I'd avoided Hidden Hills because I thought the trailers were so not funny, I'd have rather had my toenails pulled from my body. Tonight, however, I was flipping and came across the end of the show. The plot I saw, which I assume was the sub-plot, was the wife got a tattoo. A tattoo! Quick, have the townswomen hide the children!

Are tatoos still an issue for anyone? You'd think as common as they are, it'd be like getting contacts. I have a tattoo on my shoulders, a black and white drawing of angel's wings that appear to be coming out of my back. The punchline usually is "Does that mean you're an angel?" to which I grimly reply, "Lucifer was an angel too." C'mon, people, work with me here.

My mother bought me the tattoo for my birthday. She asked what I wanted, I said "A tattoo" and she sent me a check when I told her the cost. It was one of the coolest b-day presents I've ever gotten and one of the few I still have.

When I got the tattoo, it was still illegal in NYC. Officially, that is, but as with everything there was a large underground community. The manager at one photography studio had the full monty, her arms and legs covered in intricate drawings. I got her tattooist's name and number and after calling and saying I was refered, was given an address and an appointment.

The address was in the East Village, not my usual stomping ground but not a surprise given the product. I took a cab, natch, and got out to an unmarked basement-level door with a small peekhole like a speakeasy in an old movie.

I rang the bell and after being given the once-over, was let inside. The interior was banal compared to the dramatic entrance. I was in a waiting room which could have been for a dentist, replacing the landscapes with drawings of skulls and fire and the Peoples with Tattoo Monthly. I showed them a sketch which the office worker took and I was given another appointment in six weeks. You'd have thought I was trading huge amounts of heroin or bootlegged movies.

When I came back a month later, I finally met the tattooer. She was around my age (at the time) and reminded me of Painting Majors when I went to Art School. She showed me a drawing she'd done of my original idea and after I approved, she started. It took an hour and a half and the pain, while intense, was not as bad as I expected.

I was forewarned that when you finish, the body has produced huge amounts of endorphins to counter the pain and you are basically "high". This was definately a perk to counter not being able to see the results. On Hidden Hills, the lead actress gets a small tattoo of a red pepper on her ass but acts like she got a head grafted on her hip. Again, we never get to see the results but I waited and waited and never got the High.

10:49:40 PM    sro home /

So Willow's back. You know she feels better and stopped being all "Goddess of Doom" because she shows up dressed like Melissa Ethridge, frilly sheer Mick Jagger shirt under a leather jacket. It means "I'm ready to kick ass", the male equivilent being either a headband or motorcycle boots.

Dawn, meanwhile, declares as part of her new tough-routine "I need to wear more heels." Damn, she is tough. Once she's rendered immobile by this demon-thingy, adding heels would only make her look even more like an inflatable doll.

The demon turns out to be the illegitimate child of The Grinch and Jimmy Durante, strutting around all green and big-nosed. As television shows are want to do, everything works out and Willow and her friends are reunited.

In the last scene, Buffy wears a white tank top and from the back you can see she has on a flesh-colored bra. From the front you barely notice but when they shoot over her shoulder, the buckle or whatever it's called is perched right on her shoulder. She can have sex, kill monsters of the underworld but can't let her nipples show.

Even in TV World, you have to pick your battles.

9:06:30 PM    sro home /

I am so bummed about Martha Stewart. For Virgos like myself, she was a Messiah, pushing the Anal Ideals of right and wrong, good and bad, better and best to their rightful place at the front of the line. She would crown certain methods as the proper ones and I could go "Well I do that" and finally feel both appreciated and validated.

Judging from the glimpses she allows, her home is a little "Kountry With A K" for my tastes, relying as it seems to on "weathered" anything and lots of plants. I prefer the Martha in her magazine, the one that's been filtered through so many Queens, it's like looking at Liza through David's eyes. Here the environment is more hip, a little more mid-century-ish, a little more Ikea and a little less Pottery Barn.

While I love to cook, the recipes are lessons in frustration. If there isn't one ingredient you can't find here on Planet Earth, there's an ingredient which she's made herself and involves another whole fucking day. The recipe says "butter", easy enough, then says "see below". There you find instructions for some extra-special-homemade thing she made in her Martha Dairy which you would no sooner make than throw yourself in front of a bus. If I have to make the butter first, I might as well go out and buy the whole damn thing.

This is where her website steps in. Pretty smart huh? On her site, you can buy the Made thing that just looks Homemade. Verrry clever. Buy the Made thing that looks Homemade, take it apart, fuck it up and then put it back together for that Genuine Homemade Feel.

Years ago in New York I was working on a photo shoot and word got around that Martha Stewart was working in the studio next to ours. This was apparently one of the shoots for the first issue of her magazine. She wasn't yet a God, or a Siren. When I went to look, she was a woman rabidly stuffing roses into a huge arrangement sitting in her lap. She did it with the intensity you see in women crocheting or weavers with a loom. She never looked up and I certainly wasn't about to interrupt her Decorator Trance.

When I go to K-Mart and buy her sheets, I like to think of her in a warehouse somewhere, diligently stuffing the sheets into their packages with the same fervor she used on the roses. Or at least behind her is a long line of Virgo workers, their immaculate work tables stretching as far as the eye can see .

4:25:08 PM    sro home /

I had a link today from someone looking for "astronaut village" and I have to say, I love the idea.

I can picture, at the end of a long day Astronauting, all the Astronauts gathering at the local Astropub, chatting about their day at work, sucking on their Astrobeers (because they're all in beertubes, natch) and watching a game of Astroball on the AsTroV.

On the weekends, the Village has an Astrodance where some of the younger Astronauts can go and flirt. Since they built the Big Space Station, more and more Young Astronauts have been leaving the Village. It's hard to find Space work in such a small community and less of them remain and form roots.

Then the Astroqueers move in, lured by the low rents and quaint surroundings. Suddenly the Village is swamped with Astrotiques selling overpriced furniture from the Nineties and Astronaut Suit stores selling suits without sleeves and suggestive phrases on the front. They also refurbish most of the Astrohouses and soon rents are, well, sky-high.

This attracts the attention of the Astroyuppies, hungry for The Next Big Thing and the only Astronauts left who can afford to live there. What was once a quaint Futuristic Village is suddenly overrun with Astrollers and before you know it, an Astrobucks.

You know it will happen. I've seen the Future and the Future is Now.

11:40:58 AM    sro home /

Tuesday's are my therapy days. I get shrunk. My therapist is great, he's Super Therapist and I've been very lucky. In New York, my therapist would wear a coat and tie and I called him "Dr.". Here in LA, natch, it's much more cashz and I call him by his first name just like he's a real person.

He's very handsome in a "TV Dad" kind-of way and in fact, again true to LA, he used to be an actor. His handsomeness was the first thing the friend who referred him told me, like a big selling point, but fortunately the world has different ideas about such things and while I concur, he's not my type.

The woman who sees him before me is this super-model/actress who used to be on a popular TV show. I only know this because the waiting room is shared with another therapist and the person waiting for the other therapist and I talk about her when she comes out.

Not to her face of course. We whisper about it before she emerges and then when the door opens we shut up and pretend to read magazines. She always seems a little freaked out and sometimes covers her whole body with a big blanket.

Fortunately, my shrink gets very cool magazines - Rolling Stone, The Advocate, New Yorker - and there's always something to read (or pretend like you're reading). Sometimes I even go early just to catch up on my mag reading and avoid having to buy them. Plus to get ready for when She comes out.

I absolutely respect anyone's rights and privacy when seeing a shrink and would never tell someone who she is. It helps that I don't actually know who she is other than this Glamazon who obviously has Big Issues.

In the end. it's been beneficial. It's a literal lesson that "see, even super model/glamazon/actresses have problems". You can watch all the True Hollywood Stories you want, but why watch when I can see one every Tuesday? If I ever get a Big TV Show, I'm not going to stop going and when I emerge and everyone in the waiting room suddenly stops talking, I plan to look at them and smile and give them as much hope as I can.

9:24:08 AM    sro home /