This Afternoon In Drama

Miami Droop

The 2005 MTV Video Music Awards:

8:00 P.M. I have this vague, lazy desire to count how many times I'm going to hear, "YouknowwhatI'msayin'?" tonight, distinguishing between the times that yes, I do indeed know what the speaker is saying, and the times that I have no clue.  During Green Day's opening chords, I decide this will require way too much effort on my part.  The sad thing is that Billy Joe figured out how to use black eyeliner underneath his eyes way before me.  It was only this month that I asked Taryn how you get it to stay there without getting blinked away, and she informed me that there are two different eyeliner formulas, and I've been struggling with the wrong kind since adolescence.

8:10 P.M.  Two observations:  One, Diddy is a huge tool, a huger tool than Carson Daly, but he's like the fat girls on My Super Sweet 16 whose dads throw them gaudy, blowout hotel parties with henna tattooing and congratulatory phone calls from Lil' Bow-Wow.  I think the only reason that people, people being the media, won't widely acknowledge his tooliness because they don't want to risk their invites.  Two, Lindsay Lohan has officially made the transformation into Ann Margaret, except not young Ann Margaret, but sixty-year-old Ann Margaret with a double mastectomy.

8:12 P.M.  In his acceptance speech, Kanye West advises that artists should take things into their own hands, and I think about sending this piece of wisdom to Harcourt, encouraging them to let me design my own book cover so I don't end up with another dirty blond wearing a Jockey training bra.

8:28 P.M.  Diddy announces that the theme of tonight is that "Anything Can Happen," which is a pretty shitty theme when compared to my "Under The Sea" Bat Mitzvah extravaganza of '92.

8:31 P.M.  Judging by the way she dresses, I think Kirsten Dunst wishes she was fat.

8:36 P.M. These Revlon commercials where Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Kate Bosworth, and Eva Mendes "interact" really freak me out because they're trying to act normal, like Halle can't find her pants, and Eva jokes, "Are these them?" because she's been sitting on the pants. And then Susan Sarandon says something like, "Kids, kids, don't fight," and Kate Bosworth is just there, putting on mascara, and I can't figure out why they're all in this backstage lounge together because it kind of feels like they're upscale strippers, they've just gotten out of their brocade pasties and mink eyelashes, and now they're returning to their lives as respectable, middle class women.  So they're putting on muted Revlon shades and getting back into their pants, and Halle is saying she's soooooo happy she has some free time now because it's like she's spent the night humping a pole in front of the nastiest, vilest men alive, and she just wants to get home to her cats. Or maybe they're just all supposed to be starring in a Broadway play together.

8:44 P.M.  Jessica Simpson is going to get so much shit for her top tomorrow.

8:53 P.M. I took Latin in high school and French in college, so I can't report if Shakira's lyrics to her new song are any good, or at least as good as my favorite line from her English hit, "Whenever, Wherever": "Lucky that my breasts are small and humble/ So you don't confuse them with mountains." I have the opposite problem. Sometimes I'll be with a boyfriend and he'll shake his head in confusion and ask, "Did I just touch Big Bear?"

9:01 P.M.  Did Diddy and Usher make the faux pas of wearing the same blue-gray taffeta suit?

9:06 P.M.  Eric Roberts is so slimy that just by watching him talk for the past minute, I now completely understand why Julia Roberts estranged herself from him.

9:10 P.M.  Oh, beautiful! R. Kelly is going to re-enact his R&B-opera "Trapped In The Closet" live for us.  The set designer had the good sense to erect a freestanding closet door in the middle of the stage because, well, the closet is key, even if R. can no longer trap himself inside of it because this interpretation lacks an interior.  Wow, it's even better watching R. acting to an invisible mistress and an invisible mistress's angry husband than to watch him perform with other people in the room.  Because now he's just pointing to the empty bed and the fake closet door and the poor, poor people in the front row who have to stand there and watch this lip-sync job while trying not to collapse from the deadly combo of heat and laughter.

R.'s singing has ceased (but the song hasn't), and for a moment, the performance has suddenly veered dangerously into mime territory. Mark my words, this is a performance that will A.) go down in history and B.) will be featured prominently on Jimmy Kimmel's show tomorrow night.

9:19 P.M.  Diddy, perhaps embarrassed by the taffeta incident, has changed into very, very shiny black suit coat.  I need a Hi-Def TV in order to identify the fabric better.  (What up, birthday, October 28!  I can't believe it's already September and I haven't issued my ten page birthday "idea" list to my family.  This just tells you how insanely busy things have been this season.)  Also, Diddy has put together one of those narcissistic "My Life" slide shows that you usually only have to sit through at Sweet Sixteens, Bat Mitzvahs, and funerals.

9:22 P.M. Hilary Duff's new teeth kill me.  Friends can back me up on this, as I talk about the veneers practically every other day.

9:27 P.M.  I have a strange feeling that Jeremy Piven's prison banter was not discussed with Lil' Kim beforehand, and he might get shot after the show.  She's trying to be classy by covering up her ta-ta's, but her version 3.0 nose has ironically made her more white trash than ever.

9:52 P.M.  Judging by the way he dresses, I think Fat Joe wishes he wasn't fat.

10:14 P.M.  I wouldn't mind if someone socked Jamie Foxx. Missy Elliot sort of looked like she'd be up for the job before, when Jamie grabbed her and began spewing god knows what into her ear (I'm guessing it was probably something along the Ray Charlesy lines of, "Oh, Ah! Oh, Ah!") while she was trying to get past him to accept her award.  Dude needs to take an "adorable humility" lesson from Kelly Clarkson.  (11:13 P.M.  Jamie breaks into Destiny's Child's farewell speech to help them praise god.  Even they look shocked.)

10:32 P.M.  Whoa, Eva Longoria wore a bathing suit to the awards, and we're only just seeing her now. There is no camera on her ass.

10:34 P.M.  Even though she exudes crazy, Mariah Carey is still a poor show substitute for Courtney Love.

11:15 P.M.  Green Day wins "Video Of The Year."  Everything comes full circle.  There's been a lot of literal fire on this show and a lot of fire imagery, but that doesn't mean there was actually any excitement.  I say it every year and I never learn my lesson, but-- most boring show ever.  The attendees are off to party.  I "partied" as well last night, and if you want to hear how crazy it gets when you're doing it like me, I came home with one more rubber-band on my wrist than I left the house with, and I have no idea how it got there.

Andrea Goes To The Doctor

So I was at the gynecologist's office this week, where they make you write your own name on your own urine cup, which seems enormously lazy on their part.  I have to pee and write my name on the label?  Do you want me to run some diagnostic tests while I'm in there too?  Somewhat late in life I found out from my mom that you don't actually have to fill the urine cup.  Before this conversation, I thought it might be better to give the nurses as large of a sample as possible, making their job easier.  In my wiser years I've become an expert at providing only the necessary few millimeters for examination, and when I hand over my cup I always feel the pride of professionalism.

Another woman was waiting in the nurse's station with her husband, and I smirked when I saw that she'd filled her cup to at least the halfway point.  Tipping my urine cup toward the couple like we were in a bar saying cheers, I said, "Hellllllllo."  At this point the husband decided to step out into the hallway, I guess finding the urine camaraderie too intimate and thinking that I actually cared about privacy.

Not to get all Seinfeldian, but you'd think that in top notch medical offices, the partners would splurge on a scale that isn't manual.  What's.  The deal?  With.  Manual Scales?  (That's my blog approximation of Jerry's intonation.)  You can buy an electronic scale at Costco for, like, 19.99.  But still, every doctor's office I visit, I have to step on the scale with the sliding triangle that goes across the metal bar.  And in every office the nurse starts out way lower than my actual weight because I am deceptively heavy due to some impressively dense bones.  So we start at the bottom, and I roll my head and crack my neck because I've got the time, and the nurse looks disbelievingly at me as she creeps the triangle upwards.

After the weigh in, the nurse showed me to my room and instructed me to get naked, then into the little paper dress.  While getting naked I peeked through the slightly cracked horizontal blinds, wondering if anyone in the building across the street has figured out that if he or she gets a decent pair of binoculars, (s)he can see a lot of naked people.  Well, naked people viewable through blind slats, which is only probably slightly clearer than naked cable people viewable through non-subscriber interference, but still.  I put on the dress, which is not a dress at all, but closer to a talis with a backside (the talis being the long, scarf-like strip of fabric that Jewish parents bestow on their children upon the occasion of them being Bar/Bat Mitzvahed).  The armholes are also very big, meaning that you continue to be basically naked.

After donning this wearable paper towel, I hopped up onto the bed and began flipping through a National Geographic from the early nineties.  Not that I am a fetishist of this era, but I had a choice between Women's Golf and a National Geographic produced from back before I even had the need to see a gynecologist, and so I chose the NC.  I finished the magazine, which incidentally featured an article on teen mothers in America, which is maybe why my doctor chose to hold onto the issue for so long.  I checked my watch.  I'd been waiting for twenty minutes.

So I flipped through Women's Golf and only because it featured Mariska Hargitay from Law & Order: SVU, which is a show that I believe I have seen every single episode of, whether through first-run on NBC or second-run on USA.  When I was done with that issue, I checked my watch again and saw that I'd been waiting for forty minutes, which is a very long time to wait naked on a table.  I heard that once Sean Penn tied up Madonna in the kitchen and left her naked for hours upon hours, but at least she was near a refrigerator and could perhaps snack.

I knew I had to get the attention of a nurse, but they were all down the hallway, cooing over a woman's new baby.  I don't know that if I worked in a place where people brought in their babies day in and day out I'd be forever excited and cooing, but I do know that if I worked at a vet's, where people brought in their puppies, I would be endlessly thrilled.  Anyway, there were no nurses nearby, and I was naked. I couldn't go walking down the hallway naked because I think that's considered weird and also because of the nervous eyes of the husbands.  You say, "Well, you could have put your clothes back on," except I had complicated clothes that day and the effort seemed to exceed the reward.

Using my MacGyver-like smarts, I got on my cell phone and found the office's phone number on the room's cotton ball holder.  The woman at the front desk answered, and I said, "Hello! My name is Andrea Seigel and I am naked in one of your back rooms!" "Which room?" she asked.  And I said, "I don't know.  I can't go outside and check because I'm naked!"  In case I've worried you, rest assured that everything worked out for the best.  It was just one of the longest, nakedest doctor visits on personal record.

Next month: the dentist.  He keeps telling me that if I want a really perfect smile, I should have my jaw broken and then the area above my upper lip cut open and shifted, and I always say, "You know, that's okay.  I'm happy the way I am."

I Think I Love You, So What Am I So Afraid Of

When fan and object of admiration meet, it's always a sucky time.  Fan nerds out, object of admiration doesn't know what to do with him/herself when fan nerds out (unless you're a lead singer, and then you take that nerd backstage and sleep with him/her), and there's a sort of ugly moment that hangs between the two.  When I did my Panda book tour and everyone kept asking me, "Isn't it exciting having people wait in line to talk to you?", I'd have to make my "Ehhhhhh" face.  Maybe it's just notoriously, socially inept me, but being told to your face that you're the bees knees is awkward and nerve-wracking, and after it's happened a few times, you don't even have anything good to say back anymore, and you feel like a smiley, unoriginal verbal hack.

So you'd think that having been on the other side of the equation, I'd know better. But I still nerd out.  At BookExpo America 2004, I waited in line to talk to Augusten Burroughs, and performed some vaguely lame gesture, crossing my arms over my breasts to indicate how warmly I regarded him. And I said, "I know you get this all the time, but I really, really love your work-- You don't understand," even though in my heart of hearts, I knew that the "I know that you get this all the time" shit does nothing to negate the repetitive nature of the sentiment.  Augusten got that blank, polite look that I'm sure I also get and thanked me while quickly signing my galley.  As soon as I stepped away from his table, I was likely forgotten, even though this fate was the one I wanted so badly to escape.  What did I expect?  That Augusten and I would meet up later in my hotel room and braid each others' hair?

On Wednesday night I went to premiere of The 40 Year-Old Virgin to see my good friend, Kat, in it, and I couldn't stop myself from nerding out to writer-director, Judd Apatow.  I have the Freaks And Geeks DVD box set, and I've watched all the episodes with cast and crew commentary turned on, which is an exceedingly nerdy thing to do.  And on this commentary Judd keeps saying, "I don't know why we're still talking because no one is listening to this," so of course I'm sitting there, listening to it, hanging onto longtime crush Seth Rogan's every word.  At the premiere I tell Judd, "I was listening! I was listening!" which he's very cool about, except I'm seeing that same look in the eyes, that "I know you love my shit, but I don't know what to do about your love" patina.

The only exception I've ever encountered to this rule is when I was watching an old episode of MTV's Diary, and I found out that before Jennifer Love Hewitt's best friend was her best friend, she was Love's fan. If I remember correctly, the best friend gushed over Love's Party Of Fiveness on a plane, and the pair came off the flight inseparable.  This is insane, especially considering that the Diary episode consisted of Love driving around New York buying things from expensive, designer boutiques, and then buying things for her "best friend," knowing that she could never afford them herself.  I remember thinking to myself, "Whoa, I need to find a personal Love."  I can't believe that this sort of fan relationship develops all that often, and suspect it has something to do with the heavy combination of vulnerability and narcissism dominant within the actor/actress psyche.

Anyway, point being, Harcourt emailed me on Friday to tell me that they're sending me on a six city book tour in summer 2006. Thus, if you are in:
-Los Angeles
-San Francisco
-Portland
-Seattle
-Boston or
-New York

You will be able to come out and see my interpretive dance stylings with your very own eyes.  Then-- because this is just how things go and let's face it-- I'll sign your book and we'll maybe chit-chat a little, and we'll inevitably misunderstand each others' intentions and be mutually unsatisfied!  It sounds like total fun, right?

I wish I could title the tour at this point, but unfortunately my publisher has rejected my genius original title, To Feel Stuff.  Thus, the novel is currently nameless, and I'm pasting the catalog copy below so that if anyone happens to come up with an incredibly exciting title based solely on this brief preview of subject matter, they can email it to me and then win the immortal prize of being thanked at the end of the book:

"AS YET UNTITLED by Andrea Seigel

Meet Elodie Harrington, medical anomaly.  From chicken pox to tuberculosis, Elodie suffers a barrage of illnesses so frequent that she eventually moves into the Brown University infirmary to save herself the repeated trips. When Professor and MD Mark Kirschling gets wind of Elodie, he's convinced he can make his professional mark by cracking her case.

After charismatic Chess Hunter enters the infirmary with two smashed knees, he and Elodie begin an intense affair.  Chess, however, is only a visitor to Elodie' s perpetual state of medical siege.  As he begins to heal, his recovery leading him toward his former life, Elodie heads in the other direction-
toward death- and begins to see a ghost.

Suspecting that her illnesses have brought about a supernatural change in her, Elodie turns to Dr. Kirschling to help her sort out her mystery.  Dr Kirshling, entirely unprepared for what he's about to encounter, soon realizes he's witness to the first documented case of psychic puberty.

Andrea Seigel has found a wry, ingenious way to explore youth confronting illness and trauma, and the contrast between the first frisson of mortality and a life lived in defiance of it."

P.S. That's not me calling myself wry and ingenious, okay. That's just the way shit goes down in this business.

2 Turtle Doves, But No Partridge In A Pear Tree

On Monday I opened my back door, and there were two identical birds sitting on the wooden rail of my deck.  They were looking at me.  They had ginormous eyes.  They didn't seem to be alarmed when I walked up to them and said, "Hey guys. What are you doing here?"

The one on the left- the male, as I learned from his voice- said, "Well, it's kind of embarrassing."  The female turned her head away from me.  Clearly, she wasn't interested in talking.

"What could be so embarrassing?" I asked.  "Are you down on your luck and begging for food?"  I didn't have any birdseed in the house, but I figured I could give them some of the bunny's gourmet pellet combo.  There had to be something in the mix they could stomach.

"No, no, it's not that," said the boy bird. "Give me some time to get up the nerve, and I'll tell you tomorrow."

I shrugged and agreed to the request, then went and took my customary 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. daily nap.  When I woke up and went to check on the birds, they were nestled together on the top row of my plant rack, sheltered underneath a low-hanging frond from my plantain tree.  "I'm not pressing," I let them know.  "Just came out here to make sure you're doing okay."

"We're fine!" the girl bird snipped at me, and I ducked back into the house muttering, "Rude!"

The next morning I awoke and went to open the back door.  The birds had moved from the plant rack to the woven mat right beneath my feet. If I hadn't been looking for my guests, I might have stepped on them as I lunged outside to take in the sharp air wafting over from the ocean.

"Oh, hey guys. What's up?" I asked casually, not wanting to put any pressure on them.

"Okay, here's the deal," the boy bird said, cocking his head so I could look him square in his left eye.  "We're turtle doves and we mate for life.  Cammi and I have been together for nine years now."

"Ten!" Cammi yelped, clearly hurt.  "You know that, Don!"

"Camm, they've just gone so fast that I'm always unsure of the exact duration," said Don, petting his love with his speckled wing.  "Anyway, point being, we're in it for the long haul.  But lately we've come to the agreement that we've maybe lost that initial spark that burned so bright. Don't get me wrong- I still love this little chicky more than anything else in the world, and nothing's going to come between us.  But we started thinking-"

"You started thinking," corrected Cammi.

"You said you were open!" Don argued.

"I'm not sure I understand," I said.

"Okay, well, we were thinking that maybe we could jump-start the romance by, you know, introducing a new element.  A new presence.  You see now why this is so embarrassing.  I'm not exactly a smooth bird.  I found Cammi almost the second I opened my eyes, and so I've never really acquired the skills I might need for this sort of endeavor."

I thought I might be slowly latching onto his meaning.  "Oh. Oh. So you're looking for...a third?"

"A girlfriend," said Don.  "I just can't swing the other way."

"Of course not," huffed Cammi.  "That would require too much personal sacrifice on your part."

"A girlfriend," reiterated Don, "who understands that Cammi is my soul mate, and that there's no coming between us.  A girlfriend who understands that she exists only to serve a very, very specific purpose, that purpose being igniting within us a renewed appreciation for our deep and satisfying relationship." Don breathed dramatically, his fuzzy chest heaving.  "There. It's out.  If I didn't have feathers covering it, you'd see how red in the face I am right now."

"Now I understand the situation," I said, "but I don't understand how you expect me to help.  You want me to track down a bird for you?  The only one I know is my mom's lovebird, and he's a boy.  And he's missing a toe.  And we think he might be mentally challenged."

"Well, you see, it's important to Cammi that she not feel threatened by this third partner.  So she gave me a condition- that the girl we find be fatter than her."

"I still don't-" I started to say, my eyebrows furrowing in confusion, but it was then I noticed exactly how the two birds were looking up at me.  Their gazes were a mix of nervousness and anticipation.  They were referring to me.

"I'm the fat girl?!" I asked.

"No, no, no, all I'm saying is that you are fatter than Cammi, which you really shouldn't take as an insult.  She's an uncommonly svelte bird, and even more to the point, I'm sure that among your kind, you are considered a very good weight," Don said.  "I'm sure that you are not fat at all in your-sized world.  But in ours, you are, let's say- hefty.  And Cammi, after spotting you watering your plants this past weekend, decided that you're the one."

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you guys," I said, "but you're out of luck."

"You're turning us down?" asked Don. "Is it me? Because I could just sit over there, on the garden hose, if you and Cammi-"

"We didn't talk about that, Don," Cammi said.

"It's just not going to happen," I clarified, shaking my head.  "In fact, I can't even figure out the logistics of how it could happen if I even wanted it to."

"You're serious?" Don asked.

"Very," I said.

There was a long silence between us. 

To try to repair the burgeoning friendship, I said, "You're welcome to hang out in my backyard for as long as you'd like.  I really enjoy having you here.  You guys are cute.  But I won't be joining you."

"I see," Don said. "I see."

"Well, I've got to go to babysitting," I told them. "Sorry again. And see you later."

When I came home that afternoon and opened my back door, the pair was still on my doormat, where I'd left them.  Don was huddled under Cammi's wing, and she was apparently consoling him.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"He's so depressed he can't move," she answered. "He thinks it's him."