Okay, kids — here’s a little game I’ve come up with, called: “Empty Your Purse, Baby”

So…grab your purses, backpacks, satchels, and diaperbags…and spill it, dames. And don’t hold back — in MY version of the game, you get extra points for bounced check notifications, denied credit apps, long-ignored electricity or telephone service shut-off notices, or vicious letters from collection agencies: =;-)

*A big, fat, 1970’s-kotex-lookin’, thick-ass, OLD SCHOOL black Nokia cell phone from about 2 years ago (which, as you well know, is an eternity in “cell phone years”). I actually got a nice, new, high-tech model but gave it to my 16 year old daughter to spare her the social mortification of carrying around the oversized ebony monstrosity with which I currently suffer. Of course, the difference is — I could give a rat’s ass. All I care is that I have a cell fucking phone at my disposal, for my sheer and utter convenience. I am a nasty, ugly, bitchhawg American — end of story, next fucking case.

*A scratched, gnarled little tub of Carmex floating free that is literally 3 or 4 years old — the closest I come to possessing real live girl cosmetics (aside from my tweezers, of course, which, like any good girl of Mediterranean descent, I CANNOT live without.)

*A handwritten note from Sarah Weddington, the courageous and charismatic attorney who argued and won the landmark Roe v. Wade case in 1973. I had the privilege of meeting with her in January at a big Roe v. Wade 30th anniversary shin-dig here in San Diego, put on by my beloved Planned Parenthood. The note, which is beyond precious to me, reads: “Muffy…all I can say is, I’m glad we’re on the same side!”

And, yes, I said I met her in January…and yes, it’s still in my purse. Does that tell you how badly I need to clean this bastard out? Does that make you really happy to know what a domestic fuck-up I am? Does it? Well…I must say, it’s really nice to finally know exactly what kind of mean, hateful, spiteful, gloating, schadenfreude-ridden hags frequent these pages. =;-)

*An ordinary wooden spoon you’d find in any ordinary kitchen in any ordinary city in America — except this one has “The Enforcer” written on the handle with a black Sharpie pen. No decent, self-respecting Italian mother would be caught dead without one…EVER. The beauty of the wooden spoon is, you never even really have to use it on an actual darling larvae ass — you just have to growl, “Hey, goddamnit…”, and when your misbehaving offspring stops dead in his/her tracks in response, you just stare them down like the crazed demon Pazuzu, and slowly reveal just the tip of the handle out the top of your purse. In other words, JUST SHOW WOOD. Works every goddamned time.

*A pin bearing the title of one of my most fave zine series ever, “A Beautiful Final Tribute” by beelavender (this is actually stuck to the outside of my purse). I likes it.

*An ancient, chalky tin of cinnamon Altoids that has seen much finer days.

*A brochure menu from an Italian restaurant here in San Diego called “Buca di Beppo”. I went there recently for the first time to celebrate the 12th birthday of my sweet middle girl child, and I gotta say I LOVED IT. So cheeseball, so yummy, so over-the-fucking-top-Sicilian kitsch. Turns out it’s a nationwide chain (which, in some instances, can be highly annoying and off-putting), however, this place is in such powerful, purposeful bad taste — with schlocky pictures of Sinatra, Rocky Marciano, Vince Lombardi, and Sophia Loren, et al, plastered over every square inch of available wall space, as well as the tackiest Romanesque statuary placed strategically throughout the joint. They serve southern Italian cuisine (read: the grub of the rough, sketchy Mafioso/Sicilan Trash caste, i.e, My Pipples) family style. The platter was huge, the sauce was garlicky, and the fucking meatballs were the size of my tits (and that’s sayin’ somethin’, believe you me…)

Home

*A cardboard tampon, with a tattered wrapper…from possibly before the Carter administration.

*Oddly enough, Rosanna Arquette’s address and phone numbers scrawled onto the back of a blue flyer I had for the recent San Diego Democratic Club blood drive (for which, due to a mild lupus flare, I was unfortunately unable to bleed). I was up in LA meeting with producers regarding the next two films with which I am involved, and we all met in the lounge at the Four Seasons Hotel — where, not too surprisingly, we lounged.

We talked, in depth, about her extraordinary documentary, “Searching for Debra Winger”, in which she brings to the surface all of the difficulties and discrimination that actresses face in Hollywood as they cross the terrifying threshold of 40 — as artists, mothers, and women — and are then basically abandoned for younger, perkier models with none of the glorious depth or experience that a woman attains JUST BY PUTTING HER GODDAMNED TIME IN ON THIS PLANET.

On a more personal note, she is suffering from a newly broken heart (younger man, musician bastard, wandering eye) and was a complete and total darling — so open, so honest, and so engaging. And for the record, she is the loving and devoted mama of a 9 year old girl, her tits are absolutely real, and, broken heart or not, she looks positively radiant. And further, she doesn’t know it yet, but I am writing a FAB part for her in the next film.

As for her contact information…that is so we can “do lunch”. How fucking perfectly, annoyingly Hollywood of me; sometimes I disgust even myself.

So…what should I wear?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/entertainment/1992668.stm

*11 pens, littered throughout…all different sizes, shapes, and flow-types — some purchased, some inherited, and some purposefully stolen from doctor’s offices and pharmacies (rather an ongoing fetish of mine, now that I think of it). The one thing they all have in common, though: BLACK INK. I absolutely insist. Is there any other kind?

*A color brochure from my hotel in Romania — the Hotel Lebada, just outside Bucharest. My film set and home away from home for the entire month of May of this year.

God, how I miss it — legions of non-filtered cigarettes blazing at every meal, and every one of those meals consisting in large part of some sort of fatty extraneous ham product. Lemme tell you, kids, these motherfuckers LOVE they ham.

The women wear hideous 70’s hooker clothing (they think it looks good), and have the absolute bar-none worst hair dye jobs the world has ever seen (they think it looks good) — and sweet jesus how I miss them all. What glorious, generous, gracious, and passionate people. The one consolation I have to soothe my aching heart is that we are going back to film there again next year, to work, once more, with the finest film crew ever…EVER.

http://domino2.kappa.ro/clienti/lebada/home.nsf

http://www.hotelnet.ro/hotels/bucharest/lebada.htm

*A punch-foil packet of some sort of pain reliever I got in London last year at Boot’s Pharmacy. They have this truly bizarre moratorium there on selling aspirin in amounts of any more than like 16 at a time. It seems that when those zany, rainy, insany Brits get their mitts on any more than that at one time, they immediately try to kill themselves — hence the governmentally imposed limit. Interesting, that.

Christ…now that I dump all this horseshit out onto the bed and just look at it — I realize that I REALLY REALLY REALLY need to clean this bastard OUT.

*sigh*

And now, to task I be, Gentle Readers…to task.