Wing Chun: Hello.

Sarah: …Jeez.

Wing Chun: Oh, hi. Sorry.

Sarah: Everything okay?

Wing Chun: Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine, but with the Oscar nominations coming out tomorrow, it’s like, once more into the breach, my friends.

Sarah: No kidding. And it feels like it’s been “Oscar season” since Thanksgiving, practically.

Wing Chun: It really does. It’s like Christmas for retailers at this point, it starts earlier every year.

Sarah: It does. When are the Oscars this year? 2007?

Wing Chun: Something like that.

Sarah: You know what I wish they’d do nominations for, like a People’s Choice kind of thing?

Wing Chun: The Montage O’ Dead People?

Sarah: Totally!

Wing Chun: Me too. And it’s not that I don’t care about these Foley guys who did the hoofbeats for O Pioneers —

Sarah: Although you don’t.

Wing Chun: Well, no, I don’t, but I do feel bad that those guys always get shoehorned in after someone like Johnny Carson, and then the applause drops noticeably from “thunderous” to “polite but confused.”

Sarah: Oh, I know. I just imagine their families in the cheap seats, clapping really loudly and staring at their seat neighbors all, “Right? Right?!”

Wing Chun: And then if you’re Chris Penn’s family, you feel kind of guilty about out-clapping the long-time Scorsese editor who was right before him in the Montage…

Sarah: Oh, Chris Penn. What do we think happened there?

Wing Chun: You mean GBC-wise?

Sarah: No, just…death-wise.

Wing Chun: So he’s not in the GBC.

Sarah: No, I think he is. Charlie Sheen was, like, his best friend.

Wing Chun: Enough said.

Sarah: Too much said, really.

Wing Chun: Death-wise, though, I don’t know.

Sarah: Me neither. It’s funny, though, how with a Hollywood person, they have to assure us that it was “natural causes.” An overweight dude dies in Atlanta, they just assume it’s a heart attack and that’s it. It’s like…like Bart Giamatti.

Wing Chun: That guy died?

Sarah: …That guy’s been dead.

Wing Chun: The Judging Amy guy? The brother? Where have I be–

Sarah: No no no. His dad. His and Paul’s dad.

Wing Chun: …Okay?

Sarah: Former commissioner of baseball?

Wing Chun: I’m supposed to know who that is?

Sarah: He’s…Marcus and Paul Giamatti’s dad?

Wing Chun: Uh…huh?

Sarah: Okay, you know who Pete Rose is, right?

Wing Chun: Yes, I know who Pete Rose is.

Sarah: And you know he got kicked out of baseball, that whole thing.

Wing Chun: Yeah, sure.

Sarah: Well, Bart Giamatti was the commissioner of baseball at the time, and it was this whole melodrama, and it ends with Rose getting kicked out, blah, it’s more complicated than that but the point is that the commission renders its decision and then like ten minutes later, Bart Giamatti has a fatal heart attack, and everyone’s like, “Pete Rose killed him.”

Wing Chun: …Okay.

Sarah: Which, because of the stress.

Wing Chun: Right.

Sarah: Which didn’t help, but Giamatti was quite a bit overweight and chain-smoked, too, which is probably what actually killed him.

Wing Chun: Right.

Sarah: Anyway, the Chris Penn thing just put me in mind of that, that if he were just a guy instead of a famous actor, they’d be like, “Bad ticker,” bury him, end of story.

Wing Chun: Probably. Now, what did Brad Renfro’s latest arrest put you in mind of?

Sarah: Uh…

Wing Chun: Those updates on Intervention where the screen says such-and-so left rehab early against the advice of his or her counselors?

Sarah: …Yeah, kind of. I think he just made a bunch of dead pools’ lists of things to do today.

Wing Chun: Yeeeeeeah.

Sarah: And to buy it off an undercover cop…is it me, or is it just totally obvious that they’re cops? Like when they run those stings on COPS?

Wing Chun: Yeah, I’ve never gotten that either. I mean, not that I get turning tricks for fifty bucks, either, so maybe I’m not going to see things the same way.

Sarah: True. Still. An extremely clean-cut individual asking very pointed questions about the transaction?

Wing Chun: I guess it’s a risk you take. I mean, over and above having sex with strangers for money.

Sarah: And I guess if you’re buying heroin off the street…

Wing Chun: Your concern is not the semantics of the transaction.

Sarah: Right.

Wing Chun: Poor ‘Fro.

Sarah: Yeah. And! Poor Hasselhoff!

Wing Chun: Oh my hairy God, not again.

Sarah: I think he’s still sober, but he’s getting divorced.

Wing Chun: Well, would you stay with him?

Sarah: Well…I don’t know the timeline, but it just seems weird, like, he goes to rehab once, she stays, he gets out, she stays, he’s sober for a while, she stays, he goes into rehab again, she stays, he gets out, she stays, he’s sober for a while, she…leaves?

Wing Chun: You can never know everything that goes on.

Sarah: True.

Wing Chun: Maybe he came home and was so annoying with the twelve-step-speak that she bolted.

Sarah: Maybe.

Wing Chun: Or maybe he met someone in rehab.

Sarah: Could be.

Wing Chun: Someone named…

Sarah: Colin Farrell!

Wing Chun: …Ew.

Sarah: Yeah, Hasselhoff’s too good for Farrell.

Wing Chun: I…ew!

Sarah: What?

Wing Chun: I’m sorry, I just…I don’t think I realized we were going to that Brokeback Betty Ford place with it.

Sarah: Hello, “met someone”?

Wing Chun: No, I get it now. Ecchh.

Sarah: Can you imagine the GBC reaction to that?

Wing Chun: You don’t think they’d be supportive?

Sarah: No, they’d be supportive, but — it’s Colin Farrell.

Wing Chun: …Right? …Oh, I see. So they’re trying to tell the Hoff, “Dude, the thing is…maybe you could go out with Ian McKellen instead?”

Sarah: And the Hoff is all defensive.

Wing Chun: “Maybe you could spend some time examining your prejudices!”

Sarah: Right. And Noth is like, “We have. And we’re prejudiced against…Colin Farrell.”

Wing Chun: Which, who isn’t.

Sarah: His mom probably isn’t.

Wing Chun: Please. His mom is like, “Who leaves rehab and goes straight to Vegas? I’m changing my last name to Kennedy. …Oh, crap.”

Sarah: Heh. God, the GBC in Vegas.

Wing Chun: Good God, can you imagine?

Sarah: I can imagine the buffet.

Wing Chun: Can you, Sarah? Can you really?

Sarah and Wing Chun: “…DAWSON!”

Wing Chun: Hee. Richard Dawson arrives at the door of the MGM Grand, tying on a bib…

Sarah: …Cut to vintage footage of the Sands imploding.

Wing Chun: Yep.

Sarah: As long as he snacks on Danny Gans, I’m fine with it.

Wing Chun: Seconded.

Sarah: And Cirque du Soleil. And all the fratty boombatties at the Texas Hold ‘Em tables.

Wing Chun: Oy, those guys.

Sarah: I know. The poker pit at Caesar’s in AC is like a Dave Matthews concert these days.

Wing Chun: I just…don’t understand why you would go to Vegas from rehab. It’s Addictionville.

Sarah: Well, because you’re the kind of guy who does so on a motorcycle, so that you can arrive in town in a flurry of attention and then complain that you just want everyone to leave you alone.

Wing Chun: That’s about the size of it, probably.

Sarah: Not that showing up on a pink two-wheeler wouldn’t have roughly the same effect.

Wing Chun: Especially if you’re all drenched with sweat from pedaling across the desert.

Sarah: “Yes, I am actually, literally dehydrated and exhausted. No, I do not need to call my sponsor.”

Wing Chun: “No, trekking across the Mojave with Leif Garrett was not ‘a good time.'”

Sarah: “Yes, it’s true that he didn’t have his own bike.”

Wing Chun: He didn’t?

Sarah: Leif Garrett? No.

Wing Chun: Because he…sold it to buy heroin?

Sarah: He didn’t actually get pinched for possession, initially. He tried to jump the fare on the subway and that’s when they found the dope.

Wing Chun: Oh my God. That he was even attempting to take the subway in Los Angeles —

Sarah: I know!

Wing Chun: And then to jump the fare? Jesus, Leif.

Sarah: Well, and how bored is LAPD that they’re enforcing this kind of thing?

Wing Chun: Did you see his mug shot? I’d have stopped him in a Bentley, never mind for shorting the turnstile. Dude looks rough.

Sarah: Dude looks mad.

Wing Chun: Well, I’d be mad too. “This means I’m as dumb as Renfro. Fuck!”

Sarah: I just…can’t these guys just get jobs? I’m not saying this to be mean. I genuinely don’t get it. Because it just seems like ninety percent of the time with the former child stars, it’s that they’re…bored.

Wing Chun: No, I agree. And then they get depressed because they’re not working, and then they have all this money so they think they don’t need to be working, so they stay out all night partying instead, because they can, blah blah numb the pain vicious cycle, and then…

Sarah: And then: Leif Garrett.

Wing Chun: And: Brad Renfro. No, I think you’re right. If they had to get up to go to work at 7:30, this wouldn’t happen, probably.

Sarah: Exactly. And I get how the vicious cycle happens? But I don’t get how it doesn’t occur to them before it starts, hey, if I had any fulfilling way to spend my days —

Wing Chun: But for child stars, I don’t think that applies.

Sarah: Well, but they’re not working.

Wing Chun: Right. But if you’re Leif Garrett —

Sarah: I wear a lot of ill-advised Kangol hats.

Wing Chun: And an unfortunate goatee, yes, but that’s not my point. When did he get famous? He was, what, fourteen or something?

Sarah: According to the IMDb…okay, “famous,” I’m not sure, but he started in the industry when he was, like, ten.

Wing Chun: Okay, so he’s trying to be an actor as a kid, and then when he’s in his late teens, he becomes a teen idol. So, that’s his job. Now, when we were that age, what were we doing?

Sarah: Going to school, going to college —

Wing Chun: Right, which is a job, sort of, and then we’re working too, but — regular jobs.

Sarah: Right…oh, I see what you’re saying.

Wing Chun: We were in an environment where we knew we had to have some skills of some kind, or take jobs we didn’t love, or what have you, but Leif Garrett didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to —

Sarah: Be a church secretary.

Wing Chun: Or whatever, right. So this is the only job he knows. It wouldn’t occur to him to learn to type and sign up with a temp agency, because he never had to do that and he never spent time around people who had to do that, really.

Sarah: And plus, if he’s answering phones somewhere, he can’t go on auditions or whatever.

Wing Chun: Right, or he’s out at whatever hot bar and someone’s all schmoozing him that they can get him a role, so he thinks he will be working, and when it never comes through…

Sarah: He doesn’t connect the dots.

Wing Chun: Right.

Sarah: Okay, but — I mean, his career is not just off the boil at this point. His only work has been as a parody of himself for, like, years now.

Wing Chun: Right, but it’s already too late. He’s already in the vicious cycle.

Sarah: Fair enough, but I still think…I mean, he didn’t work for most of the ’90s. He’s in his thirties by that point. Wouldn’t it have occurred to him, or to his therapist to point out to him, or something — wouldn’t it have been broached somehow in that time that, you know, maybe it’s time to open a bookstore or learn to spread gravel, something besides relying on an entertainment career?

Wing Chun: No, because, like I said: too late.

Sarah: See, I disagree. I mean, I see what you’re saying, but I think that at some point, he has to look around and be like, “I’ve tried everything to make myself happy — what have I not tried yet? …Working for a living!”

Wing Chun: Yeah, but, see, he doesn’t have to. Not for a living. Otherwise, I feel like he would have. If he needed the money, he would have done what he had to.

Sarah: Well, if he’s so busted that he has to ride the subway for free?

Wing Chun: But: my point. He’s on the horse already. Vicious cycle.

Sarah: Okay, I see.

Wing Chun: Look, I’m not saying he shouldn’t just suck it up and work for the Parks Department; he should. He’d be a lot happier if he’d done that fifteen years ago. I’m saying it wouldn’t occur to him, and once he starts doing H for a living instead?

Sarah: Yeah, you’re probably right. It’s just…sad. I know I shouldn’t really feel sorry for them, because they do this to themselves, but…

Wing Chun: Well, Leif Garrett, I don’t feel sorry for. You almost kill your friend in a DUI accident, you need to figure the shit out, that day, and if you don’t, eff off.

Sarah: True. But you have to figure that the reason they wind up doing drugs has something to do with self-hate, right? So if you almost kill your friend, that doesn’t exactly do wonders for the self-esteem.

Wing Chun: Dude. He should hate himself. He got behind the wheel, loaded, and now that guy can’t walk.

Sarah: Oh, I’m not defending him. But it’s the vicious cycle, like you said. He self-medicates because he hates himself; the self-medication puts his friend in a wheelchair; now he hates himself even more. And he has no tools for that job.

Wing Chun: Right.

Sarah: You know?

Wing Chun: No, you’re right.

Sarah: So I don’t think it’s an excuse. I just think, to hate yourself so much that you can’t even stop doing a thing that makes you hate yourself? I feel sorry for him for that.

Wing Chun: And it’s got to be so hard to treat, too.

Sarah: I always think that, actually. That they show up at whatever rehab clinic and the staff is just like, well, we’ll take your money, but…

Wing Chun: Don’t expect miracles. Yeah.

Sarah: Because how do you get that work done? “Do you understand that having had some fame twenty years ago does not absolve you from the responsibility to be a functioning human being?”

Wing Chun: “A…what, now?”

Sarah: I mean, if you’re Leif Garrett’s fifth rehab? Where do you start?

Wing Chun: Besides asking for the fee up front?

Sarah: Goes without saying at that point, methinks.

Wing Chun: Well, when you show up in an orange jumpsuit, I don’t think you’re allowed to get offended.

Sarah: Nope, agreed.

Wing Chun: But you’re so right. Where would you start with Leif? Just back at the beginning, like with chores or something? “The whole addiction thing isn’t really going so well for you, so let’s try…making your bed every day, see how that goes”?

Sarah: I think most places do that. Break it down to basic responsibilities, get you in a routine. Or so I was led to believe by A Million Little Pieces, but who knows now if Frey really had to clean the toilets at Hazelden.

Wing Chun: Or if they even had toilets there.

Sarah: Ha! Rehab in the Brady Bunch house.

Wing Chun: And every time he says he snuck out to meet Lilly…

Sarah: …he was actually taking a dump in the great outdoors.

Wing Chun: And Lilly was what he named his favorite roll of toilet paper.

Sarah: Because it was white and soft.

Wing Chun: And who doesn’t love toilet paper?

Sarah: Hee. Oh, Frey.

Wing Chun: Meanwhile, in a dank cell in the New York State correctional system, Lillo Brancato is reading a Smoking Gun.com printout all, “Amateur.”

Sarah: Oh my God, I forgot about Brancato! Kid, when we said “get a job,” we didn’t mean “armed robber.”

Wing Chun: He’s about as good at that as he was at acting, though.

Sarah: Ouch.

Wing Chun: Well, you saw A Bronx Tale.

Sarah: I did, and I hear you, but it’s not like he wasn’t working.

Wing Chun: Yeah, but the most recent role any of the news reports cited was Season Two of Sopranos, which was like a decade ago.

Sarah: True. Man, what if there were actual gangsters in the GBC and then that kid showed up?

Wing Chun: Even fictional gangsters would be like, “No, son.” His Sopranos character was kind of a douche, right?

Sarah: Except for the “kind of” part.

Wing Chun: I’m enjoying the idea of Sonny Corleone pedaling past him and flicking him in the head.

Sarah: I’m enjoying the idea of Fredo Corleone grinning like a drunken fool because there’s finally a bigger dink than him in the Mob chapter.

Wing Chun: There’s chapters in the GBC now?

Sarah: There can’t be chapters?

Wing Chun: Fine, there’s chapters. Where do we put Sinatra?

Sarah: …There can’t be chapters.

Wing Chun: Don’t make more work for yourself, that’s all I’m saying.

Sarah: Point totally taken.

Wing Chun: But I have a question about Jackie Jr.

Sarah: Oh, of course.

Wing Chun: So he’s a bigger dink than — whatever Brancato’s character’s name was?

Sarah: Yes. Clearly.

Wing Chun: Bigger dink than Fredo?

Sarah: With the CK One spritzing and the wetting himself in the getaway car?

Wing Chun: Fredo wore an ascot.

Sarah: Ooh. Damn, that’s tough. Fredo didn’t play the words “poo” and “ass” in Scrabble.

Wing Chun: He probably would have, though.

Sarah: Probably.

Wing Chun: And he probably would let Moe Greene shove him off the bike Michael got him and then make him run along behind it while Moe rode downtown for ice cream.

Sarah: But Jackie Jr. would be flapping his yap about a truckload of bikes they could hijack, but then the heist would get all fouled up and it would be his fault.

Wing Chun: I think Fredo is dinkier, I have to tell you.

Sarah: But — with the gel?

Wing Chun: Jackie Jr. reads more “horse’s ass” to me. Not “dink.”

Sarah: Huh. Interesting.

Wing Chun: You don’t think?

Sarah: I hadn’t thought of it like that. I guess Fredo is the bigger dink.

Wing Chun: It’s the ascot.

Sarah: Was it even an ascot? Or was it just a neckerchief?

Wing Chun: Well, either way.

Sarah: It’s dinkier if it’s a neckerchief, somehow.

Wing Chun: I’d have to watch the movie again.

Sarah: Because a neckerchief is just so…

Wing Chun: Corleone Family Singers?

Sarah: Exactly.

Wing Chun: I always got the feeling that it was the neckerchief all along, really.

Sarah: “Fredo, you’re my older brother, and I love you. But don’t ever wear a neckerchief again. Ever.”

Wing Chun: “Leave the neckerchief. Take the cannolis.”

Sarah: “Don’t ask me about my neckerchief, Kay.”

Wing Chun: And he’s got a horse’s head in the bike basket.

Sarah: As you do.

Wing Chun: I don’t know if we want to involve the GBC in organized crime.

Sarah: What, because they’ve already got a monopoly on dis-organized crime?

Wing Chun: Easy access to guns and drugs is not what I would call a recipe for success with these dudes.

Sarah: True. They’d all be dead in, like, ten minutes.

Wing Chun: Except for Dawson.

Sarah: Dawson eats a kilo of cocaine, he’s going to have some problems.

Wing Chun: Dawson eats a kilo of cocaine, it’s everyone else who’s going to have some problems. Starting with the fort.

Sarah: He’s going to be dead, is one of the problems. This is why we need chapters, because I don’t think the dead are mixing with the living.

Wing Chun: …

Sarah: Winston Churchill joke?

Wing Chun: Nick Nolte joke.

Sarah: Ah.

Wing Chun: So, maybe a zombie chapter is in order after all.

Sarah: There it is.

January 30, 2006

Tags:   GBC