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topdocbear > kingman     BIOGRAPHY BOOKS BLOG Happy Valentines Doc By Carrie • Feb 15th, 2009 • Category: News I have a friend named Arnie Klein. Dr. Arnold Klein. Dr. Arnie Klein He’s an actual doctor, not1 of those people that call themselves doctors, like my father’s son in law. (or whatever you call your wife’s child that’s not yours) My father’s wife, Betty Lin, had a son who called himself, “Doctor Winky”. She would still have a son named doctor winky, but she passed away some years ago, so now Doctor Winky can belong to all of us. Doctor Winky is not, in fact, a physician, but a doctor of night club lights. You wouldn’t think that there was a call for a doctor of night club lights, and there probably isn’t. But if there WAS a need for someone to doctor strobe lights and the other ailing bulbs—–Doctor Winky would be their man. But Arnie isn’t a light doctor. He’s an actual doctor. And not JUST an actual doctor, Arnie is a dermatologist to the stars. He’s a pimple and wrinkle doctor, ideal for adolescence and old age and everything in between. Arnie is a great doctor. Great because he loves what he does. His job is medicine and his hobby is medicine. He spends his weekends reading medical journals. My pimples brought me to Arnie and my wrinkles and affection will keep me with him til the end. His and/or mine. Arnie and I are completely opposite in a similar way. He wants to feel like he could go into surgery in a moments notice. As the doctor. Whilst I want to feel as though I could go into surgery in a moments notice ——as the patient. Arnie likes me to write about him. He calls it feeding his narcissism. Not that this (being written about or paid attention to) is an uncommon pleasure. Especially in what is laughingly called Hollywood. I think most people like being written about. Nicely, of course. And now that Arnie has discovered that there is a new venue where I could pay him further tribute—-well, as you see—– So…….here I am writing about him………in front of God and everyone……in front of blog and everyone……Arnie………here is your tribute. Happy Valentines Day………. Posted in News | 5 Comments » Star light star bright, the rest I cant remember right. By Carrie • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: News My mother was born in El Paso, Texas. She was the second child of Ray and Maxene Reynolds, who had my mother’s brother, Bill at 16 and then proceeded to have my mother, Mary Frances, the following year. One of the reasons my grandmother wanted to marry at such a young age, was she anxious to have her own room. Raised in an extremely large family, she was anxious to get away and secure for herself some privacy. Odd logic—–marrying for privacy—-but then, my family has never been known for it’s conventional10dencies. My grandmother’s mother, Maxie Harmon, began having children in her late teens & continuing to procreate until she had her last child at 49, which the doctor informed her was a tumor—–and when that growth was born, they called him, of course, Tumor—–making him my mother’s “Uncle Tumor, who was and remains younger than his niece. Maxene grew up sharing everything with her multiple siblings, from beds to food to clothes—–, she never wore anything but her sister’s hand me downs—– so the prospect of her own closet and living in her own house was extremely alluring. She once told me that her family was so poor that they, “didn’t have6 matching glasses.”Then she added brusquely, “And don’t you put that in1 of your books!” (She didn’t say anything about blogs, so I share it without threat of adding more weight to my already tubby conscience. It would also be difficult for her to object much at this point, as my grandmother had the bad manners to pass away some time ago.) So, hoping to secure some privacy and perhaps even a dress of her own,when my 15 year old grandmother caught the eye of my handsome grandfather, Raymond Francis Reynolds, a local boy who played baseball rather well and worked on the railroad, she did nothing to discourage him. Ray was much more handsome than tall, and Maxene was more large busted than beautiful——but they began to pool their liabilities and their assets, and soon enough they found themselves courting and then, out of the something borrowed, something blue, they were wed. Unfortunately, my great grandmother (not so great in this case) had neglected to inform her daughter, Maxene, about just what would be expected of her on her wedding night——so that when my grandfather began to ………..well, as you might imagine, my grandma was, in addition to being unwilling was also quite understandably paralyzed with disbelief. Surely my grandfather was making this up——how could anyone be expected to do anything as bizarre as this! It took my grandfather3 days and lots of sketching, (what I wouldn’t give to see those!) for her to finally relent and more than likely unenthusiastically, let him have his now legal way with her. ——————————————————— My mother wasn’t a mother that cooked and cleaned and helped me with my homework, but not knowing these things existed I didn’t miss them. Debbie Carrie & Todd She was both parents to Todd and I. The main reason my father has any children at all is largely because they’re a by product of sex, which he’s devoted a huge portion of his life to. Certainly not out of any urge to procreate. We rarely saw our him—-maybe once a year—–yet my mother never spoke ill of him. At Christmas she would buy gifts and sign his name on the card. Of course, my brother and I weren’t really fooled, as she made little effort to disguise her handwriting———But the fact that she did it at all was dear. Though she had an extremely demanding career, Todd and I always had the sense that we came first to her. Both then and now. One of my favorite things that my mother does is give advice. Most mothers give advice, but she does it in a very unique way. “You know dear, I had a dream that you left your lawyers and went with mine. I know you don’t believe my dreams mean anything—–even the1 that predicted I would buy the house next door.” She mainly dreams about things she wants me to do. The MGM lionshare of her dreams are about my agents, flaws in contracts, and A LOT of dreams about business managers. Aren’t dreams meant to be symbolic? Didn’t Jung say that? And what about Freud’s theory that most dreams are sexual? And wasn’t there also a theory that you are everyone in your dreams? My mom would probably like that last notion, as it would make her my agent, my lawyer and my business manager. My mother is as far from ordinary as you can get without a rocket or special dispensation from the government. She wears turbans and sequined dresses (though rarely together),black pants and a black top with a colorful button down shirt open at the front, like a jacket. She applies her make up like a fastidious artist. Seated in front of a large mirror surrounded by lights and a white towel spread on the table beneath the mirror is another, smaller mirror for the detail work, like eyeliner and eyelash application. The walls of her home are adorned with autographed photographs of celebrities she has both known and worked with and those whom she admired. Even though she’s a celebrity herself, there’s a part of my mother that’s like a fan. No…wait…….not ‘like’,……..she IS a fan. A fan of classic films, and even some contemporary (she loved Slum Dog Millionaire) It’s almost as though she’s not part of the Hollywood community—-on the inside looking out. There’s an enormous part of her that is on the outside looking in. That is, unless she’s onstage looking out. She reads fan magazines, biographies of celebrities and watches AMC. She has always been and is still delighted by an inspired performance. For years my mother had a drama coach named Lillian Sydney. Lillian was the vocal coach at MGM, and in a short time became my mother’s mentor. Lillian had what I always called a Hollywood accent. Like the vocal coach in, “Singing in the Rain”, saying to Jean Hagen, “No, dear, ROUND tones! “And I CAAAHHNT stand him!” Where you sound like an aristocrat, someone overflowing with class—— even yawning and sneezing with elegance. And this appealed enormously to my mother who, coming from the south, wanted to sound like movie stars did. She started at the studio at 16, and I’m sure they wanted her to get rid of her accent. They changed her name from Mary Frances to Debbie (which she wouldn’t answer to for 2 years) they told her that her ears stuck out and had them surgically pinned back, they shaved her eyebrows, which then never grew back. They could reinvent her superficially, but the part of her that was raised in a2 room house in El Paso, the thoughtful, hard working, devoted, loyal, darling human that she is they couldn’t —–thank God—–alter. We’ve all heard the expression, “Star Quality”———-that ineffable something that makes certain people focus pullers. It’s my theory that they shine. Something glows out of their eyes, —–as though they’ve swallowed some of the spot light that follows them around onstage——- ——— and people get caught in their magnetic field and are drawn to them. It might even be possible that1 of the reasons that celebrities are called stars—— is because of this shine. And maybe if you hang around these beaming people, some of it will rub off on you. Whatever this thing is that glows out of them that makes them preferred above most others, if you touch them, talk to them, walk with them, live with them—-maybe you can get anointed by this wattage. Debbie Reynolds Anyway, my mother had this thing, this sublime light, and its been spilling out of her ever since she was6teen, shine that poured out of her and all over everyone. People followed her in the street, flocked to her shows—–wanted a piece of her because she reminded them of the best version of themselves. And to get that piece they applaud her, write her, love her in all the ways they know how, and my mother appreciates it. Especially when she performs. She gives everything she’s got and in return the audience celebrates her and this makes her feel a little like she’s going to live forever. And she is. She’s going to take some of that shine of hers with her and leave the rest of it to glow out of the eyes of the people that love her. Sorry it’s taken me this long to post anything. Between ECT and ice skating with my daughter, I’ve neglected carrying you all out on a wave of tales. Bear with me if you can……….or even if you can’t……. oxxoxooxcff Tags: Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, ECT, family story, Texas Posted in News | 26 Comments » What Was I Thinking? By Carrie • Feb 7th, 2009 • Category: News What Was I Thinking? About a year ago my friend Paul Slansky asked me to contribute to a book his wife, Liz Dubelman, was doing about that terrible moment when you realize that the relationship you’re in isn’t going to work. Well, I just happened to have a few of those to choose from, so I wrote1 up and now that book – What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories – has just been published, with my humble effort right up front. Here’s the beginning of “A Bullwhip?” I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality. And so when I meet someone, that’s where we hang out. It goes on for miles, the great outdoors, we romp around in my personality. And in my big sprawling personality, where this new someone is now, I love him. I love everything he does. I love being with him, I love sex with him, I’m charmed by him. And what is love if not a state of enchantment? You meet someone and it puts a charm on the world. Everything looks better when you love someone and you know you’re going to see him later. Everything between now and that later is so much fun to do, because you’re going to get who and what you want at the end of the day, so anything’s possible when that’s up ahead. Now when the person that this happens with is someone like Paul Simon, then we’re not just hanging out in my big personality. He has1, too, and they overlap in a lot of places. And that’s when it’s really kind of golden, when you can find someone who speaks your bizarre, bizarre dialect of a language of the smallest country in the world that hardly anyone ever visits, but they never forget having been there. Paul and I did share that, so when we got enchanted, the enchantment lasted a long time. But the problem is that, even at its best, enchantment just can’t sustain. When I date someone, I generally have about3 months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much. Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.” And once that starts, it’s like a case of measles, where you get just1 itch1 day, and then that itch spreads and spreads and spreads. And what feeds it is that he sees it happening. My face is like a Richter scale of every quake inside and outside of me, so it all shows up somehow. And if I turn the full beam on him of how much I like him and who he thinks he is, with everything that I am, if I shed that much light on him, and then that light starts diminishing, diminishing, diminishing, he notices. And I can’t stop it, and the more I try to stop it the more it looks like I’m trying to stop it, and that light gets fainter and fainter and fainter until everyone’s in a dark room. I remember it specifically happening when I was going out with this guy Jesse. He was actually smart, and the enchantment was unbelievably great. I remember once we were making out at Disneyland – I was that into him that I was just publicly making out. One night we were at my house and I was watching television, and Jesse was rubbing my back. And apparently I wasn’t turning the full beam on him, because it went from0 to a thousand in a nanosecond. He said, and not nicely, “What does somebody have to do to get your attention? Wrap a bullwhip around your neck?” Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book: http://tr.im/e9pe What Was I Thinking? Posted in News | 19 Comments » Life is a bowl of cherry bombs. By Carrie • Feb 5th, 2009 • Category: News But now we’ve finally come to the point of my entire, almost endless, over dramatic tale of woe. Remember the other day/week/month/year when I said I would write something in response to my brother’s thoughtful comment on my blog? Well, I”ve finally come to the part of the story where I thought I’d tell you about my calm, caring, insanely sane brother Todd…….. My brother and I were raised with the epic, mesmerizing (to us) story of how we came to be. According to my mother, I was the love child—–conceived when my parents were still riding the warm wave of romantic love. And he was the child she managed to extract from my disinterested father’s penis so that I could have company. Because all too soon their love wave crashed, and so, despite the fact that their marriage was basically in on the rocks, my mother chased my father around, hoping he would impregnate to insure that I wouldn’t end up being an only child. And so, determined that I should have a life long companion and though my father was virtually ignoring her, with his attention Taylor made to elsewhere, she somehow managed to wrangle her round wriggly way into getting inseminated with my beloved bro. Debbie w/ Carrie & Todd A companion to share our Mysterious to anyone but us History with. The Abbott to my Costello, the Fred to my Ginger, the Luke to my Leia. She made me a fellow conspirator: the rock to my roll, a co to his ed, a mate for my soul. Someone I could go on the teeter totter with, so I could go up and down and not just stay down. A partner to play chess with, if we’d ever taken the time out from where we kept it to learn……. or even a partner to dance the polka with, if we were ever absurdly inclined. Someone to blame everything on, outside of whoever else was around. My brother was all this —-and IS all this—– and more to me. Thanks to my mother’s determination to fashion a sibling for me out of my father’s increasingly thin air, this love child was able to experience brotherly love… Not a fantastic story for Todd to be brought up hearing, I’ll grant you, but hear it he did. And, like everything else, it didn’t seem to bother him. By the time Todd was born, my father was consoling Elizabeth Taylor’s heartbreak over the loss of her husband and father of her child, and namesake of my brother, Mike Todd. Eddie consoled Elizabeth the1 way her knew how—- with his trusty, grief eliminating child inseminating penis. Eddie Fisher & Elizabeth Taylor And of course, as everyone knows, grief can’t be eliminated with just a few thrusts. In order to do a really thorough job, the person with the healing penis has to continue the treatment for quite awhile. In my father’s case, he treated Elizabeth’s dispair for about4 years. (just to make COMPLETELY sure she was no longer burdened by those pesky feelings of loss) And then, when she was finally sadness free and free for anything fancy, she left my father in favor of the fancy top dollar attention paid for her new, improved mate, Richard Burton. But, back to my brother…… Unlike myself, who had enjoyed my father’s company for a year and a half, Todd never spent any time with our father. But this actually turned out to be a GOOD thing, because you can’t miss something you’ve never had. Unfortunately, in my case, I’d lived with my dad just long enough to, not only wonder where he’d gone to, but blame myself for not being lovable enough to get him to stay. (Oh poor sad Carrie! Get out your handkerchief for these nosebleed high class problems, where you sob with a British accent…..) Todd Fisher But whether it was because of the different ways my dad’s absence affected us, or because of what I refer to as, “It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it”, Todd grew up to be a calm, imperturbable, life is just a bowl of cherries guy (he actually said that to me once) and I……well, I just wasn’t like that—to say the least in the most way. As he grew up, my brother became a kind of attendant to the insane. Unflustered, he was the eye of the family tornado—-my mother and I cast as the tornado….And there he would remain unflustered & serene—nothing seemed to phase him. And believe me, there was a lot of phase inducing circumstances available to challenge even the most stalwart citizen…….but not Todd. Todd was more like my grandfather. Ray Reynolds, off somewhere fixing a TV set, or building a tree house—-My mother’s father was a carpenter and Todd absorbed his distracted, peaceful temperament, while I wandered thru the landscape, absorbing anything and everything that could be taken personally—–cars, wallpaper, absent parents, my reflection…..name it and it was my fault. Todd? No big fuckin deal. Why bother? I wanted to feel like he seemed, you know? I know you know people like this. You can’t fool me. (Well, maybe you can, just not in this area). So when Greg died, Todd made a reservation at a spa in England. A place near Sandhurst, the military training center of the United Kingdom. James Blunt went there! It had to be good! (the military school, not necessarily the spa) Actually, it takes quite a bit to ruin a spa. It’s possible, I suppose, but, in my experience, rare. Expensive and rare. But this being something of an emotional emergency, if there was ever a time to cough up the funds it was now. So we settled into our peaceful nook, nestled there in the English countryside. So there I was, nestled in another bed, watching another assortment of programs designed to distract you from whatever unpleasant experience you’d found yourself slogging through. Only this time my brother was in charge of my television programming. And what he had selected for my viewing pleasure was war movies. Whether it was old movie classics, or documentaries, this was what I feasted my famished eyes on for the duration of our stay there. (which was probably not more than a week) As big of an old movie aficionado as I was, this was an area that I had neglected. You know—-being a girl and all—-what use did I have for, “Seven Minutes over Tokyo” or “Fail Safe”? But as it turns out, these films were extremely healing for me. It may sound funny to you, but it’s true. Especially the documentaries. “Band of Brothers” Band of Brothers was my favorite. It was hours and hours of watching people go thru experiences that made my crisis look like a pimple on the ass of difficulty. (isn’t that a lovely expression? You can use it whenever you like) Not only the multiple hour show itself, but the “Making of Band of Brothers” was amazingly inspirational to me. I mean, it’s absurd for me really to compare me waking up with my dead friend to these heroic soldiers facing death all day every day, losing comrades, losing LIMBS! I mean, MY GOD! There was1 survivor of World War2 who had seen his friend get his arm blown off and, as they were taking him away on the stretcher, this soldier stopped the medics, pointed down to his arm on the ground and asking them if they would mind getting him his watch!!!!! Wow. Just incredible. And watching these films day after healing day, I thought—–well, if these men can live through THAT! And not just live in some cases, but THRIVE! If they can do that, what’s my sad experience but……..something to get to the other side of, like these men had done. Isn’t there a saying, “What man has done, man can do?” Well, I’m assuming that applies to women too, so……I set about doing what others had done before me and, in their cases, with NOBILITY. All this to say, this was my brother’s gift to me. It’s his instinct to leave someone better off than when he came across them. Whatever strength I have is bourne out of weakness. Heartbreak is my teacher. My brother’s strength comes from trust that things will be alright in the end. He sees the good in things. I find the good by traipsing thru the bad slooowly……..so I don’t miss a bruise……. Posted in News | 42 Comments » Laughing waters… eyes jeweled with tears By Carrie • Feb 4th, 2009 • Category: News Okay, if you never watch another thing again, watch this. It will make your life work. My daughter sent it to me (it flowed out of her like laughing waters….) and everything is going to be okay now.Obviously, anyone that sends this to you cares about you very much. So my daughter, Billie, cares about me—–and by extension, you—-and obviously it would follow then follow that I care deeply for you as well. See? And then everything else can just build from there! You’re officially out of harms way and in the joyous pink! So go forth and fire fly! oxxoxoxo cff Posted in News | 28 Comments » Death and houseguests………. By Carrie • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News After Greg died I stopped talking. It was as if my personality followed him down the dark passage of death and left someone who looked a lot like me, except that now my features where organized into an expression of abject fear. I had been scared—-not TO death, but BY death…you might say that Greg’s death had scared the fucking life out of me. The thing about someone dying, though, is that life goes on. While your loved1 is busy relaxing in their cozy coffins, you still have appointments, a job, friends, children —-a whole parcel of living things pulling on you to get on with it. I mean, life can be just as demanding as death in, it’s own way…….Of course, as far as I know, the demands of those us as yet unceasing are probably more of the high class variety than the demands of the deceased. Now, I’ve never really been the type of person who gets over things easily. —-I mean, I had a hard getting over the fact that I didn’t have blue eyes or finding out that I hadn’t been invited to some big party someone was throwing somewhere……., so being confronted by something as formidable as dying—well, it wouldn’t be too difficult to predict that I wouldn’t be the person putting the “fun” in funeral. Not that anyone finds it particularly easy burying someone who wouldn’t normally be considered the burying age. I mean, Greg was way far from being past his prime. His wild lifestyle probably placed him neck and neck with his prime, but for anyone to die in their forties in this day and age is a hearty mix of premature and tragic. So after Greg died I just couldn’t seem to be able to shake it off. Partly because I had loved Greg—–we had always had a lot of fun together. Much of it was the truant type of fun, but that didn’t make it any less amusing for us. Just for the folks around us who had to deal with our antics. But the other reason because I blamed myself, you see. I mean, it had happened on my watch. If only I’d woken in the middle of the night, I might have been able to save him. If only I hadn’t been so busy sleeping, I might’ve been able to wake him up the next morning….. The fact that Greg lived life like there was no tomorrow didn’t enter into it.(of course, eventually there really IS no tomorrow—–which occurs right when you run out of your stash of yesterdays and todays) I mean, it was as if Greg’s dying had more to do with me than it did with him. Which is a pretty fancy twist of perspective, when you think about it. “It’s all for you, Damien!” the nanny cries out in the movie, “The Omen”—-only in this case it was me shouting, “It’s all for you, Greg!” —-and unlike the nanny, I didn’t subsequently hang myself. Not literally, anyway. So, I lay in bed for most of the day staring at the TV, as if waiting for it to provide me with an explanation as to how I’d been chosen to survive this particular set of circumstances. Or, perhaps a show would come on that might somehow relate to my predicament. A new cable show called, “C’mon! Shake it off! What’s the big deal?!” But no such show came to my rescue. Instead, in exchange for Greg I was provided with an assortment of 5 brand new……..HOUSEGUESTS! Hooray!1 visitor dies and 5 others take his place! Needless to say, I wasn’t much of a hostess at this point. I gave more of what was left of my undivided attention to the television set than I did to the visiting friends that now crowded my house. After Greg’s body was removed, (ugh……) I had my bed frame discarded, considering it’s inability to keep Greg alive—– and then we moved the remaining mattress to a new, no death free location in my room. (having, no doubt, determined that the mattress was virtually innocent in causing Greg’s untimely death). So you might say that the entire tragic incident was just a question of luck. Perhaps the reason Greg had died was because of where the bed had been previously located and now that it had been moved from that place, no1 else would die. Of course, it might have been simpler had I just moved to another room—–ANY room—why not the LIVING ROOM?! I mean, especially considering the room was designed for LIVING, unlike my bed room, which it turned out, had been designed for death! Posted in News | 25 Comments » Who’s sorry now! By admin • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News I told people this might happen, but did anyone listen to me?! NO! Hippo eats Dwarf Posted in News | 40 Comments » A view from the bridge over troubled princess……… By Carrie • Jan 31st, 2009 • Category: News I did a radio show yesterday and the man that interviewed me asked me what question I’d been asked over the years that had most annoyed me. “That’s easy” I told him. “Did you know “Star Wars” would be that big of a hit?” The interviewer laughed, “When I told people here at work that I would be interviewing you,” he said, ” All the men wanted was for me to ask how it felt to wear the metal bikini.” Now I laughed, “The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn’t metal. ——Not that metal would’ve been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn’t adhere to1’s skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt’s gigantic, albiet grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom……….well, it had the10dency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett—–I believe his name was Jeremy—–from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask——to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida. Posted in News | 40 Comments » Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral By Carrie • Jan 30th, 2009 • Category: News I have to tell you something before we go any further with this blogging business. See, I’m a very persnickety human. I can’t just write something and push a button sending it out into the internetosphere for all to judge and laugh at. I have to endlessly fuck with my words so nobody can make fun of me. (more…) Posted in News | 38 Comments » Dead Man Blogging By Carrie • Jan 28th, 2009 • Category: News I’m not really the “thought for the day” type. I mean, “I couldn’t care less than the more that I do” probably wouldn’t help too many people. Or, “I can’t wait to not get what I want” isn’t really going to go along way with inspiring too many folks But my brother’s post was pretty cool, no? I told him that I’d post a response, but now I’ll have to do it tomorrow. (Sorry Todd!) Since I didn’t have a very eventful day, I thought I might reminisce—–you know, drudge shit up from the past when I led a more colorful life. Colorful and debilitating combined. For those of you who haven’t read my book, I had a good friend name Greg Stevens who had the bad manners to die in my house. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he died in my BED, with me beside him, sleeping til Bruce Cohen and his boyfriend, (now husband) woke me into a world it would take me a long, bummer amount of time to blunder through. But before Greg died he was alot of fun. (he might be alot of fun AFTER his death, but as to that I have no way of knowing) He was especially fun when you consider he was a Republican, but also aside from that. All on his own, politically conservative party aside, I loved spending time with Greg. Greg R Stevens That’s not to say that he was always EASY to be with. Greg was extremely fond of drugs—-an affection I could relate to. But Greg could actually make me look like an amateur in comparison—–that is, when we weren’t neck and neck in bad behavior. If you were to say that Greg and I were a bad influence on eachother…………well, you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Inches away, in fact. The truth would be breathing it’s hot scented breath down your well behaved neck. One of my favorite evenings we spent together was in New York. We’d been in upstate New York at my friend Griffin Dunne’s wedding, and afterwards we drove back to the city and checked into Greg’s suite at the4 Seasons Hotel in midtown. Greg had had quite a bit to drink at the wedding. Enough to cause him to continuously slide from the seat onto the floor of the town car he’d hired for the occasion. Greg spent most of his life in hotels. The fancier the better. He liked to live what some call, “The high life”……..(and the word, “high” could obviously be interpreted in a variety of ways) He loved spas, where he could get massages and facials and manicures and pedicures—-and he LOVED shopping—a pass time which——-along with the altered state—-we both enthusiastically shared. Greg had always told me that he came from a very wealthy family —- consequently making him very wealthy as well. He told me that he’d inherited a HUGE amount of money from a trust fund that his mother had set up for he and his2 brothers in the late6ties when they were quite young. And the money in this trust fund had originally come from a law suit his mother had won against some doctors that had gotten her husband addicted to speed. (if I’d known you could win law suits against people that get father’s addicted to speed, my siblings and I would be set for life, as my father had shot speed for 15 years courtesy of the original Dr. Feelgood aka Dr. Max Jacobsen). Anyway, for whatever idiotic reason I never questioned Greg’s story ——- I mean, it never occurred to me that someone might lie about a thing like that… My only experience with lying was someone (like myself) denying being stoned, or perhaps when someone assured someone else (say me maybe) that they didn’t look fat and that that assurance happened not to be so. One of the reasons that might explain why Greg had made up the story of his alleged wealth was that he thought that people would like him more if they thought he were rich. A sad explanation, but nonetheless possible. So, Greg told everyone that his mother had won this alleged law suit for something like2 million dollars. (not that there are very many things like2 million dollars—– other than2 million dollars) And she’d subsequently invested the money wisely, so that when Greg and his brothers came of age they would receive trust funds worth well over 50 million dollars apiece. BUT, Greg informed me, because of his drug use, his mother had decided NOT to give him his inheritance when he came of age (35, and he was now in his early 40’s)—– and that he would only receive it when and only when he sobered up. The gag was (according to Greg)—–that because he had NOT received his inheritance, it had increased10 fold because, unlike his brother’s, Greg’s money had remained invested, so on that fateful day when his mother would finally give his inheritance to him , he would be richer than either1 of his very, VERY rich brothers combined! Incredible tale, no? The only thing wrong with it was that it was entirely fabricated. A fact I didn’t find out until his wake, when his1 of his brothers told me. The idea that Greg had concocted this fantasy of immense and imminent wealth was hilarious to them. (As hilarious as it could be given that Greg had to die for all of us to get the joke) Anyway, back to Greg getting really drunk at Griffin’s wedding reception. So drunk that he ended up calling his dealer in the city from his cell phone en route from upstate New York. It turned out, probably not so amazingly enough, I’d met this woman before, once with Greg in another suite in another hotel the year before, and another time, some years Marianne Faithful back, in Ireland when she was supplying (among other clients) the now sober, then not ,Marianne Faithful. At the time this dealer had a fairly lucrative business in London—so lucrative that she was able to afford a very nice house in Chelsea. But in the ensuing years she’d moved her business back to Manhatten, and as luck would have it (dumb luck, of course), Greg wound up being1 of her clients. I forget her name, but I’ll never forget how she looked. In her mid6ties, she was quite a large person, weighing in at maybe 200–250 pounds. And if that wasn’t enough, she had a face that was a little like a basset hound. When she arrived with her delivery that night, I was in the bedroom searching for an in house movie to watch, when I hear the front door to the suite opening. I peered discretely around the corner to see who was coming down the hall and into the livingroom, which is when I recognize her from the United (drug) Kingdom. As I watched, she dragged herself, every ounce her, to a couch at the farside of the living room, huffing and puffing, with a woebegone expression on her droopy, familiar face….I listen as Greg enthusiastically greets her and I find myself thinking, well, given that I’d met her before, I should probably go say hello, right? I mean, after all, manners are manners, no? I don’t care HOW much dope is involved. So I enter the living room to pay the top dollar of my respects, and as I watch, she eases her entire self down with considerable effort and sighs a defeated sigh. “I’m so depressed” she says wearily. And now, as Greg and I gaze at this hefty, uber human self, we’re forced to say, “Why? How could someone like YOU be depressed??? You—–who have SO much to live for! A 60 something immensely overweight drug dealer with a face dripping with paste colored flesh——if happiness has eluded someone as deserving as you, what hope to the rest of us have???? And then, in response to our question as to the source of her unimaginable despondence, she replies, “I lost a client today……” “NO! You must be JOKING! Imagine losing a client in a business like yours!!!!! That is just …….well, BIZARRE!” Of course this is a sampling of something we’re thinking, as we avoid catching1 another eyes and dissolving into peals of laughter. What we SAY is, “I’m SO sorry. Are you OKAY?” I realize it might seem a little callous to some of you, the vision of Greg and myself laughing, (in part) at the misfortune of others and I apologize if I’ve offended someone whose lost a loved1 to drug addiction. Come to think of it, she probably said something very similar when Greg passed away due to a combination of sleep apnia and drug use. (Only in his case she probably was a bit annoyed on top of her distress, as Greg had a habit of not paying her.) But all I can say is, you had to be there to see her mournfully recount to us the details of the client she’d lost (a famous political writer in his late 70’s) In fact, it would have been really good if you’d been there, because if you’d been present, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be. (wouldn’t HAVE to be, but probably would be anyway. Posted in News | 14 Comments » « Older Entries 04/02/09 - 05/03/09 in Seattle, WA at The Rep View all dates © 2009 CarrieFisher | Powered by WordPress | Entries (RSS)
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topdocbear > kingman     BIOGRAPHY BOOKS BLOG Happy Valentines Doc By Carrie • Feb 15th, 2009 • Category: News I have a friend named Arnie Klein. Dr. Arnold Klein. Dr. Arnie Klein He’s an actual doctor, not1 of those people that call themselves doctors, like my father’s son in law. (or whatever you call your wife’s child that’s not yours) My father’s wife, Betty Lin, had a son who called himself, “Doctor Winky”. She would still have a son named doctor winky, but she passed away some years ago, so now Doctor Winky can belong to all of us. Doctor Winky is not, in fact, a physician, but a doctor of night club lights. You wouldn’t think that there was a call for a doctor of night club lights, and there probably isn’t. But if there WAS a need for someone to doctor strobe lights and the other ailing bulbs—–Doctor Winky would be their man. But Arnie isn’t a light doctor. He’s an actual doctor. And not JUST an actual doctor, Arnie is a dermatologist to the stars. He’s a pimple and wrinkle doctor, ideal for adolescence and old age and everything in between. Arnie is a great doctor. Great because he loves what he does. His job is medicine and his hobby is medicine. He spends his weekends reading medical journals. My pimples brought me to Arnie and my wrinkles and affection will keep me with him til the end. His and/or mine. Arnie and I are completely opposite in a similar way. He wants to feel like he could go into surgery in a moments notice. As the doctor. Whilst I want to feel as though I could go into surgery in a moments notice ——as the patient. Arnie likes me to write about him. He calls it feeding his narcissism. Not that this (being written about or paid attention to) is an uncommon pleasure. Especially in what is laughingly called Hollywood. I think most people like being written about. Nicely, of course. And now that Arnie has discovered that there is a new venue where I could pay him further tribute—-well, as you see—– So…….here I am writing about him………in front of God and everyone……in front of blog and everyone……Arnie………here is your tribute. Happy Valentines Day………. Posted in News | 5 Comments » Star light star bright, the rest I cant remember right. By Carrie • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: News My mother was born in El Paso, Texas. She was the second child of Ray and Maxene Reynolds, who had my mother’s brother, Bill at 16 and then proceeded to have my mother, Mary Frances, the following year. One of the reasons my grandmother wanted to marry at such a young age, was she anxious to have her own room. Raised in an extremely large family, she was anxious to get away and secure for herself some privacy. Odd logic—–marrying for privacy—-but then, my family has never been known for it’s conventional10dencies. My grandmother’s mother, Maxie Harmon, began having children in her late teens & continuing to procreate until she had her last child at 49, which the doctor informed her was a tumor—–and when that growth was born, they called him, of course, Tumor—–making him my mother’s “Uncle Tumor, who was and remains younger than his niece. Maxene grew up sharing everything with her multiple siblings, from beds to food to clothes—–, she never wore anything but her sister’s hand me downs—– so the prospect of her own closet and living in her own house was extremely alluring. She once told me that her family was so poor that they, “didn’t have6 matching glasses.”Then she added brusquely, “And don’t you put that in1 of your books!” (She didn’t say anything about blogs, so I share it without threat of adding more weight to my already tubby conscience. It would also be difficult for her to object much at this point, as my grandmother had the bad manners to pass away some time ago.) So, hoping to secure some privacy and perhaps even a dress of her own,when my 15 year old grandmother caught the eye of my handsome grandfather, Raymond Francis Reynolds, a local boy who played baseball rather well and worked on the railroad, she did nothing to discourage him. Ray was much more handsome than tall, and Maxene was more large busted than beautiful——but they began to pool their liabilities and their assets, and soon enough they found themselves courting and then, out of the something borrowed, something blue, they were wed. Unfortunately, my great grandmother (not so great in this case) had neglected to inform her daughter, Maxene, about just what would be expected of her on her wedding night——so that when my grandfather began to ………..well, as you might imagine, my grandma was, in addition to being unwilling was also quite understandably paralyzed with disbelief. Surely my grandfather was making this up——how could anyone be expected to do anything as bizarre as this! It took my grandfather3 days and lots of sketching, (what I wouldn’t give to see those!) for her to finally relent and more than likely unenthusiastically, let him have his now legal way with her. ——————————————————— My mother wasn’t a mother that cooked and cleaned and helped me with my homework, but not knowing these things existed I didn’t miss them. Debbie Carrie & Todd She was both parents to Todd and I. The main reason my father has any children at all is largely because they’re a by product of sex, which he’s devoted a huge portion of his life to. Certainly not out of any urge to procreate. We rarely saw our him—-maybe once a year—–yet my mother never spoke ill of him. At Christmas she would buy gifts and sign his name on the card. Of course, my brother and I weren’t really fooled, as she made little effort to disguise her handwriting———But the fact that she did it at all was dear. Though she had an extremely demanding career, Todd and I always had the sense that we came first to her. Both then and now. One of my favorite things that my mother does is give advice. Most mothers give advice, but she does it in a very unique way. “You know dear, I had a dream that you left your lawyers and went with mine. I know you don’t believe my dreams mean anything—–even the1 that predicted I would buy the house next door.” She mainly dreams about things she wants me to do. The MGM lionshare of her dreams are about my agents, flaws in contracts, and A LOT of dreams about business managers. Aren’t dreams meant to be symbolic? Didn’t Jung say that? And what about Freud’s theory that most dreams are sexual? And wasn’t there also a theory that you are everyone in your dreams? My mom would probably like that last notion, as it would make her my agent, my lawyer and my business manager. My mother is as far from ordinary as you can get without a rocket or special dispensation from the government. She wears turbans and sequined dresses (though rarely together),black pants and a black top with a colorful button down shirt open at the front, like a jacket. She applies her make up like a fastidious artist. Seated in front of a large mirror surrounded by lights and a white towel spread on the table beneath the mirror is another, smaller mirror for the detail work, like eyeliner and eyelash application. The walls of her home are adorned with autographed photographs of celebrities she has both known and worked with and those whom she admired. Even though she’s a celebrity herself, there’s a part of my mother that’s like a fan. No…wait…….not ‘like’,……..she IS a fan. A fan of classic films, and even some contemporary (she loved Slum Dog Millionaire) It’s almost as though she’s not part of the Hollywood community—-on the inside looking out. There’s an enormous part of her that is on the outside looking in. That is, unless she’s onstage looking out. She reads fan magazines, biographies of celebrities and watches AMC. She has always been and is still delighted by an inspired performance. For years my mother had a drama coach named Lillian Sydney. Lillian was the vocal coach at MGM, and in a short time became my mother’s mentor. Lillian had what I always called a Hollywood accent. Like the vocal coach in, “Singing in the Rain”, saying to Jean Hagen, “No, dear, ROUND tones! “And I CAAAHHNT stand him!” Where you sound like an aristocrat, someone overflowing with class—— even yawning and sneezing with elegance. And this appealed enormously to my mother who, coming from the south, wanted to sound like movie stars did. She started at the studio at 16, and I’m sure they wanted her to get rid of her accent. They changed her name from Mary Frances to Debbie (which she wouldn’t answer to for 2 years) they told her that her ears stuck out and had them surgically pinned back, they shaved her eyebrows, which then never grew back. They could reinvent her superficially, but the part of her that was raised in a2 room house in El Paso, the thoughtful, hard working, devoted, loyal, darling human that she is they couldn’t —–thank God—–alter. We’ve all heard the expression, “Star Quality”———-that ineffable something that makes certain people focus pullers. It’s my theory that they shine. Something glows out of their eyes, —–as though they’ve swallowed some of the spot light that follows them around onstage——- ——— and people get caught in their magnetic field and are drawn to them. It might even be possible that1 of the reasons that celebrities are called stars—— is because of this shine. And maybe if you hang around these beaming people, some of it will rub off on you. Whatever this thing is that glows out of them that makes them preferred above most others, if you touch them, talk to them, walk with them, live with them—-maybe you can get anointed by this wattage. Debbie Reynolds Anyway, my mother had this thing, this sublime light, and its been spilling out of her ever since she was6teen, shine that poured out of her and all over everyone. People followed her in the street, flocked to her shows—–wanted a piece of her because she reminded them of the best version of themselves. And to get that piece they applaud her, write her, love her in all the ways they know how, and my mother appreciates it. Especially when she performs. She gives everything she’s got and in return the audience celebrates her and this makes her feel a little like she’s going to live forever. And she is. She’s going to take some of that shine of hers with her and leave the rest of it to glow out of the eyes of the people that love her. Sorry it’s taken me this long to post anything. Between ECT and ice skating with my daughter, I’ve neglected carrying you all out on a wave of tales. Bear with me if you can……….or even if you can’t……. oxxoxooxcff Tags: Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, ECT, family story, Texas Posted in News | 26 Comments » What Was I Thinking? By Carrie • Feb 7th, 2009 • Category: News What Was I Thinking? About a year ago my friend Paul Slansky asked me to contribute to a book his wife, Liz Dubelman, was doing about that terrible moment when you realize that the relationship you’re in isn’t going to work. Well, I just happened to have a few of those to choose from, so I wrote1 up and now that book – What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories – has just been published, with my humble effort right up front. Here’s the beginning of “A Bullwhip?” I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality. And so when I meet someone, that’s where we hang out. It goes on for miles, the great outdoors, we romp around in my personality. And in my big sprawling personality, where this new someone is now, I love him. I love everything he does. I love being with him, I love sex with him, I’m charmed by him. And what is love if not a state of enchantment? You meet someone and it puts a charm on the world. Everything looks better when you love someone and you know you’re going to see him later. Everything between now and that later is so much fun to do, because you’re going to get who and what you want at the end of the day, so anything’s possible when that’s up ahead. Now when the person that this happens with is someone like Paul Simon, then we’re not just hanging out in my big personality. He has1, too, and they overlap in a lot of places. And that’s when it’s really kind of golden, when you can find someone who speaks your bizarre, bizarre dialect of a language of the smallest country in the world that hardly anyone ever visits, but they never forget having been there. Paul and I did share that, so when we got enchanted, the enchantment lasted a long time. But the problem is that, even at its best, enchantment just can’t sustain. When I date someone, I generally have about3 months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much. Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.” And once that starts, it’s like a case of measles, where you get just1 itch1 day, and then that itch spreads and spreads and spreads. And what feeds it is that he sees it happening. My face is like a Richter scale of every quake inside and outside of me, so it all shows up somehow. And if I turn the full beam on him of how much I like him and who he thinks he is, with everything that I am, if I shed that much light on him, and then that light starts diminishing, diminishing, diminishing, he notices. And I can’t stop it, and the more I try to stop it the more it looks like I’m trying to stop it, and that light gets fainter and fainter and fainter until everyone’s in a dark room. I remember it specifically happening when I was going out with this guy Jesse. He was actually smart, and the enchantment was unbelievably great. I remember once we were making out at Disneyland – I was that into him that I was just publicly making out. One night we were at my house and I was watching television, and Jesse was rubbing my back. And apparently I wasn’t turning the full beam on him, because it went from0 to a thousand in a nanosecond. He said, and not nicely, “What does somebody have to do to get your attention? Wrap a bullwhip around your neck?” Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book: http://tr.im/e9pe What Was I Thinking? Posted in News | 19 Comments » Life is a bowl of cherry bombs. By Carrie • Feb 5th, 2009 • Category: News But now we’ve finally come to the point of my entire, almost endless, over dramatic tale of woe. Remember the other day/week/month/year when I said I would write something in response to my brother’s thoughtful comment on my blog? Well, I”ve finally come to the part of the story where I thought I’d tell you about my calm, caring, insanely sane brother Todd…….. My brother and I were raised with the epic, mesmerizing (to us) story of how we came to be. According to my mother, I was the love child—–conceived when my parents were still riding the warm wave of romantic love. And he was the child she managed to extract from my disinterested father’s penis so that I could have company. Because all too soon their love wave crashed, and so, despite the fact that their marriage was basically in on the rocks, my mother chased my father around, hoping he would impregnate to insure that I wouldn’t end up being an only child. And so, determined that I should have a life long companion and though my father was virtually ignoring her, with his attention Taylor made to elsewhere, she somehow managed to wrangle her round wriggly way into getting inseminated with my beloved bro. Debbie w/ Carrie & Todd A companion to share our Mysterious to anyone but us History with. The Abbott to my Costello, the Fred to my Ginger, the Luke to my Leia. She made me a fellow conspirator: the rock to my roll, a co to his ed, a mate for my soul. Someone I could go on the teeter totter with, so I could go up and down and not just stay down. A partner to play chess with, if we’d ever taken the time out from where we kept it to learn……. or even a partner to dance the polka with, if we were ever absurdly inclined. Someone to blame everything on, outside of whoever else was around. My brother was all this —-and IS all this—– and more to me. Thanks to my mother’s determination to fashion a sibling for me out of my father’s increasingly thin air, this love child was able to experience brotherly love… Not a fantastic story for Todd to be brought up hearing, I’ll grant you, but hear it he did. And, like everything else, it didn’t seem to bother him. By the time Todd was born, my father was consoling Elizabeth Taylor’s heartbreak over the loss of her husband and father of her child, and namesake of my brother, Mike Todd. Eddie consoled Elizabeth the1 way her knew how—- with his trusty, grief eliminating child inseminating penis. Eddie Fisher & Elizabeth Taylor And of course, as everyone knows, grief can’t be eliminated with just a few thrusts. In order to do a really thorough job, the person with the healing penis has to continue the treatment for quite awhile. In my father’s case, he treated Elizabeth’s dispair for about4 years. (just to make COMPLETELY sure she was no longer burdened by those pesky feelings of loss) And then, when she was finally sadness free and free for anything fancy, she left my father in favor of the fancy top dollar attention paid for her new, improved mate, Richard Burton. But, back to my brother…… Unlike myself, who had enjoyed my father’s company for a year and a half, Todd never spent any time with our father. But this actually turned out to be a GOOD thing, because you can’t miss something you’ve never had. Unfortunately, in my case, I’d lived with my dad just long enough to, not only wonder where he’d gone to, but blame myself for not being lovable enough to get him to stay. (Oh poor sad Carrie! Get out your handkerchief for these nosebleed high class problems, where you sob with a British accent…..) Todd Fisher But whether it was because of the different ways my dad’s absence affected us, or because of what I refer to as, “It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it”, Todd grew up to be a calm, imperturbable, life is just a bowl of cherries guy (he actually said that to me once) and I……well, I just wasn’t like that—to say the least in the most way. As he grew up, my brother became a kind of attendant to the insane. Unflustered, he was the eye of the family tornado—-my mother and I cast as the tornado….And there he would remain unflustered & serene—nothing seemed to phase him. And believe me, there was a lot of phase inducing circumstances available to challenge even the most stalwart citizen…….but not Todd. Todd was more like my grandfather. Ray Reynolds, off somewhere fixing a TV set, or building a tree house—-My mother’s father was a carpenter and Todd absorbed his distracted, peaceful temperament, while I wandered thru the landscape, absorbing anything and everything that could be taken personally—–cars, wallpaper, absent parents, my reflection…..name it and it was my fault. Todd? No big fuckin deal. Why bother? I wanted to feel like he seemed, you know? I know you know people like this. You can’t fool me. (Well, maybe you can, just not in this area). So when Greg died, Todd made a reservation at a spa in England. A place near Sandhurst, the military training center of the United Kingdom. James Blunt went there! It had to be good! (the military school, not necessarily the spa) Actually, it takes quite a bit to ruin a spa. It’s possible, I suppose, but, in my experience, rare. Expensive and rare. But this being something of an emotional emergency, if there was ever a time to cough up the funds it was now. So we settled into our peaceful nook, nestled there in the English countryside. So there I was, nestled in another bed, watching another assortment of programs designed to distract you from whatever unpleasant experience you’d found yourself slogging through. Only this time my brother was in charge of my television programming. And what he had selected for my viewing pleasure was war movies. Whether it was old movie classics, or documentaries, this was what I feasted my famished eyes on for the duration of our stay there. (which was probably not more than a week) As big of an old movie aficionado as I was, this was an area that I had neglected. You know—-being a girl and all—-what use did I have for, “Seven Minutes over Tokyo” or “Fail Safe”? But as it turns out, these films were extremely healing for me. It may sound funny to you, but it’s true. Especially the documentaries. “Band of Brothers” Band of Brothers was my favorite. It was hours and hours of watching people go thru experiences that made my crisis look like a pimple on the ass of difficulty. (isn’t that a lovely expression? You can use it whenever you like) Not only the multiple hour show itself, but the “Making of Band of Brothers” was amazingly inspirational to me. I mean, it’s absurd for me really to compare me waking up with my dead friend to these heroic soldiers facing death all day every day, losing comrades, losing LIMBS! I mean, MY GOD! There was1 survivor of World War2 who had seen his friend get his arm blown off and, as they were taking him away on the stretcher, this soldier stopped the medics, pointed down to his arm on the ground and asking them if they would mind getting him his watch!!!!! Wow. Just incredible. And watching these films day after healing day, I thought—–well, if these men can live through THAT! And not just live in some cases, but THRIVE! If they can do that, what’s my sad experience but……..something to get to the other side of, like these men had done. Isn’t there a saying, “What man has done, man can do?” Well, I’m assuming that applies to women too, so……I set about doing what others had done before me and, in their cases, with NOBILITY. All this to say, this was my brother’s gift to me. It’s his instinct to leave someone better off than when he came across them. Whatever strength I have is bourne out of weakness. Heartbreak is my teacher. My brother’s strength comes from trust that things will be alright in the end. He sees the good in things. I find the good by traipsing thru the bad slooowly……..so I don’t miss a bruise……. Posted in News | 42 Comments » Laughing waters… eyes jeweled with tears By Carrie • Feb 4th, 2009 • Category: News Okay, if you never watch another thing again, watch this. It will make your life work. My daughter sent it to me (it flowed out of her like laughing waters….) and everything is going to be okay now.Obviously, anyone that sends this to you cares about you very much. So my daughter, Billie, cares about me—–and by extension, you—-and obviously it would follow then follow that I care deeply for you as well. See? And then everything else can just build from there! You’re officially out of harms way and in the joyous pink! So go forth and fire fly! oxxoxoxo cff Posted in News | 28 Comments » Death and houseguests………. By Carrie • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News After Greg died I stopped talking. It was as if my personality followed him down the dark passage of death and left someone who looked a lot like me, except that now my features where organized into an expression of abject fear. I had been scared—-not TO death, but BY death…you might say that Greg’s death had scared the fucking life out of me. The thing about someone dying, though, is that life goes on. While your loved1 is busy relaxing in their cozy coffins, you still have appointments, a job, friends, children —-a whole parcel of living things pulling on you to get on with it. I mean, life can be just as demanding as death in, it’s own way…….Of course, as far as I know, the demands of those us as yet unceasing are probably more of the high class variety than the demands of the deceased. Now, I’ve never really been the type of person who gets over things easily. —-I mean, I had a hard getting over the fact that I didn’t have blue eyes or finding out that I hadn’t been invited to some big party someone was throwing somewhere……., so being confronted by something as formidable as dying—well, it wouldn’t be too difficult to predict that I wouldn’t be the person putting the “fun” in funeral. Not that anyone finds it particularly easy burying someone who wouldn’t normally be considered the burying age. I mean, Greg was way far from being past his prime. His wild lifestyle probably placed him neck and neck with his prime, but for anyone to die in their forties in this day and age is a hearty mix of premature and tragic. So after Greg died I just couldn’t seem to be able to shake it off. Partly because I had loved Greg—–we had always had a lot of fun together. Much of it was the truant type of fun, but that didn’t make it any less amusing for us. Just for the folks around us who had to deal with our antics. But the other reason because I blamed myself, you see. I mean, it had happened on my watch. If only I’d woken in the middle of the night, I might have been able to save him. If only I hadn’t been so busy sleeping, I might’ve been able to wake him up the next morning….. The fact that Greg lived life like there was no tomorrow didn’t enter into it.(of course, eventually there really IS no tomorrow—–which occurs right when you run out of your stash of yesterdays and todays) I mean, it was as if Greg’s dying had more to do with me than it did with him. Which is a pretty fancy twist of perspective, when you think about it. “It’s all for you, Damien!” the nanny cries out in the movie, “The Omen”—-only in this case it was me shouting, “It’s all for you, Greg!” —-and unlike the nanny, I didn’t subsequently hang myself. Not literally, anyway. So, I lay in bed for most of the day staring at the TV, as if waiting for it to provide me with an explanation as to how I’d been chosen to survive this particular set of circumstances. Or, perhaps a show would come on that might somehow relate to my predicament. A new cable show called, “C’mon! Shake it off! What’s the big deal?!” But no such show came to my rescue. Instead, in exchange for Greg I was provided with an assortment of 5 brand new……..HOUSEGUESTS! Hooray!1 visitor dies and 5 others take his place! Needless to say, I wasn’t much of a hostess at this point. I gave more of what was left of my undivided attention to the television set than I did to the visiting friends that now crowded my house. After Greg’s body was removed, (ugh……) I had my bed frame discarded, considering it’s inability to keep Greg alive—– and then we moved the remaining mattress to a new, no death free location in my room. (having, no doubt, determined that the mattress was virtually innocent in causing Greg’s untimely death). So you might say that the entire tragic incident was just a question of luck. Perhaps the reason Greg had died was because of where the bed had been previously located and now that it had been moved from that place, no1 else would die. Of course, it might have been simpler had I just moved to another room—–ANY room—why not the LIVING ROOM?! I mean, especially considering the room was designed for LIVING, unlike my bed room, which it turned out, had been designed for death! Posted in News | 25 Comments » Who’s sorry now! By admin • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News I told people this might happen, but did anyone listen to me?! NO! Hippo eats Dwarf Posted in News | 40 Comments » A view from the bridge over troubled princess……… By Carrie • Jan 31st, 2009 • Category: News I did a radio show yesterday and the man that interviewed me asked me what question I’d been asked over the years that had most annoyed me. “That’s easy” I told him. “Did you know “Star Wars” would be that big of a hit?” The interviewer laughed, “When I told people here at work that I would be interviewing you,” he said, ” All the men wanted was for me to ask how it felt to wear the metal bikini.” Now I laughed, “The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn’t metal. ——Not that metal would’ve been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn’t adhere to1’s skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt’s gigantic, albiet grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom……….well, it had the10dency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett—–I believe his name was Jeremy—–from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask——to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida. Posted in News | 40 Comments » Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral By Carrie • Jan 30th, 2009 • Category: News I have to tell you something before we go any further with this blogging business. See, I’m a very persnickety human. I can’t just write something and push a button sending it out into the internetosphere for all to judge and laugh at. I have to endlessly fuck with my words so nobody can make fun of me. (more…) Posted in News | 38 Comments » Dead Man Blogging By Carrie • Jan 28th, 2009 • Category: News I’m not really the “thought for the day” type. I mean, “I couldn’t care less than the more that I do” probably wouldn’t help too many people. Or, “I can’t wait to not get what I want” isn’t really going to go along way with inspiring too many folks But my brother’s post was pretty cool, no? I told him that I’d post a response, but now I’ll have to do it tomorrow. (Sorry Todd!) Since I didn’t have a very eventful day, I thought I might reminisce—–you know, drudge shit up from the past when I led a more colorful life. Colorful and debilitating combined. For those of you who haven’t read my book, I had a good friend name Greg Stevens who had the bad manners to die in my house. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he died in my BED, with me beside him, sleeping til Bruce Cohen and his boyfriend, (now husband) woke me into a world it would take me a long, bummer amount of time to blunder through. But before Greg died he was alot of fun. (he might be alot of fun AFTER his death, but as to that I have no way of knowing) He was especially fun when you consider he was a Republican, but also aside from that. All on his own, politically conservative party aside, I loved spending time with Greg. Greg R Stevens That’s not to say that he was always EASY to be with. Greg was extremely fond of drugs—-an affection I could relate to. But Greg could actually make me look like an amateur in comparison—–that is, when we weren’t neck and neck in bad behavior. If you were to say that Greg and I were a bad influence on eachother…………well, you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Inches away, in fact. The truth would be breathing it’s hot scented breath down your well behaved neck. One of my favorite evenings we spent together was in New York. We’d been in upstate New York at my friend Griffin Dunne’s wedding, and afterwards we drove back to the city and checked into Greg’s suite at the4 Seasons Hotel in midtown. Greg had had quite a bit to drink at the wedding. Enough to cause him to continuously slide from the seat onto the floor of the town car he’d hired for the occasion. Greg spent most of his life in hotels. The fancier the better. He liked to live what some call, “The high life”……..(and the word, “high” could obviously be interpreted in a variety of ways) He loved spas, where he could get massages and facials and manicures and pedicures—-and he LOVED shopping—a pass time which——-along with the altered state—-we both enthusiastically shared. Greg had always told me that he came from a very wealthy family —- consequently making him very wealthy as well. He told me that he’d inherited a HUGE amount of money from a trust fund that his mother had set up for he and his2 brothers in the late6ties when they were quite young. And the money in this trust fund had originally come from a law suit his mother had won against some doctors that had gotten her husband addicted to speed. (if I’d known you could win law suits against people that get father’s addicted to speed, my siblings and I would be set for life, as my father had shot speed for 15 years courtesy of the original Dr. Feelgood aka Dr. Max Jacobsen). Anyway, for whatever idiotic reason I never questioned Greg’s story ——- I mean, it never occurred to me that someone might lie about a thing like that… My only experience with lying was someone (like myself) denying being stoned, or perhaps when someone assured someone else (say me maybe) that they didn’t look fat and that that assurance happened not to be so. One of the reasons that might explain why Greg had made up the story of his alleged wealth was that he thought that people would like him more if they thought he were rich. A sad explanation, but nonetheless possible. So, Greg told everyone that his mother had won this alleged law suit for something like2 million dollars. (not that there are very many things like2 million dollars—– other than2 million dollars) And she’d subsequently invested the money wisely, so that when Greg and his brothers came of age they would receive trust funds worth well over 50 million dollars apiece. BUT, Greg informed me, because of his drug use, his mother had decided NOT to give him his inheritance when he came of age (35, and he was now in his early 40’s)—– and that he would only receive it when and only when he sobered up. The gag was (according to Greg)—–that because he had NOT received his inheritance, it had increased10 fold because, unlike his brother’s, Greg’s money had remained invested, so on that fateful day when his mother would finally give his inheritance to him , he would be richer than either1 of his very, VERY rich brothers combined! Incredible tale, no? The only thing wrong with it was that it was entirely fabricated. A fact I didn’t find out until his wake, when his1 of his brothers told me. The idea that Greg had concocted this fantasy of immense and imminent wealth was hilarious to them. (As hilarious as it could be given that Greg had to die for all of us to get the joke) Anyway, back to Greg getting really drunk at Griffin’s wedding reception. So drunk that he ended up calling his dealer in the city from his cell phone en route from upstate New York. It turned out, probably not so amazingly enough, I’d met this woman before, once with Greg in another suite in another hotel the year before, and another time, some years Marianne Faithful back, in Ireland when she was supplying (among other clients) the now sober, then not ,Marianne Faithful. At the time this dealer had a fairly lucrative business in London—so lucrative that she was able to afford a very nice house in Chelsea. But in the ensuing years she’d moved her business back to Manhatten, and as luck would have it (dumb luck, of course), Greg wound up being1 of her clients. I forget her name, but I’ll never forget how she looked. In her mid6ties, she was quite a large person, weighing in at maybe 200–250 pounds. And if that wasn’t enough, she had a face that was a little like a basset hound. When she arrived with her delivery that night, I was in the bedroom searching for an in house movie to watch, when I hear the front door to the suite opening. I peered discretely around the corner to see who was coming down the hall and into the livingroom, which is when I recognize her from the United (drug) Kingdom. As I watched, she dragged herself, every ounce her, to a couch at the farside of the living room, huffing and puffing, with a woebegone expression on her droopy, familiar face….I listen as Greg enthusiastically greets her and I find myself thinking, well, given that I’d met her before, I should probably go say hello, right? I mean, after all, manners are manners, no? I don’t care HOW much dope is involved. So I enter the living room to pay the top dollar of my respects, and as I watch, she eases her entire self down with considerable effort and sighs a defeated sigh. “I’m so depressed” she says wearily. And now, as Greg and I gaze at this hefty, uber human self, we’re forced to say, “Why? How could someone like YOU be depressed??? You—–who have SO much to live for! A 60 something immensely overweight drug dealer with a face dripping with paste colored flesh——if happiness has eluded someone as deserving as you, what hope to the rest of us have???? And then, in response to our question as to the source of her unimaginable despondence, she replies, “I lost a client today……” “NO! You must be JOKING! Imagine losing a client in a business like yours!!!!! That is just …….well, BIZARRE!” Of course this is a sampling of something we’re thinking, as we avoid catching1 another eyes and dissolving into peals of laughter. What we SAY is, “I’m SO sorry. Are you OKAY?” I realize it might seem a little callous to some of you, the vision of Greg and myself laughing, (in part) at the misfortune of others and I apologize if I’ve offended someone whose lost a loved1 to drug addiction. Come to think of it, she probably said something very similar when Greg passed away due to a combination of sleep apnia and drug use. (Only in his case she probably was a bit annoyed on top of her distress, as Greg had a habit of not paying her.) But all I can say is, you had to be there to see her mournfully recount to us the details of the client she’d lost (a famous political writer in his late 70’s) In fact, it would have been really good if you’d been there, because if you’d been present, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be. (wouldn’t HAVE to be, but probably would be anyway. Posted in News | 14 Comments » « Older Entries 04/02/09 - 05/03/09 in Seattle, WA at The Rep View all dates © 2009 CarrieFisher | Powered by WordPress | Entries (RSS)
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topdocbear > kingman     BIOGRAPHY BOOKS BLOG Happy Valentines Doc By Carrie • Feb 15th, 2009 • Category: News I have a friend named Arnie Klein. Dr. Arnold Klein. Dr. Arnie Klein He’s an actual doctor, not1 of those people that call themselves doctors, like my father’s son in law. (or whatever you call your wife’s child that’s not yours) My father’s wife, Betty Lin, had a son who called himself, “Doctor Winky”. She would still have a son named doctor winky, but she passed away some years ago, so now Doctor Winky can belong to all of us. Doctor Winky is not, in fact, a physician, but a doctor of night club lights. You wouldn’t think that there was a call for a doctor of night club lights, and there probably isn’t. But if there WAS a need for someone to doctor strobe lights and the other ailing bulbs—–Doctor Winky would be their man. But Arnie isn’t a light doctor. He’s an actual doctor. And not JUST an actual doctor, Arnie is a dermatologist to the stars. He’s a pimple and wrinkle doctor, ideal for adolescence and old age and everything in between. Arnie is a great doctor. Great because he loves what he does. His job is medicine and his hobby is medicine. He spends his weekends reading medical journals. My pimples brought me to Arnie and my wrinkles and affection will keep me with him til the end. His and/or mine. Arnie and I are completely opposite in a similar way. He wants to feel like he could go into surgery in a moments notice. As the doctor. Whilst I want to feel as though I could go into surgery in a moments notice ——as the patient. Arnie likes me to write about him. He calls it feeding his narcissism. Not that this (being written about or paid attention to) is an uncommon pleasure. Especially in what is laughingly called Hollywood. I think most people like being written about. Nicely, of course. And now that Arnie has discovered that there is a new venue where I could pay him further tribute—-well, as you see—– So…….here I am writing about him………in front of God and everyone……in front of blog and everyone……Arnie………here is your tribute. Happy Valentines Day………. Posted in News | 5 Comments » Star light star bright, the rest I cant remember right. By Carrie • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: News My mother was born in El Paso, Texas. She was the second child of Ray and Maxene Reynolds, who had my mother’s brother, Bill at 16 and then proceeded to have my mother, Mary Frances, the following year. One of the reasons my grandmother wanted to marry at such a young age, was she anxious to have her own room. Raised in an extremely large family, she was anxious to get away and secure for herself some privacy. Odd logic—–marrying for privacy—-but then, my family has never been known for it’s conventional10dencies. My grandmother’s mother, Maxie Harmon, began having children in her late teens & continuing to procreate until she had her last child at 49, which the doctor informed her was a tumor—–and when that growth was born, they called him, of course, Tumor—–making him my mother’s “Uncle Tumor, who was and remains younger than his niece. Maxene grew up sharing everything with her multiple siblings, from beds to food to clothes—–, she never wore anything but her sister’s hand me downs—– so the prospect of her own closet and living in her own house was extremely alluring. She once told me that her family was so poor that they, “didn’t have6 matching glasses.”Then she added brusquely, “And don’t you put that in1 of your books!” (She didn’t say anything about blogs, so I share it without threat of adding more weight to my already tubby conscience. It would also be difficult for her to object much at this point, as my grandmother had the bad manners to pass away some time ago.) So, hoping to secure some privacy and perhaps even a dress of her own,when my 15 year old grandmother caught the eye of my handsome grandfather, Raymond Francis Reynolds, a local boy who played baseball rather well and worked on the railroad, she did nothing to discourage him. Ray was much more handsome than tall, and Maxene was more large busted than beautiful——but they began to pool their liabilities and their assets, and soon enough they found themselves courting and then, out of the something borrowed, something blue, they were wed. Unfortunately, my great grandmother (not so great in this case) had neglected to inform her daughter, Maxene, about just what would be expected of her on her wedding night——so that when my grandfather began to ………..well, as you might imagine, my grandma was, in addition to being unwilling was also quite understandably paralyzed with disbelief. Surely my grandfather was making this up——how could anyone be expected to do anything as bizarre as this! It took my grandfather3 days and lots of sketching, (what I wouldn’t give to see those!) for her to finally relent and more than likely unenthusiastically, let him have his now legal way with her. ——————————————————— My mother wasn’t a mother that cooked and cleaned and helped me with my homework, but not knowing these things existed I didn’t miss them. Debbie Carrie & Todd She was both parents to Todd and I. The main reason my father has any children at all is largely because they’re a by product of sex, which he’s devoted a huge portion of his life to. Certainly not out of any urge to procreate. We rarely saw our him—-maybe once a year—–yet my mother never spoke ill of him. At Christmas she would buy gifts and sign his name on the card. Of course, my brother and I weren’t really fooled, as she made little effort to disguise her handwriting———But the fact that she did it at all was dear. Though she had an extremely demanding career, Todd and I always had the sense that we came first to her. Both then and now. One of my favorite things that my mother does is give advice. Most mothers give advice, but she does it in a very unique way. “You know dear, I had a dream that you left your lawyers and went with mine. I know you don’t believe my dreams mean anything—–even the1 that predicted I would buy the house next door.” She mainly dreams about things she wants me to do. The MGM lionshare of her dreams are about my agents, flaws in contracts, and A LOT of dreams about business managers. Aren’t dreams meant to be symbolic? Didn’t Jung say that? And what about Freud’s theory that most dreams are sexual? And wasn’t there also a theory that you are everyone in your dreams? My mom would probably like that last notion, as it would make her my agent, my lawyer and my business manager. My mother is as far from ordinary as you can get without a rocket or special dispensation from the government. She wears turbans and sequined dresses (though rarely together),black pants and a black top with a colorful button down shirt open at the front, like a jacket. She applies her make up like a fastidious artist. Seated in front of a large mirror surrounded by lights and a white towel spread on the table beneath the mirror is another, smaller mirror for the detail work, like eyeliner and eyelash application. The walls of her home are adorned with autographed photographs of celebrities she has both known and worked with and those whom she admired. Even though she’s a celebrity herself, there’s a part of my mother that’s like a fan. No…wait…….not ‘like’,……..she IS a fan. A fan of classic films, and even some contemporary (she loved Slum Dog Millionaire) It’s almost as though she’s not part of the Hollywood community—-on the inside looking out. There’s an enormous part of her that is on the outside looking in. That is, unless she’s onstage looking out. She reads fan magazines, biographies of celebrities and watches AMC. She has always been and is still delighted by an inspired performance. For years my mother had a drama coach named Lillian Sydney. Lillian was the vocal coach at MGM, and in a short time became my mother’s mentor. Lillian had what I always called a Hollywood accent. Like the vocal coach in, “Singing in the Rain”, saying to Jean Hagen, “No, dear, ROUND tones! “And I CAAAHHNT stand him!” Where you sound like an aristocrat, someone overflowing with class—— even yawning and sneezing with elegance. And this appealed enormously to my mother who, coming from the south, wanted to sound like movie stars did. She started at the studio at 16, and I’m sure they wanted her to get rid of her accent. They changed her name from Mary Frances to Debbie (which she wouldn’t answer to for 2 years) they told her that her ears stuck out and had them surgically pinned back, they shaved her eyebrows, which then never grew back. They could reinvent her superficially, but the part of her that was raised in a2 room house in El Paso, the thoughtful, hard working, devoted, loyal, darling human that she is they couldn’t —–thank God—–alter. We’ve all heard the expression, “Star Quality”———-that ineffable something that makes certain people focus pullers. It’s my theory that they shine. Something glows out of their eyes, —–as though they’ve swallowed some of the spot light that follows them around onstage——- ——— and people get caught in their magnetic field and are drawn to them. It might even be possible that1 of the reasons that celebrities are called stars—— is because of this shine. And maybe if you hang around these beaming people, some of it will rub off on you. Whatever this thing is that glows out of them that makes them preferred above most others, if you touch them, talk to them, walk with them, live with them—-maybe you can get anointed by this wattage. Debbie Reynolds Anyway, my mother had this thing, this sublime light, and its been spilling out of her ever since she was6teen, shine that poured out of her and all over everyone. People followed her in the street, flocked to her shows—–wanted a piece of her because she reminded them of the best version of themselves. And to get that piece they applaud her, write her, love her in all the ways they know how, and my mother appreciates it. Especially when she performs. She gives everything she’s got and in return the audience celebrates her and this makes her feel a little like she’s going to live forever. And she is. She’s going to take some of that shine of hers with her and leave the rest of it to glow out of the eyes of the people that love her. Sorry it’s taken me this long to post anything. Between ECT and ice skating with my daughter, I’ve neglected carrying you all out on a wave of tales. Bear with me if you can……….or even if you can’t……. oxxoxooxcff Tags: Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, ECT, family story, Texas Posted in News | 26 Comments » What Was I Thinking? By Carrie • Feb 7th, 2009 • Category: News What Was I Thinking? About a year ago my friend Paul Slansky asked me to contribute to a book his wife, Liz Dubelman, was doing about that terrible moment when you realize that the relationship you’re in isn’t going to work. Well, I just happened to have a few of those to choose from, so I wrote1 up and now that book – What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories – has just been published, with my humble effort right up front. Here’s the beginning of “A Bullwhip?” I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality. And so when I meet someone, that’s where we hang out. It goes on for miles, the great outdoors, we romp around in my personality. And in my big sprawling personality, where this new someone is now, I love him. I love everything he does. I love being with him, I love sex with him, I’m charmed by him. And what is love if not a state of enchantment? You meet someone and it puts a charm on the world. Everything looks better when you love someone and you know you’re going to see him later. Everything between now and that later is so much fun to do, because you’re going to get who and what you want at the end of the day, so anything’s possible when that’s up ahead. Now when the person that this happens with is someone like Paul Simon, then we’re not just hanging out in my big personality. He has1, too, and they overlap in a lot of places. And that’s when it’s really kind of golden, when you can find someone who speaks your bizarre, bizarre dialect of a language of the smallest country in the world that hardly anyone ever visits, but they never forget having been there. Paul and I did share that, so when we got enchanted, the enchantment lasted a long time. But the problem is that, even at its best, enchantment just can’t sustain. When I date someone, I generally have about3 months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much. Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.” And once that starts, it’s like a case of measles, where you get just1 itch1 day, and then that itch spreads and spreads and spreads. And what feeds it is that he sees it happening. My face is like a Richter scale of every quake inside and outside of me, so it all shows up somehow. And if I turn the full beam on him of how much I like him and who he thinks he is, with everything that I am, if I shed that much light on him, and then that light starts diminishing, diminishing, diminishing, he notices. And I can’t stop it, and the more I try to stop it the more it looks like I’m trying to stop it, and that light gets fainter and fainter and fainter until everyone’s in a dark room. I remember it specifically happening when I was going out with this guy Jesse. He was actually smart, and the enchantment was unbelievably great. I remember once we were making out at Disneyland – I was that into him that I was just publicly making out. One night we were at my house and I was watching television, and Jesse was rubbing my back. And apparently I wasn’t turning the full beam on him, because it went from0 to a thousand in a nanosecond. He said, and not nicely, “What does somebody have to do to get your attention? Wrap a bullwhip around your neck?” Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book: http://tr.im/e9pe What Was I Thinking? Posted in News | 19 Comments » Life is a bowl of cherry bombs. By Carrie • Feb 5th, 2009 • Category: News But now we’ve finally come to the point of my entire, almost endless, over dramatic tale of woe. Remember the other day/week/month/year when I said I would write something in response to my brother’s thoughtful comment on my blog? Well, I”ve finally come to the part of the story where I thought I’d tell you about my calm, caring, insanely sane brother Todd…….. My brother and I were raised with the epic, mesmerizing (to us) story of how we came to be. According to my mother, I was the love child—–conceived when my parents were still riding the warm wave of romantic love. And he was the child she managed to extract from my disinterested father’s penis so that I could have company. Because all too soon their love wave crashed, and so, despite the fact that their marriage was basically in on the rocks, my mother chased my father around, hoping he would impregnate to insure that I wouldn’t end up being an only child. And so, determined that I should have a life long companion and though my father was virtually ignoring her, with his attention Taylor made to elsewhere, she somehow managed to wrangle her round wriggly way into getting inseminated with my beloved bro. Debbie w/ Carrie & Todd A companion to share our Mysterious to anyone but us History with. The Abbott to my Costello, the Fred to my Ginger, the Luke to my Leia. She made me a fellow conspirator: the rock to my roll, a co to his ed, a mate for my soul. Someone I could go on the teeter totter with, so I could go up and down and not just stay down. A partner to play chess with, if we’d ever taken the time out from where we kept it to learn……. or even a partner to dance the polka with, if we were ever absurdly inclined. Someone to blame everything on, outside of whoever else was around. My brother was all this —-and IS all this—– and more to me. Thanks to my mother’s determination to fashion a sibling for me out of my father’s increasingly thin air, this love child was able to experience brotherly love… Not a fantastic story for Todd to be brought up hearing, I’ll grant you, but hear it he did. And, like everything else, it didn’t seem to bother him. By the time Todd was born, my father was consoling Elizabeth Taylor’s heartbreak over the loss of her husband and father of her child, and namesake of my brother, Mike Todd. Eddie consoled Elizabeth the1 way her knew how—- with his trusty, grief eliminating child inseminating penis. Eddie Fisher & Elizabeth Taylor And of course, as everyone knows, grief can’t be eliminated with just a few thrusts. In order to do a really thorough job, the person with the healing penis has to continue the treatment for quite awhile. In my father’s case, he treated Elizabeth’s dispair for about4 years. (just to make COMPLETELY sure she was no longer burdened by those pesky feelings of loss) And then, when she was finally sadness free and free for anything fancy, she left my father in favor of the fancy top dollar attention paid for her new, improved mate, Richard Burton. But, back to my brother…… Unlike myself, who had enjoyed my father’s company for a year and a half, Todd never spent any time with our father. But this actually turned out to be a GOOD thing, because you can’t miss something you’ve never had. Unfortunately, in my case, I’d lived with my dad just long enough to, not only wonder where he’d gone to, but blame myself for not being lovable enough to get him to stay. (Oh poor sad Carrie! Get out your handkerchief for these nosebleed high class problems, where you sob with a British accent…..) Todd Fisher But whether it was because of the different ways my dad’s absence affected us, or because of what I refer to as, “It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it”, Todd grew up to be a calm, imperturbable, life is just a bowl of cherries guy (he actually said that to me once) and I……well, I just wasn’t like that—to say the least in the most way. As he grew up, my brother became a kind of attendant to the insane. Unflustered, he was the eye of the family tornado—-my mother and I cast as the tornado….And there he would remain unflustered & serene—nothing seemed to phase him. And believe me, there was a lot of phase inducing circumstances available to challenge even the most stalwart citizen…….but not Todd. Todd was more like my grandfather. Ray Reynolds, off somewhere fixing a TV set, or building a tree house—-My mother’s father was a carpenter and Todd absorbed his distracted, peaceful temperament, while I wandered thru the landscape, absorbing anything and everything that could be taken personally—–cars, wallpaper, absent parents, my reflection…..name it and it was my fault. Todd? No big fuckin deal. Why bother? I wanted to feel like he seemed, you know? I know you know people like this. You can’t fool me. (Well, maybe you can, just not in this area). So when Greg died, Todd made a reservation at a spa in England. A place near Sandhurst, the military training center of the United Kingdom. James Blunt went there! It had to be good! (the military school, not necessarily the spa) Actually, it takes quite a bit to ruin a spa. It’s possible, I suppose, but, in my experience, rare. Expensive and rare. But this being something of an emotional emergency, if there was ever a time to cough up the funds it was now. So we settled into our peaceful nook, nestled there in the English countryside. So there I was, nestled in another bed, watching another assortment of programs designed to distract you from whatever unpleasant experience you’d found yourself slogging through. Only this time my brother was in charge of my television programming. And what he had selected for my viewing pleasure was war movies. Whether it was old movie classics, or documentaries, this was what I feasted my famished eyes on for the duration of our stay there. (which was probably not more than a week) As big of an old movie aficionado as I was, this was an area that I had neglected. You know—-being a girl and all—-what use did I have for, “Seven Minutes over Tokyo” or “Fail Safe”? But as it turns out, these films were extremely healing for me. It may sound funny to you, but it’s true. Especially the documentaries. “Band of Brothers” Band of Brothers was my favorite. It was hours and hours of watching people go thru experiences that made my crisis look like a pimple on the ass of difficulty. (isn’t that a lovely expression? You can use it whenever you like) Not only the multiple hour show itself, but the “Making of Band of Brothers” was amazingly inspirational to me. I mean, it’s absurd for me really to compare me waking up with my dead friend to these heroic soldiers facing death all day every day, losing comrades, losing LIMBS! I mean, MY GOD! There was1 survivor of World War2 who had seen his friend get his arm blown off and, as they were taking him away on the stretcher, this soldier stopped the medics, pointed down to his arm on the ground and asking them if they would mind getting him his watch!!!!! Wow. Just incredible. And watching these films day after healing day, I thought—–well, if these men can live through THAT! And not just live in some cases, but THRIVE! If they can do that, what’s my sad experience but……..something to get to the other side of, like these men had done. Isn’t there a saying, “What man has done, man can do?” Well, I’m assuming that applies to women too, so……I set about doing what others had done before me and, in their cases, with NOBILITY. All this to say, this was my brother’s gift to me. It’s his instinct to leave someone better off than when he came across them. Whatever strength I have is bourne out of weakness. Heartbreak is my teacher. My brother’s strength comes from trust that things will be alright in the end. He sees the good in things. I find the good by traipsing thru the bad slooowly……..so I don’t miss a bruise……. Posted in News | 42 Comments » Laughing waters… eyes jeweled with tears By Carrie • Feb 4th, 2009 • Category: News Okay, if you never watch another thing again, watch this. It will make your life work. My daughter sent it to me (it flowed out of her like laughing waters….) and everything is going to be okay now.Obviously, anyone that sends this to you cares about you very much. So my daughter, Billie, cares about me—–and by extension, you—-and obviously it would follow then follow that I care deeply for you as well. See? And then everything else can just build from there! You’re officially out of harms way and in the joyous pink! So go forth and fire fly! oxxoxoxo cff Posted in News | 28 Comments » Death and houseguests………. By Carrie • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News After Greg died I stopped talking. It was as if my personality followed him down the dark passage of death and left someone who looked a lot like me, except that now my features where organized into an expression of abject fear. I had been scared—-not TO death, but BY death…you might say that Greg’s death had scared the fucking life out of me. The thing about someone dying, though, is that life goes on. While your loved1 is busy relaxing in their cozy coffins, you still have appointments, a job, friends, children —-a whole parcel of living things pulling on you to get on with it. I mean, life can be just as demanding as death in, it’s own way…….Of course, as far as I know, the demands of those us as yet unceasing are probably more of the high class variety than the demands of the deceased. Now, I’ve never really been the type of person who gets over things easily. —-I mean, I had a hard getting over the fact that I didn’t have blue eyes or finding out that I hadn’t been invited to some big party someone was throwing somewhere……., so being confronted by something as formidable as dying—well, it wouldn’t be too difficult to predict that I wouldn’t be the person putting the “fun” in funeral. Not that anyone finds it particularly easy burying someone who wouldn’t normally be considered the burying age. I mean, Greg was way far from being past his prime. His wild lifestyle probably placed him neck and neck with his prime, but for anyone to die in their forties in this day and age is a hearty mix of premature and tragic. So after Greg died I just couldn’t seem to be able to shake it off. Partly because I had loved Greg—–we had always had a lot of fun together. Much of it was the truant type of fun, but that didn’t make it any less amusing for us. Just for the folks around us who had to deal with our antics. But the other reason because I blamed myself, you see. I mean, it had happened on my watch. If only I’d woken in the middle of the night, I might have been able to save him. If only I hadn’t been so busy sleeping, I might’ve been able to wake him up the next morning….. The fact that Greg lived life like there was no tomorrow didn’t enter into it.(of course, eventually there really IS no tomorrow—–which occurs right when you run out of your stash of yesterdays and todays) I mean, it was as if Greg’s dying had more to do with me than it did with him. Which is a pretty fancy twist of perspective, when you think about it. “It’s all for you, Damien!” the nanny cries out in the movie, “The Omen”—-only in this case it was me shouting, “It’s all for you, Greg!” —-and unlike the nanny, I didn’t subsequently hang myself. Not literally, anyway. So, I lay in bed for most of the day staring at the TV, as if waiting for it to provide me with an explanation as to how I’d been chosen to survive this particular set of circumstances. Or, perhaps a show would come on that might somehow relate to my predicament. A new cable show called, “C’mon! Shake it off! What’s the big deal?!” But no such show came to my rescue. Instead, in exchange for Greg I was provided with an assortment of 5 brand new……..HOUSEGUESTS! Hooray!1 visitor dies and 5 others take his place! Needless to say, I wasn’t much of a hostess at this point. I gave more of what was left of my undivided attention to the television set than I did to the visiting friends that now crowded my house. After Greg’s body was removed, (ugh……) I had my bed frame discarded, considering it’s inability to keep Greg alive—– and then we moved the remaining mattress to a new, no death free location in my room. (having, no doubt, determined that the mattress was virtually innocent in causing Greg’s untimely death). So you might say that the entire tragic incident was just a question of luck. Perhaps the reason Greg had died was because of where the bed had been previously located and now that it had been moved from that place, no1 else would die. Of course, it might have been simpler had I just moved to another room—–ANY room—why not the LIVING ROOM?! I mean, especially considering the room was designed for LIVING, unlike my bed room, which it turned out, had been designed for death! Posted in News | 25 Comments » Who’s sorry now! By admin • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News I told people this might happen, but did anyone listen to me?! NO! Hippo eats Dwarf Posted in News | 40 Comments » A view from the bridge over troubled princess……… By Carrie • Jan 31st, 2009 • Category: News I did a radio show yesterday and the man that interviewed me asked me what question I’d been asked over the years that had most annoyed me. “That’s easy” I told him. “Did you know “Star Wars” would be that big of a hit?” The interviewer laughed, “When I told people here at work that I would be interviewing you,” he said, ” All the men wanted was for me to ask how it felt to wear the metal bikini.” Now I laughed, “The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn’t metal. ——Not that metal would’ve been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn’t adhere to1’s skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt’s gigantic, albiet grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom……….well, it had the10dency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett—–I believe his name was Jeremy—–from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask——to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida. Posted in News | 40 Comments » Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral By Carrie • Jan 30th, 2009 • Category: News I have to tell you something before we go any further with this blogging business. See, I’m a very persnickety human. I can’t just write something and push a button sending it out into the internetosphere for all to judge and laugh at. I have to endlessly fuck with my words so nobody can make fun of me. (more…) Posted in News | 38 Comments » Dead Man Blogging By Carrie • Jan 28th, 2009 • Category: News I’m not really the “thought for the day” type. I mean, “I couldn’t care less than the more that I do” probably wouldn’t help too many people. Or, “I can’t wait to not get what I want” isn’t really going to go along way with inspiring too many folks But my brother’s post was pretty cool, no? I told him that I’d post a response, but now I’ll have to do it tomorrow. (Sorry Todd!) Since I didn’t have a very eventful day, I thought I might reminisce—–you know, drudge shit up from the past when I led a more colorful life. Colorful and debilitating combined. For those of you who haven’t read my book, I had a good friend name Greg Stevens who had the bad manners to die in my house. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he died in my BED, with me beside him, sleeping til Bruce Cohen and his boyfriend, (now husband) woke me into a world it would take me a long, bummer amount of time to blunder through. But before Greg died he was alot of fun. (he might be alot of fun AFTER his death, but as to that I have no way of knowing) He was especially fun when you consider he was a Republican, but also aside from that. All on his own, politically conservative party aside, I loved spending time with Greg. Greg R Stevens That’s not to say that he was always EASY to be with. Greg was extremely fond of drugs—-an affection I could relate to. But Greg could actually make me look like an amateur in comparison—–that is, when we weren’t neck and neck in bad behavior. If you were to say that Greg and I were a bad influence on eachother…………well, you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Inches away, in fact. The truth would be breathing it’s hot scented breath down your well behaved neck. One of my favorite evenings we spent together was in New York. We’d been in upstate New York at my friend Griffin Dunne’s wedding, and afterwards we drove back to the city and checked into Greg’s suite at the4 Seasons Hotel in midtown. Greg had had quite a bit to drink at the wedding. Enough to cause him to continuously slide from the seat onto the floor of the town car he’d hired for the occasion. Greg spent most of his life in hotels. The fancier the better. He liked to live what some call, “The high life”……..(and the word, “high” could obviously be interpreted in a variety of ways) He loved spas, where he could get massages and facials and manicures and pedicures—-and he LOVED shopping—a pass time which——-along with the altered state—-we both enthusiastically shared. Greg had always told me that he came from a very wealthy family —- consequently making him very wealthy as well. He told me that he’d inherited a HUGE amount of money from a trust fund that his mother had set up for he and his2 brothers in the late6ties when they were quite young. And the money in this trust fund had originally come from a law suit his mother had won against some doctors that had gotten her husband addicted to speed. (if I’d known you could win law suits against people that get father’s addicted to speed, my siblings and I would be set for life, as my father had shot speed for 15 years courtesy of the original Dr. Feelgood aka Dr. Max Jacobsen). Anyway, for whatever idiotic reason I never questioned Greg’s story ——- I mean, it never occurred to me that someone might lie about a thing like that… My only experience with lying was someone (like myself) denying being stoned, or perhaps when someone assured someone else (say me maybe) that they didn’t look fat and that that assurance happened not to be so. One of the reasons that might explain why Greg had made up the story of his alleged wealth was that he thought that people would like him more if they thought he were rich. A sad explanation, but nonetheless possible. So, Greg told everyone that his mother had won this alleged law suit for something like2 million dollars. (not that there are very many things like2 million dollars—– other than2 million dollars) And she’d subsequently invested the money wisely, so that when Greg and his brothers came of age they would receive trust funds worth well over 50 million dollars apiece. BUT, Greg informed me, because of his drug use, his mother had decided NOT to give him his inheritance when he came of age (35, and he was now in his early 40’s)—– and that he would only receive it when and only when he sobered up. The gag was (according to Greg)—–that because he had NOT received his inheritance, it had increased10 fold because, unlike his brother’s, Greg’s money had remained invested, so on that fateful day when his mother would finally give his inheritance to him , he would be richer than either1 of his very, VERY rich brothers combined! Incredible tale, no? The only thing wrong with it was that it was entirely fabricated. A fact I didn’t find out until his wake, when his1 of his brothers told me. The idea that Greg had concocted this fantasy of immense and imminent wealth was hilarious to them. (As hilarious as it could be given that Greg had to die for all of us to get the joke) Anyway, back to Greg getting really drunk at Griffin’s wedding reception. So drunk that he ended up calling his dealer in the city from his cell phone en route from upstate New York. It turned out, probably not so amazingly enough, I’d met this woman before, once with Greg in another suite in another hotel the year before, and another time, some years Marianne Faithful back, in Ireland when she was supplying (among other clients) the now sober, then not ,Marianne Faithful. At the time this dealer had a fairly lucrative business in London—so lucrative that she was able to afford a very nice house in Chelsea. But in the ensuing years she’d moved her business back to Manhatten, and as luck would have it (dumb luck, of course), Greg wound up being1 of her clients. I forget her name, but I’ll never forget how she looked. In her mid6ties, she was quite a large person, weighing in at maybe 200–250 pounds. And if that wasn’t enough, she had a face that was a little like a basset hound. When she arrived with her delivery that night, I was in the bedroom searching for an in house movie to watch, when I hear the front door to the suite opening. I peered discretely around the corner to see who was coming down the hall and into the livingroom, which is when I recognize her from the United (drug) Kingdom. As I watched, she dragged herself, every ounce her, to a couch at the farside of the living room, huffing and puffing, with a woebegone expression on her droopy, familiar face….I listen as Greg enthusiastically greets her and I find myself thinking, well, given that I’d met her before, I should probably go say hello, right? I mean, after all, manners are manners, no? I don’t care HOW much dope is involved. So I enter the living room to pay the top dollar of my respects, and as I watch, she eases her entire self down with considerable effort and sighs a defeated sigh. “I’m so depressed” she says wearily. And now, as Greg and I gaze at this hefty, uber human self, we’re forced to say, “Why? How could someone like YOU be depressed??? You—–who have SO much to live for! A 60 something immensely overweight drug dealer with a face dripping with paste colored flesh——if happiness has eluded someone as deserving as you, what hope to the rest of us have???? And then, in response to our question as to the source of her unimaginable despondence, she replies, “I lost a client today……” “NO! You must be JOKING! Imagine losing a client in a business like yours!!!!! That is just …….well, BIZARRE!” Of course this is a sampling of something we’re thinking, as we avoid catching1 another eyes and dissolving into peals of laughter. What we SAY is, “I’m SO sorry. Are you OKAY?” I realize it might seem a little callous to some of you, the vision of Greg and myself laughing, (in part) at the misfortune of others and I apologize if I’ve offended someone whose lost a loved1 to drug addiction. Come to think of it, she probably said something very similar when Greg passed away due to a combination of sleep apnia and drug use. (Only in his case she probably was a bit annoyed on top of her distress, as Greg had a habit of not paying her.) But all I can say is, you had to be there to see her mournfully recount to us the details of the client she’d lost (a famous political writer in his late 70’s) In fact, it would have been really good if you’d been there, because if you’d been present, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be. (wouldn’t HAVE to be, but probably would be anyway. Posted in News | 14 Comments » « Older Entries 04/02/09 - 05/03/09 in Seattle, WA at The Rep View all dates © 2009 CarrieFisher | Powered by WordPress | Entries (RSS)
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topdocbear > kingman     BIOGRAPHY BOOKS BLOG Happy Valentines Doc By Carrie • Feb 15th, 2009 • Category: News I have a friend named Arnie Klein. Dr. Arnold Klein. Dr. Arnie Klein He’s an actual doctor, not1 of those people that call themselves doctors, like my father’s son in law. (or whatever you call your wife’s child that’s not yours) My father’s wife, Betty Lin, had a son who called himself, “Doctor Winky”. She would still have a son named doctor winky, but she passed away some years ago, so now Doctor Winky can belong to all of us. Doctor Winky is not, in fact, a physician, but a doctor of night club lights. You wouldn’t think that there was a call for a doctor of night club lights, and there probably isn’t. But if there WAS a need for someone to doctor strobe lights and the other ailing bulbs—–Doctor Winky would be their man. But Arnie isn’t a light doctor. He’s an actual doctor. And not JUST an actual doctor, Arnie is a dermatologist to the stars. He’s a pimple and wrinkle doctor, ideal for adolescence and old age and everything in between. Arnie is a great doctor. Great because he loves what he does. His job is medicine and his hobby is medicine. He spends his weekends reading medical journals. My pimples brought me to Arnie and my wrinkles and affection will keep me with him til the end. His and/or mine. Arnie and I are completely opposite in a similar way. He wants to feel like he could go into surgery in a moments notice. As the doctor. Whilst I want to feel as though I could go into surgery in a moments notice ——as the patient. Arnie likes me to write about him. He calls it feeding his narcissism. Not that this (being written about or paid attention to) is an uncommon pleasure. Especially in what is laughingly called Hollywood. I think most people like being written about. Nicely, of course. And now that Arnie has discovered that there is a new venue where I could pay him further tribute—-well, as you see—– So…….here I am writing about him………in front of God and everyone……in front of blog and everyone……Arnie………here is your tribute. Happy Valentines Day………. Posted in News | 5 Comments » Star light star bright, the rest I cant remember right. By Carrie • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: News My mother was born in El Paso, Texas. She was the second child of Ray and Maxene Reynolds, who had my mother’s brother, Bill at 16 and then proceeded to have my mother, Mary Frances, the following year. One of the reasons my grandmother wanted to marry at such a young age, was she anxious to have her own room. Raised in an extremely large family, she was anxious to get away and secure for herself some privacy. Odd logic—–marrying for privacy—-but then, my family has never been known for it’s conventional10dencies. My grandmother’s mother, Maxie Harmon, began having children in her late teens & continuing to procreate until she had her last child at 49, which the doctor informed her was a tumor—–and when that growth was born, they called him, of course, Tumor—–making him my mother’s “Uncle Tumor, who was and remains younger than his niece. Maxene grew up sharing everything with her multiple siblings, from beds to food to clothes—–, she never wore anything but her sister’s hand me downs—– so the prospect of her own closet and living in her own house was extremely alluring. She once told me that her family was so poor that they, “didn’t have6 matching glasses.”Then she added brusquely, “And don’t you put that in1 of your books!” (She didn’t say anything about blogs, so I share it without threat of adding more weight to my already tubby conscience. It would also be difficult for her to object much at this point, as my grandmother had the bad manners to pass away some time ago.) So, hoping to secure some privacy and perhaps even a dress of her own,when my 15 year old grandmother caught the eye of my handsome grandfather, Raymond Francis Reynolds, a local boy who played baseball rather well and worked on the railroad, she did nothing to discourage him. Ray was much more handsome than tall, and Maxene was more large busted than beautiful——but they began to pool their liabilities and their assets, and soon enough they found themselves courting and then, out of the something borrowed, something blue, they were wed. Unfortunately, my great grandmother (not so great in this case) had neglected to inform her daughter, Maxene, about just what would be expected of her on her wedding night——so that when my grandfather began to ………..well, as you might imagine, my grandma was, in addition to being unwilling was also quite understandably paralyzed with disbelief. Surely my grandfather was making this up——how could anyone be expected to do anything as bizarre as this! It took my grandfather3 days and lots of sketching, (what I wouldn’t give to see those!) for her to finally relent and more than likely unenthusiastically, let him have his now legal way with her. ——————————————————— My mother wasn’t a mother that cooked and cleaned and helped me with my homework, but not knowing these things existed I didn’t miss them. Debbie Carrie & Todd She was both parents to Todd and I. The main reason my father has any children at all is largely because they’re a by product of sex, which he’s devoted a huge portion of his life to. Certainly not out of any urge to procreate. We rarely saw our him—-maybe once a year—–yet my mother never spoke ill of him. At Christmas she would buy gifts and sign his name on the card. Of course, my brother and I weren’t really fooled, as she made little effort to disguise her handwriting———But the fact that she did it at all was dear. Though she had an extremely demanding career, Todd and I always had the sense that we came first to her. Both then and now. One of my favorite things that my mother does is give advice. Most mothers give advice, but she does it in a very unique way. “You know dear, I had a dream that you left your lawyers and went with mine. I know you don’t believe my dreams mean anything—–even the1 that predicted I would buy the house next door.” She mainly dreams about things she wants me to do. The MGM lionshare of her dreams are about my agents, flaws in contracts, and A LOT of dreams about business managers. Aren’t dreams meant to be symbolic? Didn’t Jung say that? And what about Freud’s theory that most dreams are sexual? And wasn’t there also a theory that you are everyone in your dreams? My mom would probably like that last notion, as it would make her my agent, my lawyer and my business manager. My mother is as far from ordinary as you can get without a rocket or special dispensation from the government. She wears turbans and sequined dresses (though rarely together),black pants and a black top with a colorful button down shirt open at the front, like a jacket. She applies her make up like a fastidious artist. Seated in front of a large mirror surrounded by lights and a white towel spread on the table beneath the mirror is another, smaller mirror for the detail work, like eyeliner and eyelash application. The walls of her home are adorned with autographed photographs of celebrities she has both known and worked with and those whom she admired. Even though she’s a celebrity herself, there’s a part of my mother that’s like a fan. No…wait…….not ‘like’,……..she IS a fan. A fan of classic films, and even some contemporary (she loved Slum Dog Millionaire) It’s almost as though she’s not part of the Hollywood community—-on the inside looking out. There’s an enormous part of her that is on the outside looking in. That is, unless she’s onstage looking out. She reads fan magazines, biographies of celebrities and watches AMC. She has always been and is still delighted by an inspired performance. For years my mother had a drama coach named Lillian Sydney. Lillian was the vocal coach at MGM, and in a short time became my mother’s mentor. Lillian had what I always called a Hollywood accent. Like the vocal coach in, “Singing in the Rain”, saying to Jean Hagen, “No, dear, ROUND tones! “And I CAAAHHNT stand him!” Where you sound like an aristocrat, someone overflowing with class—— even yawning and sneezing with elegance. And this appealed enormously to my mother who, coming from the south, wanted to sound like movie stars did. She started at the studio at 16, and I’m sure they wanted her to get rid of her accent. They changed her name from Mary Frances to Debbie (which she wouldn’t answer to for 2 years) they told her that her ears stuck out and had them surgically pinned back, they shaved her eyebrows, which then never grew back. They could reinvent her superficially, but the part of her that was raised in a2 room house in El Paso, the thoughtful, hard working, devoted, loyal, darling human that she is they couldn’t —–thank God—–alter. We’ve all heard the expression, “Star Quality”———-that ineffable something that makes certain people focus pullers. It’s my theory that they shine. Something glows out of their eyes, —–as though they’ve swallowed some of the spot light that follows them around onstage——- ——— and people get caught in their magnetic field and are drawn to them. It might even be possible that1 of the reasons that celebrities are called stars—— is because of this shine. And maybe if you hang around these beaming people, some of it will rub off on you. Whatever this thing is that glows out of them that makes them preferred above most others, if you touch them, talk to them, walk with them, live with them—-maybe you can get anointed by this wattage. Debbie Reynolds Anyway, my mother had this thing, this sublime light, and its been spilling out of her ever since she was6teen, shine that poured out of her and all over everyone. People followed her in the street, flocked to her shows—–wanted a piece of her because she reminded them of the best version of themselves. And to get that piece they applaud her, write her, love her in all the ways they know how, and my mother appreciates it. Especially when she performs. She gives everything she’s got and in return the audience celebrates her and this makes her feel a little like she’s going to live forever. And she is. She’s going to take some of that shine of hers with her and leave the rest of it to glow out of the eyes of the people that love her. Sorry it’s taken me this long to post anything. Between ECT and ice skating with my daughter, I’ve neglected carrying you all out on a wave of tales. Bear with me if you can……….or even if you can’t……. oxxoxooxcff Tags: Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, ECT, family story, Texas Posted in News | 26 Comments » What Was I Thinking? By Carrie • Feb 7th, 2009 • Category: News What Was I Thinking? About a year ago my friend Paul Slansky asked me to contribute to a book his wife, Liz Dubelman, was doing about that terrible moment when you realize that the relationship you’re in isn’t going to work. Well, I just happened to have a few of those to choose from, so I wrote1 up and now that book – What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories – has just been published, with my humble effort right up front. Here’s the beginning of “A Bullwhip?” I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality. And so when I meet someone, that’s where we hang out. It goes on for miles, the great outdoors, we romp around in my personality. And in my big sprawling personality, where this new someone is now, I love him. I love everything he does. I love being with him, I love sex with him, I’m charmed by him. And what is love if not a state of enchantment? You meet someone and it puts a charm on the world. Everything looks better when you love someone and you know you’re going to see him later. Everything between now and that later is so much fun to do, because you’re going to get who and what you want at the end of the day, so anything’s possible when that’s up ahead. Now when the person that this happens with is someone like Paul Simon, then we’re not just hanging out in my big personality. He has1, too, and they overlap in a lot of places. And that’s when it’s really kind of golden, when you can find someone who speaks your bizarre, bizarre dialect of a language of the smallest country in the world that hardly anyone ever visits, but they never forget having been there. Paul and I did share that, so when we got enchanted, the enchantment lasted a long time. But the problem is that, even at its best, enchantment just can’t sustain. When I date someone, I generally have about3 months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much. Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.” And once that starts, it’s like a case of measles, where you get just1 itch1 day, and then that itch spreads and spreads and spreads. And what feeds it is that he sees it happening. My face is like a Richter scale of every quake inside and outside of me, so it all shows up somehow. And if I turn the full beam on him of how much I like him and who he thinks he is, with everything that I am, if I shed that much light on him, and then that light starts diminishing, diminishing, diminishing, he notices. And I can’t stop it, and the more I try to stop it the more it looks like I’m trying to stop it, and that light gets fainter and fainter and fainter until everyone’s in a dark room. I remember it specifically happening when I was going out with this guy Jesse. He was actually smart, and the enchantment was unbelievably great. I remember once we were making out at Disneyland – I was that into him that I was just publicly making out. One night we were at my house and I was watching television, and Jesse was rubbing my back. And apparently I wasn’t turning the full beam on him, because it went from0 to a thousand in a nanosecond. He said, and not nicely, “What does somebody have to do to get your attention? Wrap a bullwhip around your neck?” Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book: http://tr.im/e9pe What Was I Thinking? Posted in News | 19 Comments » Life is a bowl of cherry bombs. By Carrie • Feb 5th, 2009 • Category: News But now we’ve finally come to the point of my entire, almost endless, over dramatic tale of woe. Remember the other day/week/month/year when I said I would write something in response to my brother’s thoughtful comment on my blog? Well, I”ve finally come to the part of the story where I thought I’d tell you about my calm, caring, insanely sane brother Todd…….. My brother and I were raised with the epic, mesmerizing (to us) story of how we came to be. According to my mother, I was the love child—–conceived when my parents were still riding the warm wave of romantic love. And he was the child she managed to extract from my disinterested father’s penis so that I could have company. Because all too soon their love wave crashed, and so, despite the fact that their marriage was basically in on the rocks, my mother chased my father around, hoping he would impregnate to insure that I wouldn’t end up being an only child. And so, determined that I should have a life long companion and though my father was virtually ignoring her, with his attention Taylor made to elsewhere, she somehow managed to wrangle her round wriggly way into getting inseminated with my beloved bro. Debbie w/ Carrie & Todd A companion to share our Mysterious to anyone but us History with. The Abbott to my Costello, the Fred to my Ginger, the Luke to my Leia. She made me a fellow conspirator: the rock to my roll, a co to his ed, a mate for my soul. Someone I could go on the teeter totter with, so I could go up and down and not just stay down. A partner to play chess with, if we’d ever taken the time out from where we kept it to learn……. or even a partner to dance the polka with, if we were ever absurdly inclined. Someone to blame everything on, outside of whoever else was around. My brother was all this —-and IS all this—– and more to me. Thanks to my mother’s determination to fashion a sibling for me out of my father’s increasingly thin air, this love child was able to experience brotherly love… Not a fantastic story for Todd to be brought up hearing, I’ll grant you, but hear it he did. And, like everything else, it didn’t seem to bother him. By the time Todd was born, my father was consoling Elizabeth Taylor’s heartbreak over the loss of her husband and father of her child, and namesake of my brother, Mike Todd. Eddie consoled Elizabeth the1 way her knew how—- with his trusty, grief eliminating child inseminating penis. Eddie Fisher & Elizabeth Taylor And of course, as everyone knows, grief can’t be eliminated with just a few thrusts. In order to do a really thorough job, the person with the healing penis has to continue the treatment for quite awhile. In my father’s case, he treated Elizabeth’s dispair for about4 years. (just to make COMPLETELY sure she was no longer burdened by those pesky feelings of loss) And then, when she was finally sadness free and free for anything fancy, she left my father in favor of the fancy top dollar attention paid for her new, improved mate, Richard Burton. But, back to my brother…… Unlike myself, who had enjoyed my father’s company for a year and a half, Todd never spent any time with our father. But this actually turned out to be a GOOD thing, because you can’t miss something you’ve never had. Unfortunately, in my case, I’d lived with my dad just long enough to, not only wonder where he’d gone to, but blame myself for not being lovable enough to get him to stay. (Oh poor sad Carrie! Get out your handkerchief for these nosebleed high class problems, where you sob with a British accent…..) Todd Fisher But whether it was because of the different ways my dad’s absence affected us, or because of what I refer to as, “It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it”, Todd grew up to be a calm, imperturbable, life is just a bowl of cherries guy (he actually said that to me once) and I……well, I just wasn’t like that—to say the least in the most way. As he grew up, my brother became a kind of attendant to the insane. Unflustered, he was the eye of the family tornado—-my mother and I cast as the tornado….And there he would remain unflustered & serene—nothing seemed to phase him. And believe me, there was a lot of phase inducing circumstances available to challenge even the most stalwart citizen…….but not Todd. Todd was more like my grandfather. Ray Reynolds, off somewhere fixing a TV set, or building a tree house—-My mother’s father was a carpenter and Todd absorbed his distracted, peaceful temperament, while I wandered thru the landscape, absorbing anything and everything that could be taken personally—–cars, wallpaper, absent parents, my reflection…..name it and it was my fault. Todd? No big fuckin deal. Why bother? I wanted to feel like he seemed, you know? I know you know people like this. You can’t fool me. (Well, maybe you can, just not in this area). So when Greg died, Todd made a reservation at a spa in England. A place near Sandhurst, the military training center of the United Kingdom. James Blunt went there! It had to be good! (the military school, not necessarily the spa) Actually, it takes quite a bit to ruin a spa. It’s possible, I suppose, but, in my experience, rare. Expensive and rare. But this being something of an emotional emergency, if there was ever a time to cough up the funds it was now. So we settled into our peaceful nook, nestled there in the English countryside. So there I was, nestled in another bed, watching another assortment of programs designed to distract you from whatever unpleasant experience you’d found yourself slogging through. Only this time my brother was in charge of my television programming. And what he had selected for my viewing pleasure was war movies. Whether it was old movie classics, or documentaries, this was what I feasted my famished eyes on for the duration of our stay there. (which was probably not more than a week) As big of an old movie aficionado as I was, this was an area that I had neglected. You know—-being a girl and all—-what use did I have for, “Seven Minutes over Tokyo” or “Fail Safe”? But as it turns out, these films were extremely healing for me. It may sound funny to you, but it’s true. Especially the documentaries. “Band of Brothers” Band of Brothers was my favorite. It was hours and hours of watching people go thru experiences that made my crisis look like a pimple on the ass of difficulty. (isn’t that a lovely expression? You can use it whenever you like) Not only the multiple hour show itself, but the “Making of Band of Brothers” was amazingly inspirational to me. I mean, it’s absurd for me really to compare me waking up with my dead friend to these heroic soldiers facing death all day every day, losing comrades, losing LIMBS! I mean, MY GOD! There was1 survivor of World War2 who had seen his friend get his arm blown off and, as they were taking him away on the stretcher, this soldier stopped the medics, pointed down to his arm on the ground and asking them if they would mind getting him his watch!!!!! Wow. Just incredible. And watching these films day after healing day, I thought—–well, if these men can live through THAT! And not just live in some cases, but THRIVE! If they can do that, what’s my sad experience but……..something to get to the other side of, like these men had done. Isn’t there a saying, “What man has done, man can do?” Well, I’m assuming that applies to women too, so……I set about doing what others had done before me and, in their cases, with NOBILITY. All this to say, this was my brother’s gift to me. It’s his instinct to leave someone better off than when he came across them. Whatever strength I have is bourne out of weakness. Heartbreak is my teacher. My brother’s strength comes from trust that things will be alright in the end. He sees the good in things. I find the good by traipsing thru the bad slooowly……..so I don’t miss a bruise……. Posted in News | 42 Comments » Laughing waters… eyes jeweled with tears By Carrie • Feb 4th, 2009 • Category: News Okay, if you never watch another thing again, watch this. It will make your life work. My daughter sent it to me (it flowed out of her like laughing waters….) and everything is going to be okay now.Obviously, anyone that sends this to you cares about you very much. So my daughter, Billie, cares about me—–and by extension, you—-and obviously it would follow then follow that I care deeply for you as well. See? And then everything else can just build from there! You’re officially out of harms way and in the joyous pink! So go forth and fire fly! oxxoxoxo cff Posted in News | 28 Comments » Death and houseguests………. By Carrie • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News After Greg died I stopped talking. It was as if my personality followed him down the dark passage of death and left someone who looked a lot like me, except that now my features where organized into an expression of abject fear. I had been scared—-not TO death, but BY death…you might say that Greg’s death had scared the fucking life out of me. The thing about someone dying, though, is that life goes on. While your loved1 is busy relaxing in their cozy coffins, you still have appointments, a job, friends, children —-a whole parcel of living things pulling on you to get on with it. I mean, life can be just as demanding as death in, it’s own way…….Of course, as far as I know, the demands of those us as yet unceasing are probably more of the high class variety than the demands of the deceased. Now, I’ve never really been the type of person who gets over things easily. —-I mean, I had a hard getting over the fact that I didn’t have blue eyes or finding out that I hadn’t been invited to some big party someone was throwing somewhere……., so being confronted by something as formidable as dying—well, it wouldn’t be too difficult to predict that I wouldn’t be the person putting the “fun” in funeral. Not that anyone finds it particularly easy burying someone who wouldn’t normally be considered the burying age. I mean, Greg was way far from being past his prime. His wild lifestyle probably placed him neck and neck with his prime, but for anyone to die in their forties in this day and age is a hearty mix of premature and tragic. So after Greg died I just couldn’t seem to be able to shake it off. Partly because I had loved Greg—–we had always had a lot of fun together. Much of it was the truant type of fun, but that didn’t make it any less amusing for us. Just for the folks around us who had to deal with our antics. But the other reason because I blamed myself, you see. I mean, it had happened on my watch. If only I’d woken in the middle of the night, I might have been able to save him. If only I hadn’t been so busy sleeping, I might’ve been able to wake him up the next morning….. The fact that Greg lived life like there was no tomorrow didn’t enter into it.(of course, eventually there really IS no tomorrow—–which occurs right when you run out of your stash of yesterdays and todays) I mean, it was as if Greg’s dying had more to do with me than it did with him. Which is a pretty fancy twist of perspective, when you think about it. “It’s all for you, Damien!” the nanny cries out in the movie, “The Omen”—-only in this case it was me shouting, “It’s all for you, Greg!” —-and unlike the nanny, I didn’t subsequently hang myself. Not literally, anyway. So, I lay in bed for most of the day staring at the TV, as if waiting for it to provide me with an explanation as to how I’d been chosen to survive this particular set of circumstances. Or, perhaps a show would come on that might somehow relate to my predicament. A new cable show called, “C’mon! Shake it off! What’s the big deal?!” But no such show came to my rescue. Instead, in exchange for Greg I was provided with an assortment of 5 brand new……..HOUSEGUESTS! Hooray!1 visitor dies and 5 others take his place! Needless to say, I wasn’t much of a hostess at this point. I gave more of what was left of my undivided attention to the television set than I did to the visiting friends that now crowded my house. After Greg’s body was removed, (ugh……) I had my bed frame discarded, considering it’s inability to keep Greg alive—– and then we moved the remaining mattress to a new, no death free location in my room. (having, no doubt, determined that the mattress was virtually innocent in causing Greg’s untimely death). So you might say that the entire tragic incident was just a question of luck. Perhaps the reason Greg had died was because of where the bed had been previously located and now that it had been moved from that place, no1 else would die. Of course, it might have been simpler had I just moved to another room—–ANY room—why not the LIVING ROOM?! I mean, especially considering the room was designed for LIVING, unlike my bed room, which it turned out, had been designed for death! Posted in News | 25 Comments » Who’s sorry now! By admin • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News I told people this might happen, but did anyone listen to me?! NO! Hippo eats Dwarf Posted in News | 40 Comments » A view from the bridge over troubled princess……… By Carrie • Jan 31st, 2009 • Category: News I did a radio show yesterday and the man that interviewed me asked me what question I’d been asked over the years that had most annoyed me. “That’s easy” I told him. “Did you know “Star Wars” would be that big of a hit?” The interviewer laughed, “When I told people here at work that I would be interviewing you,” he said, ” All the men wanted was for me to ask how it felt to wear the metal bikini.” Now I laughed, “The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn’t metal. ——Not that metal would’ve been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn’t adhere to1’s skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt’s gigantic, albiet grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom……….well, it had the10dency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett—–I believe his name was Jeremy—–from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask——to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida. Posted in News | 40 Comments » Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral By Carrie • Jan 30th, 2009 • Category: News I have to tell you something before we go any further with this blogging business. See, I’m a very persnickety human. I can’t just write something and push a button sending it out into the internetosphere for all to judge and laugh at. I have to endlessly fuck with my words so nobody can make fun of me. (more…) Posted in News | 38 Comments » Dead Man Blogging By Carrie • Jan 28th, 2009 • Category: News I’m not really the “thought for the day” type. I mean, “I couldn’t care less than the more that I do” probably wouldn’t help too many people. Or, “I can’t wait to not get what I want” isn’t really going to go along way with inspiring too many folks But my brother’s post was pretty cool, no? I told him that I’d post a response, but now I’ll have to do it tomorrow. (Sorry Todd!) Since I didn’t have a very eventful day, I thought I might reminisce—–you know, drudge shit up from the past when I led a more colorful life. Colorful and debilitating combined. For those of you who haven’t read my book, I had a good friend name Greg Stevens who had the bad manners to die in my house. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he died in my BED, with me beside him, sleeping til Bruce Cohen and his boyfriend, (now husband) woke me into a world it would take me a long, bummer amount of time to blunder through. But before Greg died he was alot of fun. (he might be alot of fun AFTER his death, but as to that I have no way of knowing) He was especially fun when you consider he was a Republican, but also aside from that. All on his own, politically conservative party aside, I loved spending time with Greg. Greg R Stevens That’s not to say that he was always EASY to be with. Greg was extremely fond of drugs—-an affection I could relate to. But Greg could actually make me look like an amateur in comparison—–that is, when we weren’t neck and neck in bad behavior. If you were to say that Greg and I were a bad influence on eachother…………well, you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Inches away, in fact. The truth would be breathing it’s hot scented breath down your well behaved neck. One of my favorite evenings we spent together was in New York. We’d been in upstate New York at my friend Griffin Dunne’s wedding, and afterwards we drove back to the city and checked into Greg’s suite at the4 Seasons Hotel in midtown. Greg had had quite a bit to drink at the wedding. Enough to cause him to continuously slide from the seat onto the floor of the town car he’d hired for the occasion. Greg spent most of his life in hotels. The fancier the better. He liked to live what some call, “The high life”……..(and the word, “high” could obviously be interpreted in a variety of ways) He loved spas, where he could get massages and facials and manicures and pedicures—-and he LOVED shopping—a pass time which——-along with the altered state—-we both enthusiastically shared. Greg had always told me that he came from a very wealthy family —- consequently making him very wealthy as well. He told me that he’d inherited a HUGE amount of money from a trust fund that his mother had set up for he and his2 brothers in the late6ties when they were quite young. And the money in this trust fund had originally come from a law suit his mother had won against some doctors that had gotten her husband addicted to speed. (if I’d known you could win law suits against people that get father’s addicted to speed, my siblings and I would be set for life, as my father had shot speed for 15 years courtesy of the original Dr. Feelgood aka Dr. Max Jacobsen). Anyway, for whatever idiotic reason I never questioned Greg’s story ——- I mean, it never occurred to me that someone might lie about a thing like that… My only experience with lying was someone (like myself) denying being stoned, or perhaps when someone assured someone else (say me maybe) that they didn’t look fat and that that assurance happened not to be so. One of the reasons that might explain why Greg had made up the story of his alleged wealth was that he thought that people would like him more if they thought he were rich. A sad explanation, but nonetheless possible. So, Greg told everyone that his mother had won this alleged law suit for something like2 million dollars. (not that there are very many things like2 million dollars—– other than2 million dollars) And she’d subsequently invested the money wisely, so that when Greg and his brothers came of age they would receive trust funds worth well over 50 million dollars apiece. BUT, Greg informed me, because of his drug use, his mother had decided NOT to give him his inheritance when he came of age (35, and he was now in his early 40’s)—– and that he would only receive it when and only when he sobered up. The gag was (according to Greg)—–that because he had NOT received his inheritance, it had increased10 fold because, unlike his brother’s, Greg’s money had remained invested, so on that fateful day when his mother would finally give his inheritance to him , he would be richer than either1 of his very, VERY rich brothers combined! Incredible tale, no? The only thing wrong with it was that it was entirely fabricated. A fact I didn’t find out until his wake, when his1 of his brothers told me. The idea that Greg had concocted this fantasy of immense and imminent wealth was hilarious to them. (As hilarious as it could be given that Greg had to die for all of us to get the joke) Anyway, back to Greg getting really drunk at Griffin’s wedding reception. So drunk that he ended up calling his dealer in the city from his cell phone en route from upstate New York. It turned out, probably not so amazingly enough, I’d met this woman before, once with Greg in another suite in another hotel the year before, and another time, some years Marianne Faithful back, in Ireland when she was supplying (among other clients) the now sober, then not ,Marianne Faithful. At the time this dealer had a fairly lucrative business in London—so lucrative that she was able to afford a very nice house in Chelsea. But in the ensuing years she’d moved her business back to Manhatten, and as luck would have it (dumb luck, of course), Greg wound up being1 of her clients. I forget her name, but I’ll never forget how she looked. In her mid6ties, she was quite a large person, weighing in at maybe 200–250 pounds. And if that wasn’t enough, she had a face that was a little like a basset hound. When she arrived with her delivery that night, I was in the bedroom searching for an in house movie to watch, when I hear the front door to the suite opening. I peered discretely around the corner to see who was coming down the hall and into the livingroom, which is when I recognize her from the United (drug) Kingdom. As I watched, she dragged herself, every ounce her, to a couch at the farside of the living room, huffing and puffing, with a woebegone expression on her droopy, familiar face….I listen as Greg enthusiastically greets her and I find myself thinking, well, given that I’d met her before, I should probably go say hello, right? I mean, after all, manners are manners, no? I don’t care HOW much dope is involved. So I enter the living room to pay the top dollar of my respects, and as I watch, she eases her entire self down with considerable effort and sighs a defeated sigh. “I’m so depressed” she says wearily. And now, as Greg and I gaze at this hefty, uber human self, we’re forced to say, “Why? How could someone like YOU be depressed??? You—–who have SO much to live for! A 60 something immensely overweight drug dealer with a face dripping with paste colored flesh——if happiness has eluded someone as deserving as you, what hope to the rest of us have???? And then, in response to our question as to the source of her unimaginable despondence, she replies, “I lost a client today……” “NO! You must be JOKING! Imagine losing a client in a business like yours!!!!! That is just …….well, BIZARRE!” Of course this is a sampling of something we’re thinking, as we avoid catching1 another eyes and dissolving into peals of laughter. What we SAY is, “I’m SO sorry. Are you OKAY?” I realize it might seem a little callous to some of you, the vision of Greg and myself laughing, (in part) at the misfortune of others and I apologize if I’ve offended someone whose lost a loved1 to drug addiction. Come to think of it, she probably said something very similar when Greg passed away due to a combination of sleep apnia and drug use. (Only in his case she probably was a bit annoyed on top of her distress, as Greg had a habit of not paying her.) But all I can say is, you had to be there to see her mournfully recount to us the details of the client she’d lost (a famous political writer in his late 70’s) In fact, it would have been really good if you’d been there, because if you’d been present, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be. (wouldn’t HAVE to be, but probably would be anyway. Posted in News | 14 Comments » « Older Entries 04/02/09 - 05/03/09 in Seattle, WA at The Rep View all dates © 2009 CarrieFisher | Powered by WordPress | Entries (RSS)
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topdocbear > kingman     BIOGRAPHY BOOKS BLOG Happy Valentines Doc By Carrie • Feb 15th, 2009 • Category: News I have a friend named Arnie Klein. Dr. Arnold Klein. Dr. Arnie Klein He’s an actual doctor, not1 of those people that call themselves doctors, like my father’s son in law. (or whatever you call your wife’s child that’s not yours) My father’s wife, Betty Lin, had a son who called himself, “Doctor Winky”. She would still have a son named doctor winky, but she passed away some years ago, so now Doctor Winky can belong to all of us. Doctor Winky is not, in fact, a physician, but a doctor of night club lights. You wouldn’t think that there was a call for a doctor of night club lights, and there probably isn’t. But if there WAS a need for someone to doctor strobe lights and the other ailing bulbs—–Doctor Winky would be their man. But Arnie isn’t a light doctor. He’s an actual doctor. And not JUST an actual doctor, Arnie is a dermatologist to the stars. He’s a pimple and wrinkle doctor, ideal for adolescence and old age and everything in between. Arnie is a great doctor. Great because he loves what he does. His job is medicine and his hobby is medicine. He spends his weekends reading medical journals. My pimples brought me to Arnie and my wrinkles and affection will keep me with him til the end. His and/or mine. Arnie and I are completely opposite in a similar way. He wants to feel like he could go into surgery in a moments notice. As the doctor. Whilst I want to feel as though I could go into surgery in a moments notice ——as the patient. Arnie likes me to write about him. He calls it feeding his narcissism. Not that this (being written about or paid attention to) is an uncommon pleasure. Especially in what is laughingly called Hollywood. I think most people like being written about. Nicely, of course. And now that Arnie has discovered that there is a new venue where I could pay him further tribute—-well, as you see—– So…….here I am writing about him………in front of God and everyone……in front of blog and everyone……Arnie………here is your tribute. Happy Valentines Day………. Posted in News | 5 Comments » Star light star bright, the rest I cant remember right. By Carrie • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: News My mother was born in El Paso, Texas. She was the second child of Ray and Maxene Reynolds, who had my mother’s brother, Bill at 16 and then proceeded to have my mother, Mary Frances, the following year. One of the reasons my grandmother wanted to marry at such a young age, was she anxious to have her own room. Raised in an extremely large family, she was anxious to get away and secure for herself some privacy. Odd logic—–marrying for privacy—-but then, my family has never been known for it’s conventional10dencies. My grandmother’s mother, Maxie Harmon, began having children in her late teens & continuing to procreate until she had her last child at 49, which the doctor informed her was a tumor—–and when that growth was born, they called him, of course, Tumor—–making him my mother’s “Uncle Tumor, who was and remains younger than his niece. Maxene grew up sharing everything with her multiple siblings, from beds to food to clothes—–, she never wore anything but her sister’s hand me downs—– so the prospect of her own closet and living in her own house was extremely alluring. She once told me that her family was so poor that they, “didn’t have6 matching glasses.”Then she added brusquely, “And don’t you put that in1 of your books!” (She didn’t say anything about blogs, so I share it without threat of adding more weight to my already tubby conscience. It would also be difficult for her to object much at this point, as my grandmother had the bad manners to pass away some time ago.) So, hoping to secure some privacy and perhaps even a dress of her own,when my 15 year old grandmother caught the eye of my handsome grandfather, Raymond Francis Reynolds, a local boy who played baseball rather well and worked on the railroad, she did nothing to discourage him. Ray was much more handsome than tall, and Maxene was more large busted than beautiful——but they began to pool their liabilities and their assets, and soon enough they found themselves courting and then, out of the something borrowed, something blue, they were wed. Unfortunately, my great grandmother (not so great in this case) had neglected to inform her daughter, Maxene, about just what would be expected of her on her wedding night——so that when my grandfather began to ………..well, as you might imagine, my grandma was, in addition to being unwilling was also quite understandably paralyzed with disbelief. Surely my grandfather was making this up——how could anyone be expected to do anything as bizarre as this! It took my grandfather3 days and lots of sketching, (what I wouldn’t give to see those!) for her to finally relent and more than likely unenthusiastically, let him have his now legal way with her. ——————————————————— My mother wasn’t a mother that cooked and cleaned and helped me with my homework, but not knowing these things existed I didn’t miss them. Debbie Carrie & Todd She was both parents to Todd and I. The main reason my father has any children at all is largely because they’re a by product of sex, which he’s devoted a huge portion of his life to. Certainly not out of any urge to procreate. We rarely saw our him—-maybe once a year—–yet my mother never spoke ill of him. At Christmas she would buy gifts and sign his name on the card. Of course, my brother and I weren’t really fooled, as she made little effort to disguise her handwriting———But the fact that she did it at all was dear. Though she had an extremely demanding career, Todd and I always had the sense that we came first to her. Both then and now. One of my favorite things that my mother does is give advice. Most mothers give advice, but she does it in a very unique way. “You know dear, I had a dream that you left your lawyers and went with mine. I know you don’t believe my dreams mean anything—–even the1 that predicted I would buy the house next door.” She mainly dreams about things she wants me to do. The MGM lionshare of her dreams are about my agents, flaws in contracts, and A LOT of dreams about business managers. Aren’t dreams meant to be symbolic? Didn’t Jung say that? And what about Freud’s theory that most dreams are sexual? And wasn’t there also a theory that you are everyone in your dreams? My mom would probably like that last notion, as it would make her my agent, my lawyer and my business manager. My mother is as far from ordinary as you can get without a rocket or special dispensation from the government. She wears turbans and sequined dresses (though rarely together),black pants and a black top with a colorful button down shirt open at the front, like a jacket. She applies her make up like a fastidious artist. Seated in front of a large mirror surrounded by lights and a white towel spread on the table beneath the mirror is another, smaller mirror for the detail work, like eyeliner and eyelash application. The walls of her home are adorned with autographed photographs of celebrities she has both known and worked with and those whom she admired. Even though she’s a celebrity herself, there’s a part of my mother that’s like a fan. No…wait…….not ‘like’,……..she IS a fan. A fan of classic films, and even some contemporary (she loved Slum Dog Millionaire) It’s almost as though she’s not part of the Hollywood community—-on the inside looking out. There’s an enormous part of her that is on the outside looking in. That is, unless she’s onstage looking out. She reads fan magazines, biographies of celebrities and watches AMC. She has always been and is still delighted by an inspired performance. For years my mother had a drama coach named Lillian Sydney. Lillian was the vocal coach at MGM, and in a short time became my mother’s mentor. Lillian had what I always called a Hollywood accent. Like the vocal coach in, “Singing in the Rain”, saying to Jean Hagen, “No, dear, ROUND tones! “And I CAAAHHNT stand him!” Where you sound like an aristocrat, someone overflowing with class—— even yawning and sneezing with elegance. And this appealed enormously to my mother who, coming from the south, wanted to sound like movie stars did. She started at the studio at 16, and I’m sure they wanted her to get rid of her accent. They changed her name from Mary Frances to Debbie (which she wouldn’t answer to for 2 years) they told her that her ears stuck out and had them surgically pinned back, they shaved her eyebrows, which then never grew back. They could reinvent her superficially, but the part of her that was raised in a2 room house in El Paso, the thoughtful, hard working, devoted, loyal, darling human that she is they couldn’t —–thank God—–alter. We’ve all heard the expression, “Star Quality”———-that ineffable something that makes certain people focus pullers. It’s my theory that they shine. Something glows out of their eyes, —–as though they’ve swallowed some of the spot light that follows them around onstage——- ——— and people get caught in their magnetic field and are drawn to them. It might even be possible that1 of the reasons that celebrities are called stars—— is because of this shine. And maybe if you hang around these beaming people, some of it will rub off on you. Whatever this thing is that glows out of them that makes them preferred above most others, if you touch them, talk to them, walk with them, live with them—-maybe you can get anointed by this wattage. Debbie Reynolds Anyway, my mother had this thing, this sublime light, and its been spilling out of her ever since she was6teen, shine that poured out of her and all over everyone. People followed her in the street, flocked to her shows—–wanted a piece of her because she reminded them of the best version of themselves. And to get that piece they applaud her, write her, love her in all the ways they know how, and my mother appreciates it. Especially when she performs. She gives everything she’s got and in return the audience celebrates her and this makes her feel a little like she’s going to live forever. And she is. She’s going to take some of that shine of hers with her and leave the rest of it to glow out of the eyes of the people that love her. Sorry it’s taken me this long to post anything. Between ECT and ice skating with my daughter, I’ve neglected carrying you all out on a wave of tales. Bear with me if you can……….or even if you can’t……. oxxoxooxcff Tags: Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, ECT, family story, Texas Posted in News | 26 Comments » What Was I Thinking? By Carrie • Feb 7th, 2009 • Category: News What Was I Thinking? About a year ago my friend Paul Slansky asked me to contribute to a book his wife, Liz Dubelman, was doing about that terrible moment when you realize that the relationship you’re in isn’t going to work. Well, I just happened to have a few of those to choose from, so I wrote1 up and now that book – What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories – has just been published, with my humble effort right up front. Here’s the beginning of “A Bullwhip?” I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality. And so when I meet someone, that’s where we hang out. It goes on for miles, the great outdoors, we romp around in my personality. And in my big sprawling personality, where this new someone is now, I love him. I love everything he does. I love being with him, I love sex with him, I’m charmed by him. And what is love if not a state of enchantment? You meet someone and it puts a charm on the world. Everything looks better when you love someone and you know you’re going to see him later. Everything between now and that later is so much fun to do, because you’re going to get who and what you want at the end of the day, so anything’s possible when that’s up ahead. Now when the person that this happens with is someone like Paul Simon, then we’re not just hanging out in my big personality. He has1, too, and they overlap in a lot of places. And that’s when it’s really kind of golden, when you can find someone who speaks your bizarre, bizarre dialect of a language of the smallest country in the world that hardly anyone ever visits, but they never forget having been there. Paul and I did share that, so when we got enchanted, the enchantment lasted a long time. But the problem is that, even at its best, enchantment just can’t sustain. When I date someone, I generally have about3 months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much. Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.” And once that starts, it’s like a case of measles, where you get just1 itch1 day, and then that itch spreads and spreads and spreads. And what feeds it is that he sees it happening. My face is like a Richter scale of every quake inside and outside of me, so it all shows up somehow. And if I turn the full beam on him of how much I like him and who he thinks he is, with everything that I am, if I shed that much light on him, and then that light starts diminishing, diminishing, diminishing, he notices. And I can’t stop it, and the more I try to stop it the more it looks like I’m trying to stop it, and that light gets fainter and fainter and fainter until everyone’s in a dark room. I remember it specifically happening when I was going out with this guy Jesse. He was actually smart, and the enchantment was unbelievably great. I remember once we were making out at Disneyland – I was that into him that I was just publicly making out. One night we were at my house and I was watching television, and Jesse was rubbing my back. And apparently I wasn’t turning the full beam on him, because it went from0 to a thousand in a nanosecond. He said, and not nicely, “What does somebody have to do to get your attention? Wrap a bullwhip around your neck?” Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book: http://tr.im/e9pe What Was I Thinking? Posted in News | 19 Comments » Life is a bowl of cherry bombs. By Carrie • Feb 5th, 2009 • Category: News But now we’ve finally come to the point of my entire, almost endless, over dramatic tale of woe. Remember the other day/week/month/year when I said I would write something in response to my brother’s thoughtful comment on my blog? Well, I”ve finally come to the part of the story where I thought I’d tell you about my calm, caring, insanely sane brother Todd…….. My brother and I were raised with the epic, mesmerizing (to us) story of how we came to be. According to my mother, I was the love child—–conceived when my parents were still riding the warm wave of romantic love. And he was the child she managed to extract from my disinterested father’s penis so that I could have company. Because all too soon their love wave crashed, and so, despite the fact that their marriage was basically in on the rocks, my mother chased my father around, hoping he would impregnate to insure that I wouldn’t end up being an only child. And so, determined that I should have a life long companion and though my father was virtually ignoring her, with his attention Taylor made to elsewhere, she somehow managed to wrangle her round wriggly way into getting inseminated with my beloved bro. Debbie w/ Carrie & Todd A companion to share our Mysterious to anyone but us History with. The Abbott to my Costello, the Fred to my Ginger, the Luke to my Leia. She made me a fellow conspirator: the rock to my roll, a co to his ed, a mate for my soul. Someone I could go on the teeter totter with, so I could go up and down and not just stay down. A partner to play chess with, if we’d ever taken the time out from where we kept it to learn……. or even a partner to dance the polka with, if we were ever absurdly inclined. Someone to blame everything on, outside of whoever else was around. My brother was all this —-and IS all this—– and more to me. Thanks to my mother’s determination to fashion a sibling for me out of my father’s increasingly thin air, this love child was able to experience brotherly love… Not a fantastic story for Todd to be brought up hearing, I’ll grant you, but hear it he did. And, like everything else, it didn’t seem to bother him. By the time Todd was born, my father was consoling Elizabeth Taylor’s heartbreak over the loss of her husband and father of her child, and namesake of my brother, Mike Todd. Eddie consoled Elizabeth the1 way her knew how—- with his trusty, grief eliminating child inseminating penis. Eddie Fisher & Elizabeth Taylor And of course, as everyone knows, grief can’t be eliminated with just a few thrusts. In order to do a really thorough job, the person with the healing penis has to continue the treatment for quite awhile. In my father’s case, he treated Elizabeth’s dispair for about4 years. (just to make COMPLETELY sure she was no longer burdened by those pesky feelings of loss) And then, when she was finally sadness free and free for anything fancy, she left my father in favor of the fancy top dollar attention paid for her new, improved mate, Richard Burton. But, back to my brother…… Unlike myself, who had enjoyed my father’s company for a year and a half, Todd never spent any time with our father. But this actually turned out to be a GOOD thing, because you can’t miss something you’ve never had. Unfortunately, in my case, I’d lived with my dad just long enough to, not only wonder where he’d gone to, but blame myself for not being lovable enough to get him to stay. (Oh poor sad Carrie! Get out your handkerchief for these nosebleed high class problems, where you sob with a British accent…..) Todd Fisher But whether it was because of the different ways my dad’s absence affected us, or because of what I refer to as, “It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it”, Todd grew up to be a calm, imperturbable, life is just a bowl of cherries guy (he actually said that to me once) and I……well, I just wasn’t like that—to say the least in the most way. As he grew up, my brother became a kind of attendant to the insane. Unflustered, he was the eye of the family tornado—-my mother and I cast as the tornado….And there he would remain unflustered & serene—nothing seemed to phase him. And believe me, there was a lot of phase inducing circumstances available to challenge even the most stalwart citizen…….but not Todd. Todd was more like my grandfather. Ray Reynolds, off somewhere fixing a TV set, or building a tree house—-My mother’s father was a carpenter and Todd absorbed his distracted, peaceful temperament, while I wandered thru the landscape, absorbing anything and everything that could be taken personally—–cars, wallpaper, absent parents, my reflection…..name it and it was my fault. Todd? No big fuckin deal. Why bother? I wanted to feel like he seemed, you know? I know you know people like this. You can’t fool me. (Well, maybe you can, just not in this area). So when Greg died, Todd made a reservation at a spa in England. A place near Sandhurst, the military training center of the United Kingdom. James Blunt went there! It had to be good! (the military school, not necessarily the spa) Actually, it takes quite a bit to ruin a spa. It’s possible, I suppose, but, in my experience, rare. Expensive and rare. But this being something of an emotional emergency, if there was ever a time to cough up the funds it was now. So we settled into our peaceful nook, nestled there in the English countryside. So there I was, nestled in another bed, watching another assortment of programs designed to distract you from whatever unpleasant experience you’d found yourself slogging through. Only this time my brother was in charge of my television programming. And what he had selected for my viewing pleasure was war movies. Whether it was old movie classics, or documentaries, this was what I feasted my famished eyes on for the duration of our stay there. (which was probably not more than a week) As big of an old movie aficionado as I was, this was an area that I had neglected. You know—-being a girl and all—-what use did I have for, “Seven Minutes over Tokyo” or “Fail Safe”? But as it turns out, these films were extremely healing for me. It may sound funny to you, but it’s true. Especially the documentaries. “Band of Brothers” Band of Brothers was my favorite. It was hours and hours of watching people go thru experiences that made my crisis look like a pimple on the ass of difficulty. (isn’t that a lovely expression? You can use it whenever you like) Not only the multiple hour show itself, but the “Making of Band of Brothers” was amazingly inspirational to me. I mean, it’s absurd for me really to compare me waking up with my dead friend to these heroic soldiers facing death all day every day, losing comrades, losing LIMBS! I mean, MY GOD! There was1 survivor of World War2 who had seen his friend get his arm blown off and, as they were taking him away on the stretcher, this soldier stopped the medics, pointed down to his arm on the ground and asking them if they would mind getting him his watch!!!!! Wow. Just incredible. And watching these films day after healing day, I thought—–well, if these men can live through THAT! And not just live in some cases, but THRIVE! If they can do that, what’s my sad experience but……..something to get to the other side of, like these men had done. Isn’t there a saying, “What man has done, man can do?” Well, I’m assuming that applies to women too, so……I set about doing what others had done before me and, in their cases, with NOBILITY. All this to say, this was my brother’s gift to me. It’s his instinct to leave someone better off than when he came across them. Whatever strength I have is bourne out of weakness. Heartbreak is my teacher. My brother’s strength comes from trust that things will be alright in the end. He sees the good in things. I find the good by traipsing thru the bad slooowly……..so I don’t miss a bruise……. Posted in News | 42 Comments » Laughing waters… eyes jeweled with tears By Carrie • Feb 4th, 2009 • Category: News Okay, if you never watch another thing again, watch this. It will make your life work. My daughter sent it to me (it flowed out of her like laughing waters….) and everything is going to be okay now.Obviously, anyone that sends this to you cares about you very much. So my daughter, Billie, cares about me—–and by extension, you—-and obviously it would follow then follow that I care deeply for you as well. See? And then everything else can just build from there! You’re officially out of harms way and in the joyous pink! So go forth and fire fly! oxxoxoxo cff Posted in News | 28 Comments » Death and houseguests………. By Carrie • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News After Greg died I stopped talking. It was as if my personality followed him down the dark passage of death and left someone who looked a lot like me, except that now my features where organized into an expression of abject fear. I had been scared—-not TO death, but BY death…you might say that Greg’s death had scared the fucking life out of me. The thing about someone dying, though, is that life goes on. While your loved1 is busy relaxing in their cozy coffins, you still have appointments, a job, friends, children —-a whole parcel of living things pulling on you to get on with it. I mean, life can be just as demanding as death in, it’s own way…….Of course, as far as I know, the demands of those us as yet unceasing are probably more of the high class variety than the demands of the deceased. Now, I’ve never really been the type of person who gets over things easily. —-I mean, I had a hard getting over the fact that I didn’t have blue eyes or finding out that I hadn’t been invited to some big party someone was throwing somewhere……., so being confronted by something as formidable as dying—well, it wouldn’t be too difficult to predict that I wouldn’t be the person putting the “fun” in funeral. Not that anyone finds it particularly easy burying someone who wouldn’t normally be considered the burying age. I mean, Greg was way far from being past his prime. His wild lifestyle probably placed him neck and neck with his prime, but for anyone to die in their forties in this day and age is a hearty mix of premature and tragic. So after Greg died I just couldn’t seem to be able to shake it off. Partly because I had loved Greg—–we had always had a lot of fun together. Much of it was the truant type of fun, but that didn’t make it any less amusing for us. Just for the folks around us who had to deal with our antics. But the other reason because I blamed myself, you see. I mean, it had happened on my watch. If only I’d woken in the middle of the night, I might have been able to save him. If only I hadn’t been so busy sleeping, I might’ve been able to wake him up the next morning….. The fact that Greg lived life like there was no tomorrow didn’t enter into it.(of course, eventually there really IS no tomorrow—–which occurs right when you run out of your stash of yesterdays and todays) I mean, it was as if Greg’s dying had more to do with me than it did with him. Which is a pretty fancy twist of perspective, when you think about it. “It’s all for you, Damien!” the nanny cries out in the movie, “The Omen”—-only in this case it was me shouting, “It’s all for you, Greg!” —-and unlike the nanny, I didn’t subsequently hang myself. Not literally, anyway. So, I lay in bed for most of the day staring at the TV, as if waiting for it to provide me with an explanation as to how I’d been chosen to survive this particular set of circumstances. Or, perhaps a show would come on that might somehow relate to my predicament. A new cable show called, “C’mon! Shake it off! What’s the big deal?!” But no such show came to my rescue. Instead, in exchange for Greg I was provided with an assortment of 5 brand new……..HOUSEGUESTS! Hooray!1 visitor dies and 5 others take his place! Needless to say, I wasn’t much of a hostess at this point. I gave more of what was left of my undivided attention to the television set than I did to the visiting friends that now crowded my house. After Greg’s body was removed, (ugh……) I had my bed frame discarded, considering it’s inability to keep Greg alive—– and then we moved the remaining mattress to a new, no death free location in my room. (having, no doubt, determined that the mattress was virtually innocent in causing Greg’s untimely death). So you might say that the entire tragic incident was just a question of luck. Perhaps the reason Greg had died was because of where the bed had been previously located and now that it had been moved from that place, no1 else would die. Of course, it might have been simpler had I just moved to another room—–ANY room—why not the LIVING ROOM?! I mean, especially considering the room was designed for LIVING, unlike my bed room, which it turned out, had been designed for death! Posted in News | 25 Comments » Who’s sorry now! By admin • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News I told people this might happen, but did anyone listen to me?! NO! Hippo eats Dwarf Posted in News | 40 Comments » A view from the bridge over troubled princess……… By Carrie • Jan 31st, 2009 • Category: News I did a radio show yesterday and the man that interviewed me asked me what question I’d been asked over the years that had most annoyed me. “That’s easy” I told him. “Did you know “Star Wars” would be that big of a hit?” The interviewer laughed, “When I told people here at work that I would be interviewing you,” he said, ” All the men wanted was for me to ask how it felt to wear the metal bikini.” Now I laughed, “The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn’t metal. ——Not that metal would’ve been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn’t adhere to1’s skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt’s gigantic, albiet grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom……….well, it had the10dency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett—–I believe his name was Jeremy—–from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask——to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida. Posted in News | 40 Comments » Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral By Carrie • Jan 30th, 2009 • Category: News I have to tell you something before we go any further with this blogging business. See, I’m a very persnickety human. I can’t just write something and push a button sending it out into the internetosphere for all to judge and laugh at. I have to endlessly fuck with my words so nobody can make fun of me. (more…) Posted in News | 38 Comments » Dead Man Blogging By Carrie • Jan 28th, 2009 • Category: News I’m not really the “thought for the day” type. I mean, “I couldn’t care less than the more that I do” probably wouldn’t help too many people. Or, “I can’t wait to not get what I want” isn’t really going to go along way with inspiring too many folks But my brother’s post was pretty cool, no? I told him that I’d post a response, but now I’ll have to do it tomorrow. (Sorry Todd!) Since I didn’t have a very eventful day, I thought I might reminisce—–you know, drudge shit up from the past when I led a more colorful life. Colorful and debilitating combined. For those of you who haven’t read my book, I had a good friend name Greg Stevens who had the bad manners to die in my house. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he died in my BED, with me beside him, sleeping til Bruce Cohen and his boyfriend, (now husband) woke me into a world it would take me a long, bummer amount of time to blunder through. But before Greg died he was alot of fun. (he might be alot of fun AFTER his death, but as to that I have no way of knowing) He was especially fun when you consider he was a Republican, but also aside from that. All on his own, politically conservative party aside, I loved spending time with Greg. Greg R Stevens That’s not to say that he was always EASY to be with. Greg was extremely fond of drugs—-an affection I could relate to. But Greg could actually make me look like an amateur in comparison—–that is, when we weren’t neck and neck in bad behavior. If you were to say that Greg and I were a bad influence on eachother…………well, you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Inches away, in fact. The truth would be breathing it’s hot scented breath down your well behaved neck. One of my favorite evenings we spent together was in New York. We’d been in upstate New York at my friend Griffin Dunne’s wedding, and afterwards we drove back to the city and checked into Greg’s suite at the4 Seasons Hotel in midtown. Greg had had quite a bit to drink at the wedding. Enough to cause him to continuously slide from the seat onto the floor of the town car he’d hired for the occasion. Greg spent most of his life in hotels. The fancier the better. He liked to live what some call, “The high life”……..(and the word, “high” could obviously be interpreted in a variety of ways) He loved spas, where he could get massages and facials and manicures and pedicures—-and he LOVED shopping—a pass time which——-along with the altered state—-we both enthusiastically shared. Greg had always told me that he came from a very wealthy family —- consequently making him very wealthy as well. He told me that he’d inherited a HUGE amount of money from a trust fund that his mother had set up for he and his2 brothers in the late6ties when they were quite young. And the money in this trust fund had originally come from a law suit his mother had won against some doctors that had gotten her husband addicted to speed. (if I’d known you could win law suits against people that get father’s addicted to speed, my siblings and I would be set for life, as my father had shot speed for 15 years courtesy of the original Dr. Feelgood aka Dr. Max Jacobsen). Anyway, for whatever idiotic reason I never questioned Greg’s story ——- I mean, it never occurred to me that someone might lie about a thing like that… My only experience with lying was someone (like myself) denying being stoned, or perhaps when someone assured someone else (say me maybe) that they didn’t look fat and that that assurance happened not to be so. One of the reasons that might explain why Greg had made up the story of his alleged wealth was that he thought that people would like him more if they thought he were rich. A sad explanation, but nonetheless possible. So, Greg told everyone that his mother had won this alleged law suit for something like2 million dollars. (not that there are very many things like2 million dollars—– other than2 million dollars) And she’d subsequently invested the money wisely, so that when Greg and his brothers came of age they would receive trust funds worth well over 50 million dollars apiece. BUT, Greg informed me, because of his drug use, his mother had decided NOT to give him his inheritance when he came of age (35, and he was now in his early 40’s)—– and that he would only receive it when and only when he sobered up. The gag was (according to Greg)—–that because he had NOT received his inheritance, it had increased10 fold because, unlike his brother’s, Greg’s money had remained invested, so on that fateful day when his mother would finally give his inheritance to him , he would be richer than either1 of his very, VERY rich brothers combined! Incredible tale, no? The only thing wrong with it was that it was entirely fabricated. A fact I didn’t find out until his wake, when his1 of his brothers told me. The idea that Greg had concocted this fantasy of immense and imminent wealth was hilarious to them. (As hilarious as it could be given that Greg had to die for all of us to get the joke) Anyway, back to Greg getting really drunk at Griffin’s wedding reception. So drunk that he ended up calling his dealer in the city from his cell phone en route from upstate New York. It turned out, probably not so amazingly enough, I’d met this woman before, once with Greg in another suite in another hotel the year before, and another time, some years Marianne Faithful back, in Ireland when she was supplying (among other clients) the now sober, then not ,Marianne Faithful. At the time this dealer had a fairly lucrative business in London—so lucrative that she was able to afford a very nice house in Chelsea. But in the ensuing years she’d moved her business back to Manhatten, and as luck would have it (dumb luck, of course), Greg wound up being1 of her clients. I forget her name, but I’ll never forget how she looked. In her mid6ties, she was quite a large person, weighing in at maybe 200–250 pounds. And if that wasn’t enough, she had a face that was a little like a basset hound. When she arrived with her delivery that night, I was in the bedroom searching for an in house movie to watch, when I hear the front door to the suite opening. I peered discretely around the corner to see who was coming down the hall and into the livingroom, which is when I recognize her from the United (drug) Kingdom. As I watched, she dragged herself, every ounce her, to a couch at the farside of the living room, huffing and puffing, with a woebegone expression on her droopy, familiar face….I listen as Greg enthusiastically greets her and I find myself thinking, well, given that I’d met her before, I should probably go say hello, right? I mean, after all, manners are manners, no? I don’t care HOW much dope is involved. So I enter the living room to pay the top dollar of my respects, and as I watch, she eases her entire self down with considerable effort and sighs a defeated sigh. “I’m so depressed” she says wearily. And now, as Greg and I gaze at this hefty, uber human self, we’re forced to say, “Why? How could someone like YOU be depressed??? You—–who have SO much to live for! A 60 something immensely overweight drug dealer with a face dripping with paste colored flesh——if happiness has eluded someone as deserving as you, what hope to the rest of us have???? And then, in response to our question as to the source of her unimaginable despondence, she replies, “I lost a client today……” “NO! You must be JOKING! Imagine losing a client in a business like yours!!!!! That is just …….well, BIZARRE!” Of course this is a sampling of something we’re thinking, as we avoid catching1 another eyes and dissolving into peals of laughter. What we SAY is, “I’m SO sorry. Are you OKAY?” I realize it might seem a little callous to some of you, the vision of Greg and myself laughing, (in part) at the misfortune of others and I apologize if I’ve offended someone whose lost a loved1 to drug addiction. Come to think of it, she probably said something very similar when Greg passed away due to a combination of sleep apnia and drug use. (Only in his case she probably was a bit annoyed on top of her distress, as Greg had a habit of not paying her.) But all I can say is, you had to be there to see her mournfully recount to us the details of the client she’d lost (a famous political writer in his late 70’s) In fact, it would have been really good if you’d been there, because if you’d been present, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be. (wouldn’t HAVE to be, but probably would be anyway. Posted in News | 14 Comments » « Older Entries 04/02/09 - 05/03/09 in Seattle, WA at The Rep View all dates © 2009 CarrieFisher | Powered by WordPress | Entries (RSS)
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topdocbear > kingman     BIOGRAPHY BOOKS BLOG Happy Valentines Doc By Carrie • Feb 15th, 2009 • Category: News I have a friend named Arnie Klein. Dr. Arnold Klein. Dr. Arnie Klein He’s an actual doctor, not1 of those people that call themselves doctors, like my father’s son in law. (or whatever you call your wife’s child that’s not yours) My father’s wife, Betty Lin, had a son who called himself, “Doctor Winky”. She would still have a son named doctor winky, but she passed away some years ago, so now Doctor Winky can belong to all of us. Doctor Winky is not, in fact, a physician, but a doctor of night club lights. You wouldn’t think that there was a call for a doctor of night club lights, and there probably isn’t. But if there WAS a need for someone to doctor strobe lights and the other ailing bulbs—–Doctor Winky would be their man. But Arnie isn’t a light doctor. He’s an actual doctor. And not JUST an actual doctor, Arnie is a dermatologist to the stars. He’s a pimple and wrinkle doctor, ideal for adolescence and old age and everything in between. Arnie is a great doctor. Great because he loves what he does. His job is medicine and his hobby is medicine. He spends his weekends reading medical journals. My pimples brought me to Arnie and my wrinkles and affection will keep me with him til the end. His and/or mine. Arnie and I are completely opposite in a similar way. He wants to feel like he could go into surgery in a moments notice. As the doctor. Whilst I want to feel as though I could go into surgery in a moments notice ——as the patient. Arnie likes me to write about him. He calls it feeding his narcissism. Not that this (being written about or paid attention to) is an uncommon pleasure. Especially in what is laughingly called Hollywood. I think most people like being written about. Nicely, of course. And now that Arnie has discovered that there is a new venue where I could pay him further tribute—-well, as you see—– So…….here I am writing about him………in front of God and everyone……in front of blog and everyone……Arnie………here is your tribute. Happy Valentines Day………. Posted in News | 5 Comments » Star light star bright, the rest I cant remember right. By Carrie • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: News My mother was born in El Paso, Texas. She was the second child of Ray and Maxene Reynolds, who had my mother’s brother, Bill at 16 and then proceeded to have my mother, Mary Frances, the following year. One of the reasons my grandmother wanted to marry at such a young age, was she anxious to have her own room. Raised in an extremely large family, she was anxious to get away and secure for herself some privacy. Odd logic—–marrying for privacy—-but then, my family has never been known for it’s conventional10dencies. My grandmother’s mother, Maxie Harmon, began having children in her late teens & continuing to procreate until she had her last child at 49, which the doctor informed her was a tumor—–and when that growth was born, they called him, of course, Tumor—–making him my mother’s “Uncle Tumor, who was and remains younger than his niece. Maxene grew up sharing everything with her multiple siblings, from beds to food to clothes—–, she never wore anything but her sister’s hand me downs—– so the prospect of her own closet and living in her own house was extremely alluring. She once told me that her family was so poor that they, “didn’t have6 matching glasses.”Then she added brusquely, “And don’t you put that in1 of your books!” (She didn’t say anything about blogs, so I share it without threat of adding more weight to my already tubby conscience. It would also be difficult for her to object much at this point, as my grandmother had the bad manners to pass away some time ago.) So, hoping to secure some privacy and perhaps even a dress of her own,when my 15 year old grandmother caught the eye of my handsome grandfather, Raymond Francis Reynolds, a local boy who played baseball rather well and worked on the railroad, she did nothing to discourage him. Ray was much more handsome than tall, and Maxene was more large busted than beautiful——but they began to pool their liabilities and their assets, and soon enough they found themselves courting and then, out of the something borrowed, something blue, they were wed. Unfortunately, my great grandmother (not so great in this case) had neglected to inform her daughter, Maxene, about just what would be expected of her on her wedding night——so that when my grandfather began to ………..well, as you might imagine, my grandma was, in addition to being unwilling was also quite understandably paralyzed with disbelief. Surely my grandfather was making this up——how could anyone be expected to do anything as bizarre as this! It took my grandfather3 days and lots of sketching, (what I wouldn’t give to see those!) for her to finally relent and more than likely unenthusiastically, let him have his now legal way with her. ——————————————————— My mother wasn’t a mother that cooked and cleaned and helped me with my homework, but not knowing these things existed I didn’t miss them. Debbie Carrie & Todd She was both parents to Todd and I. The main reason my father has any children at all is largely because they’re a by product of sex, which he’s devoted a huge portion of his life to. Certainly not out of any urge to procreate. We rarely saw our him—-maybe once a year—–yet my mother never spoke ill of him. At Christmas she would buy gifts and sign his name on the card. Of course, my brother and I weren’t really fooled, as she made little effort to disguise her handwriting———But the fact that she did it at all was dear. Though she had an extremely demanding career, Todd and I always had the sense that we came first to her. Both then and now. One of my favorite things that my mother does is give advice. Most mothers give advice, but she does it in a very unique way. “You know dear, I had a dream that you left your lawyers and went with mine. I know you don’t believe my dreams mean anything—–even the1 that predicted I would buy the house next door.” She mainly dreams about things she wants me to do. The MGM lionshare of her dreams are about my agents, flaws in contracts, and A LOT of dreams about business managers. Aren’t dreams meant to be symbolic? Didn’t Jung say that? And what about Freud’s theory that most dreams are sexual? And wasn’t there also a theory that you are everyone in your dreams? My mom would probably like that last notion, as it would make her my agent, my lawyer and my business manager. My mother is as far from ordinary as you can get without a rocket or special dispensation from the government. She wears turbans and sequined dresses (though rarely together),black pants and a black top with a colorful button down shirt open at the front, like a jacket. She applies her make up like a fastidious artist. Seated in front of a large mirror surrounded by lights and a white towel spread on the table beneath the mirror is another, smaller mirror for the detail work, like eyeliner and eyelash application. The walls of her home are adorned with autographed photographs of celebrities she has both known and worked with and those whom she admired. Even though she’s a celebrity herself, there’s a part of my mother that’s like a fan. No…wait…….not ‘like’,……..she IS a fan. A fan of classic films, and even some contemporary (she loved Slum Dog Millionaire) It’s almost as though she’s not part of the Hollywood community—-on the inside looking out. There’s an enormous part of her that is on the outside looking in. That is, unless she’s onstage looking out. She reads fan magazines, biographies of celebrities and watches AMC. She has always been and is still delighted by an inspired performance. For years my mother had a drama coach named Lillian Sydney. Lillian was the vocal coach at MGM, and in a short time became my mother’s mentor. Lillian had what I always called a Hollywood accent. Like the vocal coach in, “Singing in the Rain”, saying to Jean Hagen, “No, dear, ROUND tones! “And I CAAAHHNT stand him!” Where you sound like an aristocrat, someone overflowing with class—— even yawning and sneezing with elegance. And this appealed enormously to my mother who, coming from the south, wanted to sound like movie stars did. She started at the studio at 16, and I’m sure they wanted her to get rid of her accent. They changed her name from Mary Frances to Debbie (which she wouldn’t answer to for 2 years) they told her that her ears stuck out and had them surgically pinned back, they shaved her eyebrows, which then never grew back. They could reinvent her superficially, but the part of her that was raised in a2 room house in El Paso, the thoughtful, hard working, devoted, loyal, darling human that she is they couldn’t —–thank God—–alter. We’ve all heard the expression, “Star Quality”———-that ineffable something that makes certain people focus pullers. It’s my theory that they shine. Something glows out of their eyes, —–as though they’ve swallowed some of the spot light that follows them around onstage——- ——— and people get caught in their magnetic field and are drawn to them. It might even be possible that1 of the reasons that celebrities are called stars—— is because of this shine. And maybe if you hang around these beaming people, some of it will rub off on you. Whatever this thing is that glows out of them that makes them preferred above most others, if you touch them, talk to them, walk with them, live with them—-maybe you can get anointed by this wattage. Debbie Reynolds Anyway, my mother had this thing, this sublime light, and its been spilling out of her ever since she was6teen, shine that poured out of her and all over everyone. People followed her in the street, flocked to her shows—–wanted a piece of her because she reminded them of the best version of themselves. And to get that piece they applaud her, write her, love her in all the ways they know how, and my mother appreciates it. Especially when she performs. She gives everything she’s got and in return the audience celebrates her and this makes her feel a little like she’s going to live forever. And she is. She’s going to take some of that shine of hers with her and leave the rest of it to glow out of the eyes of the people that love her. Sorry it’s taken me this long to post anything. Between ECT and ice skating with my daughter, I’ve neglected carrying you all out on a wave of tales. Bear with me if you can……….or even if you can’t……. oxxoxooxcff Tags: Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, ECT, family story, Texas Posted in News | 26 Comments » What Was I Thinking? By Carrie • Feb 7th, 2009 • Category: News What Was I Thinking? About a year ago my friend Paul Slansky asked me to contribute to a book his wife, Liz Dubelman, was doing about that terrible moment when you realize that the relationship you’re in isn’t going to work. Well, I just happened to have a few of those to choose from, so I wrote1 up and now that book – What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories – has just been published, with my humble effort right up front. Here’s the beginning of “A Bullwhip?” I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality. And so when I meet someone, that’s where we hang out. It goes on for miles, the great outdoors, we romp around in my personality. And in my big sprawling personality, where this new someone is now, I love him. I love everything he does. I love being with him, I love sex with him, I’m charmed by him. And what is love if not a state of enchantment? You meet someone and it puts a charm on the world. Everything looks better when you love someone and you know you’re going to see him later. Everything between now and that later is so much fun to do, because you’re going to get who and what you want at the end of the day, so anything’s possible when that’s up ahead. Now when the person that this happens with is someone like Paul Simon, then we’re not just hanging out in my big personality. He has1, too, and they overlap in a lot of places. And that’s when it’s really kind of golden, when you can find someone who speaks your bizarre, bizarre dialect of a language of the smallest country in the world that hardly anyone ever visits, but they never forget having been there. Paul and I did share that, so when we got enchanted, the enchantment lasted a long time. But the problem is that, even at its best, enchantment just can’t sustain. When I date someone, I generally have about3 months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much. Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.” And once that starts, it’s like a case of measles, where you get just1 itch1 day, and then that itch spreads and spreads and spreads. And what feeds it is that he sees it happening. My face is like a Richter scale of every quake inside and outside of me, so it all shows up somehow. And if I turn the full beam on him of how much I like him and who he thinks he is, with everything that I am, if I shed that much light on him, and then that light starts diminishing, diminishing, diminishing, he notices. And I can’t stop it, and the more I try to stop it the more it looks like I’m trying to stop it, and that light gets fainter and fainter and fainter until everyone’s in a dark room. I remember it specifically happening when I was going out with this guy Jesse. He was actually smart, and the enchantment was unbelievably great. I remember once we were making out at Disneyland – I was that into him that I was just publicly making out. One night we were at my house and I was watching television, and Jesse was rubbing my back. And apparently I wasn’t turning the full beam on him, because it went from0 to a thousand in a nanosecond. He said, and not nicely, “What does somebody have to do to get your attention? Wrap a bullwhip around your neck?” Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book: http://tr.im/e9pe What Was I Thinking? Posted in News | 19 Comments » Life is a bowl of cherry bombs. By Carrie • Feb 5th, 2009 • Category: News But now we’ve finally come to the point of my entire, almost endless, over dramatic tale of woe. Remember the other day/week/month/year when I said I would write something in response to my brother’s thoughtful comment on my blog? Well, I”ve finally come to the part of the story where I thought I’d tell you about my calm, caring, insanely sane brother Todd…….. My brother and I were raised with the epic, mesmerizing (to us) story of how we came to be. According to my mother, I was the love child—–conceived when my parents were still riding the warm wave of romantic love. And he was the child she managed to extract from my disinterested father’s penis so that I could have company. Because all too soon their love wave crashed, and so, despite the fact that their marriage was basically in on the rocks, my mother chased my father around, hoping he would impregnate to insure that I wouldn’t end up being an only child. And so, determined that I should have a life long companion and though my father was virtually ignoring her, with his attention Taylor made to elsewhere, she somehow managed to wrangle her round wriggly way into getting inseminated with my beloved bro. Debbie w/ Carrie & Todd A companion to share our Mysterious to anyone but us History with. The Abbott to my Costello, the Fred to my Ginger, the Luke to my Leia. She made me a fellow conspirator: the rock to my roll, a co to his ed, a mate for my soul. Someone I could go on the teeter totter with, so I could go up and down and not just stay down. A partner to play chess with, if we’d ever taken the time out from where we kept it to learn……. or even a partner to dance the polka with, if we were ever absurdly inclined. Someone to blame everything on, outside of whoever else was around. My brother was all this —-and IS all this—– and more to me. Thanks to my mother’s determination to fashion a sibling for me out of my father’s increasingly thin air, this love child was able to experience brotherly love… Not a fantastic story for Todd to be brought up hearing, I’ll grant you, but hear it he did. And, like everything else, it didn’t seem to bother him. By the time Todd was born, my father was consoling Elizabeth Taylor’s heartbreak over the loss of her husband and father of her child, and namesake of my brother, Mike Todd. Eddie consoled Elizabeth the1 way her knew how—- with his trusty, grief eliminating child inseminating penis. Eddie Fisher & Elizabeth Taylor And of course, as everyone knows, grief can’t be eliminated with just a few thrusts. In order to do a really thorough job, the person with the healing penis has to continue the treatment for quite awhile. In my father’s case, he treated Elizabeth’s dispair for about4 years. (just to make COMPLETELY sure she was no longer burdened by those pesky feelings of loss) And then, when she was finally sadness free and free for anything fancy, she left my father in favor of the fancy top dollar attention paid for her new, improved mate, Richard Burton. But, back to my brother…… Unlike myself, who had enjoyed my father’s company for a year and a half, Todd never spent any time with our father. But this actually turned out to be a GOOD thing, because you can’t miss something you’ve never had. Unfortunately, in my case, I’d lived with my dad just long enough to, not only wonder where he’d gone to, but blame myself for not being lovable enough to get him to stay. (Oh poor sad Carrie! Get out your handkerchief for these nosebleed high class problems, where you sob with a British accent…..) Todd Fisher But whether it was because of the different ways my dad’s absence affected us, or because of what I refer to as, “It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it”, Todd grew up to be a calm, imperturbable, life is just a bowl of cherries guy (he actually said that to me once) and I……well, I just wasn’t like that—to say the least in the most way. As he grew up, my brother became a kind of attendant to the insane. Unflustered, he was the eye of the family tornado—-my mother and I cast as the tornado….And there he would remain unflustered & serene—nothing seemed to phase him. And believe me, there was a lot of phase inducing circumstances available to challenge even the most stalwart citizen…….but not Todd. Todd was more like my grandfather. Ray Reynolds, off somewhere fixing a TV set, or building a tree house—-My mother’s father was a carpenter and Todd absorbed his distracted, peaceful temperament, while I wandered thru the landscape, absorbing anything and everything that could be taken personally—–cars, wallpaper, absent parents, my reflection…..name it and it was my fault. Todd? No big fuckin deal. Why bother? I wanted to feel like he seemed, you know? I know you know people like this. You can’t fool me. (Well, maybe you can, just not in this area). So when Greg died, Todd made a reservation at a spa in England. A place near Sandhurst, the military training center of the United Kingdom. James Blunt went there! It had to be good! (the military school, not necessarily the spa) Actually, it takes quite a bit to ruin a spa. It’s possible, I suppose, but, in my experience, rare. Expensive and rare. But this being something of an emotional emergency, if there was ever a time to cough up the funds it was now. So we settled into our peaceful nook, nestled there in the English countryside. So there I was, nestled in another bed, watching another assortment of programs designed to distract you from whatever unpleasant experience you’d found yourself slogging through. Only this time my brother was in charge of my television programming. And what he had selected for my viewing pleasure was war movies. Whether it was old movie classics, or documentaries, this was what I feasted my famished eyes on for the duration of our stay there. (which was probably not more than a week) As big of an old movie aficionado as I was, this was an area that I had neglected. You know—-being a girl and all—-what use did I have for, “Seven Minutes over Tokyo” or “Fail Safe”? But as it turns out, these films were extremely healing for me. It may sound funny to you, but it’s true. Especially the documentaries. “Band of Brothers” Band of Brothers was my favorite. It was hours and hours of watching people go thru experiences that made my crisis look like a pimple on the ass of difficulty. (isn’t that a lovely expression? You can use it whenever you like) Not only the multiple hour show itself, but the “Making of Band of Brothers” was amazingly inspirational to me. I mean, it’s absurd for me really to compare me waking up with my dead friend to these heroic soldiers facing death all day every day, losing comrades, losing LIMBS! I mean, MY GOD! There was1 survivor of World War2 who had seen his friend get his arm blown off and, as they were taking him away on the stretcher, this soldier stopped the medics, pointed down to his arm on the ground and asking them if they would mind getting him his watch!!!!! Wow. Just incredible. And watching these films day after healing day, I thought—–well, if these men can live through THAT! And not just live in some cases, but THRIVE! If they can do that, what’s my sad experience but……..something to get to the other side of, like these men had done. Isn’t there a saying, “What man has done, man can do?” Well, I’m assuming that applies to women too, so……I set about doing what others had done before me and, in their cases, with NOBILITY. All this to say, this was my brother’s gift to me. It’s his instinct to leave someone better off than when he came across them. Whatever strength I have is bourne out of weakness. Heartbreak is my teacher. My brother’s strength comes from trust that things will be alright in the end. He sees the good in things. I find the good by traipsing thru the bad slooowly……..so I don’t miss a bruise……. Posted in News | 42 Comments » Laughing waters… eyes jeweled with tears By Carrie • Feb 4th, 2009 • Category: News Okay, if you never watch another thing again, watch this. It will make your life work. My daughter sent it to me (it flowed out of her like laughing waters….) and everything is going to be okay now.Obviously, anyone that sends this to you cares about you very much. So my daughter, Billie, cares about me—–and by extension, you—-and obviously it would follow then follow that I care deeply for you as well. See? And then everything else can just build from there! You’re officially out of harms way and in the joyous pink! So go forth and fire fly! oxxoxoxo cff Posted in News | 28 Comments » Death and houseguests………. By Carrie • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News After Greg died I stopped talking. It was as if my personality followed him down the dark passage of death and left someone who looked a lot like me, except that now my features where organized into an expression of abject fear. I had been scared—-not TO death, but BY death…you might say that Greg’s death had scared the fucking life out of me. The thing about someone dying, though, is that life goes on. While your loved1 is busy relaxing in their cozy coffins, you still have appointments, a job, friends, children —-a whole parcel of living things pulling on you to get on with it. I mean, life can be just as demanding as death in, it’s own way…….Of course, as far as I know, the demands of those us as yet unceasing are probably more of the high class variety than the demands of the deceased. Now, I’ve never really been the type of person who gets over things easily. —-I mean, I had a hard getting over the fact that I didn’t have blue eyes or finding out that I hadn’t been invited to some big party someone was throwing somewhere……., so being confronted by something as formidable as dying—well, it wouldn’t be too difficult to predict that I wouldn’t be the person putting the “fun” in funeral. Not that anyone finds it particularly easy burying someone who wouldn’t normally be considered the burying age. I mean, Greg was way far from being past his prime. His wild lifestyle probably placed him neck and neck with his prime, but for anyone to die in their forties in this day and age is a hearty mix of premature and tragic. So after Greg died I just couldn’t seem to be able to shake it off. Partly because I had loved Greg—–we had always had a lot of fun together. Much of it was the truant type of fun, but that didn’t make it any less amusing for us. Just for the folks around us who had to deal with our antics. But the other reason because I blamed myself, you see. I mean, it had happened on my watch. If only I’d woken in the middle of the night, I might have been able to save him. If only I hadn’t been so busy sleeping, I might’ve been able to wake him up the next morning….. The fact that Greg lived life like there was no tomorrow didn’t enter into it.(of course, eventually there really IS no tomorrow—–which occurs right when you run out of your stash of yesterdays and todays) I mean, it was as if Greg’s dying had more to do with me than it did with him. Which is a pretty fancy twist of perspective, when you think about it. “It’s all for you, Damien!” the nanny cries out in the movie, “The Omen”—-only in this case it was me shouting, “It’s all for you, Greg!” —-and unlike the nanny, I didn’t subsequently hang myself. Not literally, anyway. So, I lay in bed for most of the day staring at the TV, as if waiting for it to provide me with an explanation as to how I’d been chosen to survive this particular set of circumstances. Or, perhaps a show would come on that might somehow relate to my predicament. A new cable show called, “C’mon! Shake it off! What’s the big deal?!” But no such show came to my rescue. Instead, in exchange for Greg I was provided with an assortment of 5 brand new……..HOUSEGUESTS! Hooray!1 visitor dies and 5 others take his place! Needless to say, I wasn’t much of a hostess at this point. I gave more of what was left of my undivided attention to the television set than I did to the visiting friends that now crowded my house. After Greg’s body was removed, (ugh……) I had my bed frame discarded, considering it’s inability to keep Greg alive—– and then we moved the remaining mattress to a new, no death free location in my room. (having, no doubt, determined that the mattress was virtually innocent in causing Greg’s untimely death). So you might say that the entire tragic incident was just a question of luck. Perhaps the reason Greg had died was because of where the bed had been previously located and now that it had been moved from that place, no1 else would die. Of course, it might have been simpler had I just moved to another room—–ANY room—why not the LIVING ROOM?! I mean, especially considering the room was designed for LIVING, unlike my bed room, which it turned out, had been designed for death! Posted in News | 25 Comments » Who’s sorry now! By admin • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News I told people this might happen, but did anyone listen to me?! NO! Hippo eats Dwarf Posted in News | 40 Comments » A view from the bridge over troubled princess……… By Carrie • Jan 31st, 2009 • Category: News I did a radio show yesterday and the man that interviewed me asked me what question I’d been asked over the years that had most annoyed me. “That’s easy” I told him. “Did you know “Star Wars” would be that big of a hit?” The interviewer laughed, “When I told people here at work that I would be interviewing you,” he said, ” All the men wanted was for me to ask how it felt to wear the metal bikini.” Now I laughed, “The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn’t metal. ——Not that metal would’ve been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn’t adhere to1’s skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt’s gigantic, albiet grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom……….well, it had the10dency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett—–I believe his name was Jeremy—–from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask——to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida. Posted in News | 40 Comments » Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral By Carrie • Jan 30th, 2009 • Category: News I have to tell you something before we go any further with this blogging business. See, I’m a very persnickety human. I can’t just write something and push a button sending it out into the internetosphere for all to judge and laugh at. I have to endlessly fuck with my words so nobody can make fun of me. (more…) Posted in News | 38 Comments » Dead Man Blogging By Carrie • Jan 28th, 2009 • Category: News I’m not really the “thought for the day” type. I mean, “I couldn’t care less than the more that I do” probably wouldn’t help too many people. Or, “I can’t wait to not get what I want” isn’t really going to go along way with inspiring too many folks But my brother’s post was pretty cool, no? I told him that I’d post a response, but now I’ll have to do it tomorrow. (Sorry Todd!) Since I didn’t have a very eventful day, I thought I might reminisce—–you know, drudge shit up from the past when I led a more colorful life. Colorful and debilitating combined. For those of you who haven’t read my book, I had a good friend name Greg Stevens who had the bad manners to die in my house. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he died in my BED, with me beside him, sleeping til Bruce Cohen and his boyfriend, (now husband) woke me into a world it would take me a long, bummer amount of time to blunder through. But before Greg died he was alot of fun. (he might be alot of fun AFTER his death, but as to that I have no way of knowing) He was especially fun when you consider he was a Republican, but also aside from that. All on his own, politically conservative party aside, I loved spending time with Greg. Greg R Stevens That’s not to say that he was always EASY to be with. Greg was extremely fond of drugs—-an affection I could relate to. But Greg could actually make me look like an amateur in comparison—–that is, when we weren’t neck and neck in bad behavior. If you were to say that Greg and I were a bad influence on eachother…………well, you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Inches away, in fact. The truth would be breathing it’s hot scented breath down your well behaved neck. One of my favorite evenings we spent together was in New York. We’d been in upstate New York at my friend Griffin Dunne’s wedding, and afterwards we drove back to the city and checked into Greg’s suite at the4 Seasons Hotel in midtown. Greg had had quite a bit to drink at the wedding. Enough to cause him to continuously slide from the seat onto the floor of the town car he’d hired for the occasion. Greg spent most of his life in hotels. The fancier the better. He liked to live what some call, “The high life”……..(and the word, “high” could obviously be interpreted in a variety of ways) He loved spas, where he could get massages and facials and manicures and pedicures—-and he LOVED shopping—a pass time which——-along with the altered state—-we both enthusiastically shared. Greg had always told me that he came from a very wealthy family —- consequently making him very wealthy as well. He told me that he’d inherited a HUGE amount of money from a trust fund that his mother had set up for he and his2 brothers in the late6ties when they were quite young. And the money in this trust fund had originally come from a law suit his mother had won against some doctors that had gotten her husband addicted to speed. (if I’d known you could win law suits against people that get father’s addicted to speed, my siblings and I would be set for life, as my father had shot speed for 15 years courtesy of the original Dr. Feelgood aka Dr. Max Jacobsen). Anyway, for whatever idiotic reason I never questioned Greg’s story ——- I mean, it never occurred to me that someone might lie about a thing like that… My only experience with lying was someone (like myself) denying being stoned, or perhaps when someone assured someone else (say me maybe) that they didn’t look fat and that that assurance happened not to be so. One of the reasons that might explain why Greg had made up the story of his alleged wealth was that he thought that people would like him more if they thought he were rich. A sad explanation, but nonetheless possible. So, Greg told everyone that his mother had won this alleged law suit for something like2 million dollars. (not that there are very many things like2 million dollars—– other than2 million dollars) And she’d subsequently invested the money wisely, so that when Greg and his brothers came of age they would receive trust funds worth well over 50 million dollars apiece. BUT, Greg informed me, because of his drug use, his mother had decided NOT to give him his inheritance when he came of age (35, and he was now in his early 40’s)—– and that he would only receive it when and only when he sobered up. The gag was (according to Greg)—–that because he had NOT received his inheritance, it had increased10 fold because, unlike his brother’s, Greg’s money had remained invested, so on that fateful day when his mother would finally give his inheritance to him , he would be richer than either1 of his very, VERY rich brothers combined! Incredible tale, no? The only thing wrong with it was that it was entirely fabricated. A fact I didn’t find out until his wake, when his1 of his brothers told me. The idea that Greg had concocted this fantasy of immense and imminent wealth was hilarious to them. (As hilarious as it could be given that Greg had to die for all of us to get the joke) Anyway, back to Greg getting really drunk at Griffin’s wedding reception. So drunk that he ended up calling his dealer in the city from his cell phone en route from upstate New York. It turned out, probably not so amazingly enough, I’d met this woman before, once with Greg in another suite in another hotel the year before, and another time, some years Marianne Faithful back, in Ireland when she was supplying (among other clients) the now sober, then not ,Marianne Faithful. At the time this dealer had a fairly lucrative business in London—so lucrative that she was able to afford a very nice house in Chelsea. But in the ensuing years she’d moved her business back to Manhatten, and as luck would have it (dumb luck, of course), Greg wound up being1 of her clients. I forget her name, but I’ll never forget how she looked. In her mid6ties, she was quite a large person, weighing in at maybe 200–250 pounds. And if that wasn’t enough, she had a face that was a little like a basset hound. When she arrived with her delivery that night, I was in the bedroom searching for an in house movie to watch, when I hear the front door to the suite opening. I peered discretely around the corner to see who was coming down the hall and into the livingroom, which is when I recognize her from the United (drug) Kingdom. As I watched, she dragged herself, every ounce her, to a couch at the farside of the living room, huffing and puffing, with a woebegone expression on her droopy, familiar face….I listen as Greg enthusiastically greets her and I find myself thinking, well, given that I’d met her before, I should probably go say hello, right? I mean, after all, manners are manners, no? I don’t care HOW much dope is involved. So I enter the living room to pay the top dollar of my respects, and as I watch, she eases her entire self down with considerable effort and sighs a defeated sigh. “I’m so depressed” she says wearily. And now, as Greg and I gaze at this hefty, uber human self, we’re forced to say, “Why? How could someone like YOU be depressed??? You—–who have SO much to live for! A 60 something immensely overweight drug dealer with a face dripping with paste colored flesh——if happiness has eluded someone as deserving as you, what hope to the rest of us have???? And then, in response to our question as to the source of her unimaginable despondence, she replies, “I lost a client today……” “NO! You must be JOKING! Imagine losing a client in a business like yours!!!!! That is just …….well, BIZARRE!” Of course this is a sampling of something we’re thinking, as we avoid catching1 another eyes and dissolving into peals of laughter. What we SAY is, “I’m SO sorry. Are you OKAY?” I realize it might seem a little callous to some of you, the vision of Greg and myself laughing, (in part) at the misfortune of others and I apologize if I’ve offended someone whose lost a loved1 to drug addiction. Come to think of it, she probably said something very similar when Greg passed away due to a combination of sleep apnia and drug use. (Only in his case she probably was a bit annoyed on top of her distress, as Greg had a habit of not paying her.) But all I can say is, you had to be there to see her mournfully recount to us the details of the client she’d lost (a famous political writer in his late 70’s) In fact, it would have been really good if you’d been there, because if you’d been present, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be. (wouldn’t HAVE to be, but probably would be anyway. Posted in News | 14 Comments » « Older Entries 04/02/09 - 05/03/09 in Seattle, WA at The Rep View all dates © 2009 CarrieFisher | Powered by WordPress | Entries (RSS)
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topdocbear > kingman     BIOGRAPHY BOOKS BLOG Happy Valentines Doc By Carrie • Feb 15th, 2009 • Category: News I have a friend named Arnie Klein. Dr. Arnold Klein. Dr. Arnie Klein He’s an actual doctor, not1 of those people that call themselves doctors, like my father’s son in law. (or whatever you call your wife’s child that’s not yours) My father’s wife, Betty Lin, had a son who called himself, “Doctor Winky”. She would still have a son named doctor winky, but she passed away some years ago, so now Doctor Winky can belong to all of us. Doctor Winky is not, in fact, a physician, but a doctor of night club lights. You wouldn’t think that there was a call for a doctor of night club lights, and there probably isn’t. But if there WAS a need for someone to doctor strobe lights and the other ailing bulbs—–Doctor Winky would be their man. But Arnie isn’t a light doctor. He’s an actual doctor. And not JUST an actual doctor, Arnie is a dermatologist to the stars. He’s a pimple and wrinkle doctor, ideal for adolescence and old age and everything in between. Arnie is a great doctor. Great because he loves what he does. His job is medicine and his hobby is medicine. He spends his weekends reading medical journals. My pimples brought me to Arnie and my wrinkles and affection will keep me with him til the end. His and/or mine. Arnie and I are completely opposite in a similar way. He wants to feel like he could go into surgery in a moments notice. As the doctor. Whilst I want to feel as though I could go into surgery in a moments notice ——as the patient. Arnie likes me to write about him. He calls it feeding his narcissism. Not that this (being written about or paid attention to) is an uncommon pleasure. Especially in what is laughingly called Hollywood. I think most people like being written about. Nicely, of course. And now that Arnie has discovered that there is a new venue where I could pay him further tribute—-well, as you see—– So…….here I am writing about him………in front of God and everyone……in front of blog and everyone……Arnie………here is your tribute. Happy Valentines Day………. Posted in News | 5 Comments » Star light star bright, the rest I cant remember right. By Carrie • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: News My mother was born in El Paso, Texas. She was the second child of Ray and Maxene Reynolds, who had my mother’s brother, Bill at 16 and then proceeded to have my mother, Mary Frances, the following year. One of the reasons my grandmother wanted to marry at such a young age, was she anxious to have her own room. Raised in an extremely large family, she was anxious to get away and secure for herself some privacy. Odd logic—–marrying for privacy—-but then, my family has never been known for it’s conventional10dencies. My grandmother’s mother, Maxie Harmon, began having children in her late teens & continuing to procreate until she had her last child at 49, which the doctor informed her was a tumor—–and when that growth was born, they called him, of course, Tumor—–making him my mother’s “Uncle Tumor, who was and remains younger than his niece. Maxene grew up sharing everything with her multiple siblings, from beds to food to clothes—–, she never wore anything but her sister’s hand me downs—– so the prospect of her own closet and living in her own house was extremely alluring. She once told me that her family was so poor that they, “didn’t have6 matching glasses.”Then she added brusquely, “And don’t you put that in1 of your books!” (She didn’t say anything about blogs, so I share it without threat of adding more weight to my already tubby conscience. It would also be difficult for her to object much at this point, as my grandmother had the bad manners to pass away some time ago.) So, hoping to secure some privacy and perhaps even a dress of her own,when my 15 year old grandmother caught the eye of my handsome grandfather, Raymond Francis Reynolds, a local boy who played baseball rather well and worked on the railroad, she did nothing to discourage him. Ray was much more handsome than tall, and Maxene was more large busted than beautiful——but they began to pool their liabilities and their assets, and soon enough they found themselves courting and then, out of the something borrowed, something blue, they were wed. Unfortunately, my great grandmother (not so great in this case) had neglected to inform her daughter, Maxene, about just what would be expected of her on her wedding night——so that when my grandfather began to ………..well, as you might imagine, my grandma was, in addition to being unwilling was also quite understandably paralyzed with disbelief. Surely my grandfather was making this up——how could anyone be expected to do anything as bizarre as this! It took my grandfather3 days and lots of sketching, (what I wouldn’t give to see those!) for her to finally relent and more than likely unenthusiastically, let him have his now legal way with her. ——————————————————— My mother wasn’t a mother that cooked and cleaned and helped me with my homework, but not knowing these things existed I didn’t miss them. Debbie Carrie & Todd She was both parents to Todd and I. The main reason my father has any children at all is largely because they’re a by product of sex, which he’s devoted a huge portion of his life to. Certainly not out of any urge to procreate. We rarely saw our him—-maybe once a year—–yet my mother never spoke ill of him. At Christmas she would buy gifts and sign his name on the card. Of course, my brother and I weren’t really fooled, as she made little effort to disguise her handwriting———But the fact that she did it at all was dear. Though she had an extremely demanding career, Todd and I always had the sense that we came first to her. Both then and now. One of my favorite things that my mother does is give advice. Most mothers give advice, but she does it in a very unique way. “You know dear, I had a dream that you left your lawyers and went with mine. I know you don’t believe my dreams mean anything—–even the1 that predicted I would buy the house next door.” She mainly dreams about things she wants me to do. The MGM lionshare of her dreams are about my agents, flaws in contracts, and A LOT of dreams about business managers. Aren’t dreams meant to be symbolic? Didn’t Jung say that? And what about Freud’s theory that most dreams are sexual? And wasn’t there also a theory that you are everyone in your dreams? My mom would probably like that last notion, as it would make her my agent, my lawyer and my business manager. My mother is as far from ordinary as you can get without a rocket or special dispensation from the government. She wears turbans and sequined dresses (though rarely together),black pants and a black top with a colorful button down shirt open at the front, like a jacket. She applies her make up like a fastidious artist. Seated in front of a large mirror surrounded by lights and a white towel spread on the table beneath the mirror is another, smaller mirror for the detail work, like eyeliner and eyelash application. The walls of her home are adorned with autographed photographs of celebrities she has both known and worked with and those whom she admired. Even though she’s a celebrity herself, there’s a part of my mother that’s like a fan. No…wait…….not ‘like’,……..she IS a fan. A fan of classic films, and even some contemporary (she loved Slum Dog Millionaire) It’s almost as though she’s not part of the Hollywood community—-on the inside looking out. There’s an enormous part of her that is on the outside looking in. That is, unless she’s onstage looking out. She reads fan magazines, biographies of celebrities and watches AMC. She has always been and is still delighted by an inspired performance. For years my mother had a drama coach named Lillian Sydney. Lillian was the vocal coach at MGM, and in a short time became my mother’s mentor. Lillian had what I always called a Hollywood accent. Like the vocal coach in, “Singing in the Rain”, saying to Jean Hagen, “No, dear, ROUND tones! “And I CAAAHHNT stand him!” Where you sound like an aristocrat, someone overflowing with class—— even yawning and sneezing with elegance. And this appealed enormously to my mother who, coming from the south, wanted to sound like movie stars did. She started at the studio at 16, and I’m sure they wanted her to get rid of her accent. They changed her name from Mary Frances to Debbie (which she wouldn’t answer to for 2 years) they told her that her ears stuck out and had them surgically pinned back, they shaved her eyebrows, which then never grew back. They could reinvent her superficially, but the part of her that was raised in a2 room house in El Paso, the thoughtful, hard working, devoted, loyal, darling human that she is they couldn’t —–thank God—–alter. We’ve all heard the expression, “Star Quality”———-that ineffable something that makes certain people focus pullers. It’s my theory that they shine. Something glows out of their eyes, —–as though they’ve swallowed some of the spot light that follows them around onstage——- ——— and people get caught in their magnetic field and are drawn to them. It might even be possible that1 of the reasons that celebrities are called stars—— is because of this shine. And maybe if you hang around these beaming people, some of it will rub off on you. Whatever this thing is that glows out of them that makes them preferred above most others, if you touch them, talk to them, walk with them, live with them—-maybe you can get anointed by this wattage. Debbie Reynolds Anyway, my mother had this thing, this sublime light, and its been spilling out of her ever since she was6teen, shine that poured out of her and all over everyone. People followed her in the street, flocked to her shows—–wanted a piece of her because she reminded them of the best version of themselves. And to get that piece they applaud her, write her, love her in all the ways they know how, and my mother appreciates it. Especially when she performs. She gives everything she’s got and in return the audience celebrates her and this makes her feel a little like she’s going to live forever. And she is. She’s going to take some of that shine of hers with her and leave the rest of it to glow out of the eyes of the people that love her. Sorry it’s taken me this long to post anything. Between ECT and ice skating with my daughter, I’ve neglected carrying you all out on a wave of tales. Bear with me if you can……….or even if you can’t……. oxxoxooxcff Tags: Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, ECT, family story, Texas Posted in News | 26 Comments » What Was I Thinking? By Carrie • Feb 7th, 2009 • Category: News What Was I Thinking? About a year ago my friend Paul Slansky asked me to contribute to a book his wife, Liz Dubelman, was doing about that terrible moment when you realize that the relationship you’re in isn’t going to work. Well, I just happened to have a few of those to choose from, so I wrote1 up and now that book – What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories – has just been published, with my humble effort right up front. Here’s the beginning of “A Bullwhip?” I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality. And so when I meet someone, that’s where we hang out. It goes on for miles, the great outdoors, we romp around in my personality. And in my big sprawling personality, where this new someone is now, I love him. I love everything he does. I love being with him, I love sex with him, I’m charmed by him. And what is love if not a state of enchantment? You meet someone and it puts a charm on the world. Everything looks better when you love someone and you know you’re going to see him later. Everything between now and that later is so much fun to do, because you’re going to get who and what you want at the end of the day, so anything’s possible when that’s up ahead. Now when the person that this happens with is someone like Paul Simon, then we’re not just hanging out in my big personality. He has1, too, and they overlap in a lot of places. And that’s when it’s really kind of golden, when you can find someone who speaks your bizarre, bizarre dialect of a language of the smallest country in the world that hardly anyone ever visits, but they never forget having been there. Paul and I did share that, so when we got enchanted, the enchantment lasted a long time. But the problem is that, even at its best, enchantment just can’t sustain. When I date someone, I generally have about3 months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much. Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.” And once that starts, it’s like a case of measles, where you get just1 itch1 day, and then that itch spreads and spreads and spreads. And what feeds it is that he sees it happening. My face is like a Richter scale of every quake inside and outside of me, so it all shows up somehow. And if I turn the full beam on him of how much I like him and who he thinks he is, with everything that I am, if I shed that much light on him, and then that light starts diminishing, diminishing, diminishing, he notices. And I can’t stop it, and the more I try to stop it the more it looks like I’m trying to stop it, and that light gets fainter and fainter and fainter until everyone’s in a dark room. I remember it specifically happening when I was going out with this guy Jesse. He was actually smart, and the enchantment was unbelievably great. I remember once we were making out at Disneyland – I was that into him that I was just publicly making out. One night we were at my house and I was watching television, and Jesse was rubbing my back. And apparently I wasn’t turning the full beam on him, because it went from0 to a thousand in a nanosecond. He said, and not nicely, “What does somebody have to do to get your attention? Wrap a bullwhip around your neck?” Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book: http://tr.im/e9pe What Was I Thinking? Posted in News | 19 Comments » Life is a bowl of cherry bombs. By Carrie • Feb 5th, 2009 • Category: News But now we’ve finally come to the point of my entire, almost endless, over dramatic tale of woe. Remember the other day/week/month/year when I said I would write something in response to my brother’s thoughtful comment on my blog? Well, I”ve finally come to the part of the story where I thought I’d tell you about my calm, caring, insanely sane brother Todd…….. My brother and I were raised with the epic, mesmerizing (to us) story of how we came to be. According to my mother, I was the love child—–conceived when my parents were still riding the warm wave of romantic love. And he was the child she managed to extract from my disinterested father’s penis so that I could have company. Because all too soon their love wave crashed, and so, despite the fact that their marriage was basically in on the rocks, my mother chased my father around, hoping he would impregnate to insure that I wouldn’t end up being an only child. And so, determined that I should have a life long companion and though my father was virtually ignoring her, with his attention Taylor made to elsewhere, she somehow managed to wrangle her round wriggly way into getting inseminated with my beloved bro. Debbie w/ Carrie & Todd A companion to share our Mysterious to anyone but us History with. The Abbott to my Costello, the Fred to my Ginger, the Luke to my Leia. She made me a fellow conspirator: the rock to my roll, a co to his ed, a mate for my soul. Someone I could go on the teeter totter with, so I could go up and down and not just stay down. A partner to play chess with, if we’d ever taken the time out from where we kept it to learn……. or even a partner to dance the polka with, if we were ever absurdly inclined. Someone to blame everything on, outside of whoever else was around. My brother was all this —-and IS all this—– and more to me. Thanks to my mother’s determination to fashion a sibling for me out of my father’s increasingly thin air, this love child was able to experience brotherly love… Not a fantastic story for Todd to be brought up hearing, I’ll grant you, but hear it he did. And, like everything else, it didn’t seem to bother him. By the time Todd was born, my father was consoling Elizabeth Taylor’s heartbreak over the loss of her husband and father of her child, and namesake of my brother, Mike Todd. Eddie consoled Elizabeth the1 way her knew how—- with his trusty, grief eliminating child inseminating penis. Eddie Fisher & Elizabeth Taylor And of course, as everyone knows, grief can’t be eliminated with just a few thrusts. In order to do a really thorough job, the person with the healing penis has to continue the treatment for quite awhile. In my father’s case, he treated Elizabeth’s dispair for about4 years. (just to make COMPLETELY sure she was no longer burdened by those pesky feelings of loss) And then, when she was finally sadness free and free for anything fancy, she left my father in favor of the fancy top dollar attention paid for her new, improved mate, Richard Burton. But, back to my brother…… Unlike myself, who had enjoyed my father’s company for a year and a half, Todd never spent any time with our father. But this actually turned out to be a GOOD thing, because you can’t miss something you’ve never had. Unfortunately, in my case, I’d lived with my dad just long enough to, not only wonder where he’d gone to, but blame myself for not being lovable enough to get him to stay. (Oh poor sad Carrie! Get out your handkerchief for these nosebleed high class problems, where you sob with a British accent…..) Todd Fisher But whether it was because of the different ways my dad’s absence affected us, or because of what I refer to as, “It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it”, Todd grew up to be a calm, imperturbable, life is just a bowl of cherries guy (he actually said that to me once) and I……well, I just wasn’t like that—to say the least in the most way. As he grew up, my brother became a kind of attendant to the insane. Unflustered, he was the eye of the family tornado—-my mother and I cast as the tornado….And there he would remain unflustered & serene—nothing seemed to phase him. And believe me, there was a lot of phase inducing circumstances available to challenge even the most stalwart citizen…….but not Todd. Todd was more like my grandfather. Ray Reynolds, off somewhere fixing a TV set, or building a tree house—-My mother’s father was a carpenter and Todd absorbed his distracted, peaceful temperament, while I wandered thru the landscape, absorbing anything and everything that could be taken personally—–cars, wallpaper, absent parents, my reflection…..name it and it was my fault. Todd? No big fuckin deal. Why bother? I wanted to feel like he seemed, you know? I know you know people like this. You can’t fool me. (Well, maybe you can, just not in this area). So when Greg died, Todd made a reservation at a spa in England. A place near Sandhurst, the military training center of the United Kingdom. James Blunt went there! It had to be good! (the military school, not necessarily the spa) Actually, it takes quite a bit to ruin a spa. It’s possible, I suppose, but, in my experience, rare. Expensive and rare. But this being something of an emotional emergency, if there was ever a time to cough up the funds it was now. So we settled into our peaceful nook, nestled there in the English countryside. So there I was, nestled in another bed, watching another assortment of programs designed to distract you from whatever unpleasant experience you’d found yourself slogging through. Only this time my brother was in charge of my television programming. And what he had selected for my viewing pleasure was war movies. Whether it was old movie classics, or documentaries, this was what I feasted my famished eyes on for the duration of our stay there. (which was probably not more than a week) As big of an old movie aficionado as I was, this was an area that I had neglected. You know—-being a girl and all—-what use did I have for, “Seven Minutes over Tokyo” or “Fail Safe”? But as it turns out, these films were extremely healing for me. It may sound funny to you, but it’s true. Especially the documentaries. “Band of Brothers” Band of Brothers was my favorite. It was hours and hours of watching people go thru experiences that made my crisis look like a pimple on the ass of difficulty. (isn’t that a lovely expression? You can use it whenever you like) Not only the multiple hour show itself, but the “Making of Band of Brothers” was amazingly inspirational to me. I mean, it’s absurd for me really to compare me waking up with my dead friend to these heroic soldiers facing death all day every day, losing comrades, losing LIMBS! I mean, MY GOD! There was1 survivor of World War2 who had seen his friend get his arm blown off and, as they were taking him away on the stretcher, this soldier stopped the medics, pointed down to his arm on the ground and asking them if they would mind getting him his watch!!!!! Wow. Just incredible. And watching these films day after healing day, I thought—–well, if these men can live through THAT! And not just live in some cases, but THRIVE! If they can do that, what’s my sad experience but……..something to get to the other side of, like these men had done. Isn’t there a saying, “What man has done, man can do?” Well, I’m assuming that applies to women too, so……I set about doing what others had done before me and, in their cases, with NOBILITY. All this to say, this was my brother’s gift to me. It’s his instinct to leave someone better off than when he came across them. Whatever strength I have is bourne out of weakness. Heartbreak is my teacher. My brother’s strength comes from trust that things will be alright in the end. He sees the good in things. I find the good by traipsing thru the bad slooowly……..so I don’t miss a bruise……. Posted in News | 42 Comments » Laughing waters… eyes jeweled with tears By Carrie • Feb 4th, 2009 • Category: News Okay, if you never watch another thing again, watch this. It will make your life work. My daughter sent it to me (it flowed out of her like laughing waters….) and everything is going to be okay now.Obviously, anyone that sends this to you cares about you very much. So my daughter, Billie, cares about me—–and by extension, you—-and obviously it would follow then follow that I care deeply for you as well. See? And then everything else can just build from there! You’re officially out of harms way and in the joyous pink! So go forth and fire fly! oxxoxoxo cff Posted in News | 28 Comments » Death and houseguests………. By Carrie • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News After Greg died I stopped talking. It was as if my personality followed him down the dark passage of death and left someone who looked a lot like me, except that now my features where organized into an expression of abject fear. I had been scared—-not TO death, but BY death…you might say that Greg’s death had scared the fucking life out of me. The thing about someone dying, though, is that life goes on. While your loved1 is busy relaxing in their cozy coffins, you still have appointments, a job, friends, children —-a whole parcel of living things pulling on you to get on with it. I mean, life can be just as demanding as death in, it’s own way…….Of course, as far as I know, the demands of those us as yet unceasing are probably more of the high class variety than the demands of the deceased. Now, I’ve never really been the type of person who gets over things easily. —-I mean, I had a hard getting over the fact that I didn’t have blue eyes or finding out that I hadn’t been invited to some big party someone was throwing somewhere……., so being confronted by something as formidable as dying—well, it wouldn’t be too difficult to predict that I wouldn’t be the person putting the “fun” in funeral. Not that anyone finds it particularly easy burying someone who wouldn’t normally be considered the burying age. I mean, Greg was way far from being past his prime. His wild lifestyle probably placed him neck and neck with his prime, but for anyone to die in their forties in this day and age is a hearty mix of premature and tragic. So after Greg died I just couldn’t seem to be able to shake it off. Partly because I had loved Greg—–we had always had a lot of fun together. Much of it was the truant type of fun, but that didn’t make it any less amusing for us. Just for the folks around us who had to deal with our antics. But the other reason because I blamed myself, you see. I mean, it had happened on my watch. If only I’d woken in the middle of the night, I might have been able to save him. If only I hadn’t been so busy sleeping, I might’ve been able to wake him up the next morning….. The fact that Greg lived life like there was no tomorrow didn’t enter into it.(of course, eventually there really IS no tomorrow—–which occurs right when you run out of your stash of yesterdays and todays) I mean, it was as if Greg’s dying had more to do with me than it did with him. Which is a pretty fancy twist of perspective, when you think about it. “It’s all for you, Damien!” the nanny cries out in the movie, “The Omen”—-only in this case it was me shouting, “It’s all for you, Greg!” —-and unlike the nanny, I didn’t subsequently hang myself. Not literally, anyway. So, I lay in bed for most of the day staring at the TV, as if waiting for it to provide me with an explanation as to how I’d been chosen to survive this particular set of circumstances. Or, perhaps a show would come on that might somehow relate to my predicament. A new cable show called, “C’mon! Shake it off! What’s the big deal?!” But no such show came to my rescue. Instead, in exchange for Greg I was provided with an assortment of 5 brand new……..HOUSEGUESTS! Hooray!1 visitor dies and 5 others take his place! Needless to say, I wasn’t much of a hostess at this point. I gave more of what was left of my undivided attention to the television set than I did to the visiting friends that now crowded my house. After Greg’s body was removed, (ugh……) I had my bed frame discarded, considering it’s inability to keep Greg alive—– and then we moved the remaining mattress to a new, no death free location in my room. (having, no doubt, determined that the mattress was virtually innocent in causing Greg’s untimely death). So you might say that the entire tragic incident was just a question of luck. Perhaps the reason Greg had died was because of where the bed had been previously located and now that it had been moved from that place, no1 else would die. Of course, it might have been simpler had I just moved to another room—–ANY room—why not the LIVING ROOM?! I mean, especially considering the room was designed for LIVING, unlike my bed room, which it turned out, had been designed for death! Posted in News | 25 Comments » Who’s sorry now! By admin • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News I told people this might happen, but did anyone listen to me?! NO! Hippo eats Dwarf Posted in News | 40 Comments » A view from the bridge over troubled princess……… By Carrie • Jan 31st, 2009 • Category: News I did a radio show yesterday and the man that interviewed me asked me what question I’d been asked over the years that had most annoyed me. “That’s easy” I told him. “Did you know “Star Wars” would be that big of a hit?” The interviewer laughed, “When I told people here at work that I would be interviewing you,” he said, ” All the men wanted was for me to ask how it felt to wear the metal bikini.” Now I laughed, “The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn’t metal. ——Not that metal would’ve been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn’t adhere to1’s skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt’s gigantic, albiet grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom……….well, it had the10dency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett—–I believe his name was Jeremy—–from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask——to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida. Posted in News | 40 Comments » Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral By Carrie • Jan 30th, 2009 • Category: News I have to tell you something before we go any further with this blogging business. See, I’m a very persnickety human. I can’t just write something and push a button sending it out into the internetosphere for all to judge and laugh at. I have to endlessly fuck with my words so nobody can make fun of me. (more…) Posted in News | 38 Comments » Dead Man Blogging By Carrie • Jan 28th, 2009 • Category: News I’m not really the “thought for the day” type. I mean, “I couldn’t care less than the more that I do” probably wouldn’t help too many people. Or, “I can’t wait to not get what I want” isn’t really going to go along way with inspiring too many folks But my brother’s post was pretty cool, no? I told him that I’d post a response, but now I’ll have to do it tomorrow. (Sorry Todd!) Since I didn’t have a very eventful day, I thought I might reminisce—–you know, drudge shit up from the past when I led a more colorful life. Colorful and debilitating combined. For those of you who haven’t read my book, I had a good friend name Greg Stevens who had the bad manners to die in my house. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he died in my BED, with me beside him, sleeping til Bruce Cohen and his boyfriend, (now husband) woke me into a world it would take me a long, bummer amount of time to blunder through. But before Greg died he was alot of fun. (he might be alot of fun AFTER his death, but as to that I have no way of knowing) He was especially fun when you consider he was a Republican, but also aside from that. All on his own, politically conservative party aside, I loved spending time with Greg. Greg R Stevens That’s not to say that he was always EASY to be with. Greg was extremely fond of drugs—-an affection I could relate to. But Greg could actually make me look like an amateur in comparison—–that is, when we weren’t neck and neck in bad behavior. If you were to say that Greg and I were a bad influence on eachother…………well, you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Inches away, in fact. The truth would be breathing it’s hot scented breath down your well behaved neck. One of my favorite evenings we spent together was in New York. We’d been in upstate New York at my friend Griffin Dunne’s wedding, and afterwards we drove back to the city and checked into Greg’s suite at the4 Seasons Hotel in midtown. Greg had had quite a bit to drink at the wedding. Enough to cause him to continuously slide from the seat onto the floor of the town car he’d hired for the occasion. Greg spent most of his life in hotels. The fancier the better. He liked to live what some call, “The high life”……..(and the word, “high” could obviously be interpreted in a variety of ways) He loved spas, where he could get massages and facials and manicures and pedicures—-and he LOVED shopping—a pass time which——-along with the altered state—-we both enthusiastically shared. Greg had always told me that he came from a very wealthy family —- consequently making him very wealthy as well. He told me that he’d inherited a HUGE amount of money from a trust fund that his mother had set up for he and his2 brothers in the late6ties when they were quite young. And the money in this trust fund had originally come from a law suit his mother had won against some doctors that had gotten her husband addicted to speed. (if I’d known you could win law suits against people that get father’s addicted to speed, my siblings and I would be set for life, as my father had shot speed for 15 years courtesy of the original Dr. Feelgood aka Dr. Max Jacobsen). Anyway, for whatever idiotic reason I never questioned Greg’s story ——- I mean, it never occurred to me that someone might lie about a thing like that… My only experience with lying was someone (like myself) denying being stoned, or perhaps when someone assured someone else (say me maybe) that they didn’t look fat and that that assurance happened not to be so. One of the reasons that might explain why Greg had made up the story of his alleged wealth was that he thought that people would like him more if they thought he were rich. A sad explanation, but nonetheless possible. So, Greg told everyone that his mother had won this alleged law suit for something like2 million dollars. (not that there are very many things like2 million dollars—– other than2 million dollars) And she’d subsequently invested the money wisely, so that when Greg and his brothers came of age they would receive trust funds worth well over 50 million dollars apiece. BUT, Greg informed me, because of his drug use, his mother had decided NOT to give him his inheritance when he came of age (35, and he was now in his early 40’s)—– and that he would only receive it when and only when he sobered up. The gag was (according to Greg)—–that because he had NOT received his inheritance, it had increased10 fold because, unlike his brother’s, Greg’s money had remained invested, so on that fateful day when his mother would finally give his inheritance to him , he would be richer than either1 of his very, VERY rich brothers combined! Incredible tale, no? The only thing wrong with it was that it was entirely fabricated. A fact I didn’t find out until his wake, when his1 of his brothers told me. The idea that Greg had concocted this fantasy of immense and imminent wealth was hilarious to them. (As hilarious as it could be given that Greg had to die for all of us to get the joke) Anyway, back to Greg getting really drunk at Griffin’s wedding reception. So drunk that he ended up calling his dealer in the city from his cell phone en route from upstate New York. It turned out, probably not so amazingly enough, I’d met this woman before, once with Greg in another suite in another hotel the year before, and another time, some years Marianne Faithful back, in Ireland when she was supplying (among other clients) the now sober, then not ,Marianne Faithful. At the time this dealer had a fairly lucrative business in London—so lucrative that she was able to afford a very nice house in Chelsea. But in the ensuing years she’d moved her business back to Manhatten, and as luck would have it (dumb luck, of course), Greg wound up being1 of her clients. I forget her name, but I’ll never forget how she looked. In her mid6ties, she was quite a large person, weighing in at maybe 200–250 pounds. And if that wasn’t enough, she had a face that was a little like a basset hound. When she arrived with her delivery that night, I was in the bedroom searching for an in house movie to watch, when I hear the front door to the suite opening. I peered discretely around the corner to see who was coming down the hall and into the livingroom, which is when I recognize her from the United (drug) Kingdom. As I watched, she dragged herself, every ounce her, to a couch at the farside of the living room, huffing and puffing, with a woebegone expression on her droopy, familiar face….I listen as Greg enthusiastically greets her and I find myself thinking, well, given that I’d met her before, I should probably go say hello, right? I mean, after all, manners are manners, no? I don’t care HOW much dope is involved. So I enter the living room to pay the top dollar of my respects, and as I watch, she eases her entire self down with considerable effort and sighs a defeated sigh. “I’m so depressed” she says wearily. And now, as Greg and I gaze at this hefty, uber human self, we’re forced to say, “Why? How could someone like YOU be depressed??? You—–who have SO much to live for! A 60 something immensely overweight drug dealer with a face dripping with paste colored flesh——if happiness has eluded someone as deserving as you, what hope to the rest of us have???? And then, in response to our question as to the source of her unimaginable despondence, she replies, “I lost a client today……” “NO! You must be JOKING! Imagine losing a client in a business like yours!!!!! That is just …….well, BIZARRE!” Of course this is a sampling of something we’re thinking, as we avoid catching1 another eyes and dissolving into peals of laughter. What we SAY is, “I’m SO sorry. Are you OKAY?” I realize it might seem a little callous to some of you, the vision of Greg and myself laughing, (in part) at the misfortune of others and I apologize if I’ve offended someone whose lost a loved1 to drug addiction. Come to think of it, she probably said something very similar when Greg passed away due to a combination of sleep apnia and drug use. (Only in his case she probably was a bit annoyed on top of her distress, as Greg had a habit of not paying her.) But all I can say is, you had to be there to see her mournfully recount to us the details of the client she’d lost (a famous political writer in his late 70’s) In fact, it would have been really good if you’d been there, because if you’d been present, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be. (wouldn’t HAVE to be, but probably would be anyway. Posted in News | 14 Comments » « Older Entries 04/02/09 - 05/03/09 in Seattle, WA at The Rep View all dates © 2009 CarrieFisher | Powered by WordPress | Entries (RSS)
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topdocbear > kingman     BIOGRAPHY BOOKS BLOG Happy Valentines Doc By Carrie • Feb 15th, 2009 • Category: News I have a friend named Arnie Klein. Dr. Arnold Klein. Dr. Arnie Klein He’s an actual doctor, not1 of those people that call themselves doctors, like my father’s son in law. (or whatever you call your wife’s child that’s not yours) My father’s wife, Betty Lin, had a son who called himself, “Doctor Winky”. She would still have a son named doctor winky, but she passed away some years ago, so now Doctor Winky can belong to all of us. Doctor Winky is not, in fact, a physician, but a doctor of night club lights. You wouldn’t think that there was a call for a doctor of night club lights, and there probably isn’t. But if there WAS a need for someone to doctor strobe lights and the other ailing bulbs—–Doctor Winky would be their man. But Arnie isn’t a light doctor. He’s an actual doctor. And not JUST an actual doctor, Arnie is a dermatologist to the stars. He’s a pimple and wrinkle doctor, ideal for adolescence and old age and everything in between. Arnie is a great doctor. Great because he loves what he does. His job is medicine and his hobby is medicine. He spends his weekends reading medical journals. My pimples brought me to Arnie and my wrinkles and affection will keep me with him til the end. His and/or mine. Arnie and I are completely opposite in a similar way. He wants to feel like he could go into surgery in a moments notice. As the doctor. Whilst I want to feel as though I could go into surgery in a moments notice ——as the patient. Arnie likes me to write about him. He calls it feeding his narcissism. Not that this (being written about or paid attention to) is an uncommon pleasure. Especially in what is laughingly called Hollywood. I think most people like being written about. Nicely, of course. And now that Arnie has discovered that there is a new venue where I could pay him further tribute—-well, as you see—– So…….here I am writing about him………in front of God and everyone……in front of blog and everyone……Arnie………here is your tribute. Happy Valentines Day………. Posted in News | 5 Comments » Star light star bright, the rest I cant remember right. By Carrie • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: News My mother was born in El Paso, Texas. She was the second child of Ray and Maxene Reynolds, who had my mother’s brother, Bill at 16 and then proceeded to have my mother, Mary Frances, the following year. One of the reasons my grandmother wanted to marry at such a young age, was she anxious to have her own room. Raised in an extremely large family, she was anxious to get away and secure for herself some privacy. Odd logic—–marrying for privacy—-but then, my family has never been known for it’s conventional10dencies. My grandmother’s mother, Maxie Harmon, began having children in her late teens & continuing to procreate until she had her last child at 49, which the doctor informed her was a tumor—–and when that growth was born, they called him, of course, Tumor—–making him my mother’s “Uncle Tumor, who was and remains younger than his niece. Maxene grew up sharing everything with her multiple siblings, from beds to food to clothes—–, she never wore anything but her sister’s hand me downs—– so the prospect of her own closet and living in her own house was extremely alluring. She once told me that her family was so poor that they, “didn’t have6 matching glasses.”Then she added brusquely, “And don’t you put that in1 of your books!” (She didn’t say anything about blogs, so I share it without threat of adding more weight to my already tubby conscience. It would also be difficult for her to object much at this point, as my grandmother had the bad manners to pass away some time ago.) So, hoping to secure some privacy and perhaps even a dress of her own,when my 15 year old grandmother caught the eye of my handsome grandfather, Raymond Francis Reynolds, a local boy who played baseball rather well and worked on the railroad, she did nothing to discourage him. Ray was much more handsome than tall, and Maxene was more large busted than beautiful——but they began to pool their liabilities and their assets, and soon enough they found themselves courting and then, out of the something borrowed, something blue, they were wed. Unfortunately, my great grandmother (not so great in this case) had neglected to inform her daughter, Maxene, about just what would be expected of her on her wedding night——so that when my grandfather began to ………..well, as you might imagine, my grandma was, in addition to being unwilling was also quite understandably paralyzed with disbelief. Surely my grandfather was making this up——how could anyone be expected to do anything as bizarre as this! It took my grandfather3 days and lots of sketching, (what I wouldn’t give to see those!) for her to finally relent and more than likely unenthusiastically, let him have his now legal way with her. ——————————————————— My mother wasn’t a mother that cooked and cleaned and helped me with my homework, but not knowing these things existed I didn’t miss them. Debbie Carrie & Todd She was both parents to Todd and I. The main reason my father has any children at all is largely because they’re a by product of sex, which he’s devoted a huge portion of his life to. Certainly not out of any urge to procreate. We rarely saw our him—-maybe once a year—–yet my mother never spoke ill of him. At Christmas she would buy gifts and sign his name on the card. Of course, my brother and I weren’t really fooled, as she made little effort to disguise her handwriting———But the fact that she did it at all was dear. Though she had an extremely demanding career, Todd and I always had the sense that we came first to her. Both then and now. One of my favorite things that my mother does is give advice. Most mothers give advice, but she does it in a very unique way. “You know dear, I had a dream that you left your lawyers and went with mine. I know you don’t believe my dreams mean anything—–even the1 that predicted I would buy the house next door.” She mainly dreams about things she wants me to do. The MGM lionshare of her dreams are about my agents, flaws in contracts, and A LOT of dreams about business managers. Aren’t dreams meant to be symbolic? Didn’t Jung say that? And what about Freud’s theory that most dreams are sexual? And wasn’t there also a theory that you are everyone in your dreams? My mom would probably like that last notion, as it would make her my agent, my lawyer and my business manager. My mother is as far from ordinary as you can get without a rocket or special dispensation from the government. She wears turbans and sequined dresses (though rarely together),black pants and a black top with a colorful button down shirt open at the front, like a jacket. She applies her make up like a fastidious artist. Seated in front of a large mirror surrounded by lights and a white towel spread on the table beneath the mirror is another, smaller mirror for the detail work, like eyeliner and eyelash application. The walls of her home are adorned with autographed photographs of celebrities she has both known and worked with and those whom she admired. Even though she’s a celebrity herself, there’s a part of my mother that’s like a fan. No…wait…….not ‘like’,……..she IS a fan. A fan of classic films, and even some contemporary (she loved Slum Dog Millionaire) It’s almost as though she’s not part of the Hollywood community—-on the inside looking out. There’s an enormous part of her that is on the outside looking in. That is, unless she’s onstage looking out. She reads fan magazines, biographies of celebrities and watches AMC. She has always been and is still delighted by an inspired performance. For years my mother had a drama coach named Lillian Sydney. Lillian was the vocal coach at MGM, and in a short time became my mother’s mentor. Lillian had what I always called a Hollywood accent. Like the vocal coach in, “Singing in the Rain”, saying to Jean Hagen, “No, dear, ROUND tones! “And I CAAAHHNT stand him!” Where you sound like an aristocrat, someone overflowing with class—— even yawning and sneezing with elegance. And this appealed enormously to my mother who, coming from the south, wanted to sound like movie stars did. She started at the studio at 16, and I’m sure they wanted her to get rid of her accent. They changed her name from Mary Frances to Debbie (which she wouldn’t answer to for 2 years) they told her that her ears stuck out and had them surgically pinned back, they shaved her eyebrows, which then never grew back. They could reinvent her superficially, but the part of her that was raised in a2 room house in El Paso, the thoughtful, hard working, devoted, loyal, darling human that she is they couldn’t —–thank God—–alter. We’ve all heard the expression, “Star Quality”———-that ineffable something that makes certain people focus pullers. It’s my theory that they shine. Something glows out of their eyes, —–as though they’ve swallowed some of the spot light that follows them around onstage——- ——— and people get caught in their magnetic field and are drawn to them. It might even be possible that1 of the reasons that celebrities are called stars—— is because of this shine. And maybe if you hang around these beaming people, some of it will rub off on you. Whatever this thing is that glows out of them that makes them preferred above most others, if you touch them, talk to them, walk with them, live with them—-maybe you can get anointed by this wattage. Debbie Reynolds Anyway, my mother had this thing, this sublime light, and its been spilling out of her ever since she was6teen, shine that poured out of her and all over everyone. People followed her in the street, flocked to her shows—–wanted a piece of her because she reminded them of the best version of themselves. And to get that piece they applaud her, write her, love her in all the ways they know how, and my mother appreciates it. Especially when she performs. She gives everything she’s got and in return the audience celebrates her and this makes her feel a little like she’s going to live forever. And she is. She’s going to take some of that shine of hers with her and leave the rest of it to glow out of the eyes of the people that love her. Sorry it’s taken me this long to post anything. Between ECT and ice skating with my daughter, I’ve neglected carrying you all out on a wave of tales. Bear with me if you can……….or even if you can’t……. oxxoxooxcff Tags: Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, ECT, family story, Texas Posted in News | 26 Comments » What Was I Thinking? By Carrie • Feb 7th, 2009 • Category: News What Was I Thinking? About a year ago my friend Paul Slansky asked me to contribute to a book his wife, Liz Dubelman, was doing about that terrible moment when you realize that the relationship you’re in isn’t going to work. Well, I just happened to have a few of those to choose from, so I wrote1 up and now that book – What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories – has just been published, with my humble effort right up front. Here’s the beginning of “A Bullwhip?” I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality. And so when I meet someone, that’s where we hang out. It goes on for miles, the great outdoors, we romp around in my personality. And in my big sprawling personality, where this new someone is now, I love him. I love everything he does. I love being with him, I love sex with him, I’m charmed by him. And what is love if not a state of enchantment? You meet someone and it puts a charm on the world. Everything looks better when you love someone and you know you’re going to see him later. Everything between now and that later is so much fun to do, because you’re going to get who and what you want at the end of the day, so anything’s possible when that’s up ahead. Now when the person that this happens with is someone like Paul Simon, then we’re not just hanging out in my big personality. He has1, too, and they overlap in a lot of places. And that’s when it’s really kind of golden, when you can find someone who speaks your bizarre, bizarre dialect of a language of the smallest country in the world that hardly anyone ever visits, but they never forget having been there. Paul and I did share that, so when we got enchanted, the enchantment lasted a long time. But the problem is that, even at its best, enchantment just can’t sustain. When I date someone, I generally have about3 months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much. Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.” And once that starts, it’s like a case of measles, where you get just1 itch1 day, and then that itch spreads and spreads and spreads. And what feeds it is that he sees it happening. My face is like a Richter scale of every quake inside and outside of me, so it all shows up somehow. And if I turn the full beam on him of how much I like him and who he thinks he is, with everything that I am, if I shed that much light on him, and then that light starts diminishing, diminishing, diminishing, he notices. And I can’t stop it, and the more I try to stop it the more it looks like I’m trying to stop it, and that light gets fainter and fainter and fainter until everyone’s in a dark room. I remember it specifically happening when I was going out with this guy Jesse. He was actually smart, and the enchantment was unbelievably great. I remember once we were making out at Disneyland – I was that into him that I was just publicly making out. One night we were at my house and I was watching television, and Jesse was rubbing my back. And apparently I wasn’t turning the full beam on him, because it went from0 to a thousand in a nanosecond. He said, and not nicely, “What does somebody have to do to get your attention? Wrap a bullwhip around your neck?” Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book: http://tr.im/e9pe What Was I Thinking? Posted in News | 19 Comments » Life is a bowl of cherry bombs. By Carrie • Feb 5th, 2009 • Category: News But now we’ve finally come to the point of my entire, almost endless, over dramatic tale of woe. Remember the other day/week/month/year when I said I would write something in response to my brother’s thoughtful comment on my blog? Well, I”ve finally come to the part of the story where I thought I’d tell you about my calm, caring, insanely sane brother Todd…….. My brother and I were raised with the epic, mesmerizing (to us) story of how we came to be. According to my mother, I was the love child—–conceived when my parents were still riding the warm wave of romantic love. And he was the child she managed to extract from my disinterested father’s penis so that I could have company. Because all too soon their love wave crashed, and so, despite the fact that their marriage was basically in on the rocks, my mother chased my father around, hoping he would impregnate to insure that I wouldn’t end up being an only child. And so, determined that I should have a life long companion and though my father was virtually ignoring her, with his attention Taylor made to elsewhere, she somehow managed to wrangle her round wriggly way into getting inseminated with my beloved bro. Debbie w/ Carrie & Todd A companion to share our Mysterious to anyone but us History with. The Abbott to my Costello, the Fred to my Ginger, the Luke to my Leia. She made me a fellow conspirator: the rock to my roll, a co to his ed, a mate for my soul. Someone I could go on the teeter totter with, so I could go up and down and not just stay down. A partner to play chess with, if we’d ever taken the time out from where we kept it to learn……. or even a partner to dance the polka with, if we were ever absurdly inclined. Someone to blame everything on, outside of whoever else was around. My brother was all this —-and IS all this—– and more to me. Thanks to my mother’s determination to fashion a sibling for me out of my father’s increasingly thin air, this love child was able to experience brotherly love… Not a fantastic story for Todd to be brought up hearing, I’ll grant you, but hear it he did. And, like everything else, it didn’t seem to bother him. By the time Todd was born, my father was consoling Elizabeth Taylor’s heartbreak over the loss of her husband and father of her child, and namesake of my brother, Mike Todd. Eddie consoled Elizabeth the1 way her knew how—- with his trusty, grief eliminating child inseminating penis. Eddie Fisher & Elizabeth Taylor And of course, as everyone knows, grief can’t be eliminated with just a few thrusts. In order to do a really thorough job, the person with the healing penis has to continue the treatment for quite awhile. In my father’s case, he treated Elizabeth’s dispair for about4 years. (just to make COMPLETELY sure she was no longer burdened by those pesky feelings of loss) And then, when she was finally sadness free and free for anything fancy, she left my father in favor of the fancy top dollar attention paid for her new, improved mate, Richard Burton. But, back to my brother…… Unlike myself, who had enjoyed my father’s company for a year and a half, Todd never spent any time with our father. But this actually turned out to be a GOOD thing, because you can’t miss something you’ve never had. Unfortunately, in my case, I’d lived with my dad just long enough to, not only wonder where he’d gone to, but blame myself for not being lovable enough to get him to stay. (Oh poor sad Carrie! Get out your handkerchief for these nosebleed high class problems, where you sob with a British accent…..) Todd Fisher But whether it was because of the different ways my dad’s absence affected us, or because of what I refer to as, “It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it”, Todd grew up to be a calm, imperturbable, life is just a bowl of cherries guy (he actually said that to me once) and I……well, I just wasn’t like that—to say the least in the most way. As he grew up, my brother became a kind of attendant to the insane. Unflustered, he was the eye of the family tornado—-my mother and I cast as the tornado….And there he would remain unflustered & serene—nothing seemed to phase him. And believe me, there was a lot of phase inducing circumstances available to challenge even the most stalwart citizen…….but not Todd. Todd was more like my grandfather. Ray Reynolds, off somewhere fixing a TV set, or building a tree house—-My mother’s father was a carpenter and Todd absorbed his distracted, peaceful temperament, while I wandered thru the landscape, absorbing anything and everything that could be taken personally—–cars, wallpaper, absent parents, my reflection…..name it and it was my fault. Todd? No big fuckin deal. Why bother? I wanted to feel like he seemed, you know? I know you know people like this. You can’t fool me. (Well, maybe you can, just not in this area). So when Greg died, Todd made a reservation at a spa in England. A place near Sandhurst, the military training center of the United Kingdom. James Blunt went there! It had to be good! (the military school, not necessarily the spa) Actually, it takes quite a bit to ruin a spa. It’s possible, I suppose, but, in my experience, rare. Expensive and rare. But this being something of an emotional emergency, if there was ever a time to cough up the funds it was now. So we settled into our peaceful nook, nestled there in the English countryside. So there I was, nestled in another bed, watching another assortment of programs designed to distract you from whatever unpleasant experience you’d found yourself slogging through. Only this time my brother was in charge of my television programming. And what he had selected for my viewing pleasure was war movies. Whether it was old movie classics, or documentaries, this was what I feasted my famished eyes on for the duration of our stay there. (which was probably not more than a week) As big of an old movie aficionado as I was, this was an area that I had neglected. You know—-being a girl and all—-what use did I have for, “Seven Minutes over Tokyo” or “Fail Safe”? But as it turns out, these films were extremely healing for me. It may sound funny to you, but it’s true. Especially the documentaries. “Band of Brothers” Band of Brothers was my favorite. It was hours and hours of watching people go thru experiences that made my crisis look like a pimple on the ass of difficulty. (isn’t that a lovely expression? You can use it whenever you like) Not only the multiple hour show itself, but the “Making of Band of Brothers” was amazingly inspirational to me. I mean, it’s absurd for me really to compare me waking up with my dead friend to these heroic soldiers facing death all day every day, losing comrades, losing LIMBS! I mean, MY GOD! There was1 survivor of World War2 who had seen his friend get his arm blown off and, as they were taking him away on the stretcher, this soldier stopped the medics, pointed down to his arm on the ground and asking them if they would mind getting him his watch!!!!! Wow. Just incredible. And watching these films day after healing day, I thought—–well, if these men can live through THAT! And not just live in some cases, but THRIVE! If they can do that, what’s my sad experience but……..something to get to the other side of, like these men had done. Isn’t there a saying, “What man has done, man can do?” Well, I’m assuming that applies to women too, so……I set about doing what others had done before me and, in their cases, with NOBILITY. All this to say, this was my brother’s gift to me. It’s his instinct to leave someone better off than when he came across them. Whatever strength I have is bourne out of weakness. Heartbreak is my teacher. My brother’s strength comes from trust that things will be alright in the end. He sees the good in things. I find the good by traipsing thru the bad slooowly……..so I don’t miss a bruise……. Posted in News | 42 Comments » Laughing waters… eyes jeweled with tears By Carrie • Feb 4th, 2009 • Category: News Okay, if you never watch another thing again, watch this. It will make your life work. My daughter sent it to me (it flowed out of her like laughing waters….) and everything is going to be okay now.Obviously, anyone that sends this to you cares about you very much. So my daughter, Billie, cares about me—–and by extension, you—-and obviously it would follow then follow that I care deeply for you as well. See? And then everything else can just build from there! You’re officially out of harms way and in the joyous pink! So go forth and fire fly! oxxoxoxo cff Posted in News | 28 Comments » Death and houseguests………. By Carrie • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News After Greg died I stopped talking. It was as if my personality followed him down the dark passage of death and left someone who looked a lot like me, except that now my features where organized into an expression of abject fear. I had been scared—-not TO death, but BY death…you might say that Greg’s death had scared the fucking life out of me. The thing about someone dying, though, is that life goes on. While your loved1 is busy relaxing in their cozy coffins, you still have appointments, a job, friends, children —-a whole parcel of living things pulling on you to get on with it. I mean, life can be just as demanding as death in, it’s own way…….Of course, as far as I know, the demands of those us as yet unceasing are probably more of the high class variety than the demands of the deceased. Now, I’ve never really been the type of person who gets over things easily. —-I mean, I had a hard getting over the fact that I didn’t have blue eyes or finding out that I hadn’t been invited to some big party someone was throwing somewhere……., so being confronted by something as formidable as dying—well, it wouldn’t be too difficult to predict that I wouldn’t be the person putting the “fun” in funeral. Not that anyone finds it particularly easy burying someone who wouldn’t normally be considered the burying age. I mean, Greg was way far from being past his prime. His wild lifestyle probably placed him neck and neck with his prime, but for anyone to die in their forties in this day and age is a hearty mix of premature and tragic. So after Greg died I just couldn’t seem to be able to shake it off. Partly because I had loved Greg—–we had always had a lot of fun together. Much of it was the truant type of fun, but that didn’t make it any less amusing for us. Just for the folks around us who had to deal with our antics. But the other reason because I blamed myself, you see. I mean, it had happened on my watch. If only I’d woken in the middle of the night, I might have been able to save him. If only I hadn’t been so busy sleeping, I might’ve been able to wake him up the next morning….. The fact that Greg lived life like there was no tomorrow didn’t enter into it.(of course, eventually there really IS no tomorrow—–which occurs right when you run out of your stash of yesterdays and todays) I mean, it was as if Greg’s dying had more to do with me than it did with him. Which is a pretty fancy twist of perspective, when you think about it. “It’s all for you, Damien!” the nanny cries out in the movie, “The Omen”—-only in this case it was me shouting, “It’s all for you, Greg!” —-and unlike the nanny, I didn’t subsequently hang myself. Not literally, anyway. So, I lay in bed for most of the day staring at the TV, as if waiting for it to provide me with an explanation as to how I’d been chosen to survive this particular set of circumstances. Or, perhaps a show would come on that might somehow relate to my predicament. A new cable show called, “C’mon! Shake it off! What’s the big deal?!” But no such show came to my rescue. Instead, in exchange for Greg I was provided with an assortment of 5 brand new……..HOUSEGUESTS! Hooray!1 visitor dies and 5 others take his place! Needless to say, I wasn’t much of a hostess at this point. I gave more of what was left of my undivided attention to the television set than I did to the visiting friends that now crowded my house. After Greg’s body was removed, (ugh……) I had my bed frame discarded, considering it’s inability to keep Greg alive—– and then we moved the remaining mattress to a new, no death free location in my room. (having, no doubt, determined that the mattress was virtually innocent in causing Greg’s untimely death). So you might say that the entire tragic incident was just a question of luck. Perhaps the reason Greg had died was because of where the bed had been previously located and now that it had been moved from that place, no1 else would die. Of course, it might have been simpler had I just moved to another room—–ANY room—why not the LIVING ROOM?! I mean, especially considering the room was designed for LIVING, unlike my bed room, which it turned out, had been designed for death! Posted in News | 25 Comments » Who’s sorry now! By admin • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News I told people this might happen, but did anyone listen to me?! NO! Hippo eats Dwarf Posted in News | 40 Comments » A view from the bridge over troubled princess……… By Carrie • Jan 31st, 2009 • Category: News I did a radio show yesterday and the man that interviewed me asked me what question I’d been asked over the years that had most annoyed me. “That’s easy” I told him. “Did you know “Star Wars” would be that big of a hit?” The interviewer laughed, “When I told people here at work that I would be interviewing you,” he said, ” All the men wanted was for me to ask how it felt to wear the metal bikini.” Now I laughed, “The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn’t metal. ——Not that metal would’ve been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn’t adhere to1’s skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt’s gigantic, albiet grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom……….well, it had the10dency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett—–I believe his name was Jeremy—–from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask——to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida. Posted in News | 40 Comments » Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral By Carrie • Jan 30th, 2009 • Category: News I have to tell you something before we go any further with this blogging business. See, I’m a very persnickety human. I can’t just write something and push a button sending it out into the internetosphere for all to judge and laugh at. I have to endlessly fuck with my words so nobody can make fun of me. (more…) Posted in News | 38 Comments » Dead Man Blogging By Carrie • Jan 28th, 2009 • Category: News I’m not really the “thought for the day” type. I mean, “I couldn’t care less than the more that I do” probably wouldn’t help too many people. Or, “I can’t wait to not get what I want” isn’t really going to go along way with inspiring too many folks But my brother’s post was pretty cool, no? I told him that I’d post a response, but now I’ll have to do it tomorrow. (Sorry Todd!) Since I didn’t have a very eventful day, I thought I might reminisce—–you know, drudge shit up from the past when I led a more colorful life. Colorful and debilitating combined. For those of you who haven’t read my book, I had a good friend name Greg Stevens who had the bad manners to die in my house. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he died in my BED, with me beside him, sleeping til Bruce Cohen and his boyfriend, (now husband) woke me into a world it would take me a long, bummer amount of time to blunder through. But before Greg died he was alot of fun. (he might be alot of fun AFTER his death, but as to that I have no way of knowing) He was especially fun when you consider he was a Republican, but also aside from that. All on his own, politically conservative party aside, I loved spending time with Greg. Greg R Stevens That’s not to say that he was always EASY to be with. Greg was extremely fond of drugs—-an affection I could relate to. But Greg could actually make me look like an amateur in comparison—–that is, when we weren’t neck and neck in bad behavior. If you were to say that Greg and I were a bad influence on eachother…………well, you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Inches away, in fact. The truth would be breathing it’s hot scented breath down your well behaved neck. One of my favorite evenings we spent together was in New York. We’d been in upstate New York at my friend Griffin Dunne’s wedding, and afterwards we drove back to the city and checked into Greg’s suite at the4 Seasons Hotel in midtown. Greg had had quite a bit to drink at the wedding. Enough to cause him to continuously slide from the seat onto the floor of the town car he’d hired for the occasion. Greg spent most of his life in hotels. The fancier the better. He liked to live what some call, “The high life”……..(and the word, “high” could obviously be interpreted in a variety of ways) He loved spas, where he could get massages and facials and manicures and pedicures—-and he LOVED shopping—a pass time which——-along with the altered state—-we both enthusiastically shared. Greg had always told me that he came from a very wealthy family —- consequently making him very wealthy as well. He told me that he’d inherited a HUGE amount of money from a trust fund that his mother had set up for he and his2 brothers in the late6ties when they were quite young. And the money in this trust fund had originally come from a law suit his mother had won against some doctors that had gotten her husband addicted to speed. (if I’d known you could win law suits against people that get father’s addicted to speed, my siblings and I would be set for life, as my father had shot speed for 15 years courtesy of the original Dr. Feelgood aka Dr. Max Jacobsen). Anyway, for whatever idiotic reason I never questioned Greg’s story ——- I mean, it never occurred to me that someone might lie about a thing like that… My only experience with lying was someone (like myself) denying being stoned, or perhaps when someone assured someone else (say me maybe) that they didn’t look fat and that that assurance happened not to be so. One of the reasons that might explain why Greg had made up the story of his alleged wealth was that he thought that people would like him more if they thought he were rich. A sad explanation, but nonetheless possible. So, Greg told everyone that his mother had won this alleged law suit for something like2 million dollars. (not that there are very many things like2 million dollars—– other than2 million dollars) And she’d subsequently invested the money wisely, so that when Greg and his brothers came of age they would receive trust funds worth well over 50 million dollars apiece. BUT, Greg informed me, because of his drug use, his mother had decided NOT to give him his inheritance when he came of age (35, and he was now in his early 40’s)—– and that he would only receive it when and only when he sobered up. The gag was (according to Greg)—–that because he had NOT received his inheritance, it had increased10 fold because, unlike his brother’s, Greg’s money had remained invested, so on that fateful day when his mother would finally give his inheritance to him , he would be richer than either1 of his very, VERY rich brothers combined! Incredible tale, no? The only thing wrong with it was that it was entirely fabricated. A fact I didn’t find out until his wake, when his1 of his brothers told me. The idea that Greg had concocted this fantasy of immense and imminent wealth was hilarious to them. (As hilarious as it could be given that Greg had to die for all of us to get the joke) Anyway, back to Greg getting really drunk at Griffin’s wedding reception. So drunk that he ended up calling his dealer in the city from his cell phone en route from upstate New York. It turned out, probably not so amazingly enough, I’d met this woman before, once with Greg in another suite in another hotel the year before, and another time, some years Marianne Faithful back, in Ireland when she was supplying (among other clients) the now sober, then not ,Marianne Faithful. At the time this dealer had a fairly lucrative business in London—so lucrative that she was able to afford a very nice house in Chelsea. But in the ensuing years she’d moved her business back to Manhatten, and as luck would have it (dumb luck, of course), Greg wound up being1 of her clients. I forget her name, but I’ll never forget how she looked. In her mid6ties, she was quite a large person, weighing in at maybe 200–250 pounds. And if that wasn’t enough, she had a face that was a little like a basset hound. When she arrived with her delivery that night, I was in the bedroom searching for an in house movie to watch, when I hear the front door to the suite opening. I peered discretely around the corner to see who was coming down the hall and into the livingroom, which is when I recognize her from the United (drug) Kingdom. As I watched, she dragged herself, every ounce her, to a couch at the farside of the living room, huffing and puffing, with a woebegone expression on her droopy, familiar face….I listen as Greg enthusiastically greets her and I find myself thinking, well, given that I’d met her before, I should probably go say hello, right? I mean, after all, manners are manners, no? I don’t care HOW much dope is involved. So I enter the living room to pay the top dollar of my respects, and as I watch, she eases her entire self down with considerable effort and sighs a defeated sigh. “I’m so depressed” she says wearily. And now, as Greg and I gaze at this hefty, uber human self, we’re forced to say, “Why? How could someone like YOU be depressed??? You—–who have SO much to live for! A 60 something immensely overweight drug dealer with a face dripping with paste colored flesh——if happiness has eluded someone as deserving as you, what hope to the rest of us have???? And then, in response to our question as to the source of her unimaginable despondence, she replies, “I lost a client today……” “NO! You must be JOKING! Imagine losing a client in a business like yours!!!!! That is just …….well, BIZARRE!” Of course this is a sampling of something we’re thinking, as we avoid catching1 another eyes and dissolving into peals of laughter. What we SAY is, “I’m SO sorry. Are you OKAY?” I realize it might seem a little callous to some of you, the vision of Greg and myself laughing, (in part) at the misfortune of others and I apologize if I’ve offended someone whose lost a loved1 to drug addiction. Come to think of it, she probably said something very similar when Greg passed away due to a combination of sleep apnia and drug use. (Only in his case she probably was a bit annoyed on top of her distress, as Greg had a habit of not paying her.) But all I can say is, you had to be there to see her mournfully recount to us the details of the client she’d lost (a famous political writer in his late 70’s) In fact, it would have been really good if you’d been there, because if you’d been present, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be. (wouldn’t HAVE to be, but probably would be anyway. Posted in News | 14 Comments » « Older Entries 04/02/09 - 05/03/09 in Seattle, WA at The Rep View all dates © 2009 CarrieFisher | Powered by WordPress | Entries (RSS)
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topdocbear > kingman     BIOGRAPHY BOOKS BLOG Happy Valentines Doc By Carrie • Feb 15th, 2009 • Category: News I have a friend named Arnie Klein. Dr. Arnold Klein. Dr. Arnie Klein He’s an actual doctor, not1 of those people that call themselves doctors, like my father’s son in law. (or whatever you call your wife’s child that’s not yours) My father’s wife, Betty Lin, had a son who called himself, “Doctor Winky”. She would still have a son named doctor winky, but she passed away some years ago, so now Doctor Winky can belong to all of us. Doctor Winky is not, in fact, a physician, but a doctor of night club lights. You wouldn’t think that there was a call for a doctor of night club lights, and there probably isn’t. But if there WAS a need for someone to doctor strobe lights and the other ailing bulbs—–Doctor Winky would be their man. But Arnie isn’t a light doctor. He’s an actual doctor. And not JUST an actual doctor, Arnie is a dermatologist to the stars. He’s a pimple and wrinkle doctor, ideal for adolescence and old age and everything in between. Arnie is a great doctor. Great because he loves what he does. His job is medicine and his hobby is medicine. He spends his weekends reading medical journals. My pimples brought me to Arnie and my wrinkles and affection will keep me with him til the end. His and/or mine. Arnie and I are completely opposite in a similar way. He wants to feel like he could go into surgery in a moments notice. As the doctor. Whilst I want to feel as though I could go into surgery in a moments notice ——as the patient. Arnie likes me to write about him. He calls it feeding his narcissism. Not that this (being written about or paid attention to) is an uncommon pleasure. Especially in what is laughingly called Hollywood. I think most people like being written about. Nicely, of course. And now that Arnie has discovered that there is a new venue where I could pay him further tribute—-well, as you see—– So…….here I am writing about him………in front of God and everyone……in front of blog and everyone……Arnie………here is your tribute. Happy Valentines Day………. Posted in News | 5 Comments » Star light star bright, the rest I cant remember right. By Carrie • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: News My mother was born in El Paso, Texas. She was the second child of Ray and Maxene Reynolds, who had my mother’s brother, Bill at 16 and then proceeded to have my mother, Mary Frances, the following year. One of the reasons my grandmother wanted to marry at such a young age, was she anxious to have her own room. Raised in an extremely large family, she was anxious to get away and secure for herself some privacy. Odd logic—–marrying for privacy—-but then, my family has never been known for it’s conventional10dencies. My grandmother’s mother, Maxie Harmon, began having children in her late teens & continuing to procreate until she had her last child at 49, which the doctor informed her was a tumor—–and when that growth was born, they called him, of course, Tumor—–making him my mother’s “Uncle Tumor, who was and remains younger than his niece. Maxene grew up sharing everything with her multiple siblings, from beds to food to clothes—–, she never wore anything but her sister’s hand me downs—– so the prospect of her own closet and living in her own house was extremely alluring. She once told me that her family was so poor that they, “didn’t have6 matching glasses.”Then she added brusquely, “And don’t you put that in1 of your books!” (She didn’t say anything about blogs, so I share it without threat of adding more weight to my already tubby conscience. It would also be difficult for her to object much at this point, as my grandmother had the bad manners to pass away some time ago.) So, hoping to secure some privacy and perhaps even a dress of her own,when my 15 year old grandmother caught the eye of my handsome grandfather, Raymond Francis Reynolds, a local boy who played baseball rather well and worked on the railroad, she did nothing to discourage him. Ray was much more handsome than tall, and Maxene was more large busted than beautiful——but they began to pool their liabilities and their assets, and soon enough they found themselves courting and then, out of the something borrowed, something blue, they were wed. Unfortunately, my great grandmother (not so great in this case) had neglected to inform her daughter, Maxene, about just what would be expected of her on her wedding night——so that when my grandfather began to ………..well, as you might imagine, my grandma was, in addition to being unwilling was also quite understandably paralyzed with disbelief. Surely my grandfather was making this up——how could anyone be expected to do anything as bizarre as this! It took my grandfather3 days and lots of sketching, (what I wouldn’t give to see those!) for her to finally relent and more than likely unenthusiastically, let him have his now legal way with her. ——————————————————— My mother wasn’t a mother that cooked and cleaned and helped me with my homework, but not knowing these things existed I didn’t miss them. Debbie Carrie & Todd She was both parents to Todd and I. The main reason my father has any children at all is largely because they’re a by product of sex, which he’s devoted a huge portion of his life to. Certainly not out of any urge to procreate. We rarely saw our him—-maybe once a year—–yet my mother never spoke ill of him. At Christmas she would buy gifts and sign his name on the card. Of course, my brother and I weren’t really fooled, as she made little effort to disguise her handwriting———But the fact that she did it at all was dear. Though she had an extremely demanding career, Todd and I always had the sense that we came first to her. Both then and now. One of my favorite things that my mother does is give advice. Most mothers give advice, but she does it in a very unique way. “You know dear, I had a dream that you left your lawyers and went with mine. I know you don’t believe my dreams mean anything—–even the1 that predicted I would buy the house next door.” She mainly dreams about things she wants me to do. The MGM lionshare of her dreams are about my agents, flaws in contracts, and A LOT of dreams about business managers. Aren’t dreams meant to be symbolic? Didn’t Jung say that? And what about Freud’s theory that most dreams are sexual? And wasn’t there also a theory that you are everyone in your dreams? My mom would probably like that last notion, as it would make her my agent, my lawyer and my business manager. My mother is as far from ordinary as you can get without a rocket or special dispensation from the government. She wears turbans and sequined dresses (though rarely together),black pants and a black top with a colorful button down shirt open at the front, like a jacket. She applies her make up like a fastidious artist. Seated in front of a large mirror surrounded by lights and a white towel spread on the table beneath the mirror is another, smaller mirror for the detail work, like eyeliner and eyelash application. The walls of her home are adorned with autographed photographs of celebrities she has both known and worked with and those whom she admired. Even though she’s a celebrity herself, there’s a part of my mother that’s like a fan. No…wait…….not ‘like’,……..she IS a fan. A fan of classic films, and even some contemporary (she loved Slum Dog Millionaire) It’s almost as though she’s not part of the Hollywood community—-on the inside looking out. There’s an enormous part of her that is on the outside looking in. That is, unless she’s onstage looking out. She reads fan magazines, biographies of celebrities and watches AMC. She has always been and is still delighted by an inspired performance. For years my mother had a drama coach named Lillian Sydney. Lillian was the vocal coach at MGM, and in a short time became my mother’s mentor. Lillian had what I always called a Hollywood accent. Like the vocal coach in, “Singing in the Rain”, saying to Jean Hagen, “No, dear, ROUND tones! “And I CAAAHHNT stand him!” Where you sound like an aristocrat, someone overflowing with class—— even yawning and sneezing with elegance. And this appealed enormously to my mother who, coming from the south, wanted to sound like movie stars did. She started at the studio at 16, and I’m sure they wanted her to get rid of her accent. They changed her name from Mary Frances to Debbie (which she wouldn’t answer to for 2 years) they told her that her ears stuck out and had them surgically pinned back, they shaved her eyebrows, which then never grew back. They could reinvent her superficially, but the part of her that was raised in a2 room house in El Paso, the thoughtful, hard working, devoted, loyal, darling human that she is they couldn’t —–thank God—–alter. We’ve all heard the expression, “Star Quality”———-that ineffable something that makes certain people focus pullers. It’s my theory that they shine. Something glows out of their eyes, —–as though they’ve swallowed some of the spot light that follows them around onstage——- ——— and people get caught in their magnetic field and are drawn to them. It might even be possible that1 of the reasons that celebrities are called stars—— is because of this shine. And maybe if you hang around these beaming people, some of it will rub off on you. Whatever this thing is that glows out of them that makes them preferred above most others, if you touch them, talk to them, walk with them, live with them—-maybe you can get anointed by this wattage. Debbie Reynolds Anyway, my mother had this thing, this sublime light, and its been spilling out of her ever since she was6teen, shine that poured out of her and all over everyone. People followed her in the street, flocked to her shows—–wanted a piece of her because she reminded them of the best version of themselves. And to get that piece they applaud her, write her, love her in all the ways they know how, and my mother appreciates it. Especially when she performs. She gives everything she’s got and in return the audience celebrates her and this makes her feel a little like she’s going to live forever. And she is. She’s going to take some of that shine of hers with her and leave the rest of it to glow out of the eyes of the people that love her. Sorry it’s taken me this long to post anything. Between ECT and ice skating with my daughter, I’ve neglected carrying you all out on a wave of tales. Bear with me if you can……….or even if you can’t……. oxxoxooxcff Tags: Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, ECT, family story, Texas Posted in News | 26 Comments » What Was I Thinking? By Carrie • Feb 7th, 2009 • Category: News What Was I Thinking? About a year ago my friend Paul Slansky asked me to contribute to a book his wife, Liz Dubelman, was doing about that terrible moment when you realize that the relationship you’re in isn’t going to work. Well, I just happened to have a few of those to choose from, so I wrote1 up and now that book – What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories – has just been published, with my humble effort right up front. Here’s the beginning of “A Bullwhip?” I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality. And so when I meet someone, that’s where we hang out. It goes on for miles, the great outdoors, we romp around in my personality. And in my big sprawling personality, where this new someone is now, I love him. I love everything he does. I love being with him, I love sex with him, I’m charmed by him. And what is love if not a state of enchantment? You meet someone and it puts a charm on the world. Everything looks better when you love someone and you know you’re going to see him later. Everything between now and that later is so much fun to do, because you’re going to get who and what you want at the end of the day, so anything’s possible when that’s up ahead. Now when the person that this happens with is someone like Paul Simon, then we’re not just hanging out in my big personality. He has1, too, and they overlap in a lot of places. And that’s when it’s really kind of golden, when you can find someone who speaks your bizarre, bizarre dialect of a language of the smallest country in the world that hardly anyone ever visits, but they never forget having been there. Paul and I did share that, so when we got enchanted, the enchantment lasted a long time. But the problem is that, even at its best, enchantment just can’t sustain. When I date someone, I generally have about3 months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much. Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.” And once that starts, it’s like a case of measles, where you get just1 itch1 day, and then that itch spreads and spreads and spreads. And what feeds it is that he sees it happening. My face is like a Richter scale of every quake inside and outside of me, so it all shows up somehow. And if I turn the full beam on him of how much I like him and who he thinks he is, with everything that I am, if I shed that much light on him, and then that light starts diminishing, diminishing, diminishing, he notices. And I can’t stop it, and the more I try to stop it the more it looks like I’m trying to stop it, and that light gets fainter and fainter and fainter until everyone’s in a dark room. I remember it specifically happening when I was going out with this guy Jesse. He was actually smart, and the enchantment was unbelievably great. I remember once we were making out at Disneyland – I was that into him that I was just publicly making out. One night we were at my house and I was watching television, and Jesse was rubbing my back. And apparently I wasn’t turning the full beam on him, because it went from0 to a thousand in a nanosecond. He said, and not nicely, “What does somebody have to do to get your attention? Wrap a bullwhip around your neck?” Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book: http://tr.im/e9pe What Was I Thinking? Posted in News | 19 Comments » Life is a bowl of cherry bombs. By Carrie • Feb 5th, 2009 • Category: News But now we’ve finally come to the point of my entire, almost endless, over dramatic tale of woe. Remember the other day/week/month/year when I said I would write something in response to my brother’s thoughtful comment on my blog? Well, I”ve finally come to the part of the story where I thought I’d tell you about my calm, caring, insanely sane brother Todd…….. My brother and I were raised with the epic, mesmerizing (to us) story of how we came to be. According to my mother, I was the love child—–conceived when my parents were still riding the warm wave of romantic love. And he was the child she managed to extract from my disinterested father’s penis so that I could have company. Because all too soon their love wave crashed, and so, despite the fact that their marriage was basically in on the rocks, my mother chased my father around, hoping he would impregnate to insure that I wouldn’t end up being an only child. And so, determined that I should have a life long companion and though my father was virtually ignoring her, with his attention Taylor made to elsewhere, she somehow managed to wrangle her round wriggly way into getting inseminated with my beloved bro. Debbie w/ Carrie & Todd A companion to share our Mysterious to anyone but us History with. The Abbott to my Costello, the Fred to my Ginger, the Luke to my Leia. She made me a fellow conspirator: the rock to my roll, a co to his ed, a mate for my soul. Someone I could go on the teeter totter with, so I could go up and down and not just stay down. A partner to play chess with, if we’d ever taken the time out from where we kept it to learn……. or even a partner to dance the polka with, if we were ever absurdly inclined. Someone to blame everything on, outside of whoever else was around. My brother was all this —-and IS all this—– and more to me. Thanks to my mother’s determination to fashion a sibling for me out of my father’s increasingly thin air, this love child was able to experience brotherly love… Not a fantastic story for Todd to be brought up hearing, I’ll grant you, but hear it he did. And, like everything else, it didn’t seem to bother him. By the time Todd was born, my father was consoling Elizabeth Taylor’s heartbreak over the loss of her husband and father of her child, and namesake of my brother, Mike Todd. Eddie consoled Elizabeth the1 way her knew how—- with his trusty, grief eliminating child inseminating penis. Eddie Fisher & Elizabeth Taylor And of course, as everyone knows, grief can’t be eliminated with just a few thrusts. In order to do a really thorough job, the person with the healing penis has to continue the treatment for quite awhile. In my father’s case, he treated Elizabeth’s dispair for about4 years. (just to make COMPLETELY sure she was no longer burdened by those pesky feelings of loss) And then, when she was finally sadness free and free for anything fancy, she left my father in favor of the fancy top dollar attention paid for her new, improved mate, Richard Burton. But, back to my brother…… Unlike myself, who had enjoyed my father’s company for a year and a half, Todd never spent any time with our father. But this actually turned out to be a GOOD thing, because you can’t miss something you’ve never had. Unfortunately, in my case, I’d lived with my dad just long enough to, not only wonder where he’d gone to, but blame myself for not being lovable enough to get him to stay. (Oh poor sad Carrie! Get out your handkerchief for these nosebleed high class problems, where you sob with a British accent…..) Todd Fisher But whether it was because of the different ways my dad’s absence affected us, or because of what I refer to as, “It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it”, Todd grew up to be a calm, imperturbable, life is just a bowl of cherries guy (he actually said that to me once) and I……well, I just wasn’t like that—to say the least in the most way. As he grew up, my brother became a kind of attendant to the insane. Unflustered, he was the eye of the family tornado—-my mother and I cast as the tornado….And there he would remain unflustered & serene—nothing seemed to phase him. And believe me, there was a lot of phase inducing circumstances available to challenge even the most stalwart citizen…….but not Todd. Todd was more like my grandfather. Ray Reynolds, off somewhere fixing a TV set, or building a tree house—-My mother’s father was a carpenter and Todd absorbed his distracted, peaceful temperament, while I wandered thru the landscape, absorbing anything and everything that could be taken personally—–cars, wallpaper, absent parents, my reflection…..name it and it was my fault. Todd? No big fuckin deal. Why bother? I wanted to feel like he seemed, you know? I know you know people like this. You can’t fool me. (Well, maybe you can, just not in this area). So when Greg died, Todd made a reservation at a spa in England. A place near Sandhurst, the military training center of the United Kingdom. James Blunt went there! It had to be good! (the military school, not necessarily the spa) Actually, it takes quite a bit to ruin a spa. It’s possible, I suppose, but, in my experience, rare. Expensive and rare. But this being something of an emotional emergency, if there was ever a time to cough up the funds it was now. So we settled into our peaceful nook, nestled there in the English countryside. So there I was, nestled in another bed, watching another assortment of programs designed to distract you from whatever unpleasant experience you’d found yourself slogging through. Only this time my brother was in charge of my television programming. And what he had selected for my viewing pleasure was war movies. Whether it was old movie classics, or documentaries, this was what I feasted my famished eyes on for the duration of our stay there. (which was probably not more than a week) As big of an old movie aficionado as I was, this was an area that I had neglected. You know—-being a girl and all—-what use did I have for, “Seven Minutes over Tokyo” or “Fail Safe”? But as it turns out, these films were extremely healing for me. It may sound funny to you, but it’s true. Especially the documentaries. “Band of Brothers” Band of Brothers was my favorite. It was hours and hours of watching people go thru experiences that made my crisis look like a pimple on the ass of difficulty. (isn’t that a lovely expression? You can use it whenever you like) Not only the multiple hour show itself, but the “Making of Band of Brothers” was amazingly inspirational to me. I mean, it’s absurd for me really to compare me waking up with my dead friend to these heroic soldiers facing death all day every day, losing comrades, losing LIMBS! I mean, MY GOD! There was1 survivor of World War2 who had seen his friend get his arm blown off and, as they were taking him away on the stretcher, this soldier stopped the medics, pointed down to his arm on the ground and asking them if they would mind getting him his watch!!!!! Wow. Just incredible. And watching these films day after healing day, I thought—–well, if these men can live through THAT! And not just live in some cases, but THRIVE! If they can do that, what’s my sad experience but……..something to get to the other side of, like these men had done. Isn’t there a saying, “What man has done, man can do?” Well, I’m assuming that applies to women too, so……I set about doing what others had done before me and, in their cases, with NOBILITY. All this to say, this was my brother’s gift to me. It’s his instinct to leave someone better off than when he came across them. Whatever strength I have is bourne out of weakness. Heartbreak is my teacher. My brother’s strength comes from trust that things will be alright in the end. He sees the good in things. I find the good by traipsing thru the bad slooowly……..so I don’t miss a bruise……. Posted in News | 42 Comments » Laughing waters… eyes jeweled with tears By Carrie • Feb 4th, 2009 • Category: News Okay, if you never watch another thing again, watch this. It will make your life work. My daughter sent it to me (it flowed out of her like laughing waters….) and everything is going to be okay now.Obviously, anyone that sends this to you cares about you very much. So my daughter, Billie, cares about me—–and by extension, you—-and obviously it would follow then follow that I care deeply for you as well. See? And then everything else can just build from there! You’re officially out of harms way and in the joyous pink! So go forth and fire fly! oxxoxoxo cff Posted in News | 28 Comments » Death and houseguests………. By Carrie • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News After Greg died I stopped talking. It was as if my personality followed him down the dark passage of death and left someone who looked a lot like me, except that now my features where organized into an expression of abject fear. I had been scared—-not TO death, but BY death…you might say that Greg’s death had scared the fucking life out of me. The thing about someone dying, though, is that life goes on. While your loved1 is busy relaxing in their cozy coffins, you still have appointments, a job, friends, children —-a whole parcel of living things pulling on you to get on with it. I mean, life can be just as demanding as death in, it’s own way…….Of course, as far as I know, the demands of those us as yet unceasing are probably more of the high class variety than the demands of the deceased. Now, I’ve never really been the type of person who gets over things easily. —-I mean, I had a hard getting over the fact that I didn’t have blue eyes or finding out that I hadn’t been invited to some big party someone was throwing somewhere……., so being confronted by something as formidable as dying—well, it wouldn’t be too difficult to predict that I wouldn’t be the person putting the “fun” in funeral. Not that anyone finds it particularly easy burying someone who wouldn’t normally be considered the burying age. I mean, Greg was way far from being past his prime. His wild lifestyle probably placed him neck and neck with his prime, but for anyone to die in their forties in this day and age is a hearty mix of premature and tragic. So after Greg died I just couldn’t seem to be able to shake it off. Partly because I had loved Greg—–we had always had a lot of fun together. Much of it was the truant type of fun, but that didn’t make it any less amusing for us. Just for the folks around us who had to deal with our antics. But the other reason because I blamed myself, you see. I mean, it had happened on my watch. If only I’d woken in the middle of the night, I might have been able to save him. If only I hadn’t been so busy sleeping, I might’ve been able to wake him up the next morning….. The fact that Greg lived life like there was no tomorrow didn’t enter into it.(of course, eventually there really IS no tomorrow—–which occurs right when you run out of your stash of yesterdays and todays) I mean, it was as if Greg’s dying had more to do with me than it did with him. Which is a pretty fancy twist of perspective, when you think about it. “It’s all for you, Damien!” the nanny cries out in the movie, “The Omen”—-only in this case it was me shouting, “It’s all for you, Greg!” —-and unlike the nanny, I didn’t subsequently hang myself. Not literally, anyway. So, I lay in bed for most of the day staring at the TV, as if waiting for it to provide me with an explanation as to how I’d been chosen to survive this particular set of circumstances. Or, perhaps a show would come on that might somehow relate to my predicament. A new cable show called, “C’mon! Shake it off! What’s the big deal?!” But no such show came to my rescue. Instead, in exchange for Greg I was provided with an assortment of 5 brand new……..HOUSEGUESTS! Hooray!1 visitor dies and 5 others take his place! Needless to say, I wasn’t much of a hostess at this point. I gave more of what was left of my undivided attention to the television set than I did to the visiting friends that now crowded my house. After Greg’s body was removed, (ugh……) I had my bed frame discarded, considering it’s inability to keep Greg alive—– and then we moved the remaining mattress to a new, no death free location in my room. (having, no doubt, determined that the mattress was virtually innocent in causing Greg’s untimely death). So you might say that the entire tragic incident was just a question of luck. Perhaps the reason Greg had died was because of where the bed had been previously located and now that it had been moved from that place, no1 else would die. Of course, it might have been simpler had I just moved to another room—–ANY room—why not the LIVING ROOM?! I mean, especially considering the room was designed for LIVING, unlike my bed room, which it turned out, had been designed for death! Posted in News | 25 Comments » Who’s sorry now! By admin • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News I told people this might happen, but did anyone listen to me?! NO! Hippo eats Dwarf Posted in News | 40 Comments » A view from the bridge over troubled princess……… By Carrie • Jan 31st, 2009 • Category: News I did a radio show yesterday and the man that interviewed me asked me what question I’d been asked over the years that had most annoyed me. “That’s easy” I told him. “Did you know “Star Wars” would be that big of a hit?” The interviewer laughed, “When I told people here at work that I would be interviewing you,” he said, ” All the men wanted was for me to ask how it felt to wear the metal bikini.” Now I laughed, “The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn’t metal. ——Not that metal would’ve been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn’t adhere to1’s skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt’s gigantic, albiet grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom……….well, it had the10dency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett—–I believe his name was Jeremy—–from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask——to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida. Posted in News | 40 Comments » Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral By Carrie • Jan 30th, 2009 • Category: News I have to tell you something before we go any further with this blogging business. See, I’m a very persnickety human. I can’t just write something and push a button sending it out into the internetosphere for all to judge and laugh at. I have to endlessly fuck with my words so nobody can make fun of me. (more…) Posted in News | 38 Comments » Dead Man Blogging By Carrie • Jan 28th, 2009 • Category: News I’m not really the “thought for the day” type. I mean, “I couldn’t care less than the more that I do” probably wouldn’t help too many people. Or, “I can’t wait to not get what I want” isn’t really going to go along way with inspiring too many folks But my brother’s post was pretty cool, no? I told him that I’d post a response, but now I’ll have to do it tomorrow. (Sorry Todd!) Since I didn’t have a very eventful day, I thought I might reminisce—–you know, drudge shit up from the past when I led a more colorful life. Colorful and debilitating combined. For those of you who haven’t read my book, I had a good friend name Greg Stevens who had the bad manners to die in my house. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he died in my BED, with me beside him, sleeping til Bruce Cohen and his boyfriend, (now husband) woke me into a world it would take me a long, bummer amount of time to blunder through. But before Greg died he was alot of fun. (he might be alot of fun AFTER his death, but as to that I have no way of knowing) He was especially fun when you consider he was a Republican, but also aside from that. All on his own, politically conservative party aside, I loved spending time with Greg. Greg R Stevens That’s not to say that he was always EASY to be with. Greg was extremely fond of drugs—-an affection I could relate to. But Greg could actually make me look like an amateur in comparison—–that is, when we weren’t neck and neck in bad behavior. If you were to say that Greg and I were a bad influence on eachother…………well, you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Inches away, in fact. The truth would be breathing it’s hot scented breath down your well behaved neck. One of my favorite evenings we spent together was in New York. We’d been in upstate New York at my friend Griffin Dunne’s wedding, and afterwards we drove back to the city and checked into Greg’s suite at the4 Seasons Hotel in midtown. Greg had had quite a bit to drink at the wedding. Enough to cause him to continuously slide from the seat onto the floor of the town car he’d hired for the occasion. Greg spent most of his life in hotels. The fancier the better. He liked to live what some call, “The high life”……..(and the word, “high” could obviously be interpreted in a variety of ways) He loved spas, where he could get massages and facials and manicures and pedicures—-and he LOVED shopping—a pass time which——-along with the altered state—-we both enthusiastically shared. Greg had always told me that he came from a very wealthy family —- consequently making him very wealthy as well. He told me that he’d inherited a HUGE amount of money from a trust fund that his mother had set up for he and his2 brothers in the late6ties when they were quite young. And the money in this trust fund had originally come from a law suit his mother had won against some doctors that had gotten her husband addicted to speed. (if I’d known you could win law suits against people that get father’s addicted to speed, my siblings and I would be set for life, as my father had shot speed for 15 years courtesy of the original Dr. Feelgood aka Dr. Max Jacobsen). Anyway, for whatever idiotic reason I never questioned Greg’s story ——- I mean, it never occurred to me that someone might lie about a thing like that… My only experience with lying was someone (like myself) denying being stoned, or perhaps when someone assured someone else (say me maybe) that they didn’t look fat and that that assurance happened not to be so. One of the reasons that might explain why Greg had made up the story of his alleged wealth was that he thought that people would like him more if they thought he were rich. A sad explanation, but nonetheless possible. So, Greg told everyone that his mother had won this alleged law suit for something like2 million dollars. (not that there are very many things like2 million dollars—– other than2 million dollars) And she’d subsequently invested the money wisely, so that when Greg and his brothers came of age they would receive trust funds worth well over 50 million dollars apiece. BUT, Greg informed me, because of his drug use, his mother had decided NOT to give him his inheritance when he came of age (35, and he was now in his early 40’s)—– and that he would only receive it when and only when he sobered up. The gag was (according to Greg)—–that because he had NOT received his inheritance, it had increased10 fold because, unlike his brother’s, Greg’s money had remained invested, so on that fateful day when his mother would finally give his inheritance to him , he would be richer than either1 of his very, VERY rich brothers combined! Incredible tale, no? The only thing wrong with it was that it was entirely fabricated. A fact I didn’t find out until his wake, when his1 of his brothers told me. The idea that Greg had concocted this fantasy of immense and imminent wealth was hilarious to them. (As hilarious as it could be given that Greg had to die for all of us to get the joke) Anyway, back to Greg getting really drunk at Griffin’s wedding reception. So drunk that he ended up calling his dealer in the city from his cell phone en route from upstate New York. It turned out, probably not so amazingly enough, I’d met this woman before, once with Greg in another suite in another hotel the year before, and another time, some years Marianne Faithful back, in Ireland when she was supplying (among other clients) the now sober, then not ,Marianne Faithful. At the time this dealer had a fairly lucrative business in London—so lucrative that she was able to afford a very nice house in Chelsea. But in the ensuing years she’d moved her business back to Manhatten, and as luck would have it (dumb luck, of course), Greg wound up being1 of her clients. I forget her name, but I’ll never forget how she looked. In her mid6ties, she was quite a large person, weighing in at maybe 200–250 pounds. And if that wasn’t enough, she had a face that was a little like a basset hound. When she arrived with her delivery that night, I was in the bedroom searching for an in house movie to watch, when I hear the front door to the suite opening. I peered discretely around the corner to see who was coming down the hall and into the livingroom, which is when I recognize her from the United (drug) Kingdom. As I watched, she dragged herself, every ounce her, to a couch at the farside of the living room, huffing and puffing, with a woebegone expression on her droopy, familiar face….I listen as Greg enthusiastically greets her and I find myself thinking, well, given that I’d met her before, I should probably go say hello, right? I mean, after all, manners are manners, no? I don’t care HOW much dope is involved. So I enter the living room to pay the top dollar of my respects, and as I watch, she eases her entire self down with considerable effort and sighs a defeated sigh. “I’m so depressed” she says wearily. And now, as Greg and I gaze at this hefty, uber human self, we’re forced to say, “Why? How could someone like YOU be depressed??? You—–who have SO much to live for! A 60 something immensely overweight drug dealer with a face dripping with paste colored flesh——if happiness has eluded someone as deserving as you, what hope to the rest of us have???? And then, in response to our question as to the source of her unimaginable despondence, she replies, “I lost a client today……” “NO! You must be JOKING! Imagine losing a client in a business like yours!!!!! That is just …….well, BIZARRE!” Of course this is a sampling of something we’re thinking, as we avoid catching1 another eyes and dissolving into peals of laughter. What we SAY is, “I’m SO sorry. Are you OKAY?” I realize it might seem a little callous to some of you, the vision of Greg and myself laughing, (in part) at the misfortune of others and I apologize if I’ve offended someone whose lost a loved1 to drug addiction. Come to think of it, she probably said something very similar when Greg passed away due to a combination of sleep apnia and drug use. (Only in his case she probably was a bit annoyed on top of her distress, as Greg had a habit of not paying her.) But all I can say is, you had to be there to see her mournfully recount to us the details of the client she’d lost (a famous political writer in his late 70’s) In fact, it would have been really good if you’d been there, because if you’d been present, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be. (wouldn’t HAVE to be, but probably would be anyway. Posted in News | 14 Comments » « Older Entries 04/02/09 - 05/03/09 in Seattle, WA at The Rep View all dates © 2009 CarrieFisher | Powered by WordPress | Entries (RSS)
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topdocbear > kingman     BIOGRAPHY BOOKS BLOG Happy Valentines Doc By Carrie • Feb 15th, 2009 • Category: News I have a friend named Arnie Klein. Dr. Arnold Klein. Dr. Arnie Klein He’s an actual doctor, not1 of those people that call themselves doctors, like my father’s son in law. (or whatever you call your wife’s child that’s not yours) My father’s wife, Betty Lin, had a son who called himself, “Doctor Winky”. She would still have a son named doctor winky, but she passed away some years ago, so now Doctor Winky can belong to all of us. Doctor Winky is not, in fact, a physician, but a doctor of night club lights. You wouldn’t think that there was a call for a doctor of night club lights, and there probably isn’t. But if there WAS a need for someone to doctor strobe lights and the other ailing bulbs—–Doctor Winky would be their man. But Arnie isn’t a light doctor. He’s an actual doctor. And not JUST an actual doctor, Arnie is a dermatologist to the stars. He’s a pimple and wrinkle doctor, ideal for adolescence and old age and everything in between. Arnie is a great doctor. Great because he loves what he does. His job is medicine and his hobby is medicine. He spends his weekends reading medical journals. My pimples brought me to Arnie and my wrinkles and affection will keep me with him til the end. His and/or mine. Arnie and I are completely opposite in a similar way. He wants to feel like he could go into surgery in a moments notice. As the doctor. Whilst I want to feel as though I could go into surgery in a moments notice ——as the patient. Arnie likes me to write about him. He calls it feeding his narcissism. Not that this (being written about or paid attention to) is an uncommon pleasure. Especially in what is laughingly called Hollywood. I think most people like being written about. Nicely, of course. And now that Arnie has discovered that there is a new venue where I could pay him further tribute—-well, as you see—– So…….here I am writing about him………in front of God and everyone……in front of blog and everyone……Arnie………here is your tribute. Happy Valentines Day………. Posted in News | 5 Comments » Star light star bright, the rest I cant remember right. By Carrie • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: News My mother was born in El Paso, Texas. She was the second child of Ray and Maxene Reynolds, who had my mother’s brother, Bill at 16 and then proceeded to have my mother, Mary Frances, the following year. One of the reasons my grandmother wanted to marry at such a young age, was she anxious to have her own room. Raised in an extremely large family, she was anxious to get away and secure for herself some privacy. Odd logic—–marrying for privacy—-but then, my family has never been known for it’s conventional10dencies. My grandmother’s mother, Maxie Harmon, began having children in her late teens & continuing to procreate until she had her last child at 49, which the doctor informed her was a tumor—–and when that growth was born, they called him, of course, Tumor—–making him my mother’s “Uncle Tumor, who was and remains younger than his niece. Maxene grew up sharing everything with her multiple siblings, from beds to food to clothes—–, she never wore anything but her sister’s hand me downs—– so the prospect of her own closet and living in her own house was extremely alluring. She once told me that her family was so poor that they, “didn’t have6 matching glasses.”Then she added brusquely, “And don’t you put that in1 of your books!” (She didn’t say anything about blogs, so I share it without threat of adding more weight to my already tubby conscience. It would also be difficult for her to object much at this point, as my grandmother had the bad manners to pass away some time ago.) So, hoping to secure some privacy and perhaps even a dress of her own,when my 15 year old grandmother caught the eye of my handsome grandfather, Raymond Francis Reynolds, a local boy who played baseball rather well and worked on the railroad, she did nothing to discourage him. Ray was much more handsome than tall, and Maxene was more large busted than beautiful——but they began to pool their liabilities and their assets, and soon enough they found themselves courting and then, out of the something borrowed, something blue, they were wed. Unfortunately, my great grandmother (not so great in this case) had neglected to inform her daughter, Maxene, about just what would be expected of her on her wedding night——so that when my grandfather began to ………..well, as you might imagine, my grandma was, in addition to being unwilling was also quite understandably paralyzed with disbelief. Surely my grandfather was making this up——how could anyone be expected to do anything as bizarre as this! It took my grandfather3 days and lots of sketching, (what I wouldn’t give to see those!) for her to finally relent and more than likely unenthusiastically, let him have his now legal way with her. ——————————————————— My mother wasn’t a mother that cooked and cleaned and helped me with my homework, but not knowing these things existed I didn’t miss them. Debbie Carrie & Todd She was both parents to Todd and I. The main reason my father has any children at all is largely because they’re a by product of sex, which he’s devoted a huge portion of his life to. Certainly not out of any urge to procreate. We rarely saw our him—-maybe once a year—–yet my mother never spoke ill of him. At Christmas she would buy gifts and sign his name on the card. Of course, my brother and I weren’t really fooled, as she made little effort to disguise her handwriting———But the fact that she did it at all was dear. Though she had an extremely demanding career, Todd and I always had the sense that we came first to her. Both then and now. One of my favorite things that my mother does is give advice. Most mothers give advice, but she does it in a very unique way. “You know dear, I had a dream that you left your lawyers and went with mine. I know you don’t believe my dreams mean anything—–even the1 that predicted I would buy the house next door.” She mainly dreams about things she wants me to do. The MGM lionshare of her dreams are about my agents, flaws in contracts, and A LOT of dreams about business managers. Aren’t dreams meant to be symbolic? Didn’t Jung say that? And what about Freud’s theory that most dreams are sexual? And wasn’t there also a theory that you are everyone in your dreams? My mom would probably like that last notion, as it would make her my agent, my lawyer and my business manager. My mother is as far from ordinary as you can get without a rocket or special dispensation from the government. She wears turbans and sequined dresses (though rarely together),black pants and a black top with a colorful button down shirt open at the front, like a jacket. She applies her make up like a fastidious artist. Seated in front of a large mirror surrounded by lights and a white towel spread on the table beneath the mirror is another, smaller mirror for the detail work, like eyeliner and eyelash application. The walls of her home are adorned with autographed photographs of celebrities she has both known and worked with and those whom she admired. Even though she’s a celebrity herself, there’s a part of my mother that’s like a fan. No…wait…….not ‘like’,……..she IS a fan. A fan of classic films, and even some contemporary (she loved Slum Dog Millionaire) It’s almost as though she’s not part of the Hollywood community—-on the inside looking out. There’s an enormous part of her that is on the outside looking in. That is, unless she’s onstage looking out. She reads fan magazines, biographies of celebrities and watches AMC. She has always been and is still delighted by an inspired performance. For years my mother had a drama coach named Lillian Sydney. Lillian was the vocal coach at MGM, and in a short time became my mother’s mentor. Lillian had what I always called a Hollywood accent. Like the vocal coach in, “Singing in the Rain”, saying to Jean Hagen, “No, dear, ROUND tones! “And I CAAAHHNT stand him!” Where you sound like an aristocrat, someone overflowing with class—— even yawning and sneezing with elegance. And this appealed enormously to my mother who, coming from the south, wanted to sound like movie stars did. She started at the studio at 16, and I’m sure they wanted her to get rid of her accent. They changed her name from Mary Frances to Debbie (which she wouldn’t answer to for 2 years) they told her that her ears stuck out and had them surgically pinned back, they shaved her eyebrows, which then never grew back. They could reinvent her superficially, but the part of her that was raised in a2 room house in El Paso, the thoughtful, hard working, devoted, loyal, darling human that she is they couldn’t —–thank God—–alter. We’ve all heard the expression, “Star Quality”———-that ineffable something that makes certain people focus pullers. It’s my theory that they shine. Something glows out of their eyes, —–as though they’ve swallowed some of the spot light that follows them around onstage——- ——— and people get caught in their magnetic field and are drawn to them. It might even be possible that1 of the reasons that celebrities are called stars—— is because of this shine. And maybe if you hang around these beaming people, some of it will rub off on you. Whatever this thing is that glows out of them that makes them preferred above most others, if you touch them, talk to them, walk with them, live with them—-maybe you can get anointed by this wattage. Debbie Reynolds Anyway, my mother had this thing, this sublime light, and its been spilling out of her ever since she was6teen, shine that poured out of her and all over everyone. People followed her in the street, flocked to her shows—–wanted a piece of her because she reminded them of the best version of themselves. And to get that piece they applaud her, write her, love her in all the ways they know how, and my mother appreciates it. Especially when she performs. She gives everything she’s got and in return the audience celebrates her and this makes her feel a little like she’s going to live forever. And she is. She’s going to take some of that shine of hers with her and leave the rest of it to glow out of the eyes of the people that love her. Sorry it’s taken me this long to post anything. Between ECT and ice skating with my daughter, I’ve neglected carrying you all out on a wave of tales. Bear with me if you can……….or even if you can’t……. oxxoxooxcff Tags: Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, ECT, family story, Texas Posted in News | 26 Comments » What Was I Thinking? By Carrie • Feb 7th, 2009 • Category: News What Was I Thinking? About a year ago my friend Paul Slansky asked me to contribute to a book his wife, Liz Dubelman, was doing about that terrible moment when you realize that the relationship you’re in isn’t going to work. Well, I just happened to have a few of those to choose from, so I wrote1 up and now that book – What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories – has just been published, with my humble effort right up front. Here’s the beginning of “A Bullwhip?” I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality. And so when I meet someone, that’s where we hang out. It goes on for miles, the great outdoors, we romp around in my personality. And in my big sprawling personality, where this new someone is now, I love him. I love everything he does. I love being with him, I love sex with him, I’m charmed by him. And what is love if not a state of enchantment? You meet someone and it puts a charm on the world. Everything looks better when you love someone and you know you’re going to see him later. Everything between now and that later is so much fun to do, because you’re going to get who and what you want at the end of the day, so anything’s possible when that’s up ahead. Now when the person that this happens with is someone like Paul Simon, then we’re not just hanging out in my big personality. He has1, too, and they overlap in a lot of places. And that’s when it’s really kind of golden, when you can find someone who speaks your bizarre, bizarre dialect of a language of the smallest country in the world that hardly anyone ever visits, but they never forget having been there. Paul and I did share that, so when we got enchanted, the enchantment lasted a long time. But the problem is that, even at its best, enchantment just can’t sustain. When I date someone, I generally have about3 months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much. Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.” And once that starts, it’s like a case of measles, where you get just1 itch1 day, and then that itch spreads and spreads and spreads. And what feeds it is that he sees it happening. My face is like a Richter scale of every quake inside and outside of me, so it all shows up somehow. And if I turn the full beam on him of how much I like him and who he thinks he is, with everything that I am, if I shed that much light on him, and then that light starts diminishing, diminishing, diminishing, he notices. And I can’t stop it, and the more I try to stop it the more it looks like I’m trying to stop it, and that light gets fainter and fainter and fainter until everyone’s in a dark room. I remember it specifically happening when I was going out with this guy Jesse. He was actually smart, and the enchantment was unbelievably great. I remember once we were making out at Disneyland – I was that into him that I was just publicly making out. One night we were at my house and I was watching television, and Jesse was rubbing my back. And apparently I wasn’t turning the full beam on him, because it went from0 to a thousand in a nanosecond. He said, and not nicely, “What does somebody have to do to get your attention? Wrap a bullwhip around your neck?” Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book: http://tr.im/e9pe What Was I Thinking? Posted in News | 19 Comments » Life is a bowl of cherry bombs. By Carrie • Feb 5th, 2009 • Category: News But now we’ve finally come to the point of my entire, almost endless, over dramatic tale of woe. Remember the other day/week/month/year when I said I would write something in response to my brother’s thoughtful comment on my blog? Well, I”ve finally come to the part of the story where I thought I’d tell you about my calm, caring, insanely sane brother Todd…….. My brother and I were raised with the epic, mesmerizing (to us) story of how we came to be. According to my mother, I was the love child—–conceived when my parents were still riding the warm wave of romantic love. And he was the child she managed to extract from my disinterested father’s penis so that I could have company. Because all too soon their love wave crashed, and so, despite the fact that their marriage was basically in on the rocks, my mother chased my father around, hoping he would impregnate to insure that I wouldn’t end up being an only child. And so, determined that I should have a life long companion and though my father was virtually ignoring her, with his attention Taylor made to elsewhere, she somehow managed to wrangle her round wriggly way into getting inseminated with my beloved bro. Debbie w/ Carrie & Todd A companion to share our Mysterious to anyone but us History with. The Abbott to my Costello, the Fred to my Ginger, the Luke to my Leia. She made me a fellow conspirator: the rock to my roll, a co to his ed, a mate for my soul. Someone I could go on the teeter totter with, so I could go up and down and not just stay down. A partner to play chess with, if we’d ever taken the time out from where we kept it to learn……. or even a partner to dance the polka with, if we were ever absurdly inclined. Someone to blame everything on, outside of whoever else was around. My brother was all this —-and IS all this—– and more to me. Thanks to my mother’s determination to fashion a sibling for me out of my father’s increasingly thin air, this love child was able to experience brotherly love… Not a fantastic story for Todd to be brought up hearing, I’ll grant you, but hear it he did. And, like everything else, it didn’t seem to bother him. By the time Todd was born, my father was consoling Elizabeth Taylor’s heartbreak over the loss of her husband and father of her child, and namesake of my brother, Mike Todd. Eddie consoled Elizabeth the1 way her knew how—- with his trusty, grief eliminating child inseminating penis. Eddie Fisher & Elizabeth Taylor And of course, as everyone knows, grief can’t be eliminated with just a few thrusts. In order to do a really thorough job, the person with the healing penis has to continue the treatment for quite awhile. In my father’s case, he treated Elizabeth’s dispair for about4 years. (just to make COMPLETELY sure she was no longer burdened by those pesky feelings of loss) And then, when she was finally sadness free and free for anything fancy, she left my father in favor of the fancy top dollar attention paid for her new, improved mate, Richard Burton. But, back to my brother…… Unlike myself, who had enjoyed my father’s company for a year and a half, Todd never spent any time with our father. But this actually turned out to be a GOOD thing, because you can’t miss something you’ve never had. Unfortunately, in my case, I’d lived with my dad just long enough to, not only wonder where he’d gone to, but blame myself for not being lovable enough to get him to stay. (Oh poor sad Carrie! Get out your handkerchief for these nosebleed high class problems, where you sob with a British accent…..) Todd Fisher But whether it was because of the different ways my dad’s absence affected us, or because of what I refer to as, “It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it”, Todd grew up to be a calm, imperturbable, life is just a bowl of cherries guy (he actually said that to me once) and I……well, I just wasn’t like that—to say the least in the most way. As he grew up, my brother became a kind of attendant to the insane. Unflustered, he was the eye of the family tornado—-my mother and I cast as the tornado….And there he would remain unflustered & serene—nothing seemed to phase him. And believe me, there was a lot of phase inducing circumstances available to challenge even the most stalwart citizen…….but not Todd. Todd was more like my grandfather. Ray Reynolds, off somewhere fixing a TV set, or building a tree house—-My mother’s father was a carpenter and Todd absorbed his distracted, peaceful temperament, while I wandered thru the landscape, absorbing anything and everything that could be taken personally—–cars, wallpaper, absent parents, my reflection…..name it and it was my fault. Todd? No big fuckin deal. Why bother? I wanted to feel like he seemed, you know? I know you know people like this. You can’t fool me. (Well, maybe you can, just not in this area). So when Greg died, Todd made a reservation at a spa in England. A place near Sandhurst, the military training center of the United Kingdom. James Blunt went there! It had to be good! (the military school, not necessarily the spa) Actually, it takes quite a bit to ruin a spa. It’s possible, I suppose, but, in my experience, rare. Expensive and rare. But this being something of an emotional emergency, if there was ever a time to cough up the funds it was now. So we settled into our peaceful nook, nestled there in the English countryside. So there I was, nestled in another bed, watching another assortment of programs designed to distract you from whatever unpleasant experience you’d found yourself slogging through. Only this time my brother was in charge of my television programming. And what he had selected for my viewing pleasure was war movies. Whether it was old movie classics, or documentaries, this was what I feasted my famished eyes on for the duration of our stay there. (which was probably not more than a week) As big of an old movie aficionado as I was, this was an area that I had neglected. You know—-being a girl and all—-what use did I have for, “Seven Minutes over Tokyo” or “Fail Safe”? But as it turns out, these films were extremely healing for me. It may sound funny to you, but it’s true. Especially the documentaries. “Band of Brothers” Band of Brothers was my favorite. It was hours and hours of watching people go thru experiences that made my crisis look like a pimple on the ass of difficulty. (isn’t that a lovely expression? You can use it whenever you like) Not only the multiple hour show itself, but the “Making of Band of Brothers” was amazingly inspirational to me. I mean, it’s absurd for me really to compare me waking up with my dead friend to these heroic soldiers facing death all day every day, losing comrades, losing LIMBS! I mean, MY GOD! There was1 survivor of World War2 who had seen his friend get his arm blown off and, as they were taking him away on the stretcher, this soldier stopped the medics, pointed down to his arm on the ground and asking them if they would mind getting him his watch!!!!! Wow. Just incredible. And watching these films day after healing day, I thought—–well, if these men can live through THAT! And not just live in some cases, but THRIVE! If they can do that, what’s my sad experience but……..something to get to the other side of, like these men had done. Isn’t there a saying, “What man has done, man can do?” Well, I’m assuming that applies to women too, so……I set about doing what others had done before me and, in their cases, with NOBILITY. All this to say, this was my brother’s gift to me. It’s his instinct to leave someone better off than when he came across them. Whatever strength I have is bourne out of weakness. Heartbreak is my teacher. My brother’s strength comes from trust that things will be alright in the end. He sees the good in things. I find the good by traipsing thru the bad slooowly……..so I don’t miss a bruise……. Posted in News | 42 Comments » Laughing waters… eyes jeweled with tears By Carrie • Feb 4th, 2009 • Category: News Okay, if you never watch another thing again, watch this. It will make your life work. My daughter sent it to me (it flowed out of her like laughing waters….) and everything is going to be okay now.Obviously, anyone that sends this to you cares about you very much. So my daughter, Billie, cares about me—–and by extension, you—-and obviously it would follow then follow that I care deeply for you as well. See? And then everything else can just build from there! You’re officially out of harms way and in the joyous pink! So go forth and fire fly! oxxoxoxo cff Posted in News | 28 Comments » Death and houseguests………. By Carrie • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News After Greg died I stopped talking. It was as if my personality followed him down the dark passage of death and left someone who looked a lot like me, except that now my features where organized into an expression of abject fear. I had been scared—-not TO death, but BY death…you might say that Greg’s death had scared the fucking life out of me. The thing about someone dying, though, is that life goes on. While your loved1 is busy relaxing in their cozy coffins, you still have appointments, a job, friends, children —-a whole parcel of living things pulling on you to get on with it. I mean, life can be just as demanding as death in, it’s own way…….Of course, as far as I know, the demands of those us as yet unceasing are probably more of the high class variety than the demands of the deceased. Now, I’ve never really been the type of person who gets over things easily. —-I mean, I had a hard getting over the fact that I didn’t have blue eyes or finding out that I hadn’t been invited to some big party someone was throwing somewhere……., so being confronted by something as formidable as dying—well, it wouldn’t be too difficult to predict that I wouldn’t be the person putting the “fun” in funeral. Not that anyone finds it particularly easy burying someone who wouldn’t normally be considered the burying age. I mean, Greg was way far from being past his prime. His wild lifestyle probably placed him neck and neck with his prime, but for anyone to die in their forties in this day and age is a hearty mix of premature and tragic. So after Greg died I just couldn’t seem to be able to shake it off. Partly because I had loved Greg—–we had always had a lot of fun together. Much of it was the truant type of fun, but that didn’t make it any less amusing for us. Just for the folks around us who had to deal with our antics. But the other reason because I blamed myself, you see. I mean, it had happened on my watch. If only I’d woken in the middle of the night, I might have been able to save him. If only I hadn’t been so busy sleeping, I might’ve been able to wake him up the next morning….. The fact that Greg lived life like there was no tomorrow didn’t enter into it.(of course, eventually there really IS no tomorrow—–which occurs right when you run out of your stash of yesterdays and todays) I mean, it was as if Greg’s dying had more to do with me than it did with him. Which is a pretty fancy twist of perspective, when you think about it. “It’s all for you, Damien!” the nanny cries out in the movie, “The Omen”—-only in this case it was me shouting, “It’s all for you, Greg!” —-and unlike the nanny, I didn’t subsequently hang myself. Not literally, anyway. So, I lay in bed for most of the day staring at the TV, as if waiting for it to provide me with an explanation as to how I’d been chosen to survive this particular set of circumstances. Or, perhaps a show would come on that might somehow relate to my predicament. A new cable show called, “C’mon! Shake it off! What’s the big deal?!” But no such show came to my rescue. Instead, in exchange for Greg I was provided with an assortment of 5 brand new……..HOUSEGUESTS! Hooray!1 visitor dies and 5 others take his place! Needless to say, I wasn’t much of a hostess at this point. I gave more of what was left of my undivided attention to the television set than I did to the visiting friends that now crowded my house. After Greg’s body was removed, (ugh……) I had my bed frame discarded, considering it’s inability to keep Greg alive—– and then we moved the remaining mattress to a new, no death free location in my room. (having, no doubt, determined that the mattress was virtually innocent in causing Greg’s untimely death). So you might say that the entire tragic incident was just a question of luck. Perhaps the reason Greg had died was because of where the bed had been previously located and now that it had been moved from that place, no1 else would die. Of course, it might have been simpler had I just moved to another room—–ANY room—why not the LIVING ROOM?! I mean, especially considering the room was designed for LIVING, unlike my bed room, which it turned out, had been designed for death! Posted in News | 25 Comments » Who’s sorry now! By admin • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News I told people this might happen, but did anyone listen to me?! NO! Hippo eats Dwarf Posted in News | 40 Comments » A view from the bridge over troubled princess……… By Carrie • Jan 31st, 2009 • Category: News I did a radio show yesterday and the man that interviewed me asked me what question I’d been asked over the years that had most annoyed me. “That’s easy” I told him. “Did you know “Star Wars” would be that big of a hit?” The interviewer laughed, “When I told people here at work that I would be interviewing you,” he said, ” All the men wanted was for me to ask how it felt to wear the metal bikini.” Now I laughed, “The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn’t metal. ——Not that metal would’ve been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn’t adhere to1’s skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt’s gigantic, albiet grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom……….well, it had the10dency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett—–I believe his name was Jeremy—–from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask——to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida. Posted in News | 40 Comments » Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral By Carrie • Jan 30th, 2009 • Category: News I have to tell you something before we go any further with this blogging business. See, I’m a very persnickety human. I can’t just write something and push a button sending it out into the internetosphere for all to judge and laugh at. I have to endlessly fuck with my words so nobody can make fun of me. (more…) Posted in News | 38 Comments » Dead Man Blogging By Carrie • Jan 28th, 2009 • Category: News I’m not really the “thought for the day” type. I mean, “I couldn’t care less than the more that I do” probably wouldn’t help too many people. Or, “I can’t wait to not get what I want” isn’t really going to go along way with inspiring too many folks But my brother’s post was pretty cool, no? I told him that I’d post a response, but now I’ll have to do it tomorrow. (Sorry Todd!) Since I didn’t have a very eventful day, I thought I might reminisce—–you know, drudge shit up from the past when I led a more colorful life. Colorful and debilitating combined. For those of you who haven’t read my book, I had a good friend name Greg Stevens who had the bad manners to die in my house. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he died in my BED, with me beside him, sleeping til Bruce Cohen and his boyfriend, (now husband) woke me into a world it would take me a long, bummer amount of time to blunder through. But before Greg died he was alot of fun. (he might be alot of fun AFTER his death, but as to that I have no way of knowing) He was especially fun when you consider he was a Republican, but also aside from that. All on his own, politically conservative party aside, I loved spending time with Greg. Greg R Stevens That’s not to say that he was always EASY to be with. Greg was extremely fond of drugs—-an affection I could relate to. But Greg could actually make me look like an amateur in comparison—–that is, when we weren’t neck and neck in bad behavior. If you were to say that Greg and I were a bad influence on eachother…………well, you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Inches away, in fact. The truth would be breathing it’s hot scented breath down your well behaved neck. One of my favorite evenings we spent together was in New York. We’d been in upstate New York at my friend Griffin Dunne’s wedding, and afterwards we drove back to the city and checked into Greg’s suite at the4 Seasons Hotel in midtown. Greg had had quite a bit to drink at the wedding. Enough to cause him to continuously slide from the seat onto the floor of the town car he’d hired for the occasion. Greg spent most of his life in hotels. The fancier the better. He liked to live what some call, “The high life”……..(and the word, “high” could obviously be interpreted in a variety of ways) He loved spas, where he could get massages and facials and manicures and pedicures—-and he LOVED shopping—a pass time which——-along with the altered state—-we both enthusiastically shared. Greg had always told me that he came from a very wealthy family —- consequently making him very wealthy as well. He told me that he’d inherited a HUGE amount of money from a trust fund that his mother had set up for he and his2 brothers in the late6ties when they were quite young. And the money in this trust fund had originally come from a law suit his mother had won against some doctors that had gotten her husband addicted to speed. (if I’d known you could win law suits against people that get father’s addicted to speed, my siblings and I would be set for life, as my father had shot speed for 15 years courtesy of the original Dr. Feelgood aka Dr. Max Jacobsen). Anyway, for whatever idiotic reason I never questioned Greg’s story ——- I mean, it never occurred to me that someone might lie about a thing like that… My only experience with lying was someone (like myself) denying being stoned, or perhaps when someone assured someone else (say me maybe) that they didn’t look fat and that that assurance happened not to be so. One of the reasons that might explain why Greg had made up the story of his alleged wealth was that he thought that people would like him more if they thought he were rich. A sad explanation, but nonetheless possible. So, Greg told everyone that his mother had won this alleged law suit for something like2 million dollars. (not that there are very many things like2 million dollars—– other than2 million dollars) And she’d subsequently invested the money wisely, so that when Greg and his brothers came of age they would receive trust funds worth well over 50 million dollars apiece. BUT, Greg informed me, because of his drug use, his mother had decided NOT to give him his inheritance when he came of age (35, and he was now in his early 40’s)—– and that he would only receive it when and only when he sobered up. The gag was (according to Greg)—–that because he had NOT received his inheritance, it had increased10 fold because, unlike his brother’s, Greg’s money had remained invested, so on that fateful day when his mother would finally give his inheritance to him , he would be richer than either1 of his very, VERY rich brothers combined! Incredible tale, no? The only thing wrong with it was that it was entirely fabricated. A fact I didn’t find out until his wake, when his1 of his brothers told me. The idea that Greg had concocted this fantasy of immense and imminent wealth was hilarious to them. (As hilarious as it could be given that Greg had to die for all of us to get the joke) Anyway, back to Greg getting really drunk at Griffin’s wedding reception. So drunk that he ended up calling his dealer in the city from his cell phone en route from upstate New York. It turned out, probably not so amazingly enough, I’d met this woman before, once with Greg in another suite in another hotel the year before, and another time, some years Marianne Faithful back, in Ireland when she was supplying (among other clients) the now sober, then not ,Marianne Faithful. At the time this dealer had a fairly lucrative business in London—so lucrative that she was able to afford a very nice house in Chelsea. But in the ensuing years she’d moved her business back to Manhatten, and as luck would have it (dumb luck, of course), Greg wound up being1 of her clients. I forget her name, but I’ll never forget how she looked. In her mid6ties, she was quite a large person, weighing in at maybe 200–250 pounds. And if that wasn’t enough, she had a face that was a little like a basset hound. When she arrived with her delivery that night, I was in the bedroom searching for an in house movie to watch, when I hear the front door to the suite opening. I peered discretely around the corner to see who was coming down the hall and into the livingroom, which is when I recognize her from the United (drug) Kingdom. As I watched, she dragged herself, every ounce her, to a couch at the farside of the living room, huffing and puffing, with a woebegone expression on her droopy, familiar face….I listen as Greg enthusiastically greets her and I find myself thinking, well, given that I’d met her before, I should probably go say hello, right? I mean, after all, manners are manners, no? I don’t care HOW much dope is involved. So I enter the living room to pay the top dollar of my respects, and as I watch, she eases her entire self down with considerable effort and sighs a defeated sigh. “I’m so depressed” she says wearily. And now, as Greg and I gaze at this hefty, uber human self, we’re forced to say, “Why? How could someone like YOU be depressed??? You—–who have SO much to live for! A 60 something immensely overweight drug dealer with a face dripping with paste colored flesh——if happiness has eluded someone as deserving as you, what hope to the rest of us have???? And then, in response to our question as to the source of her unimaginable despondence, she replies, “I lost a client today……” “NO! You must be JOKING! Imagine losing a client in a business like yours!!!!! That is just …….well, BIZARRE!” Of course this is a sampling of something we’re thinking, as we avoid catching1 another eyes and dissolving into peals of laughter. What we SAY is, “I’m SO sorry. Are you OKAY?” I realize it might seem a little callous to some of you, the vision of Greg and myself laughing, (in part) at the misfortune of others and I apologize if I’ve offended someone whose lost a loved1 to drug addiction. Come to think of it, she probably said something very similar when Greg passed away due to a combination of sleep apnia and drug use. (Only in his case she probably was a bit annoyed on top of her distress, as Greg had a habit of not paying her.) But all I can say is, you had to be there to see her mournfully recount to us the details of the client she’d lost (a famous political writer in his late 70’s) In fact, it would have been really good if you’d been there, because if you’d been present, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be. (wouldn’t HAVE to be, but probably would be anyway. Posted in News | 14 Comments » « Older Entries 04/02/09 - 05/03/09 in Seattle, WA at The Rep View all dates © 2009 CarrieFisher | Powered by WordPress | Entries (RSS)
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topdocbear > kingman     BIOGRAPHY BOOKS BLOG Happy Valentines Doc By Carrie • Feb 15th, 2009 • Category: News I have a friend named Arnie Klein. Dr. Arnold Klein. Dr. Arnie Klein He’s an actual doctor, not1 of those people that call themselves doctors, like my father’s son in law. (or whatever you call your wife’s child that’s not yours) My father’s wife, Betty Lin, had a son who called himself, “Doctor Winky”. She would still have a son named doctor winky, but she passed away some years ago, so now Doctor Winky can belong to all of us. Doctor Winky is not, in fact, a physician, but a doctor of night club lights. You wouldn’t think that there was a call for a doctor of night club lights, and there probably isn’t. But if there WAS a need for someone to doctor strobe lights and the other ailing bulbs—–Doctor Winky would be their man. But Arnie isn’t a light doctor. He’s an actual doctor. And not JUST an actual doctor, Arnie is a dermatologist to the stars. He’s a pimple and wrinkle doctor, ideal for adolescence and old age and everything in between. Arnie is a great doctor. Great because he loves what he does. His job is medicine and his hobby is medicine. He spends his weekends reading medical journals. My pimples brought me to Arnie and my wrinkles and affection will keep me with him til the end. His and/or mine. Arnie and I are completely opposite in a similar way. He wants to feel like he could go into surgery in a moments notice. As the doctor. Whilst I want to feel as though I could go into surgery in a moments notice ——as the patient. Arnie likes me to write about him. He calls it feeding his narcissism. Not that this (being written about or paid attention to) is an uncommon pleasure. Especially in what is laughingly called Hollywood. I think most people like being written about. Nicely, of course. And now that Arnie has discovered that there is a new venue where I could pay him further tribute—-well, as you see—– So…….here I am writing about him………in front of God and everyone……in front of blog and everyone……Arnie………here is your tribute. Happy Valentines Day………. Posted in News | 5 Comments » Star light star bright, the rest I cant remember right. By Carrie • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: News My mother was born in El Paso, Texas. She was the second child of Ray and Maxene Reynolds, who had my mother’s brother, Bill at 16 and then proceeded to have my mother, Mary Frances, the following year. One of the reasons my grandmother wanted to marry at such a young age, was she anxious to have her own room. Raised in an extremely large family, she was anxious to get away and secure for herself some privacy. Odd logic—–marrying for privacy—-but then, my family has never been known for it’s conventional10dencies. My grandmother’s mother, Maxie Harmon, began having children in her late teens & continuing to procreate until she had her last child at 49, which the doctor informed her was a tumor—–and when that growth was born, they called him, of course, Tumor—–making him my mother’s “Uncle Tumor, who was and remains younger than his niece. Maxene grew up sharing everything with her multiple siblings, from beds to food to clothes—–, she never wore anything but her sister’s hand me downs—– so the prospect of her own closet and living in her own house was extremely alluring. She once told me that her family was so poor that they, “didn’t have6 matching glasses.”Then she added brusquely, “And don’t you put that in1 of your books!” (She didn’t say anything about blogs, so I share it without threat of adding more weight to my already tubby conscience. It would also be difficult for her to object much at this point, as my grandmother had the bad manners to pass away some time ago.) So, hoping to secure some privacy and perhaps even a dress of her own,when my 15 year old grandmother caught the eye of my handsome grandfather, Raymond Francis Reynolds, a local boy who played baseball rather well and worked on the railroad, she did nothing to discourage him. Ray was much more handsome than tall, and Maxene was more large busted than beautiful——but they began to pool their liabilities and their assets, and soon enough they found themselves courting and then, out of the something borrowed, something blue, they were wed. Unfortunately, my great grandmother (not so great in this case) had neglected to inform her daughter, Maxene, about just what would be expected of her on her wedding night——so that when my grandfather began to ………..well, as you might imagine, my grandma was, in addition to being unwilling was also quite understandably paralyzed with disbelief. Surely my grandfather was making this up——how could anyone be expected to do anything as bizarre as this! It took my grandfather3 days and lots of sketching, (what I wouldn’t give to see those!) for her to finally relent and more than likely unenthusiastically, let him have his now legal way with her. ——————————————————— My mother wasn’t a mother that cooked and cleaned and helped me with my homework, but not knowing these things existed I didn’t miss them. Debbie Carrie & Todd She was both parents to Todd and I. The main reason my father has any children at all is largely because they’re a by product of sex, which he’s devoted a huge portion of his life to. Certainly not out of any urge to procreate. We rarely saw our him—-maybe once a year—–yet my mother never spoke ill of him. At Christmas she would buy gifts and sign his name on the card. Of course, my brother and I weren’t really fooled, as she made little effort to disguise her handwriting———But the fact that she did it at all was dear. Though she had an extremely demanding career, Todd and I always had the sense that we came first to her. Both then and now. One of my favorite things that my mother does is give advice. Most mothers give advice, but she does it in a very unique way. “You know dear, I had a dream that you left your lawyers and went with mine. I know you don’t believe my dreams mean anything—–even the1 that predicted I would buy the house next door.” She mainly dreams about things she wants me to do. The MGM lionshare of her dreams are about my agents, flaws in contracts, and A LOT of dreams about business managers. Aren’t dreams meant to be symbolic? Didn’t Jung say that? And what about Freud’s theory that most dreams are sexual? And wasn’t there also a theory that you are everyone in your dreams? My mom would probably like that last notion, as it would make her my agent, my lawyer and my business manager. My mother is as far from ordinary as you can get without a rocket or special dispensation from the government. She wears turbans and sequined dresses (though rarely together),black pants and a black top with a colorful button down shirt open at the front, like a jacket. She applies her make up like a fastidious artist. Seated in front of a large mirror surrounded by lights and a white towel spread on the table beneath the mirror is another, smaller mirror for the detail work, like eyeliner and eyelash application. The walls of her home are adorned with autographed photographs of celebrities she has both known and worked with and those whom she admired. Even though she’s a celebrity herself, there’s a part of my mother that’s like a fan. No…wait…….not ‘like’,……..she IS a fan. A fan of classic films, and even some contemporary (she loved Slum Dog Millionaire) It’s almost as though she’s not part of the Hollywood community—-on the inside looking out. There’s an enormous part of her that is on the outside looking in. That is, unless she’s onstage looking out. She reads fan magazines, biographies of celebrities and watches AMC. She has always been and is still delighted by an inspired performance. For years my mother had a drama coach named Lillian Sydney. Lillian was the vocal coach at MGM, and in a short time became my mother’s mentor. Lillian had what I always called a Hollywood accent. Like the vocal coach in, “Singing in the Rain”, saying to Jean Hagen, “No, dear, ROUND tones! “And I CAAAHHNT stand him!” Where you sound like an aristocrat, someone overflowing with class—— even yawning and sneezing with elegance. And this appealed enormously to my mother who, coming from the south, wanted to sound like movie stars did. She started at the studio at 16, and I’m sure they wanted her to get rid of her accent. They changed her name from Mary Frances to Debbie (which she wouldn’t answer to for 2 years) they told her that her ears stuck out and had them surgically pinned back, they shaved her eyebrows, which then never grew back. They could reinvent her superficially, but the part of her that was raised in a2 room house in El Paso, the thoughtful, hard working, devoted, loyal, darling human that she is they couldn’t —–thank God—–alter. We’ve all heard the expression, “Star Quality”———-that ineffable something that makes certain people focus pullers. It’s my theory that they shine. Something glows out of their eyes, —–as though they’ve swallowed some of the spot light that follows them around onstage——- ——— and people get caught in their magnetic field and are drawn to them. It might even be possible that1 of the reasons that celebrities are called stars—— is because of this shine. And maybe if you hang around these beaming people, some of it will rub off on you. Whatever this thing is that glows out of them that makes them preferred above most others, if you touch them, talk to them, walk with them, live with them—-maybe you can get anointed by this wattage. Debbie Reynolds Anyway, my mother had this thing, this sublime light, and its been spilling out of her ever since she was6teen, shine that poured out of her and all over everyone. People followed her in the street, flocked to her shows—–wanted a piece of her because she reminded them of the best version of themselves. And to get that piece they applaud her, write her, love her in all the ways they know how, and my mother appreciates it. Especially when she performs. She gives everything she’s got and in return the audience celebrates her and this makes her feel a little like she’s going to live forever. And she is. She’s going to take some of that shine of hers with her and leave the rest of it to glow out of the eyes of the people that love her. Sorry it’s taken me this long to post anything. Between ECT and ice skating with my daughter, I’ve neglected carrying you all out on a wave of tales. Bear with me if you can……….or even if you can’t……. oxxoxooxcff Tags: Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, ECT, family story, Texas Posted in News | 26 Comments » What Was I Thinking? By Carrie • Feb 7th, 2009 • Category: News What Was I Thinking? About a year ago my friend Paul Slansky asked me to contribute to a book his wife, Liz Dubelman, was doing about that terrible moment when you realize that the relationship you’re in isn’t going to work. Well, I just happened to have a few of those to choose from, so I wrote1 up and now that book – What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories – has just been published, with my humble effort right up front. Here’s the beginning of “A Bullwhip?” I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality. And so when I meet someone, that’s where we hang out. It goes on for miles, the great outdoors, we romp around in my personality. And in my big sprawling personality, where this new someone is now, I love him. I love everything he does. I love being with him, I love sex with him, I’m charmed by him. And what is love if not a state of enchantment? You meet someone and it puts a charm on the world. Everything looks better when you love someone and you know you’re going to see him later. Everything between now and that later is so much fun to do, because you’re going to get who and what you want at the end of the day, so anything’s possible when that’s up ahead. Now when the person that this happens with is someone like Paul Simon, then we’re not just hanging out in my big personality. He has1, too, and they overlap in a lot of places. And that’s when it’s really kind of golden, when you can find someone who speaks your bizarre, bizarre dialect of a language of the smallest country in the world that hardly anyone ever visits, but they never forget having been there. Paul and I did share that, so when we got enchanted, the enchantment lasted a long time. But the problem is that, even at its best, enchantment just can’t sustain. When I date someone, I generally have about3 months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much. Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.” And once that starts, it’s like a case of measles, where you get just1 itch1 day, and then that itch spreads and spreads and spreads. And what feeds it is that he sees it happening. My face is like a Richter scale of every quake inside and outside of me, so it all shows up somehow. And if I turn the full beam on him of how much I like him and who he thinks he is, with everything that I am, if I shed that much light on him, and then that light starts diminishing, diminishing, diminishing, he notices. And I can’t stop it, and the more I try to stop it the more it looks like I’m trying to stop it, and that light gets fainter and fainter and fainter until everyone’s in a dark room. I remember it specifically happening when I was going out with this guy Jesse. He was actually smart, and the enchantment was unbelievably great. I remember once we were making out at Disneyland – I was that into him that I was just publicly making out. One night we were at my house and I was watching television, and Jesse was rubbing my back. And apparently I wasn’t turning the full beam on him, because it went from0 to a thousand in a nanosecond. He said, and not nicely, “What does somebody have to do to get your attention? Wrap a bullwhip around your neck?” Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book: http://tr.im/e9pe What Was I Thinking? Posted in News | 19 Comments » Life is a bowl of cherry bombs. By Carrie • Feb 5th, 2009 • Category: News But now we’ve finally come to the point of my entire, almost endless, over dramatic tale of woe. Remember the other day/week/month/year when I said I would write something in response to my brother’s thoughtful comment on my blog? Well, I”ve finally come to the part of the story where I thought I’d tell you about my calm, caring, insanely sane brother Todd…….. My brother and I were raised with the epic, mesmerizing (to us) story of how we came to be. According to my mother, I was the love child—–conceived when my parents were still riding the warm wave of romantic love. And he was the child she managed to extract from my disinterested father’s penis so that I could have company. Because all too soon their love wave crashed, and so, despite the fact that their marriage was basically in on the rocks, my mother chased my father around, hoping he would impregnate to insure that I wouldn’t end up being an only child. And so, determined that I should have a life long companion and though my father was virtually ignoring her, with his attention Taylor made to elsewhere, she somehow managed to wrangle her round wriggly way into getting inseminated with my beloved bro. Debbie w/ Carrie & Todd A companion to share our Mysterious to anyone but us History with. The Abbott to my Costello, the Fred to my Ginger, the Luke to my Leia. She made me a fellow conspirator: the rock to my roll, a co to his ed, a mate for my soul. Someone I could go on the teeter totter with, so I could go up and down and not just stay down. A partner to play chess with, if we’d ever taken the time out from where we kept it to learn……. or even a partner to dance the polka with, if we were ever absurdly inclined. Someone to blame everything on, outside of whoever else was around. My brother was all this —-and IS all this—– and more to me. Thanks to my mother’s determination to fashion a sibling for me out of my father’s increasingly thin air, this love child was able to experience brotherly love… Not a fantastic story for Todd to be brought up hearing, I’ll grant you, but hear it he did. And, like everything else, it didn’t seem to bother him. By the time Todd was born, my father was consoling Elizabeth Taylor’s heartbreak over the loss of her husband and father of her child, and namesake of my brother, Mike Todd. Eddie consoled Elizabeth the1 way her knew how—- with his trusty, grief eliminating child inseminating penis. Eddie Fisher & Elizabeth Taylor And of course, as everyone knows, grief can’t be eliminated with just a few thrusts. In order to do a really thorough job, the person with the healing penis has to continue the treatment for quite awhile. In my father’s case, he treated Elizabeth’s dispair for about4 years. (just to make COMPLETELY sure she was no longer burdened by those pesky feelings of loss) And then, when she was finally sadness free and free for anything fancy, she left my father in favor of the fancy top dollar attention paid for her new, improved mate, Richard Burton. But, back to my brother…… Unlike myself, who had enjoyed my father’s company for a year and a half, Todd never spent any time with our father. But this actually turned out to be a GOOD thing, because you can’t miss something you’ve never had. Unfortunately, in my case, I’d lived with my dad just long enough to, not only wonder where he’d gone to, but blame myself for not being lovable enough to get him to stay. (Oh poor sad Carrie! Get out your handkerchief for these nosebleed high class problems, where you sob with a British accent…..) Todd Fisher But whether it was because of the different ways my dad’s absence affected us, or because of what I refer to as, “It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it”, Todd grew up to be a calm, imperturbable, life is just a bowl of cherries guy (he actually said that to me once) and I……well, I just wasn’t like that—to say the least in the most way. As he grew up, my brother became a kind of attendant to the insane. Unflustered, he was the eye of the family tornado—-my mother and I cast as the tornado….And there he would remain unflustered & serene—nothing seemed to phase him. And believe me, there was a lot of phase inducing circumstances available to challenge even the most stalwart citizen…….but not Todd. Todd was more like my grandfather. Ray Reynolds, off somewhere fixing a TV set, or building a tree house—-My mother’s father was a carpenter and Todd absorbed his distracted, peaceful temperament, while I wandered thru the landscape, absorbing anything and everything that could be taken personally—–cars, wallpaper, absent parents, my reflection…..name it and it was my fault. Todd? No big fuckin deal. Why bother? I wanted to feel like he seemed, you know? I know you know people like this. You can’t fool me. (Well, maybe you can, just not in this area). So when Greg died, Todd made a reservation at a spa in England. A place near Sandhurst, the military training center of the United Kingdom. James Blunt went there! It had to be good! (the military school, not necessarily the spa) Actually, it takes quite a bit to ruin a spa. It’s possible, I suppose, but, in my experience, rare. Expensive and rare. But this being something of an emotional emergency, if there was ever a time to cough up the funds it was now. So we settled into our peaceful nook, nestled there in the English countryside. So there I was, nestled in another bed, watching another assortment of programs designed to distract you from whatever unpleasant experience you’d found yourself slogging through. Only this time my brother was in charge of my television programming. And what he had selected for my viewing pleasure was war movies. Whether it was old movie classics, or documentaries, this was what I feasted my famished eyes on for the duration of our stay there. (which was probably not more than a week) As big of an old movie aficionado as I was, this was an area that I had neglected. You know—-being a girl and all—-what use did I have for, “Seven Minutes over Tokyo” or “Fail Safe”? But as it turns out, these films were extremely healing for me. It may sound funny to you, but it’s true. Especially the documentaries. “Band of Brothers” Band of Brothers was my favorite. It was hours and hours of watching people go thru experiences that made my crisis look like a pimple on the ass of difficulty. (isn’t that a lovely expression? You can use it whenever you like) Not only the multiple hour show itself, but the “Making of Band of Brothers” was amazingly inspirational to me. I mean, it’s absurd for me really to compare me waking up with my dead friend to these heroic soldiers facing death all day every day, losing comrades, losing LIMBS! I mean, MY GOD! There was1 survivor of World War2 who had seen his friend get his arm blown off and, as they were taking him away on the stretcher, this soldier stopped the medics, pointed down to his arm on the ground and asking them if they would mind getting him his watch!!!!! Wow. Just incredible. And watching these films day after healing day, I thought—–well, if these men can live through THAT! And not just live in some cases, but THRIVE! If they can do that, what’s my sad experience but……..something to get to the other side of, like these men had done. Isn’t there a saying, “What man has done, man can do?” Well, I’m assuming that applies to women too, so……I set about doing what others had done before me and, in their cases, with NOBILITY. All this to say, this was my brother’s gift to me. It’s his instinct to leave someone better off than when he came across them. Whatever strength I have is bourne out of weakness. Heartbreak is my teacher. My brother’s strength comes from trust that things will be alright in the end. He sees the good in things. I find the good by traipsing thru the bad slooowly……..so I don’t miss a bruise……. Posted in News | 42 Comments » Laughing waters… eyes jeweled with tears By Carrie • Feb 4th, 2009 • Category: News Okay, if you never watch another thing again, watch this. It will make your life work. My daughter sent it to me (it flowed out of her like laughing waters….) and everything is going to be okay now.Obviously, anyone that sends this to you cares about you very much. So my daughter, Billie, cares about me—–and by extension, you—-and obviously it would follow then follow that I care deeply for you as well. See? And then everything else can just build from there! You’re officially out of harms way and in the joyous pink! So go forth and fire fly! oxxoxoxo cff Posted in News | 28 Comments » Death and houseguests………. By Carrie • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News After Greg died I stopped talking. It was as if my personality followed him down the dark passage of death and left someone who looked a lot like me, except that now my features where organized into an expression of abject fear. I had been scared—-not TO death, but BY death…you might say that Greg’s death had scared the fucking life out of me. The thing about someone dying, though, is that life goes on. While your loved1 is busy relaxing in their cozy coffins, you still have appointments, a job, friends, children —-a whole parcel of living things pulling on you to get on with it. I mean, life can be just as demanding as death in, it’s own way…….Of course, as far as I know, the demands of those us as yet unceasing are probably more of the high class variety than the demands of the deceased. Now, I’ve never really been the type of person who gets over things easily. —-I mean, I had a hard getting over the fact that I didn’t have blue eyes or finding out that I hadn’t been invited to some big party someone was throwing somewhere……., so being confronted by something as formidable as dying—well, it wouldn’t be too difficult to predict that I wouldn’t be the person putting the “fun” in funeral. Not that anyone finds it particularly easy burying someone who wouldn’t normally be considered the burying age. I mean, Greg was way far from being past his prime. His wild lifestyle probably placed him neck and neck with his prime, but for anyone to die in their forties in this day and age is a hearty mix of premature and tragic. So after Greg died I just couldn’t seem to be able to shake it off. Partly because I had loved Greg—–we had always had a lot of fun together. Much of it was the truant type of fun, but that didn’t make it any less amusing for us. Just for the folks around us who had to deal with our antics. But the other reason because I blamed myself, you see. I mean, it had happened on my watch. If only I’d woken in the middle of the night, I might have been able to save him. If only I hadn’t been so busy sleeping, I might’ve been able to wake him up the next morning….. The fact that Greg lived life like there was no tomorrow didn’t enter into it.(of course, eventually there really IS no tomorrow—–which occurs right when you run out of your stash of yesterdays and todays) I mean, it was as if Greg’s dying had more to do with me than it did with him. Which is a pretty fancy twist of perspective, when you think about it. “It’s all for you, Damien!” the nanny cries out in the movie, “The Omen”—-only in this case it was me shouting, “It’s all for you, Greg!” —-and unlike the nanny, I didn’t subsequently hang myself. Not literally, anyway. So, I lay in bed for most of the day staring at the TV, as if waiting for it to provide me with an explanation as to how I’d been chosen to survive this particular set of circumstances. Or, perhaps a show would come on that might somehow relate to my predicament. A new cable show called, “C’mon! Shake it off! What’s the big deal?!” But no such show came to my rescue. Instead, in exchange for Greg I was provided with an assortment of 5 brand new……..HOUSEGUESTS! Hooray!1 visitor dies and 5 others take his place! Needless to say, I wasn’t much of a hostess at this point. I gave more of what was left of my undivided attention to the television set than I did to the visiting friends that now crowded my house. After Greg’s body was removed, (ugh……) I had my bed frame discarded, considering it’s inability to keep Greg alive—– and then we moved the remaining mattress to a new, no death free location in my room. (having, no doubt, determined that the mattress was virtually innocent in causing Greg’s untimely death). So you might say that the entire tragic incident was just a question of luck. Perhaps the reason Greg had died was because of where the bed had been previously located and now that it had been moved from that place, no1 else would die. Of course, it might have been simpler had I just moved to another room—–ANY room—why not the LIVING ROOM?! I mean, especially considering the room was designed for LIVING, unlike my bed room, which it turned out, had been designed for death! Posted in News | 25 Comments » Who’s sorry now! By admin • Feb 2nd, 2009 • Category: News I told people this might happen, but did anyone listen to me?! NO! Hippo eats Dwarf Posted in News | 40 Comments » A view from the bridge over troubled princess……… By Carrie • Jan 31st, 2009 • Category: News I did a radio show yesterday and the man that interviewed me asked me what question I’d been asked over the years that had most annoyed me. “That’s easy” I told him. “Did you know “Star Wars” would be that big of a hit?” The interviewer laughed, “When I told people here at work that I would be interviewing you,” he said, ” All the men wanted was for me to ask how it felt to wear the metal bikini.” Now I laughed, “The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn’t metal. ——Not that metal would’ve been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn’t adhere to1’s skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt’s gigantic, albiet grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom……….well, it had the10dency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett—–I believe his name was Jeremy—–from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask——to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida. Posted in News | 40 Comments » Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral By Carrie • Jan 30th, 2009 • Category: News I have to tell you something before we go any further with this blogging business. See, I’m a very persnickety human. I can’t just write something and push a button sending it out into the internetosphere for all to judge and laugh at. I have to endlessly fuck with my words so nobody can make fun of me. (more…) Posted in News | 38 Comments » Dead Man Blogging By Carrie • Jan 28th, 2009 • Category: News I’m not really the “thought for the day” type. I mean, “I couldn’t care less than the more that I do” probably wouldn’t help too many people. Or, “I can’t wait to not get what I want” isn’t really going to go along way with inspiring too many folks But my brother’s post was pretty cool, no? I told him that I’d post a response, but now I’ll have to do it tomorrow. (Sorry Todd!) Since I didn’t have a very eventful day, I thought I might reminisce—–you know, drudge shit up from the past when I led a more colorful life. Colorful and debilitating combined. For those of you who haven’t read my book, I had a good friend name Greg Stevens who had the bad manners to die in my house. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he died in my BED, with me beside him, sleeping til Bruce Cohen and his boyfriend, (now husband) woke me into a world it would take me a long, bummer amount of time to blunder through. But before Greg died he was alot of fun. (he might be alot of fun AFTER his death, but as to that I have no way of knowing) He was especially fun when you consider he was a Republican, but also aside from that. All on his own, politically conservative party aside, I loved spending time with Greg. Greg R Stevens That’s not to say that he was always EASY to be with. Greg was extremely fond of drugs—-an affection I could relate to. But Greg could actually make me look like an amateur in comparison—–that is, when we weren’t neck and neck in bad behavior. If you were to say that Greg and I were a bad influence on eachother…………well, you wouldn’t be far from the truth. Inches away, in fact. The truth would be breathing it’s hot scented breath down your well behaved neck. One of my favorite evenings we spent together was in New York. We’d been in upstate New York at my friend Griffin Dunne’s wedding, and afterwards we drove back to the city and checked into Greg’s suite at the4 Seasons Hotel in midtown. Greg had had quite a bit to drink at the wedding. Enough to cause him to continuously slide from the seat onto the floor of the town car he’d hired for the occasion. Greg spent most of his life in hotels. The fancier the better. He liked to live what some call, “The high life”……..(and the word, “high” could obviously be interpreted in a variety of ways) He loved spas, where he could get massages and facials and manicures and pedicures—-and he LOVED shopping—a pass time which——-along with the altered state—-we both enthusiastically shared. Greg had always told me that he came from a very wealthy family —- consequently making him very wealthy as well. He told me that he’d inherited a HUGE amount of money from a trust fund that his mother had set up for he and his2 brothers in the late6ties when they were quite young. And the money in this trust fund had originally come from a law suit his mother had won against some doctors that had gotten her husband addicted to speed. (if I’d known you could win law suits against people that get father’s addicted to speed, my siblings and I would be set for life, as my father had shot speed for 15 years courtesy of the original Dr. Feelgood aka Dr. Max Jacobsen). Anyway, for whatever idiotic reason I never questioned Greg’s story ——- I mean, it never occurred to me that someone might lie about a thing like that… My only experience with lying was someone (like myself) denying being stoned, or perhaps when someone assured someone else (say me maybe) that they didn’t look fat and that that assurance happened not to be so. One of the reasons that might explain why Greg had made up the story of his alleged wealth was that he thought that people would like him more if they thought he were rich. A sad explanation, but nonetheless possible. So, Greg told everyone that his mother had won this alleged law suit for something like2 million dollars. (not that there are very many things like2 million dollars—– other than2 million dollars) And she’d subsequently invested the money wisely, so that when Greg and his brothers came of age they would receive trust funds worth well over 50 million dollars apiece. BUT, Greg informed me, because of his drug use, his mother had decided NOT to give him his inheritance when he came of age (35, and he was now in his early 40’s)—– and that he would only receive it when and only when he sobered up. The gag was (according to Greg)—–that because he had NOT received his inheritance, it had increased10 fold because, unlike his brother’s, Greg’s money had remained invested, so on that fateful day when his mother would finally give his inheritance to him , he would be richer than either1 of his very, VERY rich brothers combined! Incredible tale, no? The only thing wrong with it was that it was entirely fabricated. A fact I didn’t find out until his wake, when his1 of his brothers told me. The idea that Greg had concocted this fantasy of immense and imminent wealth was hilarious to them. (As hilarious as it could be given that Greg had to die for all of us to get the joke) Anyway, back to Greg getting really drunk at Griffin’s wedding reception. So drunk that he ended up calling his dealer in the city from his cell phone en route from upstate New York. It turned out, probably not so amazingly enough, I’d met this woman before, once with Greg in another suite in another hotel the year before, and another time, some years Marianne Faithful back, in Ireland when she was supplying (among other clients) the now sober, then not ,Marianne Faithful. At the time this dealer had a fairly lucrative business in London—so lucrative that she was able to afford a very nice house in Chelsea. But in the ensuing years she’d moved her business back to Manhatten, and as luck would have it (dumb luck, of course), Greg wound up being1 of her clients. I forget her name, but I’ll never forget how she looked. In her mid6ties, she was quite a large person, weighing in at maybe 200–250 pounds. And if that wasn’t enough, she had a face that was a little like a basset hound. When she arrived with her delivery that night, I was in the bedroom searching for an in house movie to watch, when I hear the front door to the suite opening. I peered discretely around the corner to see who was coming down the hall and into the livingroom, which is when I recognize her from the United (drug) Kingdom. As I watched, she dragged herself, every ounce her, to a couch at the farside of the living room, huffing and puffing, with a woebegone expression on her droopy, familiar face….I listen as Greg enthusiastically greets her and I find myself thinking, well, given that I’d met her before, I should probably go say hello, right? I mean, after all, manners are manners, no? I don’t care HOW much dope is involved. So I enter the living room to pay the top dollar of my respects, and as I watch, she eases her entire self down with considerable effort and sighs a defeated sigh. “I’m so depressed” she says wearily. And now, as Greg and I gaze at this hefty, uber human self, we’re forced to say, “Why? How could someone like YOU be depressed??? You—–who have SO much to live for! A 60 something immensely overweight drug dealer with a face dripping with paste colored flesh——if happiness has eluded someone as deserving as you, what hope to the rest of us have???? And then, in response to our question as to the source of her unimaginable despondence, she replies, “I lost a client today……” “NO! You must be JOKING! Imagine losing a client in a business like yours!!!!! That is just …….well, BIZARRE!” Of course this is a sampling of something we’re thinking, as we avoid catching1 another eyes and dissolving into peals of laughter. What we SAY is, “I’m SO sorry. Are you OKAY?” I realize it might seem a little callous to some of you, the vision of Greg and myself laughing, (in part) at the misfortune of others and I apologize if I’ve offended someone whose lost a loved1 to drug addiction. Come to think of it, she probably said something very similar when Greg passed away due to a combination of sleep apnia and drug use. (Only in his case she probably was a bit annoyed on top of her distress, as Greg had a habit of not paying her.) But all I can say is, you had to be there to see her mournfully recount to us the details of the client she’d lost (a famous political writer in his late 70’s) In fact, it would have been really good if you’d been there, because if you’d been present, maybe I wouldn’t have had to be. (wouldn’t HAVE to be, but probably would be anyway. Posted in News | 14 Comments » « Older Entries 04/02/09 - 05/03/09 in Seattle, WA at The Rep View all dates © 2009 CarrieFisher | Powered by WordPress | Entries (RSS)
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