Comedian Patton Oswalt is short, pudgy and gnomish. I think he asked me out on a date, but I'm not sure: I had to take Commie Mom to the hospital instead of having brunch with him, so I wasn't able to tell—from body language and those telling awkward silences —if it was meant to be a date or just him making good on an old bet of ours (for a future lunch) that I could eat a whole pizza. Guess which one among your favorite nightlife/gossip columnists is perfectly capable of eating a whole pizza? No, not The Orange County Register's Barry Koltnow! Me!
Patton Oswalt is on the show King of Queens; he plays a neighbor who's short, pudgy and gnomish—and also wacky. The wacky neighbor never goes out of style! People at the Irvine Improv in the extrafancy Irvine Spectrum like people who are on TV shows, especially if they are funny-looking (the people on the shows, not the people at the Improv). It makes them feel like they got their money's worth. And with Patton and middle act Brian Posehn (who's even funnier looking and also on a show! He's the bizarre mail guy on the once-very-funny Just Shoot Me), they certainly squeezed their shekels for every drop of value. Consider: discussing the pathetic lives of characters in booze commercials, Oswalt reached way, way back to the Martini & Rossi Asti Spumante ads. “Why are you drinking Martini & Rossi Asti Spumante?” asked the disembodied voice-over. “Because he said he'd call, and he did!” the celebratory girl in the commercial answered. But Oswalt clarified that for us. What the girl meant to say was, “Normally, I'd fuck everything that hoves into my field of vision, but this guy's new in town and doesn't know my reputation as the town jizz jar! So I'm going to kill some brain cells and try to blot out the memory of the time I fucked the softball team in the abandoned hospital! Now if only it could kill the pain in my battered, chapped old pussy!”
Chapped old pussy? If I didn't already have a boyfriend, I would put a shotgun to Oswalt's belly and make him marry me. Sigh!
As for Commie Mom, please, don't fret! She is perfectly fine, except for an excruciating case of Tennis Elbow, further compounded by her complete horror and class shame at having something called Tennis Elbow. Make her feel better, and refer to it as “Idle Lady of Leisure Elbow” or “Bourgeois Pig Disease” henceforth. “Call it tendinitis instead,” Commie Mom begged me. No.
Back in the day, my best friend Greg the Fireman never missed a Tex & the Horseheads show. He was all in love with Texacala Jones, the front woman who paved the way for current critics' darling Texas Terri's screaming fits and punk tantrums. Oi! Based on Greg the Fireman's love of the band (he used to stand in the pit while wearing T-shirts emblazoned with unbelievably misogynistic slogans, e.g. “Rape: the ultimate compliment,” plucking small women from imminent danger), I caught a couple of songs at Linda's Doll Hut Friday night. With the Hut preparing to close this summer, there were a goodly number of people making sure to catch the act—although no more than 49, the Hut's capacity. Miss Jones is about a million years old (she even has a granny voice when she talks, though she still shrieks real good), and Mike Martt is still really droll and dry and clever and all good things. Tex & the Horseheads are all over the place this month: they play the Blue Caf in Long Beach on Monday. Boss Tweed opens. I won't be there because I just said Texacala Jones is about a million years old. How embarrassing do you think it would be to get your ass kicked by a tiny, shriveled, senior citizen lady? I am so sure!
Before Tex, I stopped into Chain Reaction for a little love from The Moseleys, but I steered clear once I heard that Bunny Moseley has again been infected with the rock & roll itch. However, out in the parking lot, I eavesdropped with great fascination (while pretending to read Skratch Magazine) on a young lady who is the new girlfriend of one of the all-ages club's many bouncers. She was very outgoing and friendly, asking me if I was there “with” the band “because that's where the girlfriends usually stand!” And she was extremely helpful. She was so helpful, in fact, that she called out to a second young lady (whom she didn't know), “EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME! YOUR HAIR IS MESSED UP!” The second young lady, it appears, had a tiny bit of her bun poking through her fall of false hair. “ALL YOU NEED TO DO TO FIX IT IS GO INSIDE AND TAKE OFF THE HAIR AND THEN JUST PUT THE BUN DOWN LOWER AND THE HAIR ON HIGHER. IT'S REALLY EASY. I WEAR THOSE ALL THE TIME,” said the first (helpful) young lady. The second young lady looked as though she might cry and kept reiterating how embarrassed she was. The first young lady reassured her. “DON'T WORRY! IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME.” Then she repeated her instructions on how to fix the offending 'do, not taking no for an answer.
For the sake of the second young lady, I would like to point out that her hair looked absolutely fine, and nobody who wasn't a nosy, pushy little busybody (well-meaning, certainly, but so is Dr. Laura) would have noticed anything amiss at all.
And finally, goodbye to our friend DJ Priest, who passed away in Mexico on Sunday night while seeking treatment for cancer, which apparently had been kept on the QT. I have nothing pithy to say about it.
Send the girl some love: Co**********@ho*****.com">Co**********@ho*****.com.
