Sitting My Way Through Life

by Kimberly Thompson

  Itten who walks past him, stops, turns around and bats him right on the head! Brat was startled and sort of had this look of “What? What? What did I do???” Itten flicked her tail and strutted off, secure in her position of ruler of the roost!

  One year, about 1985, I wanted to cook Thanksgiving dinner for the first time. I invited all these friends over and I wanted to get really fancy, so I decided I was going to bone the turkey and stuff it. We had three cats at that time and here I am, on this little kitchen table trying to bone this turkey while one cat is doing figure eights around my legs, another cat is behind a potted plant saying “You can’t see me”, and the third cat is outside in three inches of snow, sitting on the air conditioner and looking through the window saying “Yeah... I can get that.” They had plots on my poor turkey.

  Whitney and I have had several cats over the years. Our second cat, Brat Cat (also known by his formal name Britannicus) used to like to fight, but he was so bad at it. Once every three or four months he would get into a fight, get nailed in the head, and I would find this great big infection there. It’s like, “Damn it, dude. If you can’t fight, stop it! Don’t you think you should have learned after like the tenth time to protect the head?” No... not him.

  We used to have these clear glass plates and a clear glass table. I’d be eating something, take a bite, look down and see this little black furry face staring up at me through the plate and table. Whatever was on my fork dropped off and he jumped up to get it. “That did you a lot of good. The force field stopped you, didn’t it?”

  Back when I used to be able to let my cats in and out (you can’t do that in California. It’s too dangerous), they would want out, so I’d open the door and they’d just sit there

  and look. And look. And look. Finally, I’d just put my foot behind them. “OUT!” We would also leave the bedroom window open about eight inches just so they could jump in and out during the summer. This way we didn’t have to play butler all night long. Inevitably, during the fall, we’d be sleeping and all of a sudden hear BAM! In the morning, there would be a little nose print on the window.

  We lived in an old house that was built in 1901. The bathroom had two doors to it and it had a claw foot tub that I would fill with hot water and sit in for hours. I just loved that tub. One day the door to the bedroom was open a little bit (I’m not allowed to shut the bathroom door. If I shut it, there are at least three cats having hysterics on the other side) and I see the tip of this little black tail coming through it waving back and forth. I go back to reading my book and the next thing I know, Brat jumps up, busts me with both paws, hits my ears and then I hear him running across the linoleum. I swear to God I heard him laughing. He thought that was just the greatest joke he ever pulled. I think it was revenge for the one time I was teasing him rather badly (this was in the turkey kitchen). After awhile, I took him into the bathroom where Whitney was taking a shower. Brat panicked and jumped into the shower with Whit. I heard MEOW! MEOW! AACCK! AACCK! Brat’s trying to get out, Whitney’s trying to get out... well... I didn’t think he’d jump into the shower. I felt bad, so I stopped teasing him that way. I didn’t stop teasing him altogether. I just stopped teasing him with the shower.

  Ti Ti likes to chase rubber balls, but he keeps losing them! He had five, lost all of them, so we bought another set and he’s lost four of those. We can’t find them anywhere! Now he’s trying to learn to open doors. He can already open the cabinets. If he had thumbs, I’d worry for our health. We may wake up one morning to find him strangling us. “Where’s my bouncy balls?! Give me my bouncy balls!”. He also likes to wrestle. On the bed. In the middle of the night! “God, cat! It’s three in the morning. Leave me alone! I don’t get to sleep 18 hours!”

  Whitney used to have to get up at five in the morning to go to work, so the cats are used to eating at five. Since he is no longer in school, he doesn’t have to be up that early, but the cats are still waking him up at five to be fed. “It’s breakfast time... it’s time... come on...” Sometimes I’ll wake up to see Whitney laying on his side with CeeCee on his hip, Skissy will be at the top, Ti Ti will be running around the bed like crazy and Xena’s on top of the dresser all looking at him. “Wake up! It’s breakfast time!”

  Ti Ti is an energetic cat and he keeps beating on the other cats, so I thought we should try walking him. He’s not crazy about the idea. Outside is great, but it’s on the other side of the door. Closed doors and cats don’t mix. If they are on one side of the door, they want to be on the other side. I have to take them out early in the morning or late at night, whenever it’s not noisy, otherwise they think something is going to get them. One of our cats we had to have declawed because she would tear up all of the furniture. (Don’t worry, we’ll never do that again.) The biggest problem with having her declawed was that she loved to chase dogs and of course we had taken away her natural defenses.

  Thank God she never caught one.

  Our first cat, Itten with Whitney 1983

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  Q: Who is your favorite actor and actress?

  A: Wow. I’d really have to think about that. There are some people that I see in a film and can’t get enough of. I adore Judy Dench. She is wonderful. And then there’s Peter O’Toole. Even though he’s done some inferior roles (and who hasn’t) he’s never made a false step.

  Chapter 3 Commercialism!

  Who knew a 30 second commercial could be so dangerous? Years ago, I did a promo. It was one of a series of commercials for ESPN’s Extreme Games. It was also the first time in my life that I had ever had pneumonia. When I booked this job I was coughing a lot, which was good. The character was a super villain called “The Litter Bug” and these X Gamer champions were superheroes sent to capture me. I was put into this AMC Hornet that had no power steering, no power brakes, and it’s a stick shift. Add in a walkietalkie that I had to place between my legs so I could receive instructions to respond to as I’m driving in the Los Angeles mountains on dirt roads. At one point they are towing me which wasn’t so bad, but then I had to drive it myself. As I’m driving, I have to throw this litter that the car is filled with out of the window (because I’m The Litterbug), and at the same time there’s this smoke machine blowing smoke into my face while I’m driving. Now I’m hitting boulders and driving on the edge of this cliff! The next scene has me driving along and as I’m going, they drop a tree in front of me and another behind me. On the third take, the back tree slams into the rear end of the car and I give out a yell. “AAAHHHH!” Then they have me come out of the car and this guy with a bow shoots an arrow right at the tire and pops it! “AAAHHH!” They hadn’t told me they were doing that! Then at the very end, for the last scene they strap me to the hood of this big, sort of jeep-like, thing... I don’t know what it was... sort of like an SUV and a Jeep had mated. They strapped me to the hood of the thing like a deer and of course they don’t have a stunt driver. They have one of these athletes driving it in the Los Angeles mountains where cars go over the edge and aren’t found for 30 years and he’s going 30 miles an hour and I’m going “AAAAAHHHH!!!”At the end of the shoot, everyone was pleased about how good my coughing and screams were. “Hey, your coughing was great!” “That’s because it was REAL!”

  I did this Coke commercial with John Stockton. I’m sitting at a piano, supposedly playing and I’m supposed to hand John Stockton this coke. Well they decided that my hands were too small and not pretty enough. So they brought in this other actor wearing the same sweater that I was (they really liked the sweater) and used his hand in the shot. I really don’t understand why. How much of a hand can be seen while it’s

  holding a product?

  Another time I did a thing for Lincoln Mercury. We were out in the high desert, which is about 30-40 miles outside of Los Angeles. There was this long, single lane, country road that went straight on forever and ever. They use it for everything. At one point they had actu
ally cut part of it so that when the car drove over it at 55 miles per hour, your tires would make a sound as if they were playing The Lone Ranger theme.

  At one point they had me sitting on this eight inch platform 30 feet up in the air. Now you would think that there would be nobody on the road. Huh uh. It was quite a busy little road. They had the California Highway Patrol stopping both ends, because when these people came up behind me they would honk, trying to scare me off of the thing. It’s like, “It’s going to take more than that, assholes.” Then there was this poor makeup artist who was terrified of heights. She can’t even put people into high chairs. They had to be down low. Even looking up at people bothered her. Now, I sweat. It doesn’t matter if I’m healthy, or have just been to the gym, I sweat. And this poor girl is looking at the cherry picker they had near by, thinking she was going to have to go up in that thing to reapply my makeup every few minutes. You could see her down there shaking going “Please. Please.” Fortunately there was a cool wind keeping me dry so we were okay. It wasn’t enough that we had to deal with cars, but planes as well. I was sitting up there on my little platform when a stealth fighter flew by. It was, of course, moving very fast, but when you’re waiting for it to go by, it seemed to be standing still. Naturally we had to hold the shooting until it was gone. I kept thinking “I’m just going to commit suicide by jumping off this thing.”

  I was at an audition for a Las Vegas casino. It was one of the most bizarre ones I’ve ever been to. When I got in the director was in the room (they generally don’t show up until callbacks). He told me to pretend I was a pair of dice and to come up snake eyes. How the hell was I supposed to do that?! So I rolled around the floor for about ten seconds, sat up and did a ‘jazz hands’ move à la Bob Fossy and hissed “Snake eyes”. I didn’t get the part, which was a shame because the star of the spot was Frank Gorshin (the Riddler from the 1960s Batman television show). Another audition had a group of thirty actors in a room, we had all been hired but they were deciding who they were going to use as the two leads. Now, we were all supposed to be cattle milling around in a corral. Everybody was going “Moo, mooo” but every time there was a lull in the noise I’d pipe up “Baaa, baaaaa”. If you know when you can be a smart ass it can pay off. I got one of the leads. I wish I hadn’t. We were taken to the Tejon Ranch, this massive, private spread north of Los Angeles County. Anyway, the very first shot was of me as part of a crowd of business people being herded by some cowboys on horses. As we headed to the corral I was broke off and ran for freedom, because you know, it always makes sense to have the fat guy running. Anyway, as I was running with this cowboy riding his horse, twirling a lariat, I hit a gopher hole and go ass over elbows. I tried to turn the fall but only succeeded in landing directly on my right shoulder, which I think I dislocated. As I look up I see our rather dignified British director running toward me. From the angle of his camera it looked as if the horse ran me over and he thought he had a dead actor on his hands. Well, the adrenaline was pumping and I didn’t feel any pain until I was ready to drive home. My car at the time was a stick shift, so I was in agony trying to change gears. I still have trouble with my right shoulder, but the commercial was very popular in Great Britain, where it played.

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  Q: Who would you really like to work with the most? A: One person I’d really love to work with is Nathan Fillion. I love an actor who can say a line so dead but you still get all these different meanings to it. He is just a natural at comedy and drama. I would also love to work with Michael Shanks. It doesn’t hurt that both of them are tall, blond, and cute.

  Chapter 4 Tim and Eric

  You KNEW we had to. I know this is going to shock a lot of Tim & Eric’s fans, you might even be disappointed, but I have to tell you this, okay, here goes those two guys are.... normal. Well, not actually normal, but damned close to it. As with all creative people they have a few screws loose, I mean not all of their wingnuts are completely tightened, okay? But they are very business like behind the camera. They don’t clown around. Gone are their internet days when it was the two of them, a digital camera and some editing equipment. They have a production office, stage, a payroll department and staff up the ying-yang! Remember, these guys are performers and when they get in front of a camera, they are “on”. And when they’re away from the office, on their own time, two sweeter guys you’ll never meet anywhere. I got started with Tim and Eric when my agent called me and said I had an audition for Cartoon Network. I thought it was for a voice over, but she said no, it was live action. “Live action? On Cartoon Network? What the hell?” Well they had said they wanted comedic actors and unusual looking people doing dramatic monologues. A while back, I had done one of my favorite plays of all time Jean Anouilh’s Antigone. So I took this seven minute monologue, cut it down to two minutes and did that. A couple of days later, I received an email from John Mugar and they sent me the words and music to Sit On You and told me to do my dance version to it. Well I dressed all in black and did a somewhat sexy dance version. They said, “No! No! No! We want you to do it like this.”, so I went back home where Whitney had this denim shirt he had bought from Nordstrom’s back in the 80s and I put it on, went back and did this whole dance routine I made up. They then told me okay, now make your face completely blank which I did. That’s when they told me I would be doing Sit on You for them. There was one part that was cut out. It was where this young girl was laying on a sofa, reading a book. I was so worried I was going to slip and fall on her and break her. She even had this look on her face as if she’s saying “Don’t crush me.” They decided to cut it out though because it looked so phony. You’ll be happy to know that the guy sitting on the toilet was wearing flesh colored pants. He wasn’t naked, thank God. And the poor guy who’s head I had to sit on? I don’t think he knew what he was in for when he signed up for this job. I wanted to say, “I’m so sorry. I’ll try not to have gas.”.

  You know, I must have done twenty takes of that song and which one do they use? The one time I went flat on a note. I used to have a really good voice. Sort of a tenor baritone, but that went the way of the dodo. After I did Sit on You, I received a call from Clark Reinking who had started out as an intern and eventually became one of their main casting people. You know it’s funny. The first time I would show up it would be Tim and Eric and ten people. The next time I would

  show up it would be Tim and Eric and 20 people. Then it would be Tim and Eric and 35 people. The number of interns just kept growing and growing. Anyway, I showed up to do the Polite Dance Song and they taped me doing it then added these other people to do it with me. The first time I wore a blue silk shirt in the original take and they really liked the way it moved. The next time I wore a red silk shirt and they liked that even better. They really liked the color. You know, almost everything I ever wore on Tim and Eric was my own clothing. Not all of it, but most of it. I mean okay guys, I know you’re cheap but.... No really. They are very good to about paying what they should, but they are very careful with their production budget. Anyway, I end up being the last one dancing on the tape and people are very surprised that I can dance. They shouldn’t be. I’ve taken ballet, was an ice skater, and studied ballroom dancing for several years, so I can dance rather well. The thing is I wasn’t always heavy and when you are heavy, you have to have a certain amount of grace or you’re going to be falling over all the time. Ahh..That makes me think back to my glory days of disco when I had a 29 inch waist for two weeks back in 1979. Okay, I may be dating myself a bit there, but then again, everyone knows I’m no spring chicken.

  The next thing we did was Bub Bubs. And we had the damnedest time getting these guys to get some type of rhythm. None of them had any sense of rhythm. We had to work them so hard. I swear to God we spent four hours just to get these three guys to get in rhythm for just one small part of the song.

  After that I did Tommy Sparks’ She’s Got Me Dancin
g. This was the dance with the laser nipples. At that time I was working out at the gym quite a bit and I was just starting to get pectoral muscles for the first time in my life, but I’m so pasty you could hardly see them. Anyway, the makeup artist decides to glue on these sequins around my nipples and I mean she glued them in with tweezers all around. As I’m sitting there while she’s gluing them on, Tommy Sparks comes in and says “Ooo, look at this.” and starts flicking my nipple back and forth. He could have at least bought me a drink first. Later I was trying to take the sequins off very very, very carefully. I was a bit tender for a few days carefully so they could be saved, but the makeup person said no, they couldn’t be reused and I could just keep them. That was fine so I went home and started taking them off, after that. Tim complimented me once saying that no matter what they gave me to do, I always buy into it and gave it my all. I do give my all, usually by thinking to myself “Okay dignity, I’m selling you out right now. Off you go, I need the paycheck.”