Final Rest

It always happens in three's. We lost Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcet and Michael Jackson all in two days. For me, it's the end of an era. Ed McMahon was our last connection to Johnny Carson, whom we all still miss. Not that Jay Leno wasn't terrific, but Johnny was with us every night at 11:30 pm through thick or thin for 34 years. The one constant in our lives was Johnny Carson and his lame routines. He left us way too soon.

Michael Jackson in his early days, when he was black, was a cultural icon. I remember his incredible break out performance on the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Motown. It was the first time he did the moonwalk and wore his sparkly white glove. After that he did the Thriller album, which I still have, he made the first memorable music video on VH1 which was a radical new channel (all music - who'd watch that?) on the still new cable TV. Then he seemed to me to lose his fucking mind, changing his face to a gender neutral mess, and obviously taking female hormones to keep his voice high and to keep his body from becoming more muscular. Just look at his four brothers, all nice looking, well muscled black men. Then he began taking something to kill the melanin in his body. For someone who claimed to be proud of being black, he did everything he could to become white. I saw him in person once, a glimpse as he was passing by, he was as white as a natural albino, no color at all and hypersensitive to the sun. When I heard of his death, I blamed it on whatever he was taking to suppress the melanin because I believe it made his systems fragile, just like an albino. A tragedy, he was a great talent. As the truth comes out, we'll hear that he took something to bleach his skin systemically. And what happens to the kids? I hope they go back to their mothers. The youngest two kids are not Michael's biological kids. He says yes, but I say no. He couldn't bleach his DNA, his two youngest children are not mixed race. That truth will come out too.

Farrah Fawcet is a beauty icon who will live on, like Marilyn or Sophia. Every girl in high school tried to achieve the Farrah windswept hairdo. It was in the pursuit of the Farrah look that I learned lesson that all women learn and the sooner the better. Hairspray.

The "Farrah do" was a layered, frosted ash blonde streaked, wind tossed, but not wind blown look, which was a battle to get. You could get a layered cut at the salon, and a professional frosting, if you could afford it, looked fantastic. Most of us could afford the cut, but not the frosting, so we did that ourselves. If it was summertime, you could buy Sun-In, a spray on bleach that you sprayed all over your hair before baking in the sun at the beach. Sun-In would blonde you up if you were already a dark blonde and would blend in nicely and you looked just lovely. For the auburn haired gals like me, it created bright brassy red streaks that stood in stark contrast to a brunette background and looked just frightening. To correct the Sun-In, we bought a Frost 'n' Tip kit. You put a plastic cap on your head and, using the sharp red plastic crochet hook provided, you punched through the cap where the black dots indicated and if you followed the instructions, you pulled through only a thin amount of hair so the highlights would blend. However, to a teenager, more is better, so you'd pull through a wad of hair to bleach completely white. Removing the cap, I looked at a head of dark brown, bright red, and white hair. I had more colors than Crayola. But, we see what we want to see, so I was very happy to have something akin to the Farrah do. Now I had to master the "windswept all the time" look.

The windswept look was accomplished with curlers and curling irons, and you could get it perfect while standing at the mirror. You had to look like you were standing twenty feet behind a propeller, any closer and the curls would blow out, the problems began when you moved. Windswept hair has to defy gravity. It cannot hang down like normal hair, it must make a right angle turn at the cheek bones and run parallel to the ground after that. How to get it to stay in place, here was the real challenge.

Gels and Mousse's made the hair heavy and pulled it down. AquaNet hairspray said it could hold without stiffness. Nope, it didn't work. I tried one hairspray after another. Finally, I paid attention to my Aunt Margaret, who wore a beehive hairdo. Her hair never moved. She could go on a boat and still look good coming in. Any hairdo, outside of a ponytail, that survives a Boston Whaler, is a serious hairdo. I knew it was one of two things, either she sold her soul to the devil for perfect hair, or there was a magic elixir in her bathroom. I went into her inner sanctum of beauty and there it was, the Holy Grail of hairdo's, Final Net.

Final Net sprays a thin layer of boat grade shellac over your hair. While it's wet, you quickly smooth your wispy ends down and let it dry. Once dry, your hair feels like a smooth tupperware container on your head, a container that is holding a perfect and indestructible hairdo. You hair may break, but it will not bend. Once I found Final Net, I was able to achieve my Farrah do. Layered, dyed, curled, shellaced, I was finally ready to face the world and be mistaken for Farrah.

Over the years, the layered hair grew out and it's no longer necessary for me to buy bleaching agents to streak my hair with white, but the one thing that remains with me to this day is Final Net. Final Net has kept my hair smooth and in place through camping trips, convertible cars, and rides at Disneyland. I'm going to be buried with a tube of red lipstick and Final Net. In the event of an afterlife, I want to be ready for the party.

How to Get a Boat

Getting the money for the boat is only half the problem, the other half is usually, your other half...July is fast approaching and if you haven't talked your mate, partner, significant other, into getting a boat this year, here are some strategies.

Strategies for Gals

1. Promise the guy the perverse sex act of his choice, and the bigger the boat, the more perverse the act. Don't worry, you'll never have to do it, just promise him, you can always break your promise later with some creative excuse. I like to say, "You know I'd love to do that, hunny, I just love the whole thing with the chickens and whipped cream, but the doctor said I've contracted Acidopholous corpus rotus delecti, and it's very contagious whenever I'm in an aroused state. But we can if you do it if you really want to..." Gets you off the hook everything.

2. Promise you'll sit and watch his football games with him this fall. He'll be thrilled. All you have to do is keep asking him questions during the first game and by half time he'll be begging you to leave the room. Just keep the beer and sandwiches going and he'll still believe you really wanted to spend four hours watching millionaires in shiny pants running into each other.

3. Tell him that buying a boat means you won't have enough money to go visit your folks anytime in the coming year. This is actually true. You won't be able to afford to visit anyone. After you buy the boat, a trip to Riverhead will be a big adventure. As a matter of fact, once you buy the boat, you won't have money to do anything else except go out on the water, quelle damage...

4. Tell him that buying a boat exempts him from doing any house painting or repairs. This is a really good ruse. After you get the boat, if you need a house repair this is what you do; buy and make sure he sees your new "How to Do House Repairs Yourself" book. Get a hammer, everything seems to start with a hammer, and some duct tape. While he's puttering around the house, start to do your repair work. You know how men do a deliberately lousy job when they do a housework task - so that in frustration, you yank the vacuum/mop/sponge from them and just do it yourself? Same principle here. Once they hear hammering, they'll have to come to supervise you. Once they see what you're doing, because you have no idea really, they'll yank the hammer from your hand and off you go!

I'll pause here to say that I realize the younger readers may think it's wrong to use manipulation and deception with the one that you love. And in a perfect world, filled with only perfect people, perfect honesty would work. But ask yourself how close to perfection your loved one is. I believe that the distance between their existing personality and perfection can be justifiably filled in with delusion and deception. In time, you will see the wisdom of this.

Strategies for Guys

1. If you want that boat, promise her a full day of shopping at the mall of her choice with your credit cards, and you will go along and hold her purse without complaint. Of course, you can always break your promise later, but I wouldn't recommend it. But if you decide to do it anyway, you should sleep with a gun under your pillow for at least six months, just as a precaution.

2. Promise her that she can pick the next four movies you see. She'll pick chick-flicks of course, but you can survive it, that's what drugs and alcohol are for.

3. Tell her that buying a boat means you won't have enough money to go visit your relatives anytime soon. Even better, tell her you won't be able to afford entertaining them at your house. As a further back up, tell her that if your people show up, you'll take them out on the boat the whole visit so she doesn't have to cook, clean, hostess. A woman knows a man won't break a promise like this because men don't like company for more that three hours no matter whose family it is and men certainly don't want to visit anybody's parents and be grilled on what they're doing or listen to hints of what relatives think they should be doing.

4. If the situation is desperate and she's not buying any of your shallow promises, you have one last stratagem left. It's the most difficult for a man, but it softens women up everything. Practice this statement, "I was wrong and I am sorry." You can paraphrase if you want, but get the words "wrong" and "sorry" in there somehow. Women never hear these words from men, so the shock of it stuns us. And after being stunned a few times, you can say, "I was wrong and I am sorry. I don't deserve someone like you and I don't know how you've put up with me all these years. I wish I could ask you if I could buy a boat so I could continue to meditate on changing my ways while on the water, but I know it's too much to ask of you." If you can connect that buying a boat with make you a more sensitive and considerate partner, you're in like Flynn....

Unauthorized Opinions

The definition of fascism is: an authoritarian and system of government with intolerant views or practices.

Miss California lost her title because she had an opinion unauthorized by the governing media. She said she is personally opposed to gay marriage, but respects the rights of others to have a different view. It took the bureaucracy a while to figure out a way to fire her for her unpopular opinion, but they managed it. I hope no one is fooled here. Her First Amendments rights were violated. She has the right to her opinion and she has the right to say it out loud regardless of whether it's approved by the media or not. I applaud her for answering honestly about her position as opposed to giving a safe answer. Most gay people I know have no problem with anyone disagreeing with their lifestyle, so long as that disagreement doesn't impinge on their civil rights or in anyway poison their pursuit of happiness. Makes perfect sense to me. We have the right to think and say anything we like, but we cannot impose on others.

I hate the way the media works to shape our opinions instead of just giving us the plain facts and let us interpret them ourselves. Where is this generation's Huntley and Brinkley, or Cronkite? All the news is so filtered through corporate views, it's very hard to discern the truth.

On Shelter Island, there is a list of unauthorized opinions. And everything I just said, only applies to the off-island world. There really are some things you cannot think here, and you'd better not say.

* "We should build a bridge from Sag Harbor to Shelter Island." NO! This is a completely unauthorized thought that should never make it to your lips. I have heard that this thought has been uttered by some people in the past. But we'll never know who they are, or where their bodies are buried...

* "We should have a McDonald's, or Pizza Hut or some of the big franchise stores here." No. Not allowed. We have everything we need - that is the official and approved opinion. Franchises are the spawn of the devil. Let one in and we'll have to let them all in... and like Walmart wiping out all the trade in a town, our Ma & Pa stores will disappear. And we love our local stores more than we need a McDonald's. Besides, we can always take a ferry and drive twenty miles through thick traffic in the summer heat to Bridgehampton if we have a Big Mac Attack.

* "People who can afford to build a heliport on their property should be allowed to do so." Nope. If we okay one, we'll have ten in a few years. The sound of helicopters will cut through the cherished quiet of the Island like a hot blade through butter. At night, when sound really carries, it will wake everybody up. If that happens, the anti-helicopter forces will spring into action. Helicopters with harpoons through them will lay rusting in the sun on open fields, their blades stripped and used to paint homey scenes on and sold by the roadside as folk art.

* "A tattoo and piercing parlor would be great here." I actually overheard this in Pat & Steve's one day. A group of young people were reviewing everything they hated about the Island and what they thought the Island needed. A Tattoo and Piercing Parlor would go over here like the KKK opening a coffee shop across from the Obama Whitehouse. I shared my opinion with the youngsters and they gave me that First Amendment stuff about having the right to say anything they like. I reminded them that they also had the right to remain silent. I probably shouldn't have stabbed the one closest to me with a fork, but he already had bolts in his face, so I thought the fork punctures in his arm would sort of go with his theme of self mutilation for fun and profit.

* "We need a combination bar/laudromat/deli for the single people and single parents on this Island." Actually, I think this is just my opinion. Having moved into six rentals over ten years, only two had washers and dryers. I believe if we had a combo bar/laudromat/deli, we could get the wash done, meet other singles and get dinner for the kids in one location. I know it's just a dream, like getting a movie theater here, but I've always dreamed big.