HOLLYWOOD CHEAPSKATE!
"Mauve" is L.A.’s premier event planner. And she’s not only one of my most difficult patients, she’s also a tightwad. Petal tells me Mauve is French for blasé, but I’m pretty sure blasé is already French. If Mauve means anything it means Cheap!
Anyway, Mauve isn’t blasé. She’s a noisy little steamroller of a woman, half hair and half chutzpa. In psychotherapeutic terms, we say she exhibits a lot of compensatory behavior. This is a common occurrence among small people and is a nice way of saying they’re pushy and domineering and don’t pay for their psychotherapy when they should.
Mauve owes me for two full years of therapy which, by my estimate, is twenty five thousand dollars. Ordinarily Petal collects my fees but she refuses to talk to Mauve, who typically gallops in the door and up to her desk, tosses a giant Hershey bar on whatever Petal happens to be reading, and barks at the poor girl, “Here, eat this, you poor, emaciated child! Let your muthah know I’m here!” (I’m not Petal’s mother!)
Mauve plowed into my office this morning and threw her petite self on the sofa. “Holy Jesus!” she said. “I could kill somebody! I’m two days away from doing the Roxbury party and everything is going wrong. The Louis IX fauteuil dining chairs I ordered just arrived with the wrong cushions, and my supplier delivered the wrong dinnerware. I’ll use it, of course, but he won‘t get a nickel out of me!”
"That must be frustrating, Mauve," I said.
"You said it, honey!”
"Do your clients generally pay you on time for your services?" I asked.
"Huh?" she said. "Oh hell, no!"
"Really!" I said. Was this an opening for me to ask for my back fees? "That seems awfully rude. Here you are, providing them your services and they don't even bother to pay. What a terrible way to behave, don't you think?"
"Ha! You said it, sister!"
"So you know how frustrating it is to not get paid for your work," I said.
"Like I said!"
"Some people, huh?!" I said.
"Ha!" she said. "Yeah. Some people!"
"Terrible, isn't it?" I said.
"Awful," she said, squinting at me suspiciously.
"Terribly awful," I said, hoping she would sense my meaning.
"Uh......Yep," she said.
I wondered if her subconscious was getting it. I stopped talking so it could have a chance to bubble up. We sat quietly for ten or fifteen minutes, her eyes averting mine. Suddenly, I heard myself say, “So where’s my money?”
She said, “Huh? What money?”
“My fees for the past two years.”
Mauve explained to me that she's been tucking my fee into a giant Hershey bar each time she comes for therapy and handing it to my receptionist. I got up and went out to Petal and asked where the Hershey bar was that Mauve brought today. She pointed to the trash can. They always get tossed there, she explained. I took out the candy bar and unwrapped it. And there was the chocolate and the cash.
Is it legal to spank an employee in California?
HOLLYWOOD HARLOT HOSED?
Mrs. Cheese has a special talent for wasting my time. I don’t believe she really comes for therapy but rather to show off her shoes and to annoy me. She walked in today wearing a transparent clingy white skirt and tall, black, ostrich leather boots that practically cried out, “Louis Vuitton!” Petal says they cried out, “Yesterday!” but who cares? They’re simply gorgeous and Mrs. Cheese is stunning in them.
As Mrs. Cheese curled up on the sofa, bragging about the sexual indiscretion she committed at a wedding reception last night (with the groom), I let my eyes wander down to her boots, whose supple black leather caressed the curve of her perfectly formed instep. Dear God, I thought to myself, I would give my eye tooth for her foot!
She finished prattling and gave me a whimsical look. “So what’s your opinion, Dr. Carla?”
I asked her why an attractive woman like herself would trample a young couple’s freshly spoken vow. “Is it because you have low self-worth?” I asked. “Is it because you unconsciously resent your husband? Is it because of unresolved hatred for your parents? Or is it because---”
“It’s ’cus I’m horny,” she cooed, running a finger up her boot to her exposed thigh. “I have primal needs!”
I told her I could provide her with this season's sheer vinyl straight jacket to get those primal needs under control. But she said no, she doesn't have the shoes for it, and besides, there’s only one way to manage those needs, at which point she stood up, took my hand and put it on her crotch. I screamed so loud that Petal came running in with a fire extinguisher.
Well, that put a sudden end to our therapy session for the day, which is a shame because I planned to hypnotize Mrs. Cheese and try on her boots. Of course, letting me try on her footwear may not be the reason she comes to my office, but guess what……I have primal needs too!
*********************
Poor little PETAL! She feels so guilty about throwing away that twenty five thousand dollars (see July 3), she actually offered to rob a bank for me. That's darling of her but if she got caught, her congressman father would be very disappointed. It's bad enough that she's a Drama major! On the other hand, George W. Bush's daughter had a "legal problem," and Al Gore’s son got arrested for possession, and it seems only to have helped their fathers’ careers, so maybe I should reconsider! I’m just joking, of course. Dr. DelVecchio does not condone bank robbery! You've got to draw the line somewhere!
FUNNYMAN'S LIFE NO JOKE!
and that’s because I was so
relaxed. I’m always delirious after spending my lunch hour at the Beverly Hills Hotel Spa, enjoying their luxurious, hour long de-aging facial. The Spa’s facialists have the softest hands anywhere! And so I was caught off guard by my first client, who came through the door in a cloud of angst.
"Jackson" is a well-known African American comedian with a sharp wit and plenty of HBO specials, but the problems he’s having with his wife aren’t very funny. He’s never actually bothered to marry the woman he calls his wife, and that may be part of the problem. Jackson came into my office today, tearing his hair out. “Dr. DelVecchio,” he cried, “I had a little--shall we say--indiscretion and my wife found out about it. Now I’m in the doghouse! What should I do?”
I thought a moment and decided it was time to address his fear of commitment. “Jackson,” I said, “I suggest you look deep inside and ask yourself what your inner child is afraid of. Is it that you--”
His cell phone rang. “Excuse me, Doctor, it’s my mother. Yes, Mama?”
I could hear his mother berating and yelling at him: “Therapy? Did you say you in therapy?! What are you doin’ telling’ your problems to some jive-ass therapist?!”
“But Mama, I--” he whimpered.
“Don’t interrupt me, child!” she hollered. “You been out sniffin’ round them other women like some ol’ junk yard dog. I done heard all about it! Now, you git yo skinny ass back to that girl and profess your love on a bendit knee, an’ you better have a diamond ring in yo pocket.! You hear me? An’ it better not be some funky ass diamelle shit this time ’cus that girl, she know the difference! Now git!”
“Yes, Mama,” he said. He turned to me. “Sorry, Doctor. What was it you were going to say?”
What could I possibly add to that? I told him, “I’d have to say your mother is right, Jackson. Her assertions that you lack self discipline and that you suffer from developmentally deferred male adult self-identity syndrome with symptoms of narcissistic delusions are fundamentally accurate.”
He scratched his chin. “Oh, I see. And what would you suggest I do?”
“Well,” I told him, “I‘d suggest you drive over to Tiffany on Rodeo right now, and don’t leave that store without spending at least fifty thousand on a diamond ring.”
“Really?” he said. “And then what?”
“Then you get yo funky jive ass back to that girl and profess your love on a bendit knee. You hear me? Now git!”
My goodness, I love talking that way! I didn’t expect to connect with it in such a visceral manner! I felt gutsy! I must tell Petal to "git" her funky ass in here and call Tuilerie Gardens for lunch reservations! I be wantin' some of that delectable Danish herring salad and shit!
CARDINAL MAHONY
I see that Cardinal Mahony has apologized for the decades of child abuse that Catholic priests have supposedly enjoyed. Having treated several victims of abuse, I must wonder why His Excellence is kowtowing to these crybabies. If it weren't for the few "bad apple" priests, those "victims" would simply find something else to cry about. These accusations of child abuse are the worst insult to our great religion since Aaron Neville butchered the Ave Maria on "Pavarotti & Friends"!
Of course, sometimes it may seem that The Holy Church is in the hands of the wrong people. It's jarring to know that priests can be less than forgiving when you most need them. The last time I went to confession, for instance. After I had entered the booth, knelt in the dark and recited my list of sins, the priest leaned forward, pressing his nose against the screen to get a better look. "For your penance," he declared, "you must wear a bolo tie with that blouse."
Nevertheless, those crying adult babies who want some kind of formal apology from the Church had better not hold their breath. It wasn't until 1984 that Our Church was pestered into issuing a formal apology to the heretic Galileo. I guess we know where he's spending eternity!
ANAL AGENT HAS ANIMUS FOR ANIMA!
I wouldn’t turn my back on Connie for one minute, not for a thousand dollars! Not even for the shiny, lipstick-red handbag with braided handles that is currently on display in the Valentino window on Rodeo Drive (breathtaking!). Connie is one of the top agents in town and--like many of them--she got there by being a thoroughly obnoxious human being. This is fine by me--I don’t judge my patients. But Connie sometimes mistakes her sympathetic psychotherapist for the brutal, conniving characters she must deal with daily.
Connie was raised by a cruel, domineering father with whom she identified, and a passive, self-pitying mother whom she disdained. This has left Connie at the anal stage of emotional development, causing her to struggle with a lifelong dilemma: how to reconcile her animus (male identity) with her anima (unavoidable but despised female identity)? The answer: take it out on the therapist! Go ahead and dump on the therapist; Dr. DelVecchio has no feelings! Abuse her all you want, you’re paying for it! The therapist won’t mind.
“Your hair looks nice today,” I lied, as she sat down on the sofa in her blue Oxford shirt and sleek Judith Leiber sunglasses that would look fabulous with anything. Her hair was the same off-center comb-through that Larry Birkhead and Suze Orman wear with limited success (it looks feminine on him and masculine on her!).
Daggers practically flew out of Connie’s eyes. “Why are you flattering me? Why do women feel we have to flatter in order to gain acceptance? Men don’t ever need to do that!”
“Actually men do,” I said. “It’s how they get sex.”
She eyed me. “Oh? And are you trying to get sex? Is that it, Dr. Carla?”
“My goodness no!” I said, a little too emphatically.
“Well,” she sniffed, “I wouldn’t want to have sex with you either!”
“Good,” I said, “because I don’t think engaging in sexual relations with a female is a very appetizing idea. Thinking about it makes me want to vomit!”
“The idea of having sex with me makes you want to vomit?” she asked.
“Frankly yes," I said. "In fact, the very thought of having to bury my face in your furry-----" Suddenly my bowels heaved up inside me and I projected my half-digested lunch onto the rug, splashing her shoes with gnocchi puttanesca. “Bleechggrph!”
Well, that changed the tone of our conversation somewhat. I tried to convince Connie I had eaten bad oysters at a salad bar and it had nothing to do with her, but the truth was God had spoken through me and Connie sensed it.
“Anyway,” I said, handing her a Kleenex for her shoe, “your hair looks nice today.”
A NAUGHTY SHOW: THE BAD SEED
My receptionist Petal begged me to go see “The Bad Seed,” which The Buzzworks Theater Company is currently performing in West Hollywood. Petal says it's the funniest thing she's ever seen and, since she gave me a complimentary ticket, I felt obliged to attend last night. “The Bad Seed” was originally a very serious 1956 movie that asked, “Is psychopathy inherited?" This is a question which I, as a Hollywood psychotherapist, have often pondered... and it's not a cause for hilarity! The film focuses on eight year-old Rhoda, a pigtailed psychopathic serial killer whose evil inclinations are, according to the playwright, inbred.
Recent research actually agrees with the playwright (Maxwell Anderson). In a study involving children who were adopted away from “problem parents,” criminal propensities were found to be inherited. However, after a period of “acting out” that lasted until adulthood, most young truants straightened up under proper guidance and incarceration. We can be sure that little Rhoda, after a youthful flirtation with theft, embezzlement and serial murder, will grow up to lead a healthy, productive life and have lots of children.
While sitting in the audience last night, I couldn’t help but notice that sweet, young Rhoda had a five o'clock shadow and furry legs that more properly belonged on an ostrich. Unlike the celluloid Rhoda who entertained herself with children's picture books, the West Hollywood Rhoda pored over magazines that featured men’s torsos. She also smoked Pall Malls. What’s more, she was in the habit of lifting her apron and showing the audience her black Fruit of the Looms. When the West Hollywood Rhoda skipped off to get a popsicle, she returned licking a frozen squirrel. And instead of a somber mood, the performers--who seemed not to understand the gravity of this horrifying drama--blissfully misinterpreted their lines, much to the audience's delight.
The Buzzworks Theater Company's performance of “The Bad Seed” was, like the movie, a study on psychic disturbance. Last night, however, the insanity emanated from the audience. I have never--ever--heard so much hysterical, uncontrolled laughing and guffawing. Until last night, I assumed “rolling in the aisles” was merely a turn of phrase. Apparently not.
While I hesitate to endorse anything via this completely noncommercial blog, but Petal has begged me to do so, so here it is.
HOLLYWOOD LAWYER HOOKED ON HOOKERS!
“Bernie” is a high powered entertainment lawyer, forever in search of conflict. When he was a little boy, Bernie’s rugged, manly (i.e. latent homosexual) father put him in a dress and dropped him at the corner of Collinsville and Broadway, in East St. Louis---the meanest corner in town. Bernie’s father had decided that if Bernie was going to learn how to slug his way through life, this would be a good place to start. So he left him there and drove the four miles home.
Five year old Bernie stood on the corner crying until a couple of hookers strolled by and decided he was cute. They took him up to their apartment and fed him sausage and beans and got him drunk on whiskey. A week later the police found him at a liquor store, buying a carton of Camels for the ladies. He was returned to his parents. And had Mommy and Daddy reported him missing? No.
Bernie's got an abiding fondness for whiskey and hookers. A couple of times a month he hires a girl to put him in a yellow sun dress with a “dotted Swiss” apron, and spank him bare-arsed over her knee. Bernie is not a small man and so I assume he hires some kind of Amazon.
Bernie walked stiffly into my office this morning and set his arse gingerly on the sofa. He told me he was going to organize a class action lawsuit. He planned to sue the fashion icon Valentino for making women look foolish and exposing them to ridicule.
As you know, Valentino recently brought the city of Rome to a virtual standstill when he presented a retrospective of his fashions and revealed his fall/winter haut couture collection. Many celebrities flocked to the event, proudly wearing his designs. Praise was nearly universal, although certain mean spirited commentators spoke disparagingly of these ladies and their splendid appearance.
“Do you think Sarah Jessica Parker would want to join the lawsuit?” Bernie asked. “She really took some heat for that awful get-up she wore.”
I told him she probably wouldn’t be interested and that we should ignore catty critics who snipe at celebrities.
“I really think she should join my lawsuit,” he insisted. “Valentino made her look pretty bad.”
“Not everybody agrees,” I said.
“But she looked foolish,” he said.
“The opinion of a man in a yellow sun dress.”
“Huh? The opinion of a woman in a Lane Bryant blazer!” he said.
“The opinion of a man with unresolved Oedipal longings,” I said.
“The opinion of a woman who should have cured me by now,” he said.
“The opinion of a man who will get a good paddling if he doesn’t shut up.”
“The opinion of a woman who doesn’t even have a paddle,” he sneered.
“The opinion of a man who is very, very wrong,” I said. I opened a drawer and pulled out my special paddle. “This,” I informed him, “is going to cost you double.”
SIT-COM STAR: "ALCOHOL ADDS ALLURE!"
Kammy is too busy to drive to my office for therapy and so, once a week, I show up at her dressing room at Warner Bros. Her suite is equipped with a double margarita machine (luscious lime and peppy pineapple), which means that, within a half hour of my arrival, she drinks herself into a coma. Fortunately she subscribes to "National Geographic," so I'm able to supplement my expertise in the breeding customs of narwhal whales, while I wait for the assistant director to bang on the door.
“Miss Kammy,” he caws, “you’re on, in ten minutes, Hun!”
Kammy seems to do her best work while she’s slobberingly drunk, so I feel good about helping her career. Unfortunately, she keeps asking me what I think of her performance, and I have to keep avoiding the question. The fact is, I haven’t ever seen her show. I can’t bear to watch sit-coms! The jokes are always predictable, and if the material happens to be new, it ends up trumpeting its own cleverness. The popular sitcom, Scrubs, for instance, has some appealing characters and wonderful actors but the writers greedily demand that you notice how witty they are. The actors should just hold up the script in front of the camera. This would save time and money and everybody would get to bed before nine!
What ever happened to Masterpiece Theater, anyway? Alistair Cooke: now there was a classy fellow! His pant legs could ride halfway up his shin, but did you ever see any flesh? Certainly not!
Well, Kammy’s sit-com isn’t a masterpiece and it certainly isn’t infused with clever writing or original concepts or interesting story lines. Maybe that’s why it gets great market shares and is enjoyed by millions. It may induce nausea but at least it won’t induce thought. This is the perfect vehicle for Kammy, whose head would explode if one iota of self-awareness entered it.
I suppose that’s what I’d like to impart to Kammy: self-awareness. I’d like to make her understand that self awareness doesn't come in a cereal box or a hash pipe or a syringe. Or, for that matter, from a yoga instructor or a self-help book or meditation class. Only psychotherapists like myself can help find her true essence. We alone hold the key to the magic portal of self-awareness, and the key is analysis. I’d like to explore all this with Kammy, but it’s very difficult to do so in ten short minutes, with her makeup lady frantically splashing water on her face and combing the gum out of her hair and her wardrobe lady cursing at her in Tagalog. It’s a priceless gift that I bear and I hope that, one day, she'll be able to accept it.
As the great Sigmund Freud used to say, “Ve grow too soon old, und too late schmart!”
Or was that Pa Kettle?
POETS PLUNDER PARAMOUNT!
One of my clients--“Director X“--invited me to a screening of his soon-to-be-released film at Paramount. Director X begged me to attend, so I drove over to the studio on Melrose after work---even though I was on the verge of diarrhea from some heavily spiced lentil soup. I tried to convince Ostergarrd to come along but he was having an odontoglossum crisis. His prized orchid, a delicate, amber-hued Peruvian odontoglossum, was failing to thrive and he needed to spend quality time with it. Ostegarrd is such a dear!
The screening room at Paramount was nearly full when I got there. Several hundred people had shown up to see Director X’s new film, and more than a few of them were my clients. Mrs. Cheese was sitting near the front, in a low cut blouse, and waved me over: she had saved me a seat. In her lap was a divinely inspired, quilted, black, buttery leather handbag with a detachable cross-body strap and silver ID frame. It could only have been Chanel.
“Carla, darling!” she cried, “I heard you were coming. I’m dying to see what this new film is about. I hear it’s a departure from his boring, standard fare! I’ve never understood the appeal of that man's films!”
“And I’ve never understood the appeal of Christian Lacroix,” I said, gazing at her shoes.
“What?” said Mrs. Cheese. “Oh, these silly things? I wore them for a lark. Aren’t they too perfect?” She leaned her knees from side to side so that the black satin, vulgarly jeweled shoes would shimmer.
I said, “Three and a half inch heels and double ankle straps are perfect if you‘re going to the Hookers’ Ball.”
She set her hand on my knee. “Darling, anywhere I go is the Hooker’s Ball!”
Director X had stepped onstage and was introducing his film. “This movie,” he said, “is a little different from my others. In this film I examine the inner workings of my own mind. And I have to say, I’ve been helped in this process by my therapist, Dr. Carla DelVecchio.” Several heads turned toward me and there was a smattering of applause, which I found embarrassing. “One day,” he continued, “I was feeling very sad and she said these words to me, which I’ll never forget. ‘The problem is, you’re a poem.’ A poem! We’ll, I thought about that and--”
A poem? Had I told him he was a poem? I didn’t remember that. But then, I’ve told lots of people they’re a poem. It’s just a thing I say during a session, a handy space filler. Hello, you’re a poem, how’s your psychosis?
Mrs. Cheese nudged me. "Carla, darling,” she said, “you told me I was a poem.”
“I did?” I said, as the lentils stirred in my gut. “Are you sure about that?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she said, sticking out her lower lip. “And I thought that you meant it.”
“Well I did,” I said, suppressing a belch.
“Then how come you told him he’s a poem?”
I was getting nauseous and didn’t feel like arguing. “Well, maybe you’re both poems. Did you ever think about that? Maybe he’s iambic tetrameter and you’re free verse.”
“Oh?” she said, with a small, annoyingly ironic smile.
“That’s right,” I said. “He’s solid, conventional and not overly inventive. Dull in many ways. And you’re the wild child, full of fun and mischief. He’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ and you’re Allen Ginsburg’s ‘Howl.’"
“Well,” she said, looking pleased, “I’ll take that as a compliment. Thank you, darling!”
“Whew!” I thought. That was a close one!
Somebody tapped me on the shoulder from behind. It was a young freckled lady, a client of mine. “Dr. Carla,” she said, “you told me I was a poem!”
“I can’t talk now,” I said, getting up to run toward the door. “I’ve got diarrhea. You’ve got issues, make an appointment.” I sprinted out into the lobby where I knew I’d find a restroom, but I kept on going and got in my car.
When I got home, Ostergarrd was sitting in an armchair in his corduroy slippers, his Peruvian odontoglossum on the table nearby. Its brilliant amber blossoms were revived.
“How did you do it?” I asked.
Ostergarrd sipped his tea and said, “I sat here until she asked for water and then I gave her some. She knew when the time was right.”
“Your odontoglossum asked for water, Ostegarrd? You mean that figuratively, right? She didn’t speak, did she? Did you hear a voice?”
Ostegarrd winked and gave me his smoochy face.
He’s such a dear! My Ostergarrd, the plant whisperer! He’s a healer, a sage, a tender earth spirit. He‘s one of those paragraphs where every other line rhymes with the one before, and there’s lots of figurative speech in it. You know the word I’m looking for... rhymes with moem.
AND THEN...
I don't think it's acceptable to laugh at people from foreign countries. But Petal insists on posting a picture she found of a lady in a bikini with strings of sausage hanging around her neck and on her head. Petal says it's the funniest thing she's ever seen (she obviously hasn't seen Benny Hill!). I don't know which country this traditional costume is from, but it certainly is unique. When this lady dances her fertility dance, I'll bet the village ends up minus one pig in the poke!
AND THEN...
I hear that the various actors' unions are clashing and that actors may be forced to go on strike again. Well, let 'em! In ancient times, actors acted for the sheer fun of it! The idea of getting paid outlandish sums of money for walking around and emoting is a modern invention.
AND THEN...
Petal reminds me that if the actors go on strike, a major portion of my income will go with them. Well, I believe the President of the United States should treat actors the same way Ronald Reagan treated air traffic controllers when they struck. MAKE 'EM WORK OR ELSE! Movie directors should bring stun guns onto the set. If actors refuse to emote, zap 'em 'til the tears flow! This may seem a stern inducement to behave but I'm sure you'll agree, it puts everything in perspective and keeps the public happy. Petal says that disobedient Actors should be forced to walk around with a scarlet A on their breast. Goodness, why not just burn 'em at the stake? Not really! I'm just kidding! How did my mind go in that direction? I love my actor-clients!! What shoes should I wear to the Director's Guild tonight? There's so much to think about!
