The Daring Book For Girls

I worked a teeny tiny bit on THE DARING BOOK FOR GIRLS. I mean, a teeny bit. My name isn't on the cover for a reason; I'm not claiming it as mine. See?




However, I was witness to the project unfolding and all and now the book is out and it's #4 on the New York Times bestseller list and it's getting reviewed all over the place.

And people have lost their minds.

There are bloggers who insist it's some antifeminist creed. There are bloggers who say it's insulting because it doesn't have Dangerous in the title. There are some who say it's Satanist because it explains ghost story telling. And I'm stumbling across chatter about it on blogs I regularly read ("It's all a marketing ploy and the authors planned to do x, y and x from the beginning," state some of the writers who are not in publishing and have never met nor spoken to the authors nor me, and I am only slightly paraphrasing), and then I go batshit in the comments section.

I'm not telling you to like it. I don't care if you like it. If you hate it and bash it publically, just, oh, you know, make sure you've read it first. That goes for any book you announce you hate. That goes for any movie you loathe, any TV show you detest, any politician you vote against. Know what the content is, is what I am saying.

not so much

Ack! I am fallow. Which reminds me of the word "marrow," which makes me think of butchers, bones and meat. And, well, no. Just - no.

I can't handle so much darkness. This sunlight-fading-and-out-by-4:45 routine? It's not the same as sexy, 10 p.m., have-a-glass-of-wine-and-turn-on-some-tunes dark. I fight the urge to pull on fat pants and thick socks by 3:07 and just call it a day. I rejoice on December 21 because I know the light is coming back, though slowly.

What helps is the Busy. However, we're now in major Holidaze, which means some of my writing clients are busy throwing holiday parties and shopping and pulling on their fat pants. That leaves just my writing projects and my writing projects don't handle well my fat pants mood. My writing projects are, in fact, sulking and refusing to come out of their room.

I commented to someone recently that my favorite color these days is orange - in cut flowers, in the garden, all sorts of places. She told me that was because I was stimulating my creativity chakra. I thought it was because it's a nice color. Both work.

I need to go find something orange. Maybe some new fat pants?

Eb at 15.
She was a piece of fruit just past ripeness: bowtie lips, white blond hair framing her soft jawline and a plumpness everywhere, with a special wardrobe just for cashmere sweaters folded carefully and stacked by color, a barn where she used to keep her own horse, a room just for studying. Her father, the wealthy attorney, flew into a violent rage when we left the darkroom a mess to come to dinner, but she said later he was just angry she had dipped into his pot stash. #35

Mag at 15.
She ran away from home to my house. I only lived four houses away, but it still felt dangerous to have her on the fold out couch, writing poetry about slitting her wrists and Edgar Allen Poe. The Internet shows me she has cats and a wife. I hope she still writes poetry. #36

Ide at 25.
She was awkward and odd. She ate salt straight from the packet, drove like an asshole on speed, denied any interest in either gender, denied any interest in any book, any TV show, any band. I was insulted when she stopped calling. #37


I am participating in x365.

Even more TV

Here are my picks at MSN TV for women who could almost, kind-of be real: Real Women.

Are any of them women you feel act, you know, believably? Who'd I leave out?

And, no. No Bea Arthur.

The eyes have it

"Elf" was on last night. Hey, kids! "Elf" is on! So, of course, all of the commercials were for "Law & Order, Special Victims Unit." In the next very special episode: Frat boys rape again! Nice. How about we run commercials that are appropriate for the viewing audience of your oh-so family-friendly movie, USA Network?

I'll explain later, kids. Now, back to Will Ferrell in tights and James Caan getting all emo.

I am right now, not unlike Mr. Caan, all curmudgeony.

I saw two movies this weekend, and I argue that they were, in some ways, strikingly similar: "The Mist" and "Enchanted." Oh, sure, "The Mist" had flesh-ripping pterodactyl things and a murder-suicide pact, but "Enchanted" had a one-footed pigeon and a horrifically wooden Patrick Dempsey.

The trailers for the films prior to the showing of "The Mist" seemed little more than 20 minutes of torture porn. "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" seems to be all about scaring women and raping women and killing women (Now with less Law & Order! Hey, kids! Come see the trailers!), and there were some other trailers (Jessica Alba gets haunted eyeballs!), and I fumed in my comfy stadium seat, growing increasingly angry at Them for making crap movies that glorify pain and fear.

And also? There was someone in the theater with a three-year-old, which I only figured out when the pterodactyl pulled the skin off a guy's neck sloooooowly and from the dark came a childish giggle. And then the mom took her out, which was great. And only 1.5 hours into the dying and the horrory bits. So Punkin missed the final denouncement; she saw people eaten and killed and swearing and screaming, and she has no closure. Nice.

I love movies so much, I went to film school. So now, of course, the magic is mainly ruined. I think about the first plot point and the subplots and rewrite the dialogue instead of watching. I won't say studying film ruined it for me, and that's too simplified, because, really, when it's good, I am in awe; it can be awfully hard to get the good bits to show. Also? I haven't gone to a horror movie in maybe 20 years. I tend to avoid feeling horrified and sad and grossed out in real life, and paying for it as entertainment stopped making sense to me many years ago. That said, sitting in stadium seating with my jacket held partially over my face (not kidding) like a child was cathartic, in its way. I didn't think about what I was doing after the movie or whether I could get a coffee and be back without missing a major plot point. For two hours, I was mostly cowering. And a few times I laughed out loud, but often not when anyone else was, so now a bunch of people in Fremont, California, think they watched a movie with a sociopath. Hi, y'all!

And then, back home, I came across "Lucky 7," a TV movie from 2003 with Patrick Dempsey. He's heartbroken and hangdog sweet and doesn't shave, which is utterly different from his role in "Enchanted," where he's hangdog sweet and heartbroken and is a lawyer. See? That's range.

I'm not knocking Patrick Dempsey. I was Patrick Dempsey last Halloween.

Hey! Wanna see the end of the world?

Cooking without pants

My son is on vacation all this week, which is interesting because he's been home for the past two-plus weeks with chicken pox. So, yeah. Legos and Legos and Mom, watch! Mom, watch! Mom! Come see!

I am between projects, which means down time, which I don't do well, which means Finding Something To Do. Which this morning meant attempting to make Martha Stewart-suggested ginger caramels. And that meant not showering or dressing until noon, which meant answering the door for the Fed Ex guy in my saggy jammies and crazy lady hair, with Charlie, clad in a nothing more than a tee-shirt, underpants, his glasses and a bike helmet (All the better for running into the couch and pillow surfing) at my hip.

Poor Fed Ex guy. What happened to the sexy, martini-wielding homemakers? Hey, did I tell you about when he used to bring me stuff for Hooters? And he would crane his neck around me to see inside, in case the Hooters Girls were collating in my dining room?


So, Martha. I don't buy her magazine; I don't live that life. Her life. And then, every once in a while, I feel frumpy and without and I send pretty much directly to Martha my five hard earned dollars.

This time I stumbled up against her ginger caramel recipe.

It's easy! Boil heavy cream, butter, salt, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves together.

Wait.

Oops. Don't add the cloves, cinnamon, vanilla, ginger or nutmeg until after.

Dammit.

Pretend this is all creamy white, with some yellow butter. Ignore the premature addition of the cloves, cinnamon, vanilla, ginger and nutmeg.

God, I'm bad at this.

It will foam. Don't freak out. It's supposed to look like The Blob.

Pour it out onto a parchment lined cookie sheet and prop it up above your kitchen sink. Balance it on the upended iced coffee maker thingie.

When it's cooled (Martha says 24 hours. Martha, you Crazy!), cut it into one inch pieces and arrange semi-artfully on a plate in order to photograph it.

Get really, really sick of cutting because they are sticky and you are trying so hard to not get disgusting finger prints on them. Go a little crazy and break them with a big knife.



Force child to put on pants already! Take child out for a forced march, and then to 7-11 for Slurpees, in order to utterly ruin him. Bring him home, prop him up in front of "Hannah Montana" (see ruining him, part one).

Proceed to wrap each piece in parchment paper. Grab a (nearby, somewhat clean cat food) bowl for photographic purposes.

You can't tell because the one in front there looks like a Banana Slug -

But don't think about that!

They turned out fantastic. Really. Ask the Fed Ex guy.

Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch

My buddy, Laurel, listed some of the things that make her suspicious.

I am suspicious of:

Salad bars,

The dark under my kitchen sink area,

and

People who have super long, painted toenails. You know, when the toenail extends by quite a bit? That makes me crazy. Don't be all growing your toe's nails so they curl and all! And then painting them a deep red, like you're vamping your crooked piggies! The feet are NOT the hands of your legs.

Added:

I also am suspicious of:

the toothpicks at the front desk of family restaurants,

wilted greens in the crisper,

the fertilized eggs in the grocery store,

toe rings on men,

milk skin on hot chocolate (vaguely obscene),

and

unoccupied park benches.

M
I was so young when I began, reflecting her without knowing it. I copied her way of dress and her mannerisms, never realizing how angry it made her. I was hungry enough for praise that, had it been me, I would have been flattered. But then, I had no center of my own. When I stopped, she disliked me more. We fought bitterly over boys, clothes, intents and purposes.

And then we were 16. 17. I was her Lamaze coach. We'd drive on Thursday nights to the birthing class, with the married, straight, white Tufts and Harvard couples, and rush back afterwards to do homework. The high school suits asked her to drop out, because she was a bad influence. They didn't ask the African American girl who was just as pregnant to drop out, though, because, well, she was black. Some things are just more, you know, expected.*

*That's not even my interpretation sprung from my liberal bias against The Man. She told me so herself.

We lost touch, and we're so different - too different - and I don't miss her and I know she doesn't miss me. She's part of me, though. She is woven into my fabric.

24 years gone. And I still dream about her.

I am participating in x365.

Hi, all!

I am compiling a list of suggested parenting-centric blogs for readers on another site for which I write. I have the ones I visit daily (plus my tacky tacky tacky, must-read gossip sites), but I know there must be some great parenting reads I am not currently, well, reading. My goal is to be (hopefully) inclusive - open adoption, singleton families, multiple kid families, postpartum depression, infertility, gay and lesbian parenting, finding a work/parenting balance - all the voices I can find.

Please feel free to suggest in the comments a blog you like - and/or a parenting-focused blog you write!

Thanks!

I am having one of THOSE DAYS where, even in my head, thoughts are in ALL CAPS. I am rewriting a thing and there's another thing due today and I sprayed the kitchen sink with one of those face-eating toxic sprays (I'm sorry, Gaia! But there was mold! Your verily mold! And I had to slay it!) and the fumes are making my head hurt. In ALL CAPS.

In between the not writing and the other not writing, I have been reading blogs and some blogs? They talk about people I know in disparaging terms. And then I go all Hulk, virtually speaking. The interweebs get so, gah. Just - gah. I love me some pithy discourse; all I ask is we argue about the quality of a thing, not the facts of a thing, because facts are immutable if I was actually there. Like who did what when and are Patrick Dempsey's eyes really that fawny? Yes. Yes, they are.

Hey! It's Suburban Haiku Wednesday!

Oh, my kitchen sink

Shiny shiny sink, but still

Fly Lady is whack

And also?

Help Yourself: 100 self-help books you can do without

I like #40.

tracy u need to get YOUR OWN MAN cuz you a skank!: The Collected Wisdom of Public Bathroom Stalls for Women

Thanks, Moobers!

Simon
We played house and you were always the mom; for "Charlie's Angels," you were, of course, Farrah. I was fine with it, but the other girls wouldn't play along because you were a boy. You made me be the big sister and I was happy to be not-a-mom; who would choose to be tired and sad and worried about money? We were a pair - the sissy and the weirdo. It took thirty years, but now, gorgeous man, you're out and proud and owning your part of the world, and I'm a mom and who wouldn't choose to have what I have? I wish I could go back and whisper Hold on. Just hold on.



I am participating in x365.

My weekend:

I attended a big, grown up cocktail party about which I had been anxious, without major event. Everyone was lovely. It rained. I misjudged everything from my body type (kimono top with wide trousers? Why did you not stop me?) to my caffeine-to-bread-ratio. I looked like this:

Exactly! I looked like the Scales of Justice, with flat hair. And yet somehow, we all survived.

Oh! The best part was that the funny, nice woman I sat across from at dinner? She and Anne Lamott share a medical professional. I know! I am now three degrees of separation from Anne Lamott, and that's without any stalking whatsoever.

You are correct, my friend. It does nothing for me directly. And yet, now I know that if Anne Lamott can have an Ob/Gyn, so can I.

Oh, I kid. I kid you, Anne Lamott's Ob/Gyn, because I care.

I have to tell you, these brushes with fame are exhausting. A close friend recently had dinner in the same general vicinity of Joyce Carol Oates, and of course then there was my passionate affair with TV's Adam West, the time a friend insulted Mira Sorvino at a dinner party by asking what she did for a living (directly after she had won her Oscar), and M has in-laws who live near Robin Williams. If I collect enough of these stories, perhaps it will be like being famous, too, without the money or good tables or swag.

Barbara
When I was the chosen one, they called me "Bra-bra" and "Boob-ra" and sniped at me until I cried, because it was sickly triumph, when the chosen one finally cried. Then she showed up, new, and she brought with her the gifts of thick glasses and a wide bottom and bad hair and oh, it still kills me that I tried to make her cry.


I am participating in x365.

November, again?

It's November, the time of gray, when only extraordinarily good sitcom writing and extra nachos get me through. I have Seasonal Affect Disorder, but really it's Seasonal Affect Disorder with Desperate Ennui Repercussions, or SADDER. And although I don't watch much TV (lies, oh dear dawg, the lies I tell), I do enjoy my Must See TV. Last night, "30 Rock" verily healed me.

I was watching Alec Baldwin tear it up; remember how mad we were at him, like Woody Allen but not so much with the "That's disgusting!" and more with the "Wow, he seems mean?" And the more he makes me laugh at what I do believe is stellar comedic timing - I mean, really, really good stuff - the more I think, "Hmm. Who am I to judge? Maybe his daughter really was being piggy."

I know Alec Baldwin was really awful to his daughter and probably used his Outside Voice while speaking to Kim Basinger and I feel really bad about this (plus he's in need of getting a little more, you know, fit), but I am more crazy about him every week. And the other thing? It seems I have thing - a THING! I tell you! for a deep voiced man.

What? Am I fourteen? A crush on a TV star? Except at fourteen I wasn't all, "Bend me over the NCB front desk, Alec!"

No, really. I wasn't.

But, I want my comedy TV when it, and that includes my warm fuzzy laughs and no distressing complications in my reality.

Remember when Woody Allen ran off with Soon-Yi and it was so squiggy? And then we all had to decide if art and the artists could be separated for us, so we could still enjoy their art and ignore their seducing of the maybe-kind-of-stepdaughter? And luckily Mr. Allen made a number of extremely subpar films, so we didn't have to chose between inappropriately helmed New York Angst and another teen sex comedy? By the time he made "Match Point" (which I admit to liking somewhat, but he was still on alert. I watched with arms primly folded, let me tell you!), we had collectively stopped being upset about him and were focusing on more important people, like Paris Hilton. And now, well, now Paris Hilton uses the N word and also, you know, doesn't do anything, and people still buy her pocketbooks.

Hey! How come Paris can use the N word and Dog the Bounty Hunter can't? Is it that he takes down bad guys as entertainment and we must hold our fake reality/faux-law enforcement types to a higher standard than celebritarts? Or that he has both a mullet and pony beads?

It's going to be a long month.

Jose
1990. I was so proud when you came out to me; as if I had earned it somehow, this good liberal girl. As if it had anything to do with me. I loved your clogs, your poor, twisted leg, your dancing and your ability to deny all the coke you had just done in the men's bathroom, off the thigh of some strapping stranger. The only thing I didn't like was talking to you on the phone; your accent made you utterly incomprehensible. I just agreed to everything you said. It was excruciating to watch you struggle with your belief that your beloved Jesus loathed you.

Eric
I was 15. You were my first all-consuming crush. It was your swagger and your cruel eyes and your blacktop mystique - heady stuff for a lost girl. I sat on your knee at a party and felt, for the one and only time, like the Best Girl. When we actually kissed - oh! I swooned, knees shaking, at the intensity of it. You were every lead singer, every Angry Young Man. Still, I'm not sure why that was enough - I didn't, I realized many years later, know you at all. I even adored you after you dumped me without explanation, threw rocks at me from across the street and told everyone my secret nickname was "Kneepads;" I had no idea what that implied. I was fine with being treated really, really badly, and I think your side of the story was a lot more interesting than mine. My mythologizing of you lasted long past my High School Daze.

Dan
You introduced me to music and books and, really, a whole world that I didn't know existed. You first kissed me as a science experiment of a sort, both in the moment, and also wondering how this girl business worked. You brought, from me - still do - both my very best and my very worst self. I don't understand the connection; I don't know from where it sprang. Not lovers, nor siblings, nor business partners; we are, on and off, an amalgam of all three, and more. Like vaudeville partners, the shtick never is forgotten. Like fading Broadway stars, boozy and thick. Like two old, old men on a simple park bench, with chemistry.

Lawrence
He was my almost boyfriend's friend, the Christian to Cyrano. While pleading another's case, he kissed me. I had ben invisible for so long that although I didn't want him, I kissed him back.

It complicated things.



I am participating in x365.

Kim
She was tiny, with honest to God garden sprite eyebrows. She was so damn fun. I thought she could teach me so much - there was I didn't know about being a woman - until she showed me the face she wore for her lovers to indicate pleasure. She practiced it in the mirror.


Tina
One minor argument - our one and only - triggered from her a torrent of grudges going back four years. They fell from her mouth, smooth from the years in which they had rubbed and tumbled against each other. Three years previously, she was sure, I had called her fat (She was stylishly slender - always, and who would ever call a friend "fat" anyway?); just months ago, she was sure I had encouraged her husband to wander (He wasn't), and always, always, she knew that I considered her a bad mother (I didn't). I kept my mouth shut about the only complaint I had, and I let her go.

My complaint, which is also smooth and worn from years tumbling inside my heart: She decided to not have any more children; it had been too hard, too painful, too dangerous the first time around. When I had my miscarriage, her first words to me were a gleeful, "Now we can be infertile together!"

I don't miss her.


I am participating in x365.

If it's Tuesday, it must be about shoes

I am in sweet nibletty anticipation of An Evening with Grown Ups Who Employ My Husband - said preparation for which includes a girding of my loins, a sloughing of my limbs, et cetera.


And purchasing of the shoes. Dear Dawg, the shoes.


When one is a writer, one must always be on the alert. Not unlike the great white shark, moving, ever moving, the freelance communicator must be ready for opportunity and/or surfers. So, my goals for this very special evening include:


A) Meeting really nice people and eating a plate of paid-for-by-them salmon with their blessing,

B) Deftly skirting the alienation of my partner's gainful employers by refraining from making rude comments about dry humping and/or organized religion,

and

C) Sidling up to Steven Spielberg and pitching to him successfully my latest opus in under three minutes, including small talk and shared eye rolling about Tom.

Possible barriers to my goals:

1) Steven Spielberg won't actually be there.


and


2) I haven't found The Shoes.

The right shoes make an outfit, as we all know. They also Make the Impression. I am looking for shoes that show I'm fun, smart, clever, thin, immortal, talented and ambidextrious. Also, they need to be comfortable. And black. My choices?

A.

B.

In defense of Choice A: According to Zappos reviews, they have excellent arch support.

Wherein I digress and talk about drugs

I am one of those freaks who likes wind chimes. But not all the time (Lady next door, with the seven angel chimes over her front door to warn of a brisk breeze and/or announce the potentially sneaky approach of an extremely tall person? I'm looking at you). I think a well-placed palm tree is pretty terrific. I also like the taste of liquor - ice cold vodka, slightly chilled bourbon. I'm not a big mixed drink person; don't pretty up my poison with syrup!

I was twenty-four and had just started working in the marketing department of an architectural firm in Boston. The office folk and I went out for drinks one evening and the orders called out from around our table went like this:

Zinfandel, Bud, Bud, Zinfandel, Mudslide, Coors, Wild Turkey on the rocks.

Yeah. And so everyone thought I was a hard drinker. But it's okay, because I sort of was. Luckily, the focus was pulled from me and my bad, bad Leroy Brown ways by my supervisor, who had approximately two drinks and began weeping in French. And then she announced she was a small Parisian schoolgirl. And then she hid in the bathroom and asked people to braid her hair.

Apparently, someone was mixing her meds.

And now? Now if I dip into the Sour Cream and Onion Pringles, I seriously regret it the next day. God, that's sad. I can't even binge on junk food, much less rotgut. And it's also good. I like being a lightweight. I like being too sensitive to drink hard or well. Or badly.

Drinking seemed so much a part of the socializing fabric of Boston. It's interesting to move from the East Coast, where pot, when you are an adult, is something one has to look for (I'm guessing. I didn't see it as an adult * and I didn't look) to California, where it's (sometimes) obviously around.

Not everywhere, of course - maybe it's the college beach town thing. The first week we were here, I had to come up with some interesting stories about "that smell" every time I took my son down to the beach. Or swung by Taco Bell. Or sat in our backyard. The town is pro-pot enough that it's been a punch line on "Saturday Night Live."

* When I started running, back in Boston, I ran with a mom friend. I didn't know her well, and sometimes that's the best. If you need to be distracted from how much it hurts, pick a talker you don't know and start asking questions. Then put your legs on cruise control and just listen. Anyway, she was such a talker! And she could run forever. She had a well-deserved reputation of being the most mellow, unflappable mom in the area; she had a number of young children and never, ever lost her cool.

So. Fast forward two years. We've run races together and logged weekly miles and gone out for lunch and done errands and watched each other's kids. And now she's moving away. We went out for a good-bye dinner and she has a little too much wine and what does she tell me? She gets stoned at least twice a day.

Separate from how not good I know this is in terms of being a safe, emotionally "there" mom for her kids by being high all day, every day, I was floored. It's like she had a secret life. No, she did have a secret life. The whole time I was with her every day – for years – she was altered. Every single time. The talking? The ability to run and run? The halting speech, which I thought was shyness? Stoned. Stoned stoned stoned.

The difference is that, if she lived in Santa Cruz, she would have been open about it and probably offered me a hit before our runs. Not that I would partoke. In some people, it causes acute anxiety attacks.**

Or so I have been told.

**It's like living in BriocheAtropolis and having a gluten allergy.

I also like ancient Labrador Retrievers, making eye contact with cashiers and that, this weekend, my seven-year-old laughed so hard while watching the ludicrously stupid "Spaceballs" that he fell off the couch.

*

T
2002. She told me how to make a roast chicken last for days and how to pay with food stamps without apologizing. She showed me simply by example how to not be at all embarrassed by being broke, or dissatisfied or unsure how to fix anything in my life that was wrong. When I admitted I had gained a lot of weight, she responded that my face did look "piggy," and I'm still pissed.

I am participating in x365.

Sunday nights taste better with regret

I'm watching Brothers & Sisters and hating myself for it.

In sharp contrast to being interviewed on The Today Show, I am home with a poxy child. When Charlie was a mere tot, it was requested most firmly that we vaccinate him against the dreaded Varicella. Chicken Pox. It was The Thing To Do. He contracted it anyway.

I have mom friends who do not vaccinate anyone ever - not their own children and would in fact devaccinate themselves if they could, and I have mom friends who vaccinate and wrap their children in Pop Tarts. Personally, I am one of those wackos who admits I don't know all the facts, would prefer to have a Ph.D. in All Things Children before making huge pronouncement either way, and trusted my extremely cool pediatrician to help me decide.

So he said, yep, vaccinate. And I just typed what his arguments were for and against and now I am deleting them because oh, me and oh, my, how I do not want to incite here and now. Not when I am busy trying to gouge out mine own eyes with a grapefruit spoon.

I work at home, so although I should be Letting Everything Go, I am trying to sneak in work between games of checkers that I keep losing on purpose because you should see this spotty, scratchy, sad little kid. And then there are the games I lose by accident because I am "not bringing [my] A game." And if he says that one more time, I may have to start pouring vodka into my coffee mug.

And now there are big men with jackhammers in the street right outside my door, I kid you not. I may have to slip X into my coffee mug, too. I have spent five days playing virtual baseball, actual checkers and many a game of Which is Your Favorite Matchbox Car of the Ones Displayed Here on the Rug?

The good news is that "Dirty Jobs" is free on Demand, so I can nudge the poor boy to hook me up one more hit of Mike Rowe. Not that I find him attractive or anything, just - oh! I hope they throw that bucket of water on him! Shhh! Mommy's watching!

Hey, you know what's a dirty job?

Nah. I got nothing.

Remember celebrity crushes, when we were younger and could pretend something might actually happen? The fantasy went something like:

You're in the local diner/airport/bookstore, and Susan Sarandon/Lief Garrett/Bono walks in. You are looking pretty foxy and Guest Celebrity asks you for a light/change for the jukebox/five minutes in the restroom. And then somehow, your own star talent is accidentally discovered when you save the day by singing/dancing/Bedazzling on national TV and/or stage.

My first celebrity fantasies involved The Partridge Family needing an emergency tambourine player. No lie. I had an official Partridge Family tambourine, with their feathered, toothy faces slowly peeling off. I was all over that thing, ready for the Big Call.