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On the eve of war, I did what any self-respecting
patriot living in the Greater Los Angeles Area would do.
I threw a party.
You know, one of those star-studded ones at a big house in
the Hollywood Hills that is attended by stars and people who
want to be stars and by people that will be banging stars
by the end of the night in a cramped linen closet six different
degrees of busted
up on coke. A Hollywood party for the last night before
the CNN coverage starts to fuck with all the really good reality
TV. Or, God forbid, pushes the Oscars back a week. They'd
rewrite the last chapter of the New Testament for that one.
The living room's for doves. A tape loop of President
Bush's diplomatic address announcing that we are going
to bomb the holy living shit out of anyone who lives near
sand and who wears a beret and a mustache plays on a 60-inch
plasma screen. Susan
Sarandon, Tim Robbins, and Janeane Garofalo play a drinking
game: every time Bush says "threat," they do a shot
of Goldschlager
off the stomach of the person who's slowest to put their finger
in Anna Nicole Smith's cleavage. Then, due to rules of the
game that I'm not privy to, Susan and Janeane make out, whether
or not they were slowest on the trigger-finger.
I keep the hawks out by the pool. Bruce Willis patrols the
pool, floating on an inflatable raft with a paintball gun,
blasting the windows with red paint and screaming "Blood
for more motherfucking oil! I've got a big, thirsty motherfucking
Escalade to run!" I've tried to tell him how much it
pisses off Heather Graham when he splatters the windows with
that damn gun; I've got her on squeegee duty every other week
after she and whoever's on the cover of Us Weekly break up.
But there's no talking to him when he's in full-on cliche
movie-star-floating-in-a-heated-pool-with-a-paintball-gun-with-a-porn-star-in-his-lap.
One more "Yippee-kai-yay!" out of him and I'm sending
his next invitation to a Sheen. It's been an ice age since
"Die Hard."
Sean Penn's sitting in a deck chair drinking something with
an umbrella in it. He's exiled to the hawks side for punching
the chubby Dixie Chick in the chops, though he said he was
just doing research. He just closed a deal to play the lead
in the Kid Rock biopic. I think that somewhere there's a Polaroid
of him and Bush at the 19th hole at Camp David, and the whole
trip to Iraq thing was just so he could get out of the Arts
and Leisure section in the Times.
I bump into the chick that won American Idol last year. I
blank on her name until Jack Black mouths it from behind her;
we'd met before, under far more naked conditions, and she
insisted that I call her Tiffany
through the entire session, just so she wouldn't forget what
might happen if she stopped working. The ironic thing is that
fifteen years ago the Mall Queen demanded that I call her
Leif Garrett for similar reasons. It felt a little creepy,
but I went along with it because you really couldn't hear
me through the ball-gag anyway. I tell the Idol girl to stop
hanging out with the fruit with the crazy hair who she beat
in the Finals unless she wants to wind up doing midnight shows
of Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Santa Monica Boulevard.
The party stays manageable until Prince shows up by the pool.
I invited to a thing once in a moment of weakness in 1991,
and now he's here whenever I hire a valet service. He's got
his chest hair shaved into a peace sign. I don't need to tell
you that it's dyed purple. And for some reason, he's carrying
nunchucks. They dangle from his fingers like a Kate Spade
bag. He's about four feet tall with three feet of platform
boots, but the guy's a python. Brittany
Murphy's right behind him holding a set of electric clippers,
begging to do some more pubic topiary.
Apparently, the peace sign thing was a big hit with the doves
in the living room. But that act's not flying with the warmongering
crowd. Specifically, with Willis, who's already loudly announced
that he's running for president of Iraq once we bomb Baghdad
into stained glass. His words. Once I hear the "Yippie"
dripping from his smirking mouth I know shit's hitting a fan
before the "Kai-yay" ever gets out. I hate being
right as a paintball slams Prince in the chest, that piece
sign a perfect crosshairs for a crimson splat. The guy doesn't
flinch even though we all wince.
Before I signal Michael Clarke Duncan to step in and flex
a little of that angelic-simpleton muscle mojo he's parlayed
into a film career, Prince is around Willis' neck like a feather
boa. Willis' raft goes down like the Titanic as the two of
them thrash in the pool. The doves pour in from the house
and scream for blood. The hawks scream for extra blood. Somehow,
there's already a crew from Access Hollywood rolling tape.
I can't watch. I know that by the time they resurface, Willis'
face is going to look like a baked potato and Prince is going
to be spitting out teeth like so much candy corn on the first
of November.
I'm back in the living room watching "Gulf War I: Smart-Bomb
Camera's Greatest Hits" on CNN when American Idol What's-her-face
sidles up beside me. She can't take all this war.
The doves and the hawks and the smart-bombs and the war will
have to wait. There's a linen closet and an eightball with
her name on it, and I've got a copy of "I Think We're
Alone Now" cued up on the stereo.
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