Todd the Wet Sprocket

Ryan McGinley, Dan and Eric,
2001, C-Print, 40″X30″Since Slappy Mickadeit over at The Orange County Register has been getting random important people to rebuild the engine on his VW bus and take him shopping, I've been consumed with just one question: Where, in the name of all that is holy, where is the love for me?

So I called Todd Spitzer—former high school English teacher, school-board member, cop, prosecutor, OC Supe and table dancer, and now your world-champion 71st District Assemblyman—and asked him to go for pedicures.

He totally said no.

He always, however, has time for coffee! And I could get 30 minutes sometime in the next two weeks.

When the felicitous day finally arrived, oh, what fun we had! When his press liaisonista Brooke arrived unexpectedly, I had just the same frisson of excitement as when my gynecologist brings his nurse into the room before my Pap. He must think I'm so unbalanced I'll sue him for inappropriate touching,I always muse self-congratulatorily (after wondering, again, why all my health plan's vagina doctors are dudes). Why self-congratulatorily, you ask? Unbalanced girls are hot.

But Brooke sat placidly beside Todd (I call him “Todd”) and never tried to stop a question, as so many press vixens do, probably because I wasn't asking so much as listening with a rapt smile on my pretty face and probably also because even if I did, there's no way Todd (I call him “Todd”) would be able to keep silent. He's a one-man filibuster. He's Bob Dornan without the crazy. I'd hate to be his lawyer.

“We” talked about all manner of juicy things, I simpering and he expounding with what managed to be a superhunky air of forthrightness even while everything was off the record. (Wish you could have been there.) And my 30 minutes turned into 90 because Todd (I call him “Todd”) was having fun, too!

So, guess what! I loooooveTodd Spitzer! I mean, don't worry! He's totally married and works too much, and I think I'm done dating Republicans anyway, even the rebellious ones. But really, I found him lovely!

A few days later, I got a call from my friend Adam Probolsky, a pollster and one of the many, many Republicans in the county who's pissed-off at Todd because he's challenging his completely worthless fellow Republican Tony Rackauckas (who seems better at putting away the innocent than the guilty) for the title of district attorney.

“A little birdie told me you're writing something slamming Todd Spitzer,” he said.

“No, not at all,” I told him. “I don't know where you got that [unless—and it's entirely possible—my wholehearted endorsement is considered a slam], but I think he's fantastic.”

“Oh. Well. Maybe I can change your mind,” he said, more than a little deflated but game as always. Then he told a story about Todd calling city managers and asking them to have their department heads call him back, and then asking them for endorsements.

It sounds just terrible, I know, calling people and asking for endorsements instead of just offering to get pedicures with them and then letting things flow. But what I don't know is this: Is that better or worse than when then-newly elected DA Rackauckas fired everyone in the department who'd endorsed his opponent? Nixon would be so proud.

This reminds me of what's wrong with Republicans. You take a look-see at your employees' FBI files, and they cry FileGate. They get to power and out you as a covert CIA agent to retaliate against your husband's going public with the truth about their fakey-fakey Nigerian uranium claims, and it's a matter of First Amendment freedoms. You evade the draft, and they faint and puke and pee themselves with embarrassment at having a dope-smoking draft-dodger for president. They evade the draft and start making fun of actual veterans' actual Purple Hearts.

So now that I think about it, Todd Spitzer pretty much deserves anything he's got coming, being a Republican and all.

But I hope the sheriff calls me. I want to go for facials!

Did you all enjoy your Super Bowl? Well, I didn't! I skipped the big charity 'do at Sutra in favor of my dear pal Al Freeman's thingie at Tentation (a club name second only to Sebaceous in greatness), and everybody there (Al Freeman excepted) managed to be both unfriendly and jabbering on coke! The women, of course, were dazzling in their well-planned casual uniforms of tight lo-rise jeans and spike heels and midriff tops and Vegas-showgirl pancake makeup and casual hair that still took 45 minutes to blow out, casually. Really, they were gorgeous. I was chatting with two of them outside—or rather, chatting at two of them, since they completely ignored me to physically hang on a man who'd just mentioned his wife.

Everyone lurked at the back with the sniffling hyena dudes (“I have two houses,” said one, and I swear I've heard that exact line before!), and not a body watched the game.

I left at the half and went on to Garf's, where the people were fat and drunk and knew how to watch football, and got pasta and Buds for six bucks.

Did you all enjoy Saturday's Art for AIDS? Well, not me! Oh, sure, it was chock-a-block with the world's most beautiful gays (Paul, darling, I'm talking to you!), and there were all kinds of old friends who had many nice things to say about my story on cock. But I guess after last year's orgy, where one girl in a prom dress swayed by the staircase, moaning that she didn't have her keys (“It's okay, sweetie,” we reminded her. “You gave them to the valet”), while another leeeeeeaned onto her escort in a slow-motion dive and the publisher of a local fabulous lifestyle magazine passed out in her chair and all kinds of people got into chest-bumping matches with security, well, I'm guessing that this year they were aiming for low-key.

Last year? People were fucking plowed.

Low-key? Doesn't really work for me, no matter how many gay husbands are dressed up shiny and nice.

We sneaked out before the speeches and before Cybill Shepherd was to sing (Remember when she sang “Blue Moon” on Moonlighting? Girl has pipes!) because, well, we didn't have a good reason—hence the sneaking. So if it turns out that after we left, there was a huge gay brawl and we missed it, I apologize now.

But I bet there wasn't. Everybody was all nice, and the only celebrity was Shirley Jones.

Shirley Jones is such a whore.

See this picture? It has nothing to do with Art for AIDS (no, seriously! It doesn't); it's a Ryan McGinley photo in the Orange County Museum of Art's incredibly beautiful (and losery) “Beautiful Losers.“ (See next week's art column, by all means!) From the people smoking joints in the parking lot to the veritable thousands inside or outside watching the skaters on the ramp, the place was the kind of madhouse Saturday night that Art for AIDS had been the year before, but without the rich people in fancy dresses vomiting on their own Manolos—and with pot!

I went home early, completely intimidated by all the pretty sk8r bois, a little paranoid and a little peckish. Nixon would be so proud.

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