by Rita Rudner
After he left, things got bad. A then-rising starlet, who shall be nameless but not bottomless, moved next door with a husband who had a fierce temper and two vicious hellhounds that frothed at the mouth and spewed saliva through the fence at passersby. Eventually, the lovebirds were divorced and the Irreconcilable Differences moving company appeared one blessed morning. A pink moving truck and a blue moving truck parked outside the house and their possessions were carried out and divided accordingly. She took the furniture, he took the dogs.
Of course, immediately before we moved to Las Vegas, a charming couple bought 2251/2. For a blissful two weeks we lived side by side in felicitous peace and harmony. Then we moved.
Now we live in an apartment and have no problem with the people who live above us, below us, and next door to us. However, I come in late at night and my dog barks the moment I put my key in the door. They have registered complaints about me.
* * *
I have no talent for growing plants. I always kill them. I went into a nursery once and saw my face on a wanted poster.
* * *
Vacations of the Not So Rich and Famous
THERE ARE A FEW PLACES I WANT TO VISIT BEFORE I die. This is one of the places I visited that almost killed me. I blame Katie Couric and Matt Lauer for this particular experience. They know nothing about it, but still, it’s their fault. The Today show was being broadcast from France one week. I’m not even sure how I saw the program, because this was before my dog was fifteen and needed to be walked at 6:00 A.M. and before I had a child who had to get to school by eight, so I don’t know what I was doing awake at seven in the morning, but I was. This particular morning Katie and Matt were in the Loire Valley. French wine country could not have looked more beautiful. The markets, the vineyards, the castles…it was all out of a fairy tale, and I love a fairy tale.
A few weeks later I received the call.
“Hi, this is Andrea, I’m a booker from Vacations of the Rich and Famous, and we’d like to know if you and your husband would like to go on an all-expenses-paid vacation to the Loire Valley. First-class tickets and accommodations are taken care of. You will be whisked from the airport to your five-star hotel and an unobtrusive film crew will follow you while you sightsee and dine in fabulous restaurants.”
I said yes very quickly just in case Andrea had dialed the wrong number and meant to ask someone who was more famous.
The day before we were set to leave for Paris, our itinerary arrived. Martin, who is a much more detail-oriented person than I am, scrutinized the first-class tickets.
“Rita, something is wrong here. It shouldn’t take twenty hours to get to Paris.”
I looked at the tickets. “Well, we have a two-hour layover in Houston and a six-hour layover in Miami. And we’re flying via Canada. I’ll call my friend Andrea. There’s been a mistake.”
There was no mistake. The tickets were indeed first-class, but they had been purchased with frequent-flyer miles and these were the only flights available. The hotel and restaurants had already been reserved and the film crew was on its way from Germany.
“I assure you,” my friend Andrea promised, “once you arrive in Paris you’ll be whisked to the hotel and from then on everything will be perfect.”
I felt better as I thought about how much fun being whisked would be.
“Even though your tickets don’t allow it, I’ll arrange for you to be let into the first-class lounges on your layovers. Bye,” she said, hanging up the phone just a little too quickly.
I swallowed the fact we were not allowed in the first-class lounge in Houston, but I fought our way into the first-class lounge in Miami. They knew nothing about any special arrangements, but a six-hour layover plus a delayed flight added a note of urgency to my plea. I just kept remembering that all we had to do was arrive in Paris and everything would be fantastic.
Twenty-five hours after leaving Los Angeles, we arrived in France. As we waited for our luggage to arrive I scoured the baggage claim area to locate the people who’d be doing the whisking.
A scowling middle-aged man approached.
“Bonjour. I am François. I am your tour guide. Merde!” he shrieked. “That is all your luggage?”
“Yes. Martin and I have two suitcases each. If we’re filming for five days, we have to wear different clothes.”
“This will not fit in my car. You will have to take a train.”
“How do I get to a train with all this luggage?”
“That is your problem.”
So much for being whisked. We held firm and insisted François drive us to the Loire. We watched as he removed the roof from his convertible and shoved the luggage into the backseat and trunk while mumbling things in French we were thankful we didn’t understand. I don’t know why someone would meet travelers at the airport in a compact convertible, but there would be many more things I didn’t understand to come.
We checked into a lovely hotel that was carved out of limestone two hundred years ago and decorated at about the same time. Martin and I went to sleep for a few hours while the film crew set up breakfast to be filmed on the front lawn. Orange juice, croissants, and eggs waited for us on a small table. They were covered with a plastic sheet to protect them from the rain that was beginning to fall quite heavily.
“You vill sit here and eat zer brekfest like it is not raining,” Eva, the German film director, commanded. Martin and I smiled and ate obediently. I like my orange juice watered down anyway, and Martin always enjoys a soggy croissant.
The weather bucked up and our next stop was a busy outdoor market. Parking was a problem for most of the market’s visitors, but not for François. François created his own parking spaces. This particular one had the car perched on an island in the middle of a street.
“Is this legal?” I worried.
“Bien sûr. It is fine,” he said, waving the film crew’s van over to park behind us.
Now this was the experience Katie and Matt had promised me. The fruits, cheeses, smells, and sounds of the outdoor market were extraordinary. We arrived back at the car just in time to witness the policeman placing the tickets on the windshields of both vehicles.
François pulled them off and stuffed them in his pocket nonchalantly. We returned back to our prehistoric hotel to rest.
“I will pick you up at five o’clock. Make sure you go to the bathroom before we leave. There are no facilities in the cave,” François warned.
“The cave?” I repeated.
“Yes, you are so lucky. Tonight we are having dinner with my friends in a cave in wine country.”
I wasn’t sure how to dress for a cave with no bathroom…maybe a burlap dress and astronaut diapers?
We met François’s friend André and toured his lush vineyard with the Nazi camera crew trailing behind. Then it was time to enter the cave. Martin and I followed François and André into André’s subterranean wine cellar. I know it must be hard to find good cave cleaners these days, but this one really could have used a good dusting. The walls were covered with what I call fungus and what André called mushrooms. He stuck his hand into a cobwebbed wall, pulled out a fungus-covered bottle of wine we would be having with our meal, and wiped it on his pants.
“Fantastique!” he exclaimed Frenchly.
Martin and I sat down with around twenty people and our film crew and ate a menu of varied, unnamed barbecued meats accompanied by fabulous wine. Around ten we all began wandering out of the cave to either find a bathroom or to create one of our own.
The next day’s highlight was a trip to a sixteenth-century château. As usual, François created his own parking space between two elm trees and gestured to the film van to park alongside.
“Do you have zer permit?” Eva asked François.
“Pardon?” he replied.
“Did you call ahead and get permission from zer authorities to film in zer castle?” Eva repeated.
“I will do that right now,” François replied. “You go on. I wil
l catch up with you.”
We were filming outside in the castle gardens when we were stopped by security.
“May I see your film permit?” the guard asked.
“We’re with the TV program Vacations of the Scattered and Disorganized,” I replied. “Our guide is arriving with it momentarily.”
François arrived permitless and entered into a heated argument with the security guard that culminated in money changing hands and our group being able to film anywhere we wanted. When we were done, we returned to our parking spots. We had a parking ticket. There was no parking ticket on the film crew’s windshield because there was no windshield. The van had been broken into and all the film crew’s passports and wallets had been stolen along with their spare equipment. We returned back to the hotel while the German crew visited the police station.
Our filming temporarily curtailed, we visited François’s parents and the school he’d attended as a young boy. No trip to the Loire is complete without these two fascinating stops. When the film crew returned, we visited a small family bakery, an impressionist art museum, and a restaurant situated in a house on a lake. François accrued at least ten more parking tickets.
The final night we all dined together at the limestone hotel and were one big, happy, dysfunctional family. I had one more disagreement with François when he wanted us to take the train back to the airport. We refused, stuffed our luggage back into his convertible, and began our journey back to Los Angeles. This flight was much better. It only took twenty-three hours.
Martin and I still remember our trip to the Loire Valley fondly, and if we ever go back, we’re going to look up François. He won’t be hard to find…I’m pretty sure he’s in parking ticket prison.
* * *
I have a girlfriend who’s so into recycling, she’ll only marry a man who’s been married before.
* * *
What to Wear…Not
“WHO DO YOU THINK IS CRAZIER, DOLCE OR GABBANA?” I asked my friend Lisa as I leafed though a fashion magazine.
“Let me see what they’ve done now,” she replied, grabbing the thick, shiny fashion bible from my clutches. “Oh, my God! Why is she naked and bound in electrical wire?”
“It’s not electrical wire. It’s a pashmina string shawl. Evidently, we’re all going to be bound in them by Christmas.”
I retrieved my magazine and continued to flip.
“Karl Lagerfeld has been taking his bad dreams a little too seriously as well.”
Lisa grabbed the magazine once again.
“She’s on fire. Are we all going to have to set ourselves on fire this winter?”
“That’s one way to keep warm.”
I continued my quest to find a picture of something I would actually wear.
“Oh, now this is me. I can see me going to the bank in this. They might give me some extra money if I agree never to come in again.”
“That is scary,” Lisa commented, scrutinizing the photograph. “Where are you going to get the gold paint, the feathers, and the pacifier?”
“I don’t know. Saks?”
As far as I can see, there is a complete disconnect between the photos in the sleek fashion magazines and the clothes that people actually wear. The models—or, as I like to call them, TPWHs (that’s an acronym for telephone poles with hair)—either are starved from birth or have metabolisms like hummingbirds. In any case, they’re bonier than fish carcasses.
I can hear the photo editors now: “Push the envelope, Helmut. I’ve seen the girl in the bikini riding a llama in Marlo Thomas’s living room a million times. We want something different.”
Not only are the photos different, they are becoming increasingly sexual. I was leafing through a copy of Vogue on an airplane and the man next to me became transfixed.
“I have to know. What part of a woman’s body is that?” he asked.
“I’m hoping it’s her tonsils,” I replied, hastily turning the page.
Comfort and time management are really not factors here, I thought as I looked at the woman wearing a pair of shoes that laced to her crotch. And look at those high heels. The last thing that girl needs is to be taller. If she were a firefighter, she could rescue people without using a ladder.
“When would a woman actually wear shoes like that?” my puzzled neighbor asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe in a foot bondage competition.”
“Is this the price here?” he inquired.
I leaned over and squinted.
“Yes, they’re seven thousand dollars. If it’s any consolation, that’s for both of them.”
Instead of voicing dissent about the too-high cost of too-high heels, not only are women buying these shoes, they’re having their feet surgically altered to accommodate them.
I’ve recently learned that as women age the pads on the balls of their feet thin. There is now an operation that is becoming increasingly more popular: silicone foot implants. I swear I didn’t make it up. I saw it on an interview with a surgeon on the Discovery Channel.
“It makes sense,” he said. “Women want to look glamorous and this cushions the ball of the foot and keeps it bouncy. It gives the woman a younger foot.”
I knew the rest of me was too old, but I was fairly confident about the balls of my feet.
The man handed the magazine back to me.
“You women, you’ll buy anything,” he said.
He was partially correct. I will and I do, but I rarely buy any outfits I see in the fashion magazines.
I did once spot in a Chanel advertisement an evening gown that I thought would be fun to wear onstage. It was light pink and had a flared skirt dotted with bits of material that were so fine they appeared to be floating. I found the gown on Chanel’s Web site. It was haute couture and cost $35,000. I decided it would not be wise for me to have that much fun.
I was coming to the end of the June issue when I spied a pants suit that I coveted. It was made of off-white wool and the trousers flared slightly but not ridiculously at the bottom. The jacket was cut low enough in the front to reveal some bosom, but not an amount that I would consider inappropriate. It appeared not only stylish but comfortable.
“Lisa, look at this. Something I would actually wear.”
Lisa glanced over at the magazine.
“They’re not selling the pants suit. It’s an ad for that vitamin for women who are premenopausal.”
“Oh,” I said, closing the magazine. “My streak remains intact.”
Things I Never Thought I Would See in My Lifetime
1. A five-dollar cup of coffee.
2. Television commercials for erectile dysfunction.
3. Paul McCartney getting divorced.
4. A vice president shooting his best friend.
5. A ninety-year-old woman having to take her shoes off in order to put them through the X-ray machine at the airport security checkpoint to ensure they weren’t going to explode.
Television Envy
IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT THROUGH THE years, in order to entice the public to keep on buying, companies have to make their products either bigger or smaller. The phones, for example, are now so small we can’t find them, and the televisions are now so large we need to create special rooms for them.
Forget penis envy and remember television envy. Every man has a friend who has a television that is bigger than his and he wants it. It is not, however, the simple purchasing of an enormous television that can make a man feel complete. The sound system, the blackout curtains, the theater seating, and the acoustic wall panels have to make all of his friends sick with jealousy for a man to really be happy.
When we moved into our new apartment in Las Vegas, my husband and I came to the agreement that I could have a lavender bedroom if he could have his own, very special, macho television room. The family den, which used to be a comfortable environment where children could play and people could eat, talk, and laugh, has now morphed into what is now commonly
referred to as a “home theater”—a place that must remain as dark as a well and as quiet as a morgue.
Since we were moving to a new town and since we don’t like to reject anybody and since he came in with a very low quote, we went with the first person we interviewed to build my husband’s fantasy room. The media man was just starting his own company and his eyes contained a sadness that indicated he needed us. He also had a soft voice and a gentleness about him that prevented us from suing him.
My husband and It’sNotMyFault (as I shall call him) decided on a front-projection screen that was so wide it failed to go through the door that led into the room. Rather than compromise on the size of the screen, a new door was created and the old one was paneled over. It’sNotMyFault also made the decision to hire a family member to cover the walls with a special material that both absorbed and ricocheted sound at the same time. I don’t know how this man (whom I shall call IDidn’tDoIt) would know very much about material given that he had never owned a shirt with sleeves and most of his body was kept warm by tattoos. He was also put in charge of the all-important blackout curtains, intended to keep sunlight away from the screen. This task seemed as imperative as that of a bodyguard assigned to keep young boys away from a king’s pretty daughter.
“Are you sure these blackout curtains will make it dark enough in here?” my husband inquired worriedly. “Maybe you should double-line them? I don’t want any light shining on my projection screen. It’s very sensitive. A mark can appear on it even if you just speak badly about it.”
“I guarantee you, no light will make it through these curtains. Your screen is safe. I have these very same curtains in my home and they work perfectly in my home theater.”
It struck me as odd that a man who couldn’t afford a shirt would be able to spring for a home theater, but I guess many men would now rather be homeless than home-theater-less. Anyway, he was right about the curtains. The minute he put them up, I tripped over everything in the room. It is so dark in there that while trying to eat a sandwich I actually missed my mouth. I pointed out to my husband that even real movie theaters have some lights in them so you can see an aisle or an exit. He said it compromised the whole experience and that was exactly why he was creating his own home theater.