I don’t mean to imply that I haven’t gotten weird notes from the network about my show now. They’d like me to develop some magic powers, like the ability to see through lead or bend spoons with my mind. But no matter how weird my show—Ellen—might get, nothing compares to how weird TV was during the sixties.
Not that there aren’t bad shows on now, but at least they kind of have a base in reality. Well, okay, Melrose Place doesn’t.
The sixties were when hallucinogenic drugs were becoming really, really big. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we had the type of shows that we had then, like The Flying Nun.
If you think about it, nuns were very popular in the sixties. They must have had a good publicist then. They had The Sound of Music, about a nun. They had The Singing Nun—remember her? “Dominique a nique a nique a Dominique …” So they figure, “Hey, the nuns are popular, let’s do a TV show.” But I think it was just about nuns until they got the Network Notes. “Nuns are good. People will watch. But, couldn’t they fly or something? People like flying.”
I’m just surprised there were no copycat shows, like The Swimming Rabbi or The Leaping Episcopalian. Because, no matter how bizarre a show is, if it’s popular, someone is going to try to imitate it. Bewitched came on and one year later it was I Dream of Jeannie. “No, they’re different. On one she twitches her nose, on the other she blinks. But the most important thing is, one’s a witch and the other’s a genie. It’s so different it’s not even funny.”
Other similar shows were The Addams Family and The Munsters; Gilligan’s Island and Lost in Space; Mr. Ed and My Mother the Car (one is a talking horse, the other a talking car—they’re both transportation); Gunsmoke and 60 Minutes (well, they both have a bunch of guys and one girl).
My Mother the Car has to be the weirdest show ever. It even tops The Flying Nun. A man’s mother dies and is reincarnated as a car. It could happen. I mean, a talking toaster or talking can opener, an ironing board or a Ping-Pong table—those would be ridiculous. But a talking car? That’s much more likely.
Somewhere along the way to putting this show on the air, drugs had to be involved. It was the sixties. To me it sounds like the last idea you have, and you mention it, kind of embarrassed, after all your other ideas have been rejected. “I came up with this one at 3:00 in the morning. I don’t know … Well, it’s a talking car—you know, like they have—and it’s this guy’s mother … I guess.”
Now he might not have been zoned out on boo or goofballs, but the network guy who bought it, man, he had to be on something. “Right, it talks. Just like a person talks. I dig it. Write it up. I’ll give you more notes after I tie-dye my shirt and drive up to San Francisco to see the Grateful Dead. Wow. Look at my fingers. They’re funny.”
I saw Jerry Van Dyke, the star of My Mother the Car, in person around the time that show was on the air, but it’s kind of embarrassing how I saw him. The only major trip that my family ever took was to Los Angeles, Disneyland, and Anaheim. We took a train and that was kind of fun. My parents told my brother and me that it was an airplane, but we figured out after the first thousand miles that they were lying. We went to Hollywood and saw the set where Gillian’s Island was shot. That was every bit as exciting as you could imagine.
While we were in Hollywood, my mom spotted Jerry Van Dyke walking down some street. It was a big deal for us to see a celebrity, so, when my mother saw him she screamed, “There’s Dick Van Dyke’s brother!” He looked around kind of uncomfortably. Even as a child, I was humiliated. I just knew that that wasn’t a good thing.
I don’t remember how old I was at the time. Maybe my parents would remember or perhaps even Jerry Van Dyke.
I guess they had another talking-car show in the eighties: Knight Rider. That was much different, though. It was a drama and not a comedy.
Actually, of all those odd shows, Mr. Ed doesn’t sound so weird. I guess that’s because my Uncle Cookie had a talking horse. Well, it was really a dog with a saddle on it, but my Uncle Cookie thought it was a horse. He was blind and a little loopy.
We didn’t want to break his heart. It was all he had, that horse. Or dog. It was a small dog. But he never saw a horse, so he didn’t know how big it was supposed to be.
Nobody heard him talk but my Uncle Cookie. The dog would be lying on the floor (actually it was dead) and my Uncle would say, “That’s a good one, Spot. He’s telling a joke now.”
That’s right, Uncle Cookie.
I went to a
psychic
or
baloney is just salami with an
inferiority complex
A lot of people who know I’m writing a book ask me, “So, do you think it’s going to be any good? Well, do you?”
It’s hard to tell how successful or good anything is going to be. And, to be honest, it makes me a little nervous. That’s why I decided to do the only rational thing: go to a psychic. I mean, what’s the use of putting in a lot of hard work if this book is going to be a flop? I could better use my time doing other stuff, like becoming a professional ballerina or flossing.
The first psychic I went to wasn’t that good. Do you know how some people go to student beauticians to save a little money? I went to a student psychic. There was a little psychic academy in a mini-mall between a video store and a frozen-yogurt place. It was called Gus’s Psychic School.
My student psychic was named Chuck. He was an ex-soldier who was going to psychic school on the GI Bill. The first thing he said to me was “You are at a crossroads and confused. There are questions you want answered.” “Well, yeah,” I said, “that’s why I’m here. Why else would I go to a psychic?” I should have gotten suspicious when he said, “How am I supposed to know? What am I, Kreskin?”
Chuck said “Oooooooo” and raised his hands in the air every time he made a prediction. I guess he thought it looked like he was communicating with powerful entities in the spirit world, but to me it looked like he was auditioning for a minstrel show. I knew he was bad because he wouldn’t say anything without first consulting his Time/Life book on unexplained phenomena.
His predictions were kind of vague, to say the least. “I see you pouring some kind of liquid into your mouth out of a cylindrical object. This object, it’s made of … glass. After you pour the liquid into your mouth, you will no longer be thirsty.”
“There is someone important in your life whose name Starts with either the letter E … C …B … F … or M through W.”
“You have a brother or a sister. Either that or you are an only child.” I told him I had a brother; he seemed proud of himself, then went back to psychicing.
“Your brother knows how to drive.” As a matter of fact he does. He drives an ambulance. He’s not a paramedic or anything, he just got a good deal on it. It doesn’t get very good mileage, but the upside is he’s never late to meetings.
“On Letterman tonight, Dave’s guests will be Angela Lansbury and Sting.” I had to tell him that wasn’t a prediction, it was a blurb from TV Guide. He tried to cover by saying he has never read TV Guide, even though there was one on his desk with the crossword puzzle half done. Then he said that so much came to him, he couldn’t remember if it was a prediction or if he read it somewhere.
I asked him about my past lives, hoping that I had been Cleopatra or, at the very least, someone who once had lunch with Cleopatra. He told me that once I had been a monkey, but that in my last life I was a spring roll at a Chinese restaurant. Now that’s ridiculous, even though it does explain a recurring nightmare where I’m held upside down over a dish of hot mustard sauce.
At a beautician school, there is a teacher present at all times to advise the student and make sure things don’t get too out of hand. At the psychic academy, the psychic teacher wasn’t there. He would just call in by phone now and then from his condo in Hawaii to tell his students he knew they were doing a good job. Or he would call and say things like “Tell that woman there’s something caught in her teeth.”
>
The student psychic finally admitted that he wasn’t very good. He was, however, able to predict where I would find a good psychic. The session wasn’t a total waste because he gave me a dollar-off coupon for the frozen-yogurt place next door.
You could tell the woman he referred me to was good because she opened the door before I rang the bell. Then she said, “You must be Ellen.” Well, that was the capper. Because Ellen is my name and all. Sure I had an appointment, and she could have been looking through the keyhole, but I prefer to think she had finely honed psychic powers.
It seems most psychics have names like Esmerelda or Cassandra—spooky kinds of names. Mine was named Shari Lewis. Not the woman with Lambchop the puppet, just somebody with the same name. I wouldn’t trust a psychic who used a puppet. I don’t think it’s because I’m prejudiced or anything. It’s just that it would disturb me to have a little puppet voice say, “You will be successful as long as you never get up on stilts. Avoid Circus of the Stars—don’t even watch it.”
The psychic knew that I was nervous about writing a book. This might be because the first thing I said to her was “I’m nervous about writing a book.” She looked me in the eye (or possibly both eyes, I don’t remember) and without raising her arms or saying, “Ooooooooo,” she made her predictions. The good news, she said, was that my book is going to be on best-seller lists for over twenty-five years and win a ton of awards (literally a ton; they’ll actually weigh them at one point). The bad news, though, was that I was going to have to sit down and actually write the book. I was kind of hoping that elves would come in the middle of the night while I was sleeping and write a best-seller for me; the psychic told me that though this wasn’t impossible (she claimed one or two of Danielle Steel’s books were written this way) in my case it was highly unlikely. Bummer.
Then she took out her tarot cards. She wasn’t able to get a very good reading, so then she took out a deck of regular cards. An hour and a half later she had won $150 off of me playing gin rummy. So you can see, she’s a very good psychic, even though what she really wants to do is deal blackjack in Vegas.
The good psychic would pick up the phone before it rang. Of course, it’s possible there was nobody on the other line. Once she said, “God bless you.” I said, “I didn’t sneeze.” She looked deep into my eyes and said, “You will, eventually.” And, damn if she wasn’t right. Two days later I sneezed. It felt eerie. Not the sneeze, just that she predicted it.
It sounds like a real L.A. thing to do, going to a psychic. I was thinking this as I drove away from her home in my Mercedes convertible on my way to pick up my dog from his personal trainer. What’s great about this trainer is that she also does my dog’s colors. It turns out my dog is an Autumn, which explains why he looks so good in an olive green sweater.
Well, as I was driving, the phone rang. This was weird in itself, because the psychic had predicted that I would get a phone call later in the day. As it turned out, it was my psychic calling. While we were chatting, I got a fax reminding me to call my bird psychiatrist.
Now a bird psychiatrist isn’t an actual bird; that would be ridiculous. He’s a human psychiatrist that deals with my bird’s problems. You just call him up on the phone, tell him what’s bothering your bird, and he tells you how to deal with it. He’s a bit cheaper than an actual psychiatrist—no pun intended—so sometimes I call him up with one of my problems and pretend that it’s one of my bird’s problems. Actually, I don’t even own a bird.
“Well my bird is thinking about starting a new relationship. The problem is that this other bird reminds him of somebody else, somebody who had hurt him in a previous relationship. My bird had been rejected and didn’t take it well. He drank a lot of fermented seed juice and didn’t go out much for a long time. And when he did, he took out his pain on other birds.
“Also, my bird, Paco, who has a sitcom that’s called Paco (he’s a very funny bird), is worried about a book he’s supposed to write. So, he’s not sure this is the best time to start a relationship.
“Paco had an interesting dream recently. I sensed the dream. I know him well enough to pick up the dreams, but not well enough to actually help him. That’s why I called you. He had this dream that he was being held upside down and dipped into a dish of hot mustard sauce …
“Oh, I see, he probably was a spring roll in a past life.”
I put on the answering machine, so I wouldn’t get any more phone calls as I drove. I felt content. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have a good feeling about this book. That’s what you asked, right?
how to
explain sex to
a child
or
where there’s a corn chip, there’s
bound to he hot sauce
Hey, Debbie, this is Ellen. That’s a real cute phone message. You sounded just like Elmer Fudd. Geez, I hope you were trying to sound like Elmer Fudd. If you weren’t, I’m terribly sorry. Thanks for saying that you’d watch my house while I’m gone next week on vacation to the Luxembourg Soft Cheese and Jazz Festival. I know you said you would water the plants, bring in the mail, and turn some lights on so that it looks like somebody is home. But if it’s not too much of an imposition, could you also make sure that the mobile over the crib isn’t tangled? Otherwise, the baby is just going to get bored. I never knew having a kid was so much responsibility! Bye bye.
I’m just joking. I don’t have a baby. I do, however, have a mobile and a crib. I enjoy those things, so I have them. And, even though I don’t have a baby, I have hired a nanny. In case I decide to have a baby, it’s nice to know that Bok Choy is there. (To keep him in practice, I have him read me a bedtime story every night and occasionally I let him burp me.)
I want to have a child. I really do. I think about it every day—and every day I change my mind: I want one now. I’ll wait a year. I want one now. I’ll wait a year. Well, you get the idea.
I think that part of my dilemma is that even though I want to have a baby, I don’t want to have the baby. I can’t imagine having the baby. Giving birth is just so much pain. I know it’s a beautiful child you end up with. I’m aware of that. But if I want a new washer and dryer, I wouldn’t necessarily want to have a new washer and dryer, if you know what I mean (and if you don’t, I really don’t care to explain it in any more detail).
I don’t think I could go through that pain (having the child—let’s just forget the washer and dryer now, okay?). A lot of women I know believe in natural childbirth. No matter how much discomfort they’re in, they refuse to take drugs. Mercy, mercy me! Just thinking about that pain makes me want to take drugs (sometimes I even drive down to the hospital and demand an epidural).
I don’t need a baby growing inside of me for nine months, either. For one thing, there’s morning sickness. If I’m going to feel nauseous and achy when I wake up, I want to achieve that state the old-fashioned way: getting good and drunk the night before. I know that a woman glows when she’s pregnant, and that sounds neat. But, I can get a pretty good glow by enjoying a steam bath followed by some assorted skin creams. The thing that I don’t understand most is when a pregnant woman joyfully talks about feeling her baby kick. To me, getting kicked isn’t as big a thrill as others make it out to be. I’ve never liked getting kicked from the outside, why should I feel any different about an inside kick?
But I would like to have a child. So, one day I’d like to adopt a baby who needs a loving home and be a mother who will adore him or her and teach it important things. I think I’d make a great mother. I’m great with kids. I know this because I’m the godmother to a precious little two- or five-year-old boy or girl (I’m not sure of the specifics). I probably would be overprotective of my child, though. She (if it’s a girl) or he (if it’s not a girl) would always have to wear a helmet (even if it’s just to eat cereal; those spoons can be mighty dangerous!); would be on one of those protective leashes until, at least, senior year of high school; and would, in general, be raised like
people raise veal—confined to a crate by itself somewhere.
I think my best quality as a mother would be the ability to communicate complex ideas simply, I think all parents dread the old “How are babies made” question. I know my parents had a problem explaining this to me.
“Mommy, Daddy—how are babies made?”
“Well, Ellen honey, there’s an egg.”
“Like a chicken egg?”
“No, smaller.”
“Like a robin’s egg?”
“No, much smaller—it’s very small. And Daddy gives Mommy … Well, there’s a Papa Bear and a Mama Bear and the Mama Bear has the baby in her tummy—”
“So I grew in a bear’s stomach?”
“No, but if you were a bear you would’ve.”
“But I’m not a bear?”
“No, you’re a little girl.”
“So, where did I grow?”
“In Mommy’s tummy.”
“How did I get there?”
“Daddy gave her special sauce.”
“Like McDonald’s?”
“Who knows? Maybe.”
“How did he give it to her? In a hamburger?”
“Okay. Yes.”
“I like hamburgers. Good night.”
“Good night, sleep tight.”
I know that I could do a much better job answering that question than my parents. Other people sense this, too. In fact, hardly a day goes by when somebody doesn’t ask me, “Ellen, how can I explain sex to my children?” Unfortunately, it’s always the same person who is asking me that question. He’s the man who runs the cheese shop I go to—Cheeses ’N’ Things it’s called (I’ve always been afraid to ask what the ’N’ Things are). Anyway, this man’s only child works in the store with him, is in his mid-twenties, and from the way he handles a sharp cheddar, can probably explain more about sex to his father than vice versa.