Me enjoying the Hollywood Bowl

1. The two yentas who sat behind me at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday night. BroJoe called me on Sunday morning to offer me an extra ticket he had for the Bowl’s program The Big Picture: 20th Century Fox Film and Music. I accepted with alacrity, looking forward to sharing the evening with Joe, our pals Ken and Trish, and the jumbo quantities of alcohol that they were sure to be bringing with them. What I failed to take into consideration was the bad luck I’ve had with the concert-goers who inevitably surround me when I attend the Bowl. The last time I was there, I sat behind a seven foot tall behemoth who decided to make me his BFI (Best Friend for Intermission) and then felt so comfortable in our relationship that he provided a commentary of his impressions of the entire second half of the show. This time, the assault came not from the front but from the rear, as the jabbering yentas immediately behind us looked upon their Bowl excursion as an excuse to catch up with each other and regard the program on the stage only as an occasional diversion from their constant chattering. Joe gave them a manly admonition of “would you mind not talking?” That only quieted them for a brief period as they continued their vital brainstorming about whether pumpkin or oatmeal cookies would be a more popular intermission snack, or enthusiastically pointing out to the screaming infant seated in one of their laps that the clips from Ice Age that the orchestra was playing accompaniment to was a cartoon (a revelation that was clearly expected to be reacted to with enthusiasm by the child, although the only thing it seemed to engender was more screaming). I will be attending the Bowl again this Friday, and I am seriously considering wearing ear plugs during the show. I may not be able to hear the music, but at least I won’t be annoyed by the audience.

BroJoe showing off the small amount of alcohol that DIDN'T contribute to his Pavarotti-like trumpeting at the end of the evening

2. Bro Joe. The problem with being invited to a function by Bro Joe is that you are then required to spend the evening with Bro Joe. It’s not that he’s a bad fellow – the Joe who invited me to the Bowl that morning was a generous and charming fellow with whom I’d gladly go to any social function at which he was footing the bill. But when you add alcohol to a Mullich, you sometimes get a different Mullich than the one you started out with. In my case, you get an obnoxiously sentimental Mullich who expresses far more affection for you and the people surrounding you than what you are apt to hear in the inevitable morning after. In Joe’s case, the addition of alcohol pumps up the volume. At the evening’s end we entered the bus that would return us to Van Nuys, and Joe inexplicably began speaking to Trish (who was seated immediately in front of him) as though she was on a separate bus going to San Bernardino. Trish quietly asked Joe to speak in his “inside voice”, apparently not aware that alcohol-fueled Joe’s “inside voice” is pitched at a level where he seems to think that he is addressing a full house at Madison Square Garden after the public address system had gone out. Fortunately, the bus ride didn’t take long and by the time we reached our cars the wine had worn off to the point where we could all safely drive home and Joe could speak at a volume that could be comfortably heard from a yard away. Of course by that time his voice was muffled from Trish’s seat cushion being stuffed halfway down his throat, but he seemed to have run out of small talk by then anyway.

Robert Osborne

3. Robert Osborne, the benign figure who introduces the films on Turner Classic Movies. Osborne hosted the Hollywood Bowl event, offering the same banal, empty trivia that he offers up on TCM every night. Living in Los Angeles, I regularly encounter waiters who have a more comprehensive familiarity of film history and who can provide more perceptivity on the art form than I have ever heard out of Osborne, who has an undeniable avuncular charm about him but doesn’t come remotely close to providing the kind of insightful commentary that Kevin Brownlow or Rogert Ebert can crap out on command. Osborne’s claim to fame is an encyclopedic knowledge of the Academy Awards but his magnum opus on the subject, 75 Years of Oscar, is a bland coffee table book that glosses over the darker (and most interesting) aspects of the Academy’s history in an obvious avoidance of biting the hand that feeds him, completely lacking the depth or information that can be gathered from the definitive work on the subject, Inside Oscar by Mason Wiley and Damien Boa. But 75 Years of Oscar has the distinction of being the “official” history of AMPAAS (Inside Oscar has a disclaimer that it is not endorsed by the organization) just as Osborne is the “official” host of Turner Classic Movies. And when something is the “official” representation of an enormous, faceless entity that might have a few skeletons in its closet, it’s best that it not be too controversial, divisive or interesting. Osborne fits those requirements to a tee.

One of the fraudulent photographs Amy Ball posted to try and con the world into believing that she had left the country

4. My Apple Tree costar Amy Ball, with whom I had brunch on Saturday. This was my first opportunity to really sit down with Ms. Ball and hear about her adventures on her six month world tour that took her from Japan to Belize to the farthest corners of Europe. At first I was entranced with her tales of world travel until she got to the part about visiting Japan. What Ms. Ball didn’t realize was that I have extensive experience interacting with our neighbors from the Far East through my frequent use of a telephone service called Geisha Sex Chat, and Ms. Ball’s stories of Japan were far removed from my own contact with the natives of the country, who are primarily obsessed with dressing up in Ninja outfits with fishnet stockings and pumps with stiletto heels and performing unnatural sex acts with American tourists who have goatees and glasses (they also all speak with heavy New Jersey accents, a detail never mentioned by Ms. Ball). After seeing through her tall tales of the Far East, it made me wonder if Ms. Ball had actually traveled anywhere, or if she had merely (as I suspect) posted photos of herself in exotic-looking locales while she was actually hiding out in San Diego to recover from some cheap cosmetic surgery performed by a Tijuana plastic surgeon. I can’t yet prove these charges, but I refuse to believe that I’m the only one to notice that her nose appears slightly smaller than before and she is now free of the luxurious mustache and back hair that she sported prior to leaving for her “trip”. It doesn’t add up and I intend on having my operatives (some of whom are Vulcan) do a complete investigation on the matter.

Fiama Fricano Traxler

5. My buddy Fiama Fricano Traxler, who gave her final performance in the San Francisco production of Wicked this weekend after spending 15 years with the show. That’s only a slight exaggeration; but Fiama has been with the production for a lonnnnng freakin’ time, to the point where she might have enough experience under her belt to perform in one my own masterworks. U.S.S. Pinafore is closing this weekend so she missed that opportunity, but after performing in front of a rabble of 2,000 members of the great unwashed I think she just might be ready to be seen by my far more discriminating audience of 45 or 50 seasoned theatregoers. She’ll need to audition of course, but I’m willing to keep an open mind.

1. Kiki Wistone, with whom I dined last night. I have made my reading public aware that I have curtailed my consumption of any alcohol except for Friday nights, when I drink enough vodka to hydrate a camel for six months. Despite her awareness of this policy, Ms. Wistone concentrated all of her considerable feminine whiles in a vain attempt to seduce me into imbibing of a hair of the dog. After much fluttering of her eyelashes I finally gave in to throwing back a vodka and cranberry juice. What happened next will come as no surprise to my adult readership. After loosening me up with demon rum, Ms. Wistone made it clear what her seamy intent was: to pummel me with questions about how I behaved after I’d had too much to drink. Decades of consuming mass quantities of alcohol made a single vodka and cranberry juice have the same effect of my liver as would emptying a bottle of Perrier into the Pacific Ocean, but it did throw me off guard to the point where I admitted that there exists a video taken of me the night after Thanksgiving three years ago where I drank three entire bottles of wine and proceeded to make more of an ass of myself than Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I divulged nothing more than that, but it was enough to set Ms. Wistone on a mission to find the video that has hung over my head low these many years. It is only a matter of time before she unearths it, and my hard-won reputation as a sober and serious man of letters is shattered. It was a nice run while it lasted.

2. The Macha Theatre Company. After I divulged the secret of my hidden shame, Ms. Wistone and I walked to the nearby Hugo’s Restaurant on King’s Road which is next door to my youthful stomping grounds of the Globe Playhouse. The Globe was a one-of-a-kind theatre constructed by the late R. Thad Taylor into a small-scale replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on the Thames. The structure was originally a Quonset hut that served as a car mechanic’s garage until Taylor took all of the passion and love for Shakespeare at his disposal and converted it into a theatre where a young Jonny M. performed in The Alchemist and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I thought that the theatre was still called the Globe until we were seated in the outdoor patio of the restaurant and I could see that it was now renamed The Macha after its home theatre company “to build social, cultural, and artistic bridges between the straight and gay communities of various ethnicities and provide the LGBTI community a sense of belonging.” As we ate, we encountered an actor who was rehearsing the upcoming show at the theatre, a modern language adaptation of Twelfth Night in which Malvolio announces his suppressed homosexuality at the play’s climax. While these liberties with the Bard didn’t sit with me any better than the translation of Shakespeare into Klingon that I wrote about earlier this week, I was at least pleased that Taylor’s legacy was still being used as a theatre and not as a mechanic’s shop. Of course, I wasn’t sure how much that pleasure had to do with my still being a little hammered.

3. Former News Radio star and general annoyance Andy Dick. Our chat on the patio was rudely interrupted when a woman in a car across the street began violently leaning on her car horn and yelling incomprehensible curses at the parking garage across from the restaurant. After several moments of barraging us with this noise pollution, she exited the auto and stormed into the restaurant and paid a check. From what we could gather, she had been on a blind date with Mr. Dick who decided mid-meal that she wasn’t his cup of tea and abruptly walked out of paying the bill, leaving her to come back and settle things in the name of karma. To be fair, I never saw Mr. Dick and we were only getting her side of the story (and she looked and sounded annoying enough to where I can’t entirely blame Dick for making the move, if that’s what actually happened). But I found it irritating enough to include on today’s list for two reasons. One is that as I handed over my credit card to pay the bill after my appallingly annoying sit-down with Ms. Wistone, I thought that if I tried the dine-and-ditch ploy on her that she probably wouldn’t be able to catch me but if she did, she’s beat my ass so badly that I’d be lucky to crawl away with only a broken arm and some brain damage. But I was primarily disquieted by the episode because it reminded me that there existed on the planet a creature known as Andy Dick, and I’m not sure if I have it in me to forgive that.

4. Jon Hofferman. In my haste to crap out a list before leaving for yesterday’s dentist appointment, I mistakenly referred to Brahms’ Lullaby as Brahm’s Lullaby. No one noticed the misplaced apostrophe until last night, when Hofferman wrote “(Warning: This is not a snappy riposte.) I know I’m going to wind up regretting this, and I wouldn’t even bother if it were just your normal everyday typu/mispeling, but this is Brahms, whose name is in fact ‘Brahms,’ meaning the possessive would be either ‘Brahms’s’ or ‘Brahms’,’ depending on your taste or which authority you favor. I look forward to the usual anti-intellectual lambasting for my pains.” I have three things to say in response to Mr. Hofferman’s correction. One is that it is not necessary to lead with the warning that his riposte lacks snap, since as it is coming from Mr. Hofferman’s keyboard that is to be expected. Secondly, I’d like to point out that a typo or two on the Enemies List is not exactly an unprecedented occurrence and my loving readership is not shy about pointing them out. The fact that the snooty Mr. Hofferman called me on misspelling the name of a classical composer doesn’t win him any more “intellectual” points than it would if he caught me booting the name of a porn star or a 1960s TV sitcom icon. Lastly, I hasten to add that Mr. Hofferman’s pecking out of “typu/mispeling” (sic) was itself a typo/misspelling so I’d advise him to lose the superior attitude if he knows what’s good for him. Other than that, I appreciate his comment and look forward to his continued participation on this list.

5. Officially named Hottest Chick on the Enemies List Kelie McIver who was my Facebook-assigned Best Friend for the Day yesterday. I frequently have my photograph taken with Ms McIver because she is so good-looking that she improves the appearance of any photograph by a scientifically-measured 234% by posing in it. But that measurement was tested at the Zodiac Thrillers improvisation show last Saturday when she and I were pictured with my arch-enemy Dan E. Campbell, who is clocked at reducing the viewability of any photo by at least 318% by being included in it. Since both Ms. McIver and Campbell are pictured in the photo on the left, I took it to the Jonny Labs to have my science guys test its aesthetic quality. Their conclusion was that I should cut the photo in half and frame the part with me and Kelie, and use the side that pictures Campbell as toilet paper or mulch. Science is vindicated once again.

No list on Monday. Happy Labor Day!

1. Enemies List favorite Mara Marini, who was my Facebook-assigned Best Friend of the Day (BFD) yesterday. I continued my agonizing boycott of posting any images of Mara and instead posting photos of SAG Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Ernest Borgnine by making this photo of Ernie and me to commemorate Mara’s BFD honor. As soon as the image was posted, I was inundated with messages (both public and private) referring to Ernie’s endorsement of masturbation as the secret to long life. I refuse to buckle in and will continue to replace Mara’s picture with one of Mr. Borgnine until I get what I want (photos of Ms. Marini’s recent experiments on the flying trapeze). It’s going to mean my putting up with a lot of whacking-off jokes, but I knew the risks when I got into this racket. But what I overlooked was the fact that other images of Ms. Marini would continue to pop up on the Internet, like one today that shows her acting tough with a rifle at a local shooting range. Do I discontinue the boycott and show Mara with her guns, or stick to my own guns and continue to only post photos of Ernie until I get what I want? This is something that I’ll have to pray about.

2. My nemesis Misty LaRue. When I posted the images of Borgnine and myself, Ms. LaRue commented “Great profile pic of the two of you together. Ernie has the very same one. He found the one way he could look handsome.” Burning with rage, I created the image on the left depicting Ms. LaRue with The Elephant Man, planning to caption it “In response to my dear friend Misty’s compliment of my new profile picture. Yes, it is a common practice for an unattractive person to pose with an even more peculiar-looking one to make themselves look better by comparison. It was first started by John Merrick, the Elephant Man with great success.” The only problem was that just as I was putting the finishing touches on the image, my annoying co-worker Monica Tims passed by my cubicle and saw the photo of the Jabbering Jewess and opined “she’s pretty!.” Undaunted, I posted the image anyway; to which Ms. LaRue replied “Hey, Jon. Where did you dig this one up of the two of us?…You never looked better!” I tell you my friends, the good guys lost that day.

3. My annoying coworker “Biff” Wellington. I have written many times on these pages of my proclivity to take a nap during the 45 minutes during the workday that are allotted for my luncheon that I might spend the afternoon refreshed and rosy-cheeked. I had an appointment yesterday which precluded me taking my siesta, with the result being that I was lurching around the office in the afternoon like Frankenstein’s Monster and slamming back coffee like it was my Friday night vodka. When Wellington was informed of my unfortunate dilemma, he found a web site that contained an audio file of Brahm’s Lullaby and blasted it over his computer in order to taunt me and make my life even more miserable than it is. If only Mara Marini had been there, I would have asked her to turn her shooting range rifle on me and put me out of my misery. Or better yet, turn it on Wellington and put everyone out of our misery.

4. My dentist Dr. Gibson Gowland, who asked me to “drop by his office for a minute” a week and a half ago so that he could check out a piddling anomaly that he saw on the x-ray taken at my latest cleaning. After spending two agonizing hours in his Pain Chair, I found myself forking over $600 and then crawling back to my car that I might drive myself home in order to collapse in pain. I have to return to his office this morning to finish the work, the most annoying part of which is that as I walk into his office through the parking lot, I will be confronted by a small canopy under which will be parked one of a series of outrageously expensive sports cars that the doctor drives to work. I don’t begrudge him the rewards of his profession; being a dentist is a tough job and God knows that if I was up to my elbows in Misty LaRue’s cavernous mouth, I’d charge a hefty dime for it. But it occurs to me that the $600 I forked over (not including what he rakes in from the insurance company) wouldn’t pay for one of his hand-crafted headlight frames, and it makes me wonder if I shouldn’t have listened to my mother and gone to Tooth Yanking and Bloodletting School in my wayward youth. Not only could I afford a better car, I wouldn’t have to work in an office that had “Biff” Wellington taunting me with Brahm’s Lullaby.

5. Mara Marini again. Since I am likely to be depressed to the point of jumping out a window today by forking over my last shekels to Dr. Gowland and then coming into the office to be mocked by Wellington in one sadistic way or another, I’m going to give us all something nice to look at in this picture or Mara in the shooting range. I know that I’m going back on my boycott, but pictures of Ernest Borgnine don’t do anything to cheer me up.

The great Klingon poet William Shakspeare

1. Myself. I wasn’t sure who to make the focus of this listing about a Washington Post article a friend of mine sent me about a benefit that the Washington Shakespeare Company is putting on that will stage a translation of Shakespeare’s work into Klingon. That’s right, the greatest works of poetry ever created by a human being are being bastardized into a made up language that no one understands in order to exploit the popularity of a forty-five year old TV show that I already exploited this year. It was enough to make me blow a gasket; but at who? Shakespeare for dying off and letting the copyright of his work expire so that any moron can do anything they want with it? The two nudniks who did the translation that no one will be able to judge the accuracy of because no one actually speaks this “language” that doesn’t actually exist? The moronic theatre’s administrators who are using their valuable resources to put together this facacta benefit? The Washington Post for posting this article as though it was actually news? My friend for bringing it to my attention in the first place? I decided that the guiltiest party here was me, because I have led my life in such a way that all of these annoyances managed to accumulate in a perfect storm of idiocy and find it’s way to me. God help me – or as the Klingons would say, joH’a’ QaH jIH.

What's to like about convertibles?

2. My annoying co-worker “Biff” Wellington who accused me of being “neuvo convertible” because I enjoy driving with my top down. Wellington explained that the only reason I was so unsophisticated as to ride with the top down was because I had “only” owned a convertible for five years, whereas he has been chauffeured around in them his entire life and was now so blasé about it that he seldom felt the need to be uncovered. I’m still not quite sure what point Wellington was trying to make in saying that in order to truly appreciate something you have to be surrounded by it for so long that you take it for granted and no longer appreciate it. With that logic it’s probably a good thing Wellington never got married, as he would have paid for the convertibles of many divorce lawyers by this point.

Steven Stanley with the biggest name in LA theatre

3. Legendary critic Steven Stanley, who quoted me in his Facebook post “Theater Professionals Salute StageSceneLA’s 3rd Anniversary!” in which I said some nice things about his StageSceneLA web site. My compliments were sincere, but I was aghast to discover that my quote was lumped in with a bunch of other yahoos who had similarly fond words for Mr. Stanley. I therefore want to make it known to StageSceneLA that if they have any future plans to use my name and vast popularity to promote their site, that I will be listed first over and above any other “theater professionals” that suck up to them and in a font face at least two points larger than anyone else who offered a similarly sycophantic quote. I am aware that a lot of people like Stanley and have nice things to say about him, but in today’s Jonny-Hungry society you have to lead with what the public wants.

Kiki Wistone

4. Kiki Wistone who went surfing yesterday and woke up describing herself “looking like the elephant man this morning (half swollen left eye, completely swollen shut right eye.) What is the toxic crap floating in our Southern Cali ocean?” As far as I’m concerned, the toxic crap floating in the ocean is Kiki Wistone, who has no business being out surfing while some of us are locked in a gray cubicle on Wilshire Blvd. I am writing this after waking up on my bathroom floor where I apparently vomited the remnants of last night’s vodka and hashish brownies that got me through yet another nightmarishly lonely evening, and what I saw in the mirror wouldn’t be able to get a date with the Elephant Man at his most desperate. So I would advise Ms. Wistone to quit her whining about her swollen eyes. There are parts of me that swell up all the time, and no one is interested in them either.

Note to Mara: I can keep this up for as long as you can

5. Enemies List favorite Mara Marini, who posted “I want to invent a Tanning Jacuzzi. How awesome would it be to sit in a hot tub for fifteen minutes & come out bronzed?” While I would love nothing more than to post a photo of a bronzed Mara sitting in a hot tub (preferably with me on the other side), I am continuing my pledge of posting images of SAG Lifetime Achievement Award-winner Ernest Borgnine in Mara’s place until she forks over the photos of her on a trapeze that I wrote about yesterday. This isn’t pleasant for any of us Mara, and you’re not making it any easier.

Luise Rainer in “The Good Earth”

1. Luise Rainer. Yesterday’s listing about my goddess Olivia de Havilland got me to thinking about Ms. Rainer, who (having turned 100 in January) is the oldest living Best Actress Oscar-winner. She was also the first performer to win back-to-back statuettes for her awkward and ineffective turn as the first wife of impresario Florenz Ziegfeld in the interminable The Great Ziegfeld. in 1936 and for her deeply moving depiction of a Chinese peasant in the still-powerful The Good Earth in 1937. The fact that the Viennese Ms. Rainer won Oscars for playing a French singer and an Asian social climber made me think how free and easy Hollywood has been in regards to casting actors outside of their ethnicity, especially for Asian characters. Boris Karloff as Dr. Fu Manchu, Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto, Katharine Hepburn in Dragon Seed, Marlon Brando in Teahouse of the August Moon and Warner Oland, Sidney Toler and Peter Sellers as Charlie Chan are just a few examples of the studios taping up the eyes of non-Asian actors rather than trying to develop some ethnically-correct performers to play the parts, with the nadir of the practice being John Wayne as Ghengis Khan and Mickey Rooney in the appallingly racist depiction of a Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffanys (which is as offensive as anything in Birth of a Nation). We compliment ourselves that we are above such practices now, but the reality is that the only Asian performers who have been nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor or Best Actress are Yul Brynner, Ben Kingsley and Merle Oberon, actors who primarily played non-Asian roles. As for Ms. Rainer, she made only six more feature films of diminishing quality after her back-to-back Oscars and faded into relative oblivion, never to know (unlike Olivia de Havilland) what it’s like for me to get hammered on Vodka on a Friday night and fantasize about her lustfully. Looking at it that way, I’m sure she considers hers to be a life well-lived.

The Particularly Grim Reaper

2. Bro Joe who posted yesterday “I just went to Alive or Dead to see who I have lived longer than — Michael Jackson, Steve McQueen, and Rod Serling. If I made it 38 more days, I will have outlived Errol Flynn.” The Dead or Alive Joe refers to is the web site www.deadoraliveinfo.com, a handy reference tool to find out whether or not your favorite celebrities are on this mortal coil and if not, when they went to meet their maker. The oldest living celebrity in the Dead or Alive database is 104 year-old Ruby Muhammad who the site refers to as “the Mother of the Nation of Islam”, and the site has a convenient tool that tells you who you’ve outlived. At my current age, I have outlived Joseph McCarthy by 90 days and if I make it 11 more days I’ll have outlived Monty Python’s Graham Chapman. The person I’m really shooting to outlive though is BroJoe, and rest assured that I’ll be drinking a lot of fluids in preparation for the moment I’m standing at his burial site. There’s nothing like a lifetime of suppressed hostility and a full bladder to really liven up a funeral.

A poor replacement

3. Enemies list favorite Mara Marini, who recently made the Facebook post “Awaiting the plethora of incredibly embarrassing photos/videos to hit the ‘net. Me + trapeze = scariest thing EVER!!!” While the word “scary” is not the first that leaps to mind when anticipating photos of Mara on a trapeze, it has given me something to want to outlive Graham Chapman for and I have vowed not to post any more pictures of Mara until these promised trapeze photos are made available to me. Instead, I am posting this picture of Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award-winner Ernest Borgnine, which is all the eye candy you get until Mara forks over the trapeze pictures. The clock is ticking.

The Pain Box

4. Crispy Bacon, who failed to make an appearance at Dan E. Campbell’s improvisation competition on Saturday night. When asked about his no-show status, Crispy explained “I hurt myself Saturday scrubbing the kitchen and lifting laundry. I had to turn on the pain box and let it fire twice to try and shut my back up. Sorry I missed the fun, I hope you won! And I was all ready to write 666 on my forehead to drive Jon Mullich crazy (after his little photoshop shtick!).” I have no idea why Crispy feels that writing the sign of the beast on his face would have any effect on me when it typically is reserved for the address of the government-assisted housing in which he lives so that kindly strangers can help him find his way home, but I am intrigued by this “pain box” that he turned on to help him get through his ordeal. Since I am into some stuff that would have got me stoned during the middle ages I am in no position to judge anyone’s kinks, but I am curious at what twisted perversions Crispy gets up to in this box. I spent a good part of last night on the Internet trying to determine what the apparatus did, but all the sites that featured it charged a $29.95 monthly membership fee. The only things I could glean from the free preview pages were that the box required a spotless kitchen to set up in and that you needed a lot of freshly-laundered towels and sheets for clean-up afterwards. Sick.

Misty LaRue

5. Misty LaRue, who commented on yesterday’s Enemies List “Jon, I just read your EL list. It was one of your very best. I’m assuming you had a great deal of help.” The hysterical yenta was simply being her typically glib self, but the reality is that every one of these lists is beholden to the annoying, soul-destroying cretins that I am forced to interact with on a daily basis. I owe them each a debt of gratitude, starting today with Misty LaRue’s cavernous mouth. I am indebted to her for being the annoying yenta that she is, and I look forward to the day when she is given her proper enshrinement on a web site like www.deadoraliveinfo.com. I’m already stocking up on bottled water in preparation for the day she makes it.

Glenn Beck and his supporters

1. Glenn Beck, who led a massive rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday calling for a “Religious Rebirth” in America. The truth is that I don’t know much about Glenn Beck except for what I’ve seen of him on the (possibly skewed) reports about his television program on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. From what I have seen, he appears to be ripe fodder for mockery and I don’t understand how anyone could take him seriously but obviously from the crowds who came to his rally, someone does. But whether or not I like or dislike Glenn Beck isn’t the point of this listing. What offends me is when a person or a group makes a call for their followers and interested fence riders to get behind their narrow agenda in the name of Religion. What Beck and Sarah Palin (who I do know something about and who offends me to the core of my being) are saying is that because they are on the side of “Religion” that they speak for God and therefore have divine providence on their side in pushing what they have to sell (which, let’s face it, is the promotion and enrichment of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin). The reality is that it’s not possible to get back to religion because religion has always been at the forefront of our lives. And by “religion”, I mean every individual human being’s (and that includes you, me, and – yes – Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin) relationship with God. But here’s the monkey wrench in Beck’s deus ex machina: every individual human being has a different definition of what that relationship is. Let’s use the sexist stereotype of God, the Father: we have a family of three brothers, one of whom thinks Dad is great, one of whom thinks Dad is okay but a little overbearing, and one of whom thinks Dad is an asshole. We all know families like that, and many of us are an active participant in one. Each of the brothers has accepted Dad into their lives, but each has a very different perspective of what he represents. Does the brother who has a great relationship with Dad (let’s call him Glenn, for lack of a better name) have the right to say to the other brothers “I think Dad is terrific, so I expect you to feel the same way about him and honor him as I do and if you don’t, you’re evil ingrates.” That is the kind of thinking that tears families apart, and it is the kind of divisiveness that has been tearing the human family apart since the Crusades. To truly “get back to God”, we need to accept the idea that the very concept of God is a deeply personal one and that He, She, or It is not in the business of endorsing political or social agendas. And that’s the Gospel Truth.

Danny's dream

2. My arch-enemy Dan E. Campbell, with whom I found myself in the horrifying position of interacting socially at Canter’s Deli on Saturday night. At one point in the evening Campbell demanded that I allow him to try on my trademark spectacles on the pretense that his government-assisted healthcare was finally allowing him to update the eyewear that he had been sporting since 1978 and he was experimenting with new looks. I would normally no more allow a dude to put on my eyeglasses than I would my sweat socks or sequined banana hammock, but Campbell’s insane, pleading stare made me decide to amend my policy in the interest of the safety of those surrounding us. As soon as he slid my glasses onto his Humpty Dumpty-like noggin he was swept away to a fantasy world far removed from his meager existence of WIC coupons and seamy glory holes, and was instead transported to my jet-setting lifestyle of celebrity parties and half-price Gin Rickeys after I had purchased a Gin Rickey at full price at Trader Vic’s. Campbell’s dream was short-lived as I snatched the glasses off his bulbous nose and put them back on so that I could observe a group of teenage party girls exit the deli. But I believe that I provided Campbell in that one moment the greatest thrill of his tangled, tragic life and that I came to understand him just a little more, and like him even less.

Christine Jones

3. My former co-worker Christine Jones who I bumped into while walking out of Canter’s where she was on the sidewalk begging for spare change (or at the deli counter purchasing a pastry; the memory is hazy as I write this). I pretended to be happy to encounter Ms. Jones as she complimented me on my well-documented 50 lb. weight loss since she had last seen me, smirking “guys only need to hold their breath and they lose twenty pounds”. I immediately admonished Ms. Jones (and point out to any of my female readers) that it is a misconception that men shed body fat so easily; my weight loss was the result of a strenuous regimen of diet and exercise that I continue to observe in my ongoing attempt to live a healthy life. What I didn’t tell her was that I had just spent twenty minutes in the men’s room violently purging the ten pounds of chocolate babka that I had just crammed down my face. It tasted much better going down.

Four bearded idiots

4. Bro Joe, the evil genius Sir Lars Fargo and Kenny Veranos with whom I joined for our monthly primal scream therapy last night. With the bearded mirror universe Fargo still trapped in this dimension and Bro Joe having grown out his Van Dyke in order to escape detection from the police until certain misunderstandings can be ironed out, we noticed that this was the first time in our long and unpleasant association that the four of us sported facial hair at the same time. I grew my own signature goatee after being enslaved by Ralph’s Supermarket for fourteen years (where facial hair was no more permitted than was independent thought) and while I have periodically gone beardless while performing in such productions as Servant of Two Masters, The Imaginary Invalid and Slick Jonny’s Hairless Gang Bang, I do go through a phase of depression after shaving it as I recall my days chained to the deli counter. Veranos has sported his beard since the Andrew Jackson administration, and it now enjoys government protection as the nesting ground for numerous species of rare insects and fungi.

My dream girl

5. Olivia de Havilland. Friday night is becoming Vodka Night at Casa de Jonny, as I have celebrated the end of the week for the last few weeks by tossing back a couple of screwdrivers and enjoying an inflated sense of self esteem that only alcohol can give me at this point. I had a double-thrill this Friday because Turner Classic Movies showed a triple bill of films starring Olivia de Havilland. I have a small collection of actresses who I worship at in a dark corner of my mind who (for whatever reason) I regard with a reverence that I would willingly lay down my life to defend them if they required me to. My devotion to these flickering celluloid images has nothing to do with fame or talent and range from immortal movie stars like Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren and Myrna Loy to relatively obscure goddesses like Linda Kelsey from the old Lou Grant TV show. Nearing the top of the list is Ms. de Havilland, who (in films like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Adventures of Robin Hood) I consider to be the single most perfect physical creation that Jehovah has yet cranked out. Regrettably, when she changed studios after a famous lawsuit in the 1940s, she wanted to be regarded as a “serious” actress instead of the porcelain object of my worship. So she submerged her exquisite beauty in films like To Each His Own, The Heiress and The Snake Pit, which were the films that TCM screened on Friday. They were fine films (she won Oscars for To Each His Own and The Heiress) but in my Vodka-enhanced state I wanted to see the Olivia of my imaginary shrine, and I did not respond politely to the physically dowdy, artistically superior model that was on display on Friday. The result is that there is an enormous crack in my television screen from where a threw a bottle of Vodka at it, which I’m going to mask by taping a lobby card of Olivia de Havilland in A Midsummer Night’s Dream over. I can’t wait for next Friday.

1. The Most Interesting Man in The World from those Dos Equis ads. Yesterday, a compadré of mine posted on his Facebook wall “In a fight, The Most Interesting Man in the World would beat the Old Spice Guy. And then drink his blood. Stay thirsty, my friends.” I found that amusing, and responded ‎”I don’t always drink blood but when I do, I prefer AB+.” The point of this Algonquin Round Table-like wit is that I love the Most Interesting Man in The World commercials but, like any ad campaign that I consider to be clever, I am observing it with a considerable amount of caution because I know that it’s only a matter of time before it’s beaten into the ground. This is especially true of beer commercials, which I learned the hard way from Budweiser’s Great American Heroes ads that I loved when they first came out but that I would yank the upholstery out of my car seat to stick in my ears when I heard worn-out variations of the same theme still be played on the radio ten years later. So I’m begging Dos Equis to retire the Most Interesting Man in The World commercials before they suffer the same fate. It won’t be long before The Most Interesting Man in The World isn’t interesting any more.

2. Bro Joe, with whom I had dinner last night. When I was in kindergarten and elementary school, class would inevitably interrupted by some kid who was leaning back in chair misjudge his balance and come crashing back to the floor. The class would enjoy a sadistic chuckle at his expense and the social mishap would then be immediately forgotten as one of those dumb things that kids are always doing. I haven’t witnessed this kind of misuse of a chair in forty years with the exception of Joe, who was admonished by our waiter to quit leaning back on the two legs of his chair and sit like a human being. Joe admits that he is frequently scolded for this behavior from waiters, coffee baristas, and security guards – security guards; people who are charged with overseeing the public safety to the degree that they are provided firearms and expected to lay their life on the line have considered Joe such a danger to himself and society at large that they have singled him out for special observation. In truth, I have yet to see Joe go crashing to the floor from his hijinx like the kids in third grade, but then we never had an armed guard tell us to knock it off with the chairs. Maybe if we did, a few of us might not have been held back in life due to brain trauma.

3. Crispy Bacon, who posted on his Facebook Wall “On the bus this morning and a shirtless guy gets on…has ‘This Space For Rent’ tattooed on his back…all I can do to keep myself from laughing…” Personally, I find nothing amusing about the body art and consider it to be a very sensible way of advertising a potential business opportunity. I can think of a completely unused area on Crispy that could potentially be used for storage and I would advise him to stamp a similar advertisement on it right away. It will need the cobwebs dusted out of it, but aside from that it is pristine.

4. My compadré Jesse Merlin, who sometimes posts quotes from his mentor Quentin Crisp as his Facebook status. The most recent one is “”Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.” That’s a nice sentiment, but sex is not the last refuge of the miserable. Making Enemies Lists is the last refuge of the miserable. I know from experience.

And to end on a happy note, another picture of Mara Marini. Happy Friday, everyone!

1. My iPod, which is out to destroy me. It is one of my Great Little Pleasures to drive to work with the top down, my iPod hooked up to the car stereo blaring out one of the 1,372 songs currently loaded on it. But I’ve come to notice that when the songs are shuffled and one of those 1,372 is played to me, I sometimes am serenaded with a recording that I not only have no idea how it made it into my digitally encoded audio vault but it might very well be a song that I personally can’t stand, such as Did I Shave My Legs For This? or Torn Between Two Lovers. And even when I reorganize my iTunes, the objectionable songs make their way back to the playlist. That’s when it dawned on me that the iPod was trying to impose its musical tastes on me. It all came to a head yesterday, when I gave the thing a stern talking to (instructing it that it was the servant and I was the master) and then plugged it into the car radio for my drive over Coldwater Canyon. But when I set it to shuffle, nothing played. I inspected the device and saw that it now had zero songs loaded on it. I had no time to resync the iPod to my iTunes, so I had to drive to work listening to commercial radio as the iPod lay in the seat beside me, cruelly mocking me. I have now resynced the iPod and the songs are now reloaded, but which songs? I won’t find out until the drive to work if the iPod will allow me a few of my own selections or (now that it has displayed its dominance over me) if I must now listen to whatever song it chooses to play. Of course, when I think of some of my own selections – I Think We’re Alone Now by Tiffany, Straight Up by Paula Abdul – maybe it’s for the best.

2. Jesse Merlin, who was my Facebook-assigned Best Friend for the Day (BFD) yesterday. Yesterday, Mr. Merlin bragged that he was invited to one of the architectural marvels of Los Angeles – the famous house in Hancock Park that has nine reproductions of Michelangelo’s statue of David in the front yard. I have driven by the house many times and I consider it to be the third most beautifully landscaped building in Los Angeles (I won’t say what the first two are, but they’re COVERED in gnomes), so I am green with envy at Mr. Merlin’s invitation, but I’m also a little nervous. After my experience with the iPod I now fear inanimate objects and I worry that Mr. Merlin has been commissioned to teach the Davids to come to life and act out scenes from the film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. When they get to the classic scene where one of the characters is ordered to consume solid waste and the marble statues have to poop, it could give the expression “a shit brick” a whole new meaning.

3. Kelie McIver who called me at work yesterday while on the way to a professional appointment of her own. Since I do not take personal calls on my work phone Ms. McIver called me on my cell phone from her cell phone, the result being something like Neil Armstrong talking to Mission Control. I don’t remember the specifics of the conversation so much as both of us saying “What? I can’t hear you!” a lot and explaining that we each probably wouldn’t hear what each other was saying because we were speaking on a cell phone. It was nevertheless a delight to hear Ms. McIver’s smoky, velvety voice and I look forward to seeing her in person so I can ask what the hell we were talking about.

4. Cady Haas, who posted as her Facebook status “is always pleasantly surprise by the amount of food I can get for my money at Trader Joe’s. Petco, on the other hand, has robbed me blind in puppy treats once again, all because Pet’s Naturally doesn’t open till 10am!” Since this made it sound to me that Trader Joe’s fulfilled all her dietary needs with the exception of puppy treats, I left a wise-ass comment which ultimately degenerated into a string of vile entries which I topped with a reference to anal sex. It was then that Ms. Haas reminded me that there were children who could see her Facebook Wall, which thoroughly confused me. I mean, kids have to find out about back-door action eventually and if they wait until they’re old enough to rent a movie like Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom it might be too late for them. I’m providing a valuable educational service here and the sooner you people realize that, the better.

5. Peter Fields who started the comments on yesterday’s Enemies List by announcing “Jon, you’re a genius.” Since I am accustomed to starting the day with either Jaz Davison informing me that she found a misspelled word in a listing about hummingbirds or Misty LaRue telling me to go F myself, Mr. Fields’ complimentary beginning threw me off for the whole day. I would therefore appreciate it if he could say something thoroughly nasty about me today. It may be unpleasant, but it’s what I’ve grown accustomed to.

Steven Stanley and his nemesis Steven Stanley

1. Legendary critic Steven Stanley, whose web site StageSceneLA is celebrating its third anniversary of covering the theatre scene in Los Angeles. To comemorate the event, Mr. Stanley has put out a call for quotes from local theatre professionals about the site to be posted in a press release that will be sent to Los Angeles media outlets. Since StageSceneLA is a Los Angeles media outlet it will then print the press release, only leaving out key factoids that will make the article subtly insulting to Mr. Stanley who will then threaten a lawsuit against himself if he doesn’t print a retraction. Since Mr. Stanley won’t buckle into threats, he will tell himself to go to hell and will respond by suing himself for every penny he’s got. He will win the case in court (or lose it, depending on which Steven Stanley you ask about it) and will be forced to pay out a hefty settlement to himself which he will then use to finance massive improvements to StageSceneLA which will gain Steven Stanley even more renown as Steven Stanley fades bitterly into obscurity, sorry that he ever went up against so awesome a force as Steven Stanley.

Nicole Dean

2. My annoying co-worker Nicole Dean. Ms. Dean gamely returned to work after taking three sick days off and promptly emptied the contents of her stomach in her office wastepaper basket. It is not the first time that someone has threatened to puke their guts out in my vicinity, but it the first time that I can recall anyone actually following through on it. Since Ms. Dean was not plagued by a stomach disorder during her affliction, I can only assume that the evacuation of her stomach lining was either due to a consumption of too much alcohol to quiet her distaste for her co-workers or else it was a commentary on the office politics in the organization. Whatever the cause of the unfortunate state of affairs, it did demonstrate the less-than-lightning-speed of the building janitorial staff which took several hours to get around to cleaning up the mess, forcing Ms. Dean to continue going through her backlog of work in an atmosphere that ultimately seemed like the Okefenokee Swamp shortly after it served as the battlefield in a bloody melee between a herd of rabid wombats and a group of savage pygmies with diarrhea. Amazingly, Ms. Dean was able to finish out the day in her pungent office, assisted no doubt by whatever libation that caused her to defile it in the first place.

“Pink Ball” Harding

3. “Pink Ball” Harding, who celebrates a birthday today. Harding is an animal rights enthusiast who spends his day posting photographs on his Facebook wall of injured cats wearing cones on their heads and asking for monetary contributions to pay for the cones. I have yet to cough up any scratch to help out the sickly kitties, although I might reconsider if it turned out the money was to pay for a cone to go over Harding’s head. I would happily finance anything that might muffle the sound of his talking about injured cats, plus the cone might keep Harding from licking himself. That would be money well-spent.

Dan E. Campbell at last year's fashion show.

4. My arch-enemy Dan E. Campbell, who announced that his 27th annual “Do It Yourself Fashion Show” would take place on October 23rd. Campbell started the ritual when he read his horoscope one day and the swami who wrote it told Dan that “you will host a fashion show in your home.” I have never received such specific instructions in a horoscope myself, although Google Horoscopes told me today that “You must clearly demonstrate that you are prepared before you ask others to accept you as their leader.” That seems reasonable to me, so I have mapped out an elaborate plan to kidnap Dan Campbell on October 22nd so that I don’t have to endure another fashion show. I figure that if I can prevent the world from having to put up with the sight of Dan in an Uncle Sam jacket and short shorts again, mankind will be so grateful that they’ll happily follow my bidding on anything.

Gummo Marx

5. Gummo Marx. October 23rd also happens to be the birthday of Milton”Gummo” Marx. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Gummo, he was one of the legendary Marx Bros. who rose to Hollywood immortality in films like Animal Crackers, Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera. Unlike his siblings Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo however, Gummo never appeared in a movie because he decided that he wasn’t a good enough actor and dropped out of the act in 1916 to be replaced by Zeppo. Anyone who thinks he’s such a bad actor that he needs to be replaced by Zeppo Marx must be the worst actor in the history of acting, but Gummo eventually found success on his own, first as the inventor of a new kind of laundry box and later as an agent in the theatrical agency Zeppo founded after leaving the team himself in 1934. Gummo made headlines when he died in 1977 because he was in the midst of a bitter legal battle at the time to gain control of Groucho’s finances over Groucho’s live-in girlfriend, but he always lived in the shadow of his famous brothers. That fact was brought home to him when his son began telling his schoolmates that he was Harpo Marx’s son. When asked why, the boy responded “Who ever heard of Gummo Marx?” A fair point, but at least Gummo died before he would have had to sit through one of Campbell’s fashion shows.

1. Enemies List favorite Mara Marini, who expressed some frustration when she was served a subpoena yesterday to appear in court today. My sick mind immediately went to fantasies of strip searches and shower fights, but innocent Mara is merely being called to testify against some scofflaw and I have no doubt that the ner’do well will do serious time after Mara has her say. I have no idea what he’s being charged with or what kind of testimony Mara will offer, but I know that if I was on a jury and Mara wanted me to vote a certain way, I’d do it no matter what the circumstances were. I realize that I would probably end up on charges myself for treating my jury service so casually but since I have a thing for strip searches and shower fights, I figure everybody wins.

2. Kiki Wistone, Peter Fields and Micki Sackler. It all began on Sunday, when I made an innocent Facebook posting saying that I enjoyed my nemesis Dan E. Campbell’s performance in the improv show I saw him in on Saturday night. The comment string ultimately touched on my taekwondo class that morning, when I pointed out that the instructor was Russian. Ever the wise ass, Ms. Wistone responded “fuck you and the horse you rode in on” but in Russian, so it read “Пошел на хуй, и лошадь, которую вы ехали на!”. Now before anyone gets excited at Ms. Wistone’ bilingual accomplishments, there are a number of online translation applications which convert English into Russian. The problem is that they’re not terribly accurate, so what Kikiactually told me was “I went to dick, and the horse you rode on!” Despite this rather nonsensical statement, I responded in kind and we carried on our discursive Slavic silliness into yesterday’s Enemies List, where we were joined by Mr. Fields and Ms. Sackler who apparently are also aware of translate.reference.com, and whose Russian posts were seamlessly reworded into English as “John, you do not hate life more than you hate well-aged and warm red wine” and “After reading all these wonderful comments, I look forward to the film noir this evening. Seeing the psycho-bully ‘Tommy Udo’ send a woman in a wheelchair down the stairs, will be like a comedy!” I think something got lost in the translation. At least I hope so. My last word on the topic is Нет больше русский, пожалуйста! Анекдот закончился! (No more Russian, please! The joke is over!)

3. The evil genius Sir Lars Fargo. Speaking of my taekwondo class, Bro Joe was talking to Fargo about it prior to our taking it. Fargo responded that he didn’t care for taekwondo,which Joe assumed to mean that the burly evil genius thought there were better ways of getting the same exercise. When pressed however, Fargo said that he disliked taekwondo because “it’s a martial art that you can’t take to the streets”. I have known Fargo for many years, and his primary means of passing his time are carving tiki statues out of discarded tree stumps, going to garage sales to find the best deals on used underwear and Tupperware, and haunting 99-cent Stores in the hopes that they’ll get an unexpected shipment of Peeps candy. I’ve never known him to break out the nunchucks and go toe-to-toe with a street gang wearing baseball uniforms and black eyeliner so I don’t know which martial art he finds best for taking to the narrow avenue on which he lives, but I researched the subject and found offshoots of Kung Fu called Monkey, Praying Mantis, and Drunken Boxing. I have no idea which of these is most lethal in a street fight, but I’m going to try Drunken Boxing this Friday night. I’ll just need to stop off at one of Fargo’s tiki bars for a few rum drinks and then I’ll be ready to kick some serious ass.

4. Misty LaRue. Speaking of ner’do wells, some swine hijacked BroJoe’s Facebook wall this morning with the obviously phony post “hello!.. this website is giving away free Apple iPad to everyone. Alot of people got their iPad for free. I’m not sure how long this offer will last, so hurry up and get yours before it’s too late.” Being the altruistic soul that I am in trying to keep Joe’s cronies from clicking on what could be a dangerous link, I posted the brilliant cautionary warning “Is this spam?” Ms. LaRue immediately jumped on my ass, replying “No, Jon…It’s REAL! I just got my free iPad! I’m going to set it up in my castle in the clouds and my fairy godmother is going to help…” I have nothing to add to this except that after I get through with Ms. LaRue when I next see her, I only hope Mara Marini testifies on my behalf at my trial or else they’re going to throw away the key.

5. Laura Boyle, who posted on our mutual Facebook friend Shawn Cahill’s wall “So how do you know Jon Mullich (my condolences!).” Her query prompted Mr. Cahill to reply that he supported me when I starred in Twelfth Night a couple of years ago. Since I had no recollection of who Mr, Cahill was, I’ll ignore the “condolences” crack and charge Ms. Boyle to ask similar questions of my other Facebook friends, since I have no idea who 95% of you people are. And with the notable exceptions of Mara Marini, Kelie McIver and the evil genius Lars Fargo (who might come in handy when shit goes down on the street), I’m not that crazy about the 5% that I do know.