Jean Nouvel

Jean Nouvel (born 12 August 1945) is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of Mars 1976 and Syndicat de l'Architecture. He has obtained a number of prestigious distinctions over the course of his career, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (technically, the prize was awarded for the Institut du Monde Arabe which Nouvel designed), the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2005 and the Pritzker Prize in 2008. A number of museums and architectural centres have presented retrospectives of his work.

Robert Gober

Robert Gober is an American sculptor, who was born in Wallingford, Connecticut, September 12, 1954. He studied at Middlebury College, Vermont and the Tyler School of Art in Rome. He lives and works in New York City. He is best known for his sculptures, but also has made photographs, prints, and drawings and has curated exhibitions. He has had exhibitions of his work in Europe, North America and Japan. One of his most well known series of works was of sculptures of sinks. He has made many sculptures of everyday objects, showing familiar things as well as strange ones.

His work is often related to domestic and familiar objects such as sinks, doors, and legs, and has themes of nature, sexuality, religion, and politics. The sculptures are meticulously handcrafted, even when they appear to just be a re-creation of a common sink.

His work is in many museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Menil Collection and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. He represented the United States at the 2001 Venice Biennale and has had several one-person museum exhibitions including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Jeu de Paume, Paris, and Dia Center for the Arts, New York. His work has also been included in five Whitney Biennials. In 2007 there was a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Schaulager in Basel. The exhibition was accompanied by a comprehensive book of his sculptures entitled Robert Gober. Sculptures and Installations 1979-2007.

Somebody Loves Me by Jack Chick

Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid was born October 31, 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. She received a degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before moving to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. After graduating she worked with her former teachers, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, becoming a partner in 1977. It was with Koolhaas that she met Peter Rice who gave her support and encouragement early on, at a time when her work seemed difficult to build. In 1980 she established her own London-based practice. During the 1980s she also taught at the Architectural Association. She has also taught at prestigious institutions around the world; she held the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois School of Architecture in Chicago, guest professorships at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, the Knolton School of Architecture, at the Ohio State University, the Masters Studio at Columbia University, New York and the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. In addition, she was made Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. She is currently Professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria.

A winner of many international competitions, theoretically influential and groundbreaking, a number of Hadid's winning designs were initially never built: notably, The Peak Club in Hong Kong (1983) and the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994). In 2002 Hadid won the international design competition to design Singapore's one-north masterplan. In 2005, her design won the competition for the new city casino of Basel, Switzerland. In 2004 Hadid became the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture's equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Previously, she had been awarded a CBE for services to architecture. She is a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In 2006, Hadid was honoured with a retrospective spanning her entire work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In that year she also received an Honorary Degree from the American University of Beirut.

Michael

Part One


Feeling pretty useless, worthless right now. Thought I would try to write something. Writing this without the slightest idea of what to write. Then, I remember this, something I wrote when I thought I had something to write about. It is called, Michael.

Thursday afternoon.
The southern California sun is undeniable.
Golden.
If one could see from beneath a shroud?
I’m in the back of the van with keyboard and cello, somewhere in Orange County, beneath the Orange Curtain as they say. I get a call from an old friend. But I miss it so I have to listen to his message.
I don’t have a chance to call him until I get back home to San Francisco.
I call Michael. His father’s had a series of heart attacks and is on life support. Michael sounds somewhat upset. He manages to tell me what’s happened and then falls apart at the end.
I tell him I will call him the next day. He and his sister are trying to figure out what happens next. What to do. The next day I call him and they’re still trying to figure it out.
At the end of our conversation, he seems to falter again, becoming even weepy. I don’t know what to say to him, so I say goodbye.
Two days later I get the call. He and his sister sat in the room with him as the nurses and attendants removed all of the equipment. It was 5:30 in the afternoon. The sun was just barely receding, loaming around the tops of the mountains. He and his sister sat in the room until 9:30 the next morning, when suddenly, their father ceased to exist. He lay there, a silent memory, becoming smaller and smaller and then seemingly tucked away.
I talk to Michael until it seems he is finished. We talk about old friends and how we used to get into fights. Go looking for fights. Girls. Boys. He says that it’s to be a traditional Jewish funeral. I’ve never been and I immediately think about the wooden coffin. The yarmulke. I think about my own father. I’m pretty broke so I can’t really afford to go back down to So Cal. I feel shitty about it. Michael offers to pay for a flight. In the end, he and his sister talk me into it. I feel badly because I don’t want to be a burden on them, especially at this time in their lives. Quietly Michael whispers into the receiver, “hey! If it means anything, my dad left me a shit load of cash.” I say, perhaps overly so, “really? That’s awesome.” Michael says, “I’d rather have my dad.” I feel shittier now. We agree that I will fly down for the funeral and he will drive me back to S.F. He needs to take a drive and get away from it all he says.


I wrote this exactly one week ago today.

Micheal got up early this morning while I was still asleep, the sun not yet up, and drove back home.

I had every intention of writing a story that might be funny. Sad…and funny. I was sure that in writing what I considered then to be prologue, by story’s end, would wind up being, in the very least, “messy.” Sad, funny…and messy. I was convinced, that once Micheal and I got to San Francisco, it would be one endless taxicab ride to the strip clubs where he would, as he would put it, “get laid.” I would pay the entrance fees and watch an “international” parade of debutantes; bad, bad girls flashing their tits and plotting, conjuring up ways to make their daddies smile, paternal and otherwise. He’d spend close to two thousand dollars on couch dances and maybe a good hard rub, only in the end to fall deeper into a black vortex of shame, hatred and regret. In my story, I’d concocted what could only be called over-embellishment, when late one night, Michael and I would score some ecstasy and really, “bare our souls” to each other. We always had, I don’t know why it should have changed over the years, done these things. How many late nights I’d spent with him arguing anything and nothing at all, marveling in each other’s uneducated intellects. How many times I’d recall, staring at the top of his shining bald scalp, all the cruel, fucked up things my father had said about, “The Jews!”

In truth, there were only a couple instances that might be found to be of any humorous bent.

One;
Getting drunk with his family, who, in the past, have been pretty much tea-totaling “re-formed” Jews. I hadn’t seen his sister in at least ten years. She and her husband, a year before had undergone gastric bi-pass surgeries, and were now basking in their new lives of thinness. Truth be told, his sister scared the shit out of me when she showed up that first night. I could not believe what I was seeing. For a useful bit of comparative thought, though I usually shutter at such derisive and unimaginative measures, just imagine, a stick next to a tree, and you will begin to imagine the magnitude of my reaction to her startling wait loss and undeniable transformation. We’re all sitting around in the back yard of his sister’s newly financed, “dream back yard,” complete with swimming Jacuzzi and water falls, when I find myself altogether suddenly engrossed in a slightly inebriated conversation with his sister’s husband about Calvin and his years at Bob Jones University. That reads as if Calvin attended this notoriously “flat headed” school. Never my intention. But the wine, straight from the central valley I’m told by his sister, continued to pour. Tongues waggled, toes twittled, a few toasts to the dearly departed. Silence. And then more silence.


And


Two;
The Rabbi recited the 23rd Psalm, first in Hebrew and then in English. But not the standard King James Version, no, it was of a decidedly more modern translation. So, those in attendance, who thought it necessary or perhaps even required to recite aloud, found themselves accidentally mumbling like a teenage girl who thinks she knows the words to a popular song, at times lost. I felt stupid in my disposable yarmulke. Now and then, someone would look up and then peripherally for some sort of assurance. Blessed Assurance I believe is what they call it. For once, I felt like my father’s son.
An old lady chorus group, which called themselves The Angels Choir, sang an old diddy called, “Always. “ I don’t know if it was the song or the sad drooping lilac’s singing, bound to grace, inescapably, but I did cry. But every single one of them saw right through me. They did not see my tears. I do not know why I think they would. They saw right through me and out past the stain glassed windows whose normal depictions of The Stations of The Cross were now covered with simple and plainly painted clay Stars of David. The coffin was wood, covered with strangely bright orange and red lilies. Too bright, I thought.



Part Two


And then I found out, apparently, on the morning of the funeral, that I was to be one of the poll bearers. This was fine. I’d never done it before. I figured, why not, if not just for the experience. And it WOULD have been just fine, just fine. If, that morning, if upon waking, before anyone told me of my entailed duties, I hadn’t smoked three whole joints!

When the hearse arrived I was summoned by the funeral director to hither come, so I hithered accordingly. He was a pock marked little man with skin the color of pale yellow cheese. He wore tinted aviator glasses and his cheap shirt was at least one size too big. His collar looked comical and if you looked too closely you might see some small speck of dried blood just on the crease. I thought it really strange to be suddenly carrying the remains of a beloved family member, of a beloved friend, along with five other men, none of whom I’d ever even met. A quick perusal saw one extremely tall bald man, a well-dressed, youngish black guy behind me, and a thin man with salt and pepper hair in a very bad suit, navy blue, behind the black guy. Then across the way, standing with the tall guy were two guys whom I cannot for whatever reason recall at all. We were quickly, one might call it, “on-the-job-training,” instructed as to what to do next. Whilst this was happening, in an unexplainable attempt to avoid eye contact with the others, I looked over and saw a rather large mound of dirt, covered with a green astro-turph tarpaulin, and next to it, a most undeniable hole. There was shining, chrome…stainless steel, metal scaffolding stationed around the perimeter of said hole, and beneath it, framing the rough edges, were long wooden planks. Then I saw the rabbi, and not just the rabbi, but another guy who it turned out was the director and caretaker of this specific Jewish part of the cemetery, now both standing on the boards, as if to test their strength. And these were not large men. In fact, they were quite small. The boards sprung up and down with a certain comical BOING! I surmised further that from where I was standing, I would be forced to carry the casket with my left hand. I thought I’d take a quick survey of these nameless strangers to try and find out who would like to switch with me since I was no southpaw. But buy then it was much too late. The funeral director, bony hand like a bleached poplar branch outstretched, swung open the back of the hearse, reached in and unscrewed a stainless steel latch that bracketed the casket to the hearse floor. We were told to stand with our carrying arms inward and to face forward. This was easy enough I thought, although once the weight of the thing was separated from the horizontal bracing of the hearse it became considerably heavier. I felt suddenly very week. Why didn’t I get on the right side! I would surely drop the damned thing and then no amount of cleverness could explain everyone’s subsequent horror. But by then we were halfway to the grave. As we approached, suddenly I realized that the mound of freshly unearthed soil was piled much too closely to the actual grave. We were less than three feet away when suddenly I froze. All eyes were on us. I realized then, that we were to walk up and onto the boards. This just couldn’t be. We would surely snap the wooden planks into, causing the whole thing to collapse, and subsequently we would all land somehow less than respectfully square in the middle of irretrievable and repugnant regret. Standing dead still now, only a few feet from the grave, suddenly the funeral director gave a motion for us to change positions. And then, as if trained professionals, somehow all six of us did just that, and suddenly found ourselves facing one another, staring dead into each other’s eyes, all twelve of our hands bone white, now bracing the coffin. Once we got to the edge of the grave, I heard someone say, “Step up and onto the boards.” I turned to the funeral director whose lips were tightly pursed and seemingly stained purple. Next, holding tightly to the casket, all six of us turned our bodies sideways and slowly proceeded to navigate, inch by inch, across the boards. I felt sort of silly walking this way, and if not for sheer necessity, I might have even found it all quite humorous, like those racy black and white cartoons from the 30’s depicting black faced vaudevillians doing voodoo dances and singing about Alabama or The Devil in Ole Black Joe. Once the weight of not just the tall bald man, the young black guy, the two aforesaid and hitherto anonymous men, the guy with the salt and pepper hair in less than attractive attire, myself and the casket were completely, that is, the full weight, on the planks, I felt them, the planks, suddenly give, slightly. This was it! I panicked! But just as my stomach sank and I swallowed real hard, we somehow continued on and across the length of the grave, finally making it all the way across. And then leaning clumsily forward, the six of us held our breath as we let go of the casket, letting it fall onto the straps which miraculously caught it and held it in place, taking the burden from us. The six of us disappeared into the crowd never to see each other again.

And then, just as I thought the worst of it was over, just as the rabbi turned the shining silver crank to lower the casket into the grave, everything suddenly stopped. The coffin froze. It would go no further.








Part Three




My name is Michael Blume. I have recently been made an orphan. In the literal sense only I suppose. Can a grown man be called or call himself an orphan? I’m in San Francisco. I guess I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning, early I guess. I think I just got off the bus at the wrong place. I’m on Van Ness and Market. I stand at the bus stop. A green trolley rolls on at a snail’s pace but somehow sounds thunderous from the rails below. The wind is really whipping up a fury. I am a lousy Jew. We used to call it reformed. I guess some still do. I don’t know shit about…Judaism? Is that what it’s called? I’d ask my dear old dad if he was still with me. I’d call him up and I would say, “hey dad! Why is it exactly that I don’t know squat about being a Jew?” He’d mumble something into the receiver, all insulted and shit, and probably hang up on me. Or else he’d make a joke. A really bad one. He’d say, “Son, did you know that we had relatives who died in Auschwitz?” I would pause and say, “No dad! Are you kidding? No I didn’t!” He would pause, chuckling, I can hear his exact chuckle right now, and then he’d say, “yeah! They fell out of the guard tower!” This is the extent of my Judaism! Ah now! Ah shit! Now look at that cunt! I bet she could…oh I just know she could suck a fat nut out of my balls! Just fucking look at her! Fucking whore! Who’s paying your rent honey? I start walking toward downtown, what I think is downtown anyway. I need to buy myself a warmer coat. Leave it up to me to get stuck trying to buy myself a coat in freezing cold San Francisco. And that’s exactly what I’m gonna do too. I will not, I promised myself, I WILL NOT go to the clubs. Besides, it’s freaking Monday afternoon. The hot ones aren’t even working yet. But you can never tell. Most of those places nowadays have a rolling stock of fresh pussy in shifts like a Chrysler plant. I really am a horrible person. Listen to me! My dear old dad would probably be making like a fag dancer turning pirouettes in his cold grave if he could see me now. I’m disgusting! I’m a fucking pig! I'm supposed to be mourning here! In mourning! Whatever the fuck they call it! I don’t even know what they call it! That thing Jews do when someone dies and they rip up their clothes or whatever? What a fucking dick! I guess these days...they don’t rip their clothes up anymore? The rabbi gave my sister and me these little black silk pins to wear in our lapels, had a torn piece of silk ribbon or whatever. And of course I’ve freakin’ lost mine already. Dad would have known what they call it. What a worthless piece of shit I am! I could be walking forever! Geez! Where the hell am I? Fuck it! I call the cabby over. “Mitchell Brothers!” I say without taking a beat. The driver drives on in even less time. The next thing I know I’m in a toilet stall trying to get a rubber on my dick. I put ‘em on just in case I have an accident. Some of these little girls can really get me worked up. This place is famous for it.





The rabbi quickly got to his knees, lowering his head nearer to the coffin, as he briskly waved his hands under the casket feeling blindly into the emptiness for some unforgivable obstruction. Crisscrossing his arms beneath the coffin in a fevered and suddenly panicked motion, he looked like a magician out to prove something or perhaps the rabbi thought someone…or something was…holding up the proceedings…for some reason. Then, there was a short sigh of relief when finally the casket slowly began to move again.




This cunt thinks she’s gonna get every fucking penny in my pockets. Fucking whore! Probably will. Look at her. Can’t be a day over twenty. Bet she knows a trick or two. Next thing I know I’m in a back room. These girls really know how to take care of you. She won’t let me touch her cunt but she’s okay with touching me. Through the jeans of course. She’s got my dick worked up and in my pants. She’s gathering up the fabric around my crotch and I swear she’d put it all up in her filthy hole if she could, jeans and all. Ah gees! This one’s really giving it her Union all today. Ah gees! But it’s too late. All unbeknownst to her, she’s pulled the rubber off my dick and I’m cummin’ in my jeans. FUCK! I walk outside the club, watching myself in the reflection of the brass doors as I take my jacket off and wrap it around my waist so no one can see the cum stains. FUCK!


Back at his sister’s new house I learn the whole story, what actually happened at the graveside. It appears that ten years earlier, when they’d buried their mother, somehow the director of the Jewish cemetery and the people, who do the actual burying, put their mother in the wrong spot. Or…that is…they marked it wrong with the headstone. At any rate, the morning they dug the grave for their father, they found the coffin, that is, the remains of their mother, in the same hole. While his sister retells of the horror, I find myself staring into her fancy waterfall in her new swimming Jacuzzi, suddenly recalling something that happened to my own family years before. My father was downright indignant with the funeral director I remember; as they’d somehow managed to misspell my grandfather’s first name on the headstone. I rest my arm on the table and notice that I’ve managed to get a little sun burned these last few days. Then I recall the face of the rabbi as he attempted to make right a very wrong situation, his face getting redder and redder.

A Birthday by Christina Rossetti

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.

Anywhere I lay my head, or, Scarlett Johansson's a god-damned pig!

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!