Photo by Rebecca Schoenkopf”Can I wear my nippley dress?” Suparna the Rocket Scientist wanted to know.
“You have to wear your nippley dress,” I explained. “That's what going to parties with the liberal-Hollywood elite is for.”
Suparna the Rocket Scientist was terribly excited. And in her bright-orange dress, you couldn't help but notice.
Our host, Tim Long, is executive producer of The Simpsons, which meant that in his ridiculously great apartment (or whatever you call an apartment you own) were Homer Simpson, Andy Richter, Helen Fielding (who wrote Bridget Jones' Diary) and a member of Parliament (the deliberative body, not the band) from Littlehampton. He's a Conservative. Most likely the only one in town.
I met Tim on Friendster. But I didn't have a lie prepared, so every time someone asked how we knew Tim, and I replied, “On Friendster,” they would laugh and smirk knowingly. Hey, we didn't meet anywhere embarrassing like J-Date, the love site for Jews where my dad met my stepmom. (When my stepmom kvetched Jewily—which really is the only way to kvetch, now that I think about it—that my dad was getting too old to help me move next weekend and should send a couple of strong young men in his place, he archly told her the Talmud says we see the world not as it is, but as we are. Oooh, that smarts! Nor is he above loftily quoting New Testament at me instead of Old, always bringing up Jesus-and-the-hookers-and-thieves when I don't like hanging around his pet junkies.)
Anyway, Tim and I met on Friendster. For friends!
When Suparna the Rocket Scientist and I arrived somewhat on the early side, Tim asked what we were doing that night. Had we perhaps gone to dinner? Were we on our way somewhere else? Why were we there, exactly, discomfiting him so? (Really, we did look like tartish—and devilishly young—party crashers.) “You invited us here,” I reminded him gently, but we couldn't blame him for being knocked off-stride since we looked that fucking good. There was Suparna with her nipples and I in my classy-yet-whorish blue Chinese silk. Perhaps you've seen it?
Yes.
We ate all the food and tried to avoid the skeezy French waiter and went and sat by a funny blond commentatrix from NPR. “We were talking politics,” she said. “But we'll stop.” Does she not know who I am? No. She does not. And telling her up here, in Hollywood, in the elegant building where Portia DiRossi, the world's most beautiful real-life lesbian, lives, and where Marilyn Monroe lived before her, and I think Tim said Henry Kissinger or somebody too, and oh yeah, Ronald Reagan, would be the height of uselessness.
Wow. Nobody's ever thought I was so beautiful I must be dumb before. Yay, me!
“What's great about that,” Suparna said, giggling delightedly and with a couple glasses of wine in her, “is that we're really, really smart!” She let out a beautiful big guffaw, and then started talking recipes with our new friend from NPR.
With all that Hollywood-liberal elite hanging out, I spoke not a word to any of them. I wanted to go up to Andy Richter and say, “How the hell are ya, Andy Richter?!” but I didn't because I knew from watching him on Conan that he's married (turns out, to our NPR lady), and I didn't want a repeat of the John Doe fiasco, wherein I go up and chat in a friendly manner and he comes back with, “Uh . . . you know I'm married, right?” Ugh. So we talked to some girls who used to work at Burke-Williams and were asking Suparna (she's a rocket scientist) how to catch an engineer and let their parents die happy, and we chatted with the MP, and I talked to a documentarian who's working on a film on Hell House. “Oh, my friend Patton was in that,” I name-dropped, if by friend you mean someone who, if asked, will know who I am. Then the guy kept looking at my bosoms, which did indeed look plump and fabulous, but he thought he was being funny about it, and he really wasn't. Plus, he was short.
And in three hours, those were the only people we talked to. Here's the thing about the liberal-Hollywood elite. They're perfectly nice, and they're nothing to be envious of. Nobody chats them up, even at a private party, for fear of being invasive. They're not arrogant—if anything, they're shy and afraid to go up to people they don't know, just like every other under-liquored person. (Once, during the first couple weeks of the school year in college, I was at a party in Isla Vista on acid, and I was able to see straight through everybody, whether they were being surly or stuck-up or loud and overly jovial; every single one of them was nervous and shy. So I started going around and introducing people to one another, and then they got to have something in common: namely, thinking I was weird and most likely on acid. But by the time I left, they were all mingling and meeting new people and had relaxed exponentially. Why? Because I am a kind and empathetic person.) Why are the morals folks so het up about Hollywood? I mean, it's not like Janet Jackson flashes her chichis everywhere she goes. The only nipples around were Suparna's, and they were still covered, albeit in shocking orange. (I don't think the Hilton sisters and Tara Reid were invited, and I'm pretty sure they're not Hollywood liberals anyway; I imagine them to be pristinely apolitical if they're not actively for the New Conservatism of tax-cut-and-spend.)
The only thing to envy is the excellent hors d'oeuvres.
And after that, we left. We wanted to go to Largo, but they wouldn't let us in even after I lied and said I was from the LA Weekly.
It never works.
Here's a fabulous letter I received this week from Jolene Dugan of Lake Forest:
Congratulations Ms. Schoenkopf! You have just proved to be the epitome of a low-class, filthy-mouthed citizen of this country. Your “Dem Hopes” article stimulated my up-chuck reflexes. I am ashamed to be of the same gender as you because you have just given any female reporter a bad name. You also give any “American” a bad name. Thanks to your article, nobody in my company, including myself, will never pick up a copy of OC Weekly again. This has just showed me that your paper does not care about America or Orange County's concerns, but rather only printing scum that will get noticed. I suggest educating yourself, or perhaps opening your bible before you ever print another article. I pray to God that OC Weekly fired you. I'm sorry that you never got the soap treatment in your mouth when you were younger. I truly think that someone should give it to you now. Cheers to the worst article ever written! You are a Class-Act!
So about what is Jolene getting all in a twist? As far as I can tell, it's that I used fuck or a derivation thereof four times (by my count, but math is hard) and called James Carville a dick. Also, I said “puss-like” and “masturbate.”
For that, I need to read my Bible—which I'm pretty sure doesn't prohibit anywhere in it any curse words besides taking the Lord's name in vain.
Are leftists sometimes overly judgmental? Sure! I mean, God forbid you should eat meat or drive an SUV or be engaged to a Republican operative. But not one of them, in history, has thought that being a good Christian and reading your Bible is a prerequisite for being allowed to speak in the United States of America.
You know what you are, Jolene?
You're un-American.
Suck on that.
I'm a Catholic (I know: it's a cult) and a Jew, just like your personal lord and savior. I am quite literally my brother's keeper. My family values include being ever faithful to my family even when they're a huge pain in the ass, which is always, and to the family of man beyond them. I've never been divorced (just like the heathens in Taxachusetts, which has the lowest divorce rate in the country). I've never needed an abortion because I took sex ed. And I cuss like a trucker, and my breasts look fantastic, though it's a tossup between them and my coltish legs. And like Jesus admonishes, I don't pray in public. That's for the Pharisees and the hypocrites.
Prithee, goodwife, go back to your Bible. I recommend particularly Luke 6:37. And please? Please?
Fuck off, but gently. Liberals don't like to see their fellow man in pain.
