titles on the cards like Smokey and the Bandit II and Saw IV and The English Patient
III.
We're sitting in the back of a town car, being driven from some airport
to some hotel in Beverly Hills. I'm sitting in the jump seat facing my mother
so she can't see what I write. After that, I hand the card to her assistant,
who tucks it into an envelope, affixes a gold-foil seal, and hands the finished
product to my mom to rip open.
We're not going to the Beverly Wilshire because that's where I tried to
flush the dead body of my kitten, poor Tiger Stripe, and a plumber had to come
and unclog half the toilets in the hotel. We're also not going to the house in
Brentwood, because this trip is only for, like, seventy-two hours, and my mom
doesn't trust Goran and me not to mess up the whole place.
On one blank card, I'm writing Porky's Revenge. On another I write Every Which Way but Loose. As I write Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy's Dead, I ask my mom where she put my pink blouse with the smocking on the front.
Tearing open an envelope, my mom says, "Did you check your closet
in Palm Springs?"
My dad isn't here in the car. He stayed back to supervise work on our
jet. Whether this is a joke, I won't even venture a guess, but my dad is
redesigning our Learjet to feature an interior crafted of organic brick and
hand-hewn pegged beams, with knotty pine floors. All of it sustainably grown by
the Amish. Yeah—installed in a jet. To cover the floors, he hoisted all my
mom's last-season Versace and Dolce on some Tibetan rag-rug braiders and he's
called this "recycling." We'll have a jet outfitted with faux
wood-burning fireplaces and antler chandeliers. Macramé plant hangers. Of
course, all the brick and wood is just veneer; but trying to take off, the
plane will still consume somewhere around the entire daily output of dinosaur
juice pumped by Kuwait.
Welcome to the start of another glorious media cycle. All this muss and
fuss is to justify their getting the cover of Architectural
Digest.
Sitting opposite me, my mom tears open an envelope, saying, "This
year's Academy Award for Best Picture goes to..." She plucks the card out
of the envelope and starts to laugh, saying, "Maddy, shame on you!"
My mom shows the card to Emily or Amanda or Ellie or Daphne or WHOEVER her PA
is this week. The card reads, The Piano II:
Attack of the Finger. Emily or Audrey or
whoever, she doesn't get the joke.
The good news is the Prius is way too dinky for Goran and me to
accompany my folks to the awards ceremony. So, while my mom's onstage trying
not to get a paper cut or crack up laughing from having to give an Oscar to
somebody she hates, Goran is supposed to babysit me at the hotel. Be still, my
wildly beating heart. Technically, because Goran doesn't speak enough English
to order pay-per-view cable porn, I'll be babysitting him, but we're required
to watch the awards on television so we can tell mom whether she ought to
bother doing them again next season.
That's how come I need my pink blouse—to look hot for Goran. Booting my
mom's notebook computer, I press the Control, Alt, and S keys, using the
security cams to scan my bedroom closet in Palm Springs. I toggle to the
cameras in Berlin and check my bedroom there.
"Check in Geneva," says my mom. "Tell the Somali maid to
FedEx it to you."
I hit Ctrl+Alt+G. I hit Ctrl+Alt+B. Checking Geneva. Checking Berlin.
Athens. Singapore.
To be honest, Goran is the most likely reason he and I aren't going to
this year's Oscars. It's too big a gamble that, when the cameras zoom in on us
in our seats, the Spencer children, Goran would be yawning or picking his nose
or snoring, slumped in his red velvet theater seat, asleep, with drool trailing
out one corner of his sensuously full lips. This is all water under the bridge,
but whatever flunky does the screening to identify potential adoptees, he or
she definitely lost his or her job for putting Goran's name forward. My parents
fund a charity foundation which
III.
We're sitting in the back of a town car, being driven from some airport
to some hotel in Beverly Hills. I'm sitting in the jump seat facing my mother
so she can't see what I write. After that, I hand the card to her assistant,
who tucks it into an envelope, affixes a gold-foil seal, and hands the finished
product to my mom to rip open.
We're not going to the Beverly Wilshire because that's where I tried to
flush the dead body of my kitten, poor Tiger Stripe, and a plumber had to come
and unclog half the toilets in the hotel. We're also not going to the house in
Brentwood, because this trip is only for, like, seventy-two hours, and my mom
doesn't trust Goran and me not to mess up the whole place.
On one blank card, I'm writing Porky's Revenge. On another I write Every Which Way but Loose. As I write Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy's Dead, I ask my mom where she put my pink blouse with the smocking on the front.
Tearing open an envelope, my mom says, "Did you check your closet
in Palm Springs?"
My dad isn't here in the car. He stayed back to supervise work on our
jet. Whether this is a joke, I won't even venture a guess, but my dad is
redesigning our Learjet to feature an interior crafted of organic brick and
hand-hewn pegged beams, with knotty pine floors. All of it sustainably grown by
the Amish. Yeah—installed in a jet. To cover the floors, he hoisted all my
mom's last-season Versace and Dolce on some Tibetan rag-rug braiders and he's
called this "recycling." We'll have a jet outfitted with faux
wood-burning fireplaces and antler chandeliers. Macramé plant hangers. Of
course, all the brick and wood is just veneer; but trying to take off, the
plane will still consume somewhere around the entire daily output of dinosaur
juice pumped by Kuwait.
Welcome to the start of another glorious media cycle. All this muss and
fuss is to justify their getting the cover of Architectural
Digest.
Sitting opposite me, my mom tears open an envelope, saying, "This
year's Academy Award for Best Picture goes to..." She plucks the card out
of the envelope and starts to laugh, saying, "Maddy, shame on you!"
My mom shows the card to Emily or Amanda or Ellie or Daphne or WHOEVER her PA
is this week. The card reads, The Piano II:
Attack of the Finger. Emily or Audrey or
whoever, she doesn't get the joke.
The good news is the Prius is way too dinky for Goran and me to
accompany my folks to the awards ceremony. So, while my mom's onstage trying
not to get a paper cut or crack up laughing from having to give an Oscar to
somebody she hates, Goran is supposed to babysit me at the hotel. Be still, my
wildly beating heart. Technically, because Goran doesn't speak enough English
to order pay-per-view cable porn, I'll be babysitting him, but we're required
to watch the awards on television so we can tell mom whether she ought to
bother doing them again next season.
That's how come I need my pink blouse—to look hot for Goran. Booting my
mom's notebook computer, I press the Control, Alt, and S keys, using the
security cams to scan my bedroom closet in Palm Springs. I toggle to the
cameras in Berlin and check my bedroom there.
"Check in Geneva," says my mom. "Tell the Somali maid to
FedEx it to you."
I hit Ctrl+Alt+G. I hit Ctrl+Alt+B. Checking Geneva. Checking Berlin.
Athens. Singapore.
To be honest, Goran is the most likely reason he and I aren't going to
this year's Oscars. It's too big a gamble that, when the cameras zoom in on us
in our seats, the Spencer children, Goran would be yawning or picking his nose
or snoring, slumped in his red velvet theater seat, asleep, with drool trailing
out one corner of his sensuously full lips. This is all water under the bridge,
but whatever flunky does the screening to identify potential adoptees, he or
she definitely lost his or her job for putting Goran's name forward. My parents
fund a charity foundation which
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