Blankie gets it right

Blankie told me my new mantra: DO IT, GET THROUGH IT, YA DON'T DIE. It really is a balsm, a salve, an ointment, an elixir and a tonic (sorry, I can't say the word balsm without going through all the cinnamons I can for that word. reflexive autistic tick). I said it when I walked into my first musical audition in nearly 20 years. For a Disney show. I sang "Ain't Love a Kick in the Head." Prolly not the standard 16 bars, but they let me sing the whole song through.

And I said it all through my experiences in Cut-Throat Caroling. Oh yeah, one year you're the Fah-La-Lah, and the next, you don't got a bell, and you're yuletide's in hell. I'll get to that.

But first ... Today Blankie and I went to the Surplus Store. Our mission: to not be be-headed whilest stealing a look. To not spend money. To get a shot of me looking like a drill sergeant, without spending any money. Of course, the overly helpful sales lady kept hanging around while Blankie couldn't get the camera to work. Finally, the phone rang, and the flash popped, and we got our shot. I'll buy the hat and get-up if I get singing telegram work, but I don't want to be spending precious $$ on costumes for gigs I don't have. I also met my pal, Merv, for the creation of our own caroling culture. We are attempting to subvert the market with a People's Republic of California look. Goodbye hand-mufflers and fey arrangements, hello coronas, buds, board, broads and, oh yes, christmas carols. How did I arrive at this caroling chasm? What was my caroling crisis? This caroling connundrum? This aliteration alacrity?

It begins in the O.C., as do most dirty tales. In those cul de sacs, when they aren't swinging, eating bad snacks, or reading the Newsmax site on the web, they are caroling. Hatching caroling schemes and caroling dreams. The Christ Child is Born and we are going to take you right into that manger, with four part harmonies, do-do-dos and Victorian Garb. Victorian Garb made for frigid London nights, the kind a Dickensian beggar would starve on, and the Upper Crust man would push the beggar's carcass out of the way with his walking stick. Those kinds of nights. Not 72 degress, at the Promenade, the Del Ammo mall. Did I tell you the girls stick their hands in the muffs? Yes, they do. I signed up to carol, to learn 66 songs in five weeks. Nay, to MEMORIZE 66 songs in five weeks. To wear Victorian garb, to over-annunciate my words and sing yucky manhattan-transfer (remember the 80s?) harmonies and try to maintain a hint of straightness and dignity. Don we now are gay apparrel indeed.

When I asked why we couldn't have our song books in front of you (ya know, like the currier and ives prints we were trying to emulate with our GARB), they said: "We have a muff." Yes, you do, and the girls get to stick their hands in them, meanwhile I have to memorize fah-la-fucking-lahs in minor modes. I literally sat under a blanket in my living room, with the CD player on repeat for most of the week. "This is a tale, a fairy tale about a funny snowman. He put on a hat, a high silk hat, and he came to life one day." I think Frosty clocked in at over 34 listens. And yet, when it came my time to sing with the quartet, I was rifling through my songbook, for the words I didn't need, to a song I did know. But I was scairt, so I paged through, and guess what: I missed the pitch pipe blowing. Next thing I know, people are singing and I'm trying to find my place, without the pitch pipe. That pitch pipe is gonna be my pavlovian bell for the rest of my life, it will make me launch into anxiety-ridden performances of Carol of the Bells, etc. I was bounced. Bring a torch Jennette Isabella took me down. The greche in the stall was a floater, it would appear. Cut as a caroler, two practices in. It was lemons-to-lemonaide time for me.

start at the very beginning, because it's a very good place to start

Do Re Mi, and Fah-Freaking-Lah. Well, my beau has decreed that saving these stories for dinner parties is unacceptable. He is my gay lover, and we frequent many a hoity-toity affair in this town of tinsel. He's a studio executive (V.P. of Publicity) at studly studio, and I reap the cream of his work. In No-biz terms: he's a suit. He's admonished me to share, so, I hope you accept what I offer. My life in the fringes of the entertainment industry. As I told my pal Blankie the other day, "NO, I will not clown." But because that sentence contains two negatives, did I actually leave the possibility for clowning open?

Who knows? I'd clown to avoid aushwitz, if we're going to go down one of those kinds of philosophical traps an older brother will throw at you ("would you kill your mom, if it meant saving the whole family?"), but I have my pride. My pride is wavering when it comes to stripping. I've been deemed a good choice for anti-stripping. The classic british humor staple: people who should not be naked or nearly-naked, running around in just that state. Sadly, I qualify as someone who has no business out of clothes in the public arena. And thus: C O M E D Y! Comedy, the new equation sez, equals bad ideas done well. Fuck tragedy and time, that's just theoretical physics, which we all know contains not one slug of humor. The other characters I'm compiling for Singing Telegrams (yes, the stripper would sing too!) are: Drill Sergeant, The Preacher, Fambah Joe, Bad Santa, Bad Lincoln and Big Baby. I find these concepts enormously entertaining, but then I'm not the sort of person who cottons towards singing telegrams. So, would people who say to themselves, "Hey, I'm gonna get Giselle a singing telegram," would they be going down a list of Singing Bananas, Elvii, hot chix, and see Bad Lincoln as the height of humor? I'm afraid it will be just like my Junior High Yearbook. "To a nice WEIRD guy," was essentially written about fifteen times. Urrrr. I think Preacher is purty normal, I am a licensed minister, I have married a couple, I can do a song, and a baptism, exoricsm, marriage, sainthood, etc. So I show up in a frock coat and white collar, sorta Johnny Cash-ish preacher and do my thing. Drill Sgt. works off the basic premise: IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY I'VE BEEN TOLD, NOW YOU ARE ANOTHER YEAR OLD!! SOUND OFF, ONE TWO, THREE FOUR! DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY ..." Bad Santa is just that, think the recent movie, or Dan Ackyarod in Trading Places. Actually, at the costume shop where I went to see about Santa Suits, the guy tried to sell me a grey beard, based on that premise. Only if I could tuck a whole salmon in the suit I told him. I'm in love with the idea of coming in as Bad Santa, and the first thing I do is just flop my carcass down on someone's desk, the floor and slurring "Santa's sleepy." Then just staying there, seemingly passed out, skunk drunk, and seeing what kind of unease I can create, so that when I start ENTERTAINING it will be a relief. Hoping they are proding me with their shoes to get up, you fat fuck. We paid top dollar for a singing Santa.

How'd did I come to all of this. Well, three years ago, I had a bad Friday. I got told I was fat, I got fingered, and then I got fired. The doctor told me I was overweight [in catskills voice] "I need a doctor to tell me this?" and then I got my first "digital exam." That's what they call it, but it wasn't about ones and zeros, charged or not charged diodes replicating information, no it was a finger up my anus. Then I went to work and got fired from a horrid accounting gig where one of the two accountants in the firm actively hated me. That was fun! So I did what any sane person would do: I got a job as a Hollywood Death Cab Tour Guide. That's right, the Hollywood Death Cab, perhaps the most famous tour in Hollywood, with new dead celebs arriving daily.

Thinking it was a Kevin Spacey-esque/American Beauty tumble into the land of no-responsibility, teenage fun, I found out that the ramp-up was actually harder than college. Three weeks of intense Tour Guide bootcamp. I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'VE BEEN TOLD, BUT MEMORIZATION GETS REALLY OLD. Yup, rote memorization, and plenty of it. Early on in my stellar academic career (no irony here, I got latin after my college degree. Semper Ubi Sub Ubi), I realized memorization was something to avoid. No languages, no chemistry, biology. Cork Cambium, Anvil, Dorsal Fin, Anal Pore, Au means GOLD, but the Indians called it MAZE. Anything not mostly concept oriented I avoided.

During the training we had many magical moments with our pal Dirk, the trainer. Dirk was a midget. Who cares, no big deal there. In fact the program was run by two tall dudes over 7 feet. But unfortunatley Dirk was one of those rotten people who has a disability to hide behind. He was trumpted as acerbic by those seeking to soothe his shit-deal, but was ultimately unhappy and nasty. It's not my fault he was midget, but Dirk saw it that way. It's not my fault he couldn't attain his dream of running dog shows. Yup, that was his dream. Sometimes in our cab, he would look off wistfully into the distance, and I know he'd be thinking why his poodle connections had failed him and left him stranded here with me, saying for the 1000th time "Ya know, there's saying in Hollywood: You're worth more dead than alive ..."

I spent a lot of time in the bathtub (my sactuary for all things trying), memorizing. I was on the back porch, drinking kool-aid and memorizing. I pulled all-nighters, things a 32-year-old should not do. Most of our guides were in there 20s, so the fact that I was 30ish, made me different. Well, that and ...

We had been asked to introduce ourselves at the beginning of Hollywood Death Cab training, amongst cheery actor hellos, I said: "When my grandfather died, there were people still alive from the declaration of independence. Visiting graveyards is one of my hobbies. I dig graves," and sat down. Freak!! "Josh, to a cool, WEIRD guy" they all wrote on my graduation card.

Yup, I'm a Hollywood Death Cab Tourguide. Riding up and down the streets of Hollywood, in an oversized Yellow Cab. Think one of those Hummer Limos, it's about that big, but shaped like an old 50s cab. And bright cabby yellow. We pick over the carion of the stars, revel in their demise and open the eyes of the tourists from New Zealand, New Brunswick and New London. We even have TV's installed,and I can play clips for our passengers. Clips of dead folks, yet folks who's lives burned so brightly, they flicker right in front of our eyes.