, I am known in Hollywood for my absolutely ineffable capacity for compassion, my golden empathetic heart and profuse selflessness. My charity is well known and often compared to that of say…an Audrey Hepburn or a…Peggy Guggenheim, and…oh here I go again but damnet! OKAY? I WOULD, I really really would actually go to Darfur, I WOULD, if it weren’t for that damnedable Angelina Jolie stealing the idea from Chloe, and how I would be subsequently, and in no uncertain terms cut off from certain other parties if I were to ACTUALLY go there, and…but now, at this very moment, to be quite frank, I can not somehow find it in me, this beneficent…altruistic heart for which, among many other interesting facts, I am famous the world over, as Miss Scarlett Jo hasn’t so much as offered me a single fucking key bump of her shit, when it’s obvious, quite obvious that she knows that I know that we know all the same people! I mean it’s not like I wasn’t up all night in god damned Malibu listening to that uber self-important Gena Rollands ranting about “her god damned Jew lawyers and agents!” Before I either drolly, or banally, hint at a bump of her blow, suddenly, Scarlet slams her hands down onto the white plastic patio furniture and darts for the front counter again. Now, before I comment on what I saw next, allow me to explain one thing. I have been frequenting Pink’s Hot Dogs since I was in Junior High School. I’ve simply adored their spicy ambrosia-like chili, and their specially manufactured Hoffy Hot Dogs that SNAP when you bite into them, for years, just like everyone else. Everyone else since 1939 in fact. Back before they had an all-girl staff, flirtatious Salvadorian queens included, they had these old men, brash old fuckers who used to scream at you if you didn’t speak up loud enough or simply skip over you and go onto the next customer. Before they named their menu items (all pretty much a variation of the classic weiner and bun configuration) names like; The Martha Stewart dog, or The Rosie O’Donell dog, or the Hugh Houser dog…who the fuck is Hugh Houser anyway! Before, when they only carried a particular type of soda imported, from of all places, Israel. As Scarlett Johansson finally sat, I noticed that two of the Salvadorian workers, eyes diverted to the ground, were standing behind her. Together, the three of them had five plastic trays piled high with food. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! It was vile and disgusting! What a fucking pig! Scarlett Johansson’s a god-damned pig! She had four MULLHOLLAND DRIVE DOGs (I don’t know about anyone else out there, but I personally don’t want to eat anything named after Mullholland Drive, and nor would you if you’d been with me the time Carrie Fisher made me pull over to the side of the road at around three a.m. one fine Easter Sunday morning so that she could go take a dump and get some…I don’t remember…some sort of shrubbery cuttings in the back of Farrah Fawcett’s backyard), 3 Lord of the "RINGS" Dogs, what looked like 3 of the aforementioned Martha Stewart dogs, 2 bacon burrito dogs (two Hoffy hot dogs with a stack of bacon, American chesses, onions and a enormous plop of their world famous chili wrapped up and grilled in a giant flour tortilla) several baskets of their special onion rings, a couple orders of French fries, a bucket of cole slaw, and what looked like two six packs of the aforesaid jew pop. I thought, “What’s up Scarlett Jo? Did your mama not feed you when you were a kid? Are you going to need the key to the toilet again…real soon…for WHATEVER reason?” And then without another moment wasted, she proceeded to shovel it all into her mouth. She sort of growled at the two Salvadorian girls whose eyes were as large as mine were now, as the girls slowly backed away from the table mumbling quietly in Spanish. “Well, err…Scarlett Johansson, tell me about your brand new cd you’ve just recorded!” Her face is now smeared with crusty, rusty-brown chili and melted American cheese, and instead of the lovely woman turning nonchalantly with the tiny pearl earring, like in the movie, her face looked more like a baby’s shitty diaper. I tried to recall lovelier images of her; the beautiful Charlotte in Lost in Translation, the lovely Rebecca in Ghost World, the irresistible Nola in Match Point, but I just couldn’t! It was like the pink elephant in the room…the fucking pink elephant! Except in this case, the pugnacious pachyderm is Scarlett Johansson pounding pepperoncini and pastrami post haste! “So, it’s been said to be part My Bloody Valentine/David Bowie-esque, with equal parts Velvet Underground, Nico era, meets Jane Birkin and…”
Then I saw it. It was absurd. It was…just…absurd. It was quite frankly, also, I must admit, quite miraculous! Now, the Columbian nose cluster was somehow the size of a jellybean. How the hell did she breathe! It hung precariously to the very end of her nose as if a grape. Not to mention the thick, viscous, mountain of food she’d become, or, rather morphed into within the last three minutes or so. She was turning into fucking Jaba The Hut before my very eyes. Who am I kidding? She made Jaba look like Francois Hardy's 12 year-old sister locked in a celler! And then, as if a Persian kitty on a silk pillow, the docile and dainty Scarlett Johansson says, “oh I enjoyed myself very much. You know David…David Bowie is actually on it!” “The record”, she says. When she opens her mouth to speak, it’s as if a ray of beautiful sunshine illuminates her every breath. She is the loveliest creature on god’s green planet. But then, you connect the face to the voice and it’s like you’re looking down the manhole of a Paris sewer. Quite wretched really. I watch her. I know she’s saying something. It’s all too sweet. And then suddenly I pity her. It’s just my way. She’s clearly one big hot mess, but honestly, who knew! I say to her, “congratulations on your recent engagement.” She’s to marry the actor Ryan Reynolds whom I don’t have the heart to tell her I’ve recently spotted at The Hollywood baths on Ivar, dressed in nothing but a surgical scrub top, a violet wig, and an orange jock strap. And, if he wasn’t as talented and as important an actor as he is, and I mean that, I wouldn’t have fucked him that night in the bathroom of The Monica Fourplex near the third street promenade.
But by now, Scarlett Johansson is one gelatinous blob forming, dripping from the shoulders down to the hot asphalt of Pink’s patio, bright ORANGE! It’s like a giraffe had diarrhea and shat out an orange heap of Hollywood A-list star-studded poo. Yes, that’s exactly it. A giraffe, on the corner of Melrose and La Brea just shat next to me and somewhere on the top of this massive mound of giraffe shit is what now looks like a fist-sized ball of cocaine, resting there, hanging from the oh so very very precious nose of Scarlett Johansson. Suddenly the black 69 Jag appears. The guy, the driver, jumps out of the car and runs over to where I’m sitting. He begins screaming, “Miss Johansson, not again! Fuck! Not again!” He shoots me a look, as if I were to blame, “Could you help me get her into the car please!” “Not without a has mat suit and a 20,000 dollar retainer buddy.” And I thought her fiancé, Ryan Reynolds, star of The Amityville Horror (remake) and Van Wilder (his co-star Tara Reid, a complete heroin addict, clepto and sometimes cutter) was a sloppy pass around party bottom…I mean, just look at her! She’s just GROSS!” But finally, I relent. I and several other unfortunates, sans driver who suddenly had to make A PHONE CALL, somehow manage to scoop Scarlett Johansson up and back into the back of the black 69 Jag. I decide that I will just make up a story. My deadline is this Friday. In it, Scarlett Johansson drives me to The Getty and together with several other triple A-listers, have a private listen-to of the aforesaid debut cd. Afterward, Scarlett drops me off at my place in WEHO where actor/future husband of aforesaid actress waits for me in my lobby with a bouquet of yellow jonquils and the CUTEST PUPPY DOG SMILE!
