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September 19, 2002
I miss my fantastic gay vet. The vet we go to in LA is a nice enough office with friendly enough people but we get different doctors each time. The last one had aqua-blue shellacked talons. This one was a crabby lady who was so not fantastic, so not gay. Instead she told me Iodine was fat without even saying something nice about her first, like that she has a great personality (which she really really does, and a really pretty face). Then she got a little X-Files on me by telling me that the suggested serving on the bag is just how the cat food company makes you buy more food. But then seconds later told me that my 100% indoor cat needs flea control… and not just any flea control, the brand of flea control that they happened to sell right there in the office. I miss Dr. Crutchfield. He let Iodine get as few vaccinations as possible since she was 100% indoor and he vaguely resembled a fantastic gay Bob Balaban. In the inevitable movie of Dr. Crutchfield's animal-saving life, Bob Balaban will play him. Did I tell you my Bob Balaban story? No, I didn't. Ok, me and Ben Pants and another friend of his went to see the Price is Right one day, which is oh my god a tale unto itself, maybe I'll tell it in a second, but on the way out as we walked through the CBS lot, I saw Bob Balaban walking past. Now, normally, I'd have been like "dude! That's that guy! From… everything!" (easiest landmarks in his career from my perspective are: Enid's dad in Ghost World, The producer guy in Gosford Park, the guy who got Carrie drunk at VOGUE on sex and the city, the NBC guy on Seinfeld, the director of a truly underrated late 80s teen movie called My Boyfriend's Back and of Strangers with Candy, among eight million other things) but just the week prior, some guy on a listserv I'm on had been writing piece on him for the Washington Post so I was a walking Bob Balabanopedia. Now, when I first found out I'd be moving to LA, I recall having more than one discussion with friends about meeting movie stars, and which of them would cause me to actually lose my shit. Like if you saw a famous person in line at the Rite Aid, what famous person would it have to be in order for you to break the cool and be like "DUDE! It's YOU!" I decided the only person who could do that to me was Paul Reubens. I think that's still the case. But seeing Bob Balaban in the CBS Parking Lot, still technically high on that patented Price is Right Assault of Color, I was galvanized into autograph-seeking action. I didn't squeal though, I was very composed. I did the thinking woman's squeal, a sort of head-tilting "Um, excuse me sir, are you Bob Balaban?" And I think, being character actor guy, he doesn't get the whole name recognition thing very often so he happily signed the back of my Price is Right magic winning number (which won me exactly nothing) and if I still had a scanner I'd prove it. I would. Oh yeah and SPEAKING of not winning anything, I am sorry to report that for reasons not quite within my understanding, I did not, repeat, DID NOT win the $115 million jackpot in the super lotto plus a few weeks ago. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong, except that I was kind of rude to this one guy in traffic. But other than that my positive mental attitude was unassailable. My sister in NY played the lotto there shortly thereafter, and tried a different tactic wherein she kept it a secret and didn't tell anyone about her positive mental attitude and all of the millions of dollars she was going to win... and SHE DIDN'T WIN EITHER! I don't get it! How does one win the lotto, exactly? It must be impossible. Thunk at 12:54 PM |
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