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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN…. HER
MALIBU MARILYN
2.5 THE HELTER SKELTER THEATER
EYES WIDE SHUT
SUNSET BOULEVARD
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
ALL IN ON THE NARRATOR
ON THE TOWN
DEVIL’S BELDAMES
FORTUNE’S FOOL
DO YOU LIKE GIRLS?
A STRANGE VIRTUE
MARTIN ASTON MARTIN
13.5 BIOPHILIAC
13.6 SYLVIA
DYING THOUGHTS
MACBETH V MACDUFF
OUT, DAMNED SPOT!
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CHAPTER 1 - LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... HER
Double double toil and trouble, Bubblehead is on the bubble. Nervous, excited - nervously excited - but late, late for an important date that might determine her fate.
Alone in her bu-dwa, Bubblehead is a thoroughly modern, 21st Century millennial actress/waitress/cosplay and Jeopardy! dork, dressed in the fine robes of an 11th Century Scottish queen.
Or in the case of Lady Macbeth: almost-a-queen. A wannabe royal. An usurper. An equivocator. A temptress. A murderess. An accomplice. Doomed.
When Bubblehead is nervous, she quotes Shakespeare. She’s nervous because she’s running late for an extremely important audition, so a line from Merry Wives of Windsor bubbles around her effervescent Bill brain - looking for an exeunt.
For her present tizzy, she says:
BUBBLEHEAD
Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
Bubblehead’s dear old dad is a Gen Xer who loves Led Zeppelin. More times than Bubblehead could count, he has said, “There’s a Led Zeppelin song for every human emotion, and some emotions that haven’t been invented yet.”
That was her dad’s line, but Bubblehead also found that what was true for those Lovely Lads was true for Shakespeare. Bill lived from 1564 to 1616 and he wrote from 1590 to 1613. Bubblehead didn’t know what Gen that made Bill: Gen Elizabeth?
But she learned that once she untangled the knot of his language, much of what Shakespeare said then, applies to now: Four hundred plus years ago, Shakespeare had words for every human emotion and situation, and some human emotions and situations that still haven’t been invented.
“Genius” was a word and a concept and a title cheapened by the 21st Century. “Kanye West is a genius.” “Taylor Swift is a genius.” No, they’re not.
True genius is truely rare. Beethoven was a genius and Jimmy Page might have been a genius and Andy Warhol and possibly Eddie van Halen. Elon Musk is a genius but Shakespeare most certainly qualified: Extraordinary depth, quality and quantity.
Was Shakespeare a genius? Smarter people than Bubblehead seemed to think so.
William Quayle - whoever that was - said this about that in Some Words on Loving Shakespeare around 1900:
But Shakespeare knows what the sphinx thinks, if anybody does. His genius is penetrative as cold midwinter entering every room, and making warmth shiver in ague fits. I think Shakespeare never errs in his logical sequence in character. He surprises us, seems unnatural to us, but because we have been superficial observers; while genius will disclose those truths to which we are blind.
And Horace Walpole - whoever that was - said in 1764:
One of the greatest geniuses that ever existed,
Shakespeare, undoubtedly wanted taste.
Bubblehead knows who Sir Laurence Olivier is, and he said:
Shakespeare - The nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.
Bubblehead liked to think Shakespeare was a genius and she liked to think herself a clever girl for learning to unknot and understand and really appreciate the dude she and her friends called “Bill.”
[Bubblehead and her friends thought they were being clever calling Shakespeare “Bill.” But then Dear Old Dad had to go and ruin their fun by pointing to a lyric by the Eagles from Get Over It, way back in the 1994: “Old Billy was right / Let's kill all the lawyers tonight."]
Bill was an acquired taste like sushi, and coffee and… other things. Out of middle school and into high school, reading Shakespeare inspired Bubblehead to rend her garments, throw books, pound on laptop keyboards and tear her hair out - was this dude really writing in English? The fu…..???????
How could Bubblehead not understand a word of it? Was she really just a brainless basic white cute girl from the Valley? She wanted more. Like Marilyn, she wanted more.
Being a pretty face was nice, but Bubblehead wanted more. And she wasn’t afraid to work for it.
With time and tutoring and maturity, she learned to read Shakespeare, and when she cracked the code she devoured Shakespeare and had read a good chunk of his 39 plays, 154 sonnets and many of his poems.
And she remembered them. And could quote them: Bill at will for every human emotion and situation.
When she was nudged onto the actress path, Bubblehead hunted down opportunities to act in Bill’s plays: Wily and brave Portia, from The Merchant of Venice, was closest to her heart and soul. She died for love as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and Emilia in Othello, had a ball with Rosalind from Twelfth Night.
And now she was fixing to take on the King Daddy of all: The queen corrupter, breaker of moral code and Goddess of PTSD: Lady M. But she’d better get a move on.
She’s late, and she can’t find her smartphone and she can’t leave home without her smartphone. Where is that damned thing?
A bubble head (or blondtard) as illustrated by Ariel Medel.
Urban Dictionary defines “bubblehead” as: bubblehead A foolish or empty-headed person. “That guy is such a bubblehead. He says the most naive and ignorant things.”
Because she’s a bubble head, Bubblehead has her smartphone in one hand with the Flashlight function set to “KILL,” and is frantically looking for her smartphone as she can’t leave home without her smartphone.
Bubblehead scans her vanity with her smartphone, looking for the smartphone she holds in her hand to find her smartphone. Doh!
Bubblehead is sometimes foolish - as with the smartphone search - and she could be classified as naive, but she certainly isn’t empty headed or ignorant, as her Gulliver is an ongoing encyclopedic Tarantinado of Shakespeare lines, movie lines, song lyrics, ambitions, quips, quotes, acting, more ambitions, emotions.
Her thoughts are - in 21st Century Basic White Valley Girl Speak = random.
As she scans the vanity with her smartphone, she flashes on three mememages stuck to the mirror that triangulate her emotional, philosophical and situational zeitgeist.
One is a bombshell portrait of Marilyn Monroe with her simple quest: “I don’t want to make money. I just want to be wonderful.”
A noble thought. An artist’s thought. A purist’s thought, and Bubblehead saw herself as a purist, and artist. Noble.
Too pure to get a tattoo - which are vulgarly ignoble, impure and inartisitic to Bubblehead’s aesthetic - but if she ever stooped to get inked, Marilyn’s motto would do nicely nicely: “I just want to be wonderful.”
That’s Bubblehead, she just wants to be wonderful in a Marilyn sort of way.
That Marilynism would be her tattoo if she was kidnapped, held down and forced to get inked. Or maybe Plato, which is another photomotto taped to her vanity mirror: Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
That’s Bubblehead. A bombshell brimming with what Bill called “the milk o’ human kindness.”
So: wonderfulness and kindness. Maybe both. Self-indulgent and selfless. Yin and yang. Tattoos of Plato and Marilyn facing off on her back like Basquiat and Warhol: Bubblehead just wants to be wonderful while being kind to every person she meets.
Or maybe Plato on one arm and Marilyn on the other. But no, tattoos are vulgar and she likes to quote her favorite philosopher: DearOldDadistes: “When I was young, tattoos were merely bad taste. Now that they’re hip, they’re truly vulgar.”
According to Dear Old Dad, when he was young, only a certain class of human had tattoos: Merchant Marines, mercenaries, Hells Angels, convicts. And it wasn’t the upper class, or even the middle.
Hawaiians and native Americans of course, but that’s a different deal.
But now in this 21st Century, kids are inked from head to toe. Tattoos crawling up chests and arms and necks and chins and all the way into the face, like some science fiction, face-eating (job-prospect-killing, friend-and-family-alienating) virus.
Bubblehead didn’t agree with Dear Old Dad on a lot of things, but they saw eye to eye on the ink: Vulgar. Basic. No bueno.
Bubblehead’s disdain for getting inked goes against the grain of many in her generation, but there it is. She was born a rebel.
The third vanity image is a depiction of Lord Byron in his prime - tall, dark, handsome and romantic - with his famous yearning quote: “Fame is the thirst of youth.”
Which apparently was true in the time of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, Fellowship of the Royal Society (1788 – 1824), because it sure as shooting is true 200 years later, when everyone in the world seems to want to be famous, and technology has invented dozens of fame flavors.
Some fame flavors are valuable and meaningful. Some cheap.
That’s Bubblehead. She wants to be wonderful. She wants to be famous for being wonderful. Nothing wrong with that.
Bill discussed fame in Othello: “Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving.”
“Oft got without merit.” indeed. Bubblehead is growing up in a time when fame is a diminished concept - when the definition of fame is tarnished. Cheapened, like the word “genius” has been cheapened.
Fame is meant for people who are talented, who achieve, who are born blessed with natural talent or have worked hard to make it look like they were born with natural talent. People who do exceptional things.
Fame is for wonderful people who inspire wonder. But are also kind.
Oddly, for a young woman who knows a William “Bill” Shakespeare quote for every occasion, emotion and situation, Bubblehead does not have a photo of Bill or a Shakespeare quote on her vanity mirror.
But if she did, it might have been from Twelfth Night: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”
Bubblehead is all too aware she was Born Basic - Valley Girl, she’s a Valley Girl. But like Marilyn Monroe who overcame terrible things - orphanages, abortions, rotten men, pressure, drugs, depression, insecurity, more rotten men, fame, expectations and the Curse of Greatness - Bubblehead is willing to do the work to overcome her basic Valley Girlness. Achieve that wonderfulness. Earn it.
That’s what fame used to mean. Fame is supposed to be special.
Way back in the 20th Century, Andy Warhol or David Bowie or someone thin, white, blonde and wonderful had predicted: “In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.”
During one of her random Marilyn-Monroe-self-improvement-get-smarter Google sessions, Bubblehead went looking for the origin and inspiration for that “15 minutes of fame” quote.
She found this on Wikipedia:
“German art historian Benjamin H. D. Buchloh suggests that the core tenet of Warhol's aesthetic, being "the systematic invalidation of the hierarchies of representational functions and techniques" of art, corresponds directly to the belief that the "hierarchy of subjects worthy to be represented will someday be abolished;" hence, anybody, and therefore "everybody," can be famous once that hierarchy dissipates, "in the future," and by logical extension of that, "in the future, everybody will be famous," and not merely those individuals worthy of fame.
On the other hand, wide proliferation of the adapted idiom "my fifteen minutes"and its entrance into common parlance have led to a slightly different application, having to do with both the ephemerality of fame in the information age and, more recently, the democratization of media outlets brought about by the advent of the internet. In this formulation, Warhol's quote has been taken to mean: "At the present, because there are so many channels by which an individual might attain fame, albeit not enduring fame, virtually anyone can become famous for a brief period of time."
Well Warhol had a touch of Nostradamus way back in 1966 or whenever he said whatever he said. That 20th Century prophecy was coming true with a vengeance in this 21st Century, where everyone is famous for 15 - 60 seconds every 15 minutes - on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok, on Netflix, on hundreds of internet sites and streaming channels and podcasts - much of this fame oft got without merit.
There had never been more avenues to become famous, but what value did that 15 seconds or 15 minutes of fame carry?
Famous for everything. For nothing. Famous for having no talent. Famous for famously being without talent. Famous unsullied by wonderfulness. Famous for singing songs about their dripping wet quoniam (see below) or the size of their Johnsoniam.
Vulgar fame, as opposed to wonderful fame.
Bubblehead wants that enduring fame. She doesn’t want to be a YouTube star or a TikTok queen. Multiple people told Bubblehead she would make serious bank on OnlyFans. But she did not want to expose herself that way. Vulgar was verboten.
She wants that Old School, Marilyn Monroe fame.
Big fame. Wonderful fame. Indelible, immortal fame. Fame got with merit.
Bubblehead wants to be wonderful but she fears she’s living in the wrong decade - like wearing the wrong dress or putting on the wrong makeup. The 21st Century isn’t for her. The wrong century.
If anyone asks, Bubblehead will say she belongs anywhere from the 1930s to the 1950s. When fame was special. Distant. Rare and valuable.
Not the 21st Century, where everyone is famous and the whole concept is diluted under 15 seconds of fame every 15 minutes.
Bubblehead wants to be wonderful, and this production of that Scottish play might be her shot. But she is running late.
Way back in the 20th Century, Woody Allen or Martin Scorcese or Spike Lee or some New York director said: “99% of success is showing up.”
Or maybe it was ninety per cent, or eighty. Whatever.
The point was: Show up. Be on time. Be prepared.
Bubblehead cannot fail to show up for this audition, but she is late and late is not wonderful.
Bubblehead speaks:
BUBBLEHEAD
Ladies and gentlemen…. Her.
Looking into the mirror of her vanity, she affects a British accent and mimics a sound bite she hears on Tik Tok. The source of the quote is still unknown - Keira Knightley? Minnie Driver? Helena Bonham Carter? Adele? Amy Winehouse? Someone female, British and Cockney-posh, anyway.
Bubblehead has never bothered to figure out from whence came that soundbite, or whose voice that is. She just likes to say - alone, in private…
BUBBLEHEAD
Ladies and gentlemen…. Her.
…in a London accent that makes her sound like a chimney sweep or a scullery maid perhaps, and that is Bubblehead’s own private joke. Because without putting too fine a point on it, in the flesh, Bubblehead is Really Something.
More than a little bit of alright.
In the mirror of her vanity, framed by Plato and Marilyn and Lord Byron, Bubblehead catches a glimpse of… her, and shines a light on her own vanity. She likes what she sees and smiles that gap-toothed smile that brings men to her knees on their knees: Bubblehead is sexy and she knows it. But she is not altogether comfortable with what Sharon Tate called “The sexy little me.”
Bubblehead has many flavors of sexy, but this morning she is regally sexy, draped in 11th Century robes, queenly hair and makeup.
Bubblehead blushes at the radiant young woman looking back at her from the mirror. She is a bit of a narcissist in private, in love with her own reflection. But only in private. In public, Bubblehead has learned the art of acting completely unaware she is a knockout.
Living in Malibu around the rich and the famous and the talented and the successful and the wonderful and the beautiful, the finest quality she has seen in some - but not all of them - is gratitude.
Talented musicians or writers born with a talent and they are just grateful they have it and it has given them an interesting life.
Pretty girls and handsome men who turned out to be pretty and handsome and are just grateful for those gifts.
In public, Bubblehead has learned to Marilyn her looks and her sexiness as if she isn’t aware of any of it.
Bubblehead is in love with her reflection, but it’s a good kind of love. A healthy love. Because under it all, she is just grateful to have been so naturally blessed. City girls seem to find out early how to use their looks and their sexiness and whirl it around them like a scythe to get what they want.
Bubblehead is built to be one of those girls, but she doesn't want that. She wants to be wonderful - to be loved, not feared. Beneath her flawless bosom beats a kind heart.
“The Sexy Little Me” was a power that came on Bubblehead gradually. A power that embarrassed, frightened and confused her at first - a power she had learned was a double-edged sword. The Sexy Little Me brought so much trouble with it: unwanted, sometimes aggressive attention.
Dishonest approaches from men and women. Teachers. Strangers. Friends. Thugs. Cops. Lots of people.
Bubblehead sees herself as an observer, an artist. She wants to be invisible. To observe, and not be observed - until she is on stage, anyway. So she knows how to hide her body and use and not use makeup to tone herself down or do herself up.
Today she is going to be on stage so she is doing herself up for the full KAPOW!
Of all the words about Marilyn Monroe that swirl in Bubblehead’s insatiably curious Gulliver, one of her favorite stories is from Amy Greene, wife of Marilyn’s photographer Milton Greene:
"I'll never forget the day Marilyn and I were walking around New York City, just having a stroll on a nice day. She loved New York because no one bothered her there like they did in Hollywood, she could put on her plain-jane clothes and no one would notice her. She loved that.
So as we were walking down Broadway, she turns to me and says 'Do you want to see me become her?'
I didn't know what she meant but I just said 'Yes'- and then I saw it.
I don't know how to explain what she did because it was so very subtle, but she turned something on within herself that was almost like magic. And suddenly cars were slowing and people were turning their heads and stopping to stare. They were recognizing that this was Marilyn Monroe as if she pulled off a mask or something, even though a second ago nobody noticed her.
I had never seen anything like it before."
Bubblehead is learning how to do that - turn it on and turn it off, as she pleases. When it suits her. When she wants to observe. When she wants to be observed.
There are women who are sexy on the inside but not on the outside and vice versa.
Bubblehead is the vice versa. On the inside she is just a dorky, nice girl, “Full o’ the milk o’ human kindness” as Bill would say. But on the outside, she is all milky-perfect curves and boobs and butt capped by a lava flow of red hair framing a perfectly symmetrical, sun-protected face flawed only by the gap in her two front teeth - the sign of Venus.
As one potential suitor described her. “The winner of the Gaellic Combined:” Red hair, green eyes, skin like alabaster. A knockout. Even by Los Angeles standards.
In Spinal Tap terms, nature had cranked Bubblehead to 11. Which was nice, except she was so almost-flawless, everyone assumed it was all a whopping big expensive Kardashian fake: Nose job, fake boobs, tattooed eyelashes, lips, lipo = work work work.
No no no.
But it wasn’t fake. That was all… her. All natural. Genetically blessed and artisanally curated and carefully cared for but all natural.
Pity the young woman in Los Angeles born with perfect boobs. Everyone assumes they’re store bought. For a while when she lived in Los Feliz Bubblehead wore a tight t-shirt reading “NOT STORE BOUGHT” but then she thought better of it.
Too showy. Too visible. Too “look at me.”
Vulgar. Basic. Why add to the tsunami of look-at-me vulgarity that was Los Angeles in the 21st Century? The world in the 21st Century?
Bubblehead was learning how to carry it, how to use it, how to turn it off, turn it on. She carried it well, pretended to be unaware of it, which made her even more sexy. Bubblehead read everything about Marilyn Monroe she could get her hands on - printed, online, anywhere. She could quote Marilyn almost as well as she could quote Bill.
She read Truman Capote’s A Beautiful Child in which Marilyn exclaimed - or so Capote claimed: “I like to dance naked in front of mirrors and watch my titties jump around.”
That wasn’t Bubblehead’s style - not even in private - but at another point, in A Beautiful Child, Marilyn is staring into a mirror and Capote asks: “What are you doing?” to which Marilyn mysteriously replied, “Looking at Her.”
Now in her room, alone and in private, the inner Bubblehead is looking at the outer Her.
And She is smiling back.
She smiles at Her queenly, 11th Century reflection in the mirror and makes a mental note to thank Kelsey in costume.
Kelsey killed it. Her costume is perfect.
Francesa Annis perfect? Maybe.
The moment she was considered for the role, Bubblehead worked to earn a quick PhD in all things Macbeth - but especially Lady M.
Roman Polanski directing Francesca Annis as Lady M in Polanski’s Macbeth (1971)
Of all the women who’d had a go at Lady M on stage and screen - Sarah Siddons in the 18th Century, Sarah Bernhardt (not the comedienne, she is Sandra Bernhard) and Ellen Terry in the 19th Century, Isuzu Yamada in Throne of Blood in 1957, Judi Dench on a stripped stage in 1976 (M playing Lady M!), Marion Cotillard in the 21st Century - it was Francesca Annis in Roman Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth who Bubblehead was shooting for.
Annis was rarely mentioned in the 10 Best Lady Macbeth lists, possibly because the Polanski name poisoned anything attached to it. But Francesca Annis was the Lady Macbeth Bubblehead wanted to be: Outwardly innocent, inwardly evil, sexy, seductive, doomed.
Sexy. Ambitious. Guilty. Doomed. Beautiful. Could Bubblehead present all of those, that well, better than it had been done before?
It is time to find out and the clock is ticking. She is late for a date with her fate.
That smile in the vanity mirror exposes Bubblehead’s secret weapon. Her kiss of Venus. Her two front teeth are gapped, on the top: Like Madonna, like Anna Paquin, like Georgia Jagger, like Lauren Hutton.
Liiiiiike Brigitte Bardot!
Like Dakota Johnson and of course, like the Wife of Bath.
Of all the men who had hit on her over the years, one of them came in at a literary angle, telling Bubblehead that gapped teeth were a sign of sexuality, going back to the 15th Century. Going back to Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath.
A nice line and a nice angle. Bubblehead didn’t take the bait with Literary Dude right off because she didn’t know what he was talking about. Chaucer? But Literary Dude did inspire her to pick up The Canterbury Tales and try to read them in Middle English - a trickier knot than Shakespeare even - but she made herself understand.
Chaucer’s description of the Wife of Bath from The Canterbury Tales resonated across the centuries and all the way to modern Los Angeles and was 50 - 100% true of Bubblehead.
Bella Morgan is a red-headed, gap-toothed galon Instagram who has Bubbleheadish qualities: https://www.instagram.com/p/COxyIrwBmvN/
In the prologue to the Wife of Bath, she describes burying her fourth husband and putting on a show of remorse and longing, then wasting no time falling for a guy half her age. The Wife of Bath didn’t hold back in describing herself, body and soul:
And I was fourty, if I shal seye sooth;
But yet I hadde alwey a coltes tooth.
I hadde the prente of seinte Venus seel.
As help me God, I was a lusty oon,
And faire, and riche, and yong, and wel bigon,
And trewely, as myne housbondes tolde me,
I hadde the beste quoniam myghte be.
Bubblehead struggled to untangle and decipher that Middle English knot - she found the Cliff’s Notes and other explanations online - but once she understood the words, she compared them to herself and found some things in common with that 15th Century gap-toothed vixen.
And I was fourty, if I shal seye sooth; Bubblehead was half that. Twenty years old.
But yet I hadde alwey a coltes tooth. By “coltes tooth” Chaucer meant “youthful wantonness : concupiscent desire” according to Mirriam Webster. But that was not true of Bubblehead.
Young Bubblehead was often described as “coltish” wobbling around on long legs, until she grew into those legs and became a different sort of animal. A thoroughbred. She had made some money as a leg model, but her ambitions extended farther than that.
Gat-tothed I was, and that bicam me weel; Gap-tooted Bubblehead was - and she made it look good. Her parents never corrected that dental flaw - diastema, it was called - maybe because they knew Chaucer? She was teased about her teeth, until she learned how to use them to tease men back.
The Wife of Bath, in color.
I hadde the prente of seinte Venus seel. In Chaucer’s time gapped-teeth were seen as a symbol of Venus - goddess of love. One of Bubblehead’s first modeling jobs, as a matter of fact, was posing as Botticelli’s Venus, barely clothed, in a plastic shell, for an oyster and seafood bar in Venice. She was 16 and in the throes of discovering the Good Cop/Bad Cop nature of being Very Good Looking. But that corny oyster bar ad attracted attention and lead to more modeling jobs and the kind of attention and money that was heady for a teenager. And after the thousandth person told Bubblehead she should try acting, she tried acting. And she loved it and that lead her to Bill. And it all went back to seinte Venus seel: Standing almost illegally naked in a plastic oyster shell.
Jim Carrey freaking out from The Mask.
As help me God, I was a lusty oon, Lusty? No. Despite outward appearances, Bubblehead was shy. Modest. Sex terrified her when she was younger and she was not even close to being the vixenish hell-cat she appeared to be. It had taken her a while to enjoy sex. The Boyfriend opened her up - so to speak - and now she was getting the hang of it - so to speak - but she would not describe her inner self as lusty, even though her outer self made men howl with protruding tongues and bulging eyeballs like Jim Carrey fiending for Cameron Diaz in The Mask.
And faire, and riche, and yong, and wel bigon, Bubblehead had a bit of Ireland on both sides. She was fair, as in fair-skinned - she preferred ‘fair’ to ‘pale’ - as in allergic to the sun, and she was young.
But she was neither rich nor wel bigon = well-fixed.
Bubblehead was all too aware she was wannabe actress / waitress/ Cosplay dork #124,908,345 in Los Angeles. She lived with The Boyfriend in a rent-controlled, ocean-view apartment in Malibu - where rich and well-fixed was a relative deal. Bubblehead and the Boyfriend paid $3500 a month to live in a decent apartment on the cheaper, inland side of Pacific Coast Highway - backed up to those sketchy cliffs, looking across the riverine, ever-flowing Pacific Coast Highway to the ever-flowing deep and dark blue Pacific.
Carbon/Billionaire Beach looing east. Bubblehead and The Boyfriend live on the inland/cheap side of Pacific Coast Highway. Photo: Team Coben.
Boyfriend drove a Tesla and Bubblehead had her beloved Prius. They weren’t poor and had money in the bank and some financial security, but they lived across the street from Carbon Beach - aka Billionaire’s Beach - a stretch of nature-blessed coast where a beach cottage cost anywhere $15,000,000 to $150,000,000 and rented for anywhere from $15,000 a week to $150,000 a month and then some.
A hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month, just to rent a place? For a month. Sometimes more. A lot more. Bubblehead just couldn’t get over that, even though she overlooked it from their upstairs apartment on the cheaper, inland side of PCH.
Who had that kind of money? Rich people were like a different species to Bubblehead until she moved to Malibu and met a few. They were human, just a little different.
From her balcony on the cheap side of PCH, Bubblehead could spy into the homes of three Oscar winners, a gazillionaire Google exec, several homes bought by famous gazillionaire Larry Ellison that he rented out to Jennifer Aniston and others, and the homes of several anonymous gazillionaires she’d never heard of.
Bubblehead and The Boyfriend were doing nicely nicely thank you but rich? Wel bigon? A relative term in Malibu where the sky was almost always blue - and the sky was the limit for living la vita dolce.
And trewely, as myne housbondes tolde me, She was not married, and had no husband, only a loyal and loving boyfriend. He was also a wannabe actor - a devotee of Bill who managed to pay the bills as a semi-professional poker player. The Boyfriend was smart, and he was cautious and he sometimes came home from The Hustler Casino or the Bicycle Club or the Hollywood Casino or private game with three month’s rent after one night of cards.
The Boyfriend was an excellent bluffer, and he knew how to read people.
In fact, Boyfriend bought that Tesla after one particularly good night of cards: Flipped a royal flush on the river and busted out a guy who had four aces. Just destroyed him.
Which was nice, but The Boyfriend’s real goal was to make it to the World Series of Poker, win the whole damned thing and throw a couple million down on a beach house on the good side of Pacific Coast Highway - right on the sand of Billionaire Beach.
Walk out the back door, paddle or ride the eBike on the hard sand up to Surfrider Beach. Surf. Repeat. Never grow old. Never die.
Bubblehead and The Boyfriend were happy together, and it was nice - in a La La Land kind of way: Ambitious, talented, getting there, not quite there. Getting along. So in a way, they were wel begon - well fixed - maybe not financially or professionally, but emotionally.
So far, so good. Another day of sun.
I hadde the beste quoniam myghte be. Bubblehead blushed at this. Like a 21st Century rapper - like Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion singing about WAP - the W.O.B wasn’t shy bragging about the smoothness of her nether regions. Bubblehead was shy about such things, but she had been told - by those few chaps who had been down there - that her quoniam was smoother than a silk purse. Sweeter than cherry pie. But Bubblehead wasn’t one of those rapper chicks. She kept such things about herself, to herself.
Nothing to brag about good heavens. That was vulgar. Tattoos were vulgar. Bragging about your quoniam was vulgar. Bubblehead might have been basic, but she was not vulgar.
Private parts should be kept private. The Boyfriend liked Bubblehead’s quoniam, and that was good enough for Bubblehead.
[Bubblehead was like Marilyn Monroe in that she was a glutton for knowledge, experience, ascension, improvement. Anything that would help her become wonderful. The Literary Dude who saw parallels between a fictional 15th Century Middle English character and Bubblehead was the kind of guy who got a second date. Bubblehead cranked up the sexy to 11 for this chap and they went somewhere nice in the Hollywood Hills in a large convertible automobile. All was going smooth until Bubblehead complimented Literary Dude on his literary skills, to which he answered: “Wait until you experience my cliterary skills.” And that was that for Literary Guy. See ya. Don’t call me. Vulgar. Obvi!]
Bubblehead is the Wife of Bath, and she isn’t. The soul of a modest girl misplaced in the body of a sex goddess. Red hair, fair-skinned, gap-toothed.
As Jim Carrey said in The Mask: Smokin!
Bubblehead checks her look in the mirror one more time, then resumes her search for the smartphone she holds in her hand. She can not leave home without that phone - it is her lifeline to the world.
Like removing a pacemaker from a heart patient, or that nuclear deal from the chest of Iron Man. What was that? The ARC reactor. Bubblehead’s smartphone was as vital to her as the ARC reactor was to Tony Stark.
So where is that smartphone?
It’s dark in the room but there is music, a beautiful, haunting song written before Bubblehead’s time about an even more distant time - Chaucer’s 15th Century, or maybe Macbeth’s 11th Century - a moody, medieval song about mind reading, ghosts, castles, heartache, movie stars, movie queens, love going wrong.
This song has been on permanent rotation in Bubblehead’s Gulliver since she was very young. Her Gen X parents loved the song. They danced to it at their wedding and suggested Bubblehead might have been conceived to If You Could Read My Mind.
For many years she thought Gordon Lightfoot was a Scotsman - because his voice was rough and smooth and accented like good Scotch whiskey. But he was Canadian - from Ontario, like her Dear Old Dad.
Gordon Lightfoot’s If You Could Read My Mind was popular in the 1970s, but it was the kind of song that would have echoed nicely nicely through an 11th century Scottish castle, if 11th Century Scottish castles had Spotify.
GORDON LIGHTFOOT
If you could read my mind, love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
'Bout a ghost from a wishing well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
You know that ghost is me
And I will never be set free
As long as I am a ghost, you can't see
Gordon Lightfoot always put Bubblehead in the mood - in the mood for whatever she was in the mood for. Sometimes it was the mood for love - Lightfoot was right up there with Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir and Donna Summer’s I Feel Love for her chanson d’amour.
But this morning Bubblehead is in the mood to kill - where Urban Dictionary defines “kill” as “To get a powerful amount of positive feedback. Often used in comedy, Rock and Roll shows, and anything else stage related.”
Bubblehead’s urge to kill that morning is stage-related. In about two hours she will audition in costume in front of God, The Director, Mr. Money and everyone for the part of Lady Macbeth - a notorious actress-slayer in a notoriously jinxed Scottish play.
That Scottish play.
Bubblehead wants Lady M more than she has ever wanted anything. A somber, moody, emotionally and physically taxing role, and she is revving on a somber, moody, emotional song by Gordon Lightfoot, who seems to be singing directly to her.
GORDON LIGHTFOOT
I'd walk away like a movie star
Who gets burned in a three way script
Enter number two, a movie queen to play the scene
Of bringing all the good things out in me
But for now, love, let's be real
Bubblehead hopes to walk away like a movie star after nailing her audition for the part of a movie queen.
That part was right.
“Burned in a three-way script/Enter number two” meant what, exactly? Bubblehead never deciphered that line. There were no Cliff’s Notes for 70s classic rock. Songfacts.com shed no light.
“Bringing all the good things out in me,” was not quite right. Lady MacBeth is not about good things. The opposite. She isn’t bringing out the good things in anyone. Lady MacBeth is the bad devil sitting on the shoulder of her husband, urging him to kill the king and steal his crown. She shames her husband into breaking his moral code and loyalties to kill King Duncan - and bring out a lot of blood from him.
Lady Macbeth is evil. The Boyfriend believes Bubblehead is “too full o’ the milk of human kindness” to play such an evil woman.
Is that true? She is about to find that out. She’s ready, except she can’t find her damned smartphone.
Then Bubblehead has a lightbulb: She will use this phone in her hand to call her smartphone and it will ring and she will find it, probably lost in her bedsheets or under her vanity or somewhere else Doh!ish.
Or maybe Ike the Cat’s run off with it.
Bubblehead is late and nervous and making mistakes. She dials her smartphone to find her smartphone and then has what alcoholics call “a moment of clarity,” or what Homer Simpson would call a “Doh!” moment.
“Doh!” Bubblehead says out loud, when she understands her mistake.
BUBBLEHEAD
Good thing the phone is smart. Doh!
Bubblehead is the only witness to her nervous foolishness, which she will add to a private, long list of nervous foolishnesses.
That problem solved, Bubbblehead is almost ready to go. Ready for whatever.
She checks her look in the mirror one more time, and finds a flaw on her otherwise perfection costume. Some little bit of schmutz.
What schmutz? Blood? Sweat? Tears?
When Bubblehead is nervous, she quotes Shakespeare. But in her nervousness she recognizes a chance to rehearse a bit for her immediate future and apply it to her present situation.
Clever girl.
A famous scene from Macbeth, with Lady M on the verge of a nervous breakdown and suicide - overwhelmed by the guilt that follows the breaking of one’s moral code.
An 11th Century PTSD in a way, because what kills Lady M is shame.
BUBBLEHEAD
Yet, here’s a spot.
Because Bubblehead is a bubble head and often besmirching her garments in any number of ways - booze, nachos, blood, grease - and because she is auditioning for a notoriously bloody play, she has bottles of white vinegar and hydrogen peroxide handy - on her vanity, in her purse, in her glovebox. For this garment, hydrogen peroxide is the go. With that in hand, she runs through some lines as she applies the hydrogen peroxide to whatever that is besmirching her queenly robes:
BUBBLEHEAD
Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
Behind and all around her, Bubblehead’s room is decorated with visuals of her various passions and inspirations: furniture, used props, costumes.
Movie/theater posters: Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Polanski’s Macbeth, Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, David Lynch and Naomi Watts’ Mulholland Drive, Pulp Fiction and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood from Q, Sean Connery as James Bond in Goldfinger, Daniel Craig and Eva Green in the modern Casino Royale, Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Clooney and JLo in Outta Sight (the chemistry!), all the lovely lads in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black - movies she can quote line for line off the top of her head, and often does.
This is the room of a young actress who loves her craft, loves the stage, loves movies, loves great writing, loves acting. The room of a young actress who just wants to be wonderful.
Bubblehead dabs the spot until she is satisfied, then primps and twitters and nervously roams her room, stalling and wasting time as she listens to the last of Gordon Lightfoot.
GORDON LIGHTFOOT
And if you read between the lines
You'll know that I'm just trying to understand
The feelings that you lack
I never thought I could feel this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it
I don't know where we went wrong
But the feeling's gone
And I just can't get it back
Bubblehead thinks an idle thought about the lyrics “like a ghost from a wishing well” and the movie The Ring which starred Naomi Watts, one of Bubblehead’s favorite actresses ever since she had seen Mulholland Drive the sixth time and took the time to unravel and understand a movie that was way over her head.
Kind of like reading Shakespeare - or Chaucer - watching and understanding Mulholland Drive was like untying a knot.
Bubblehead had always wondered if The Ring was inspired by Gordon Lightfoot singing about “a ghost from a wishing well” and she also wondered for the millionth time why Naomi Watts hadn’t been nominated for Mulholland Drive.
If that wasn’t acting, Bubblehead didn’t know what acting was. And Bubblehead likes to think she knows what acting is.
Those idle thoughts are interrupted by a nervous knock, knock knocking on her bedroom door. She knows who it is, and she knows she is late, so she nervously busts out some Bill, from that Scottish play.
It’s The Porter:
BUBBLEHEAD
Knock,knock, knock! Who's there?
Faith, here's an English tailor come hither,
for stealing out of a French hose: come in, tailor;
here you may roast your goose.
From outside the door, a pause, and then an agitated male voice.
THE BOYFRIEND
Bubble, your goose is gonna be cooked if we don’t get rolling.
You wanna be working as a waitress in an oyster bar the rest of your life?
Urged on by the urgency in The Boyfriend’s knocking and voice, Bubblehead primps urgently.
BUBBLEHEAD
I’m fine tuning!
THE BOYFRIEND
Can I come in?
BUBBLEHEAD
No! It’s bad luck to see an actress before an audition!
BOYFRIEND (exasperated)
No, that’s a bride before a wed… Incoming!!!
Bubblehead knows the irritation in her fella’s voice, and now that she is properly primped, that inspires her to take a position of vulnerability in the seat in front of her vanity, extending her once-coltish, now thoroughbred legs like Madeline Kahn as Lily von Shtupp in Blazing Saddles.
She nails the line:
BUBBLEHEAD (Shtupp-style)
Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome! C'mon in!
The bedroom door swings open and there is The Boyfriend: Basketball tall, surfer dark and movie star handsome, he looks more than a little like a hybrid of Lord Byron circa the first canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Gordon Lightfoot circa If You Could Read My Mind: Tall, lean, dark and handsome. Moustache and whiskers for daaaaaays.
Gordon Lightfoot, the Younger.
Curly hair. Masculine. Voice deep enough to find work as a foghorn if the poker thing doesn’t work out.
As much a statue to masculinity as Bubblehead is a fertility symbol. Movie star handsome.
[In fact, after seeing Pulp Fiction, Bubblehead and the Boyfriend felt compelled to come up with Pumpkin/Honey Bunny-class nicknames for themselves. Bubblehead thought it funny to call The Boyfriend “Foghorn Leghorn” because of his deep voice - and other things. And so the Boyfriend called her Chicken Hawk. But never publicly. A private thing. Less explaining to do.]
Foghorn Leghorn and Chicken Hawk were a handsome couple. L.A. handsome. Living in Los Angeles, Bubblehead became aware of a cultural phenomenon she called “celebripheral vision” - which meant when someone or a couple walked into a trendy bar or restaurant or party, heads turned to check out who’s who.
Maybe it’s someone famous!
Bubblehead and The Boyfriend look like famous people. They turn heads. A very handsome couple indeed. Lord Byron and Venus. Brigitte Bardot and Michael Fassbender, Gordon Lightfoot and Lauren Hutton. Sookie and Bill from True Blood.
THE BOYFRIEND
The hour has come to strut and fret. You ready, Chicken Hawk?
Bubblehead has a pornographic memory when it comes to movie lines - old and new. This one she pulls from Don Cheadle’s character in Outta Sight.
BUBBLEHEAD
Ready for whatever.
THE BOYFRIEND
Places to go and minds to blow.
The Boyfriend offers his hand and helps Bubblehead to her feet, gives her a confidence kiss and hug and does their private shtick.
THE BOYFRIEND
I love you Chicken Hawk.
BUBBLEHEAD
I love you Foghorn Leghorn.
He guides her out of the safety of the bedroom and closer to the nervous uncertainty of an important day.
THE BOYFRIEND
Let’s make like a shepherd and get the flock out of here!
BUBBLEHEAD
Let’s make like a bread truck and haul buns.
Bubblehead and the Boyfriend have many things in common, outside of their outward appearance. They both know their Bill, and can bust it out at appropriate occasions.
They sometimes argue using Bill. Make up using Bill.
Make out using Bill.
For this occasion, the Boyfriend borrows from King Lear and makes it sound good.
THE BOYFRIEND
Come, let's away...
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.
The Boyfriend busting out the Bill has the same effect on Bubblehead as Morticia Adams speaking French to Gomez. A melting feeling.
BUBBLEHEAD
You’re making me ebb and flow, with all your Bill.
We better exeunt before our passions get the better of us…
The Boyfriend lets his passions get the best of him, grabs Bubblehead and gives her a smoking hot kiss, hands on her royal rump - a tribute to Fassbender and Cotillard in that flawed modern version of Macbeth. Bubblehead fans herself and pretends to swoon, but carries on, adjusting her dress and her hair.
At the door to the apartment, The Boyfriend lets in the sound of traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, and glimpses of the deep and dark blue ocean shimmering to the south and east and west.
Bubblehead pauses at the open door. Cold feet? No. Ike the Cat, their black and white Norwegian Forest Cat bounds up on a sofa and gets close enough to Bubblehead for a scratch and a nuzzle
BUBBLEHEAD
You hold down the fort, Ike the Cat.
I’m gonna go kick ass and be wonderful, but we’ll be back soon.
Bubblehead and The Boyfriend exeunt, leaving Ike the Cat looking after them longingly. A very attractive cat: Black and white and fluffy, Ike is as charming as Pepe le Peu and as rascal as Sylvester. The door closes, Ike bounds through the living room to an outdoor balcony and leaps gracefully to the ledge like Brad Pitt leaping from fence to rooftops in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.
Ike the Cat is king of all he surveys, as he prowls the ledge, looking down.
From Ike’s point of view, he is standing on the balcony of an apartment on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. Cat-killing traffic passes relentlessly east and west, but Ike is safe and sound above all that, looking south through the trees and over the houses along Carbon/Billionaire Beach, to the deep and dark blue Pacific Ocean, shining like a National guitar.
As endlessly mesmerizing and mysterious to a Viking-descended Norwegian Forest Cat as it is to humans.
Ike looks down until Bubblehead looks up and waves, inspiring Ike to purr and stretch and watch as Mistress and Master climb into a shiny-new Tesla S - the Plaid version. The fast version. The 1020 horsepower version. Acceleration is life and death when you live on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu - an autobahn passing through a residential neighborhood.
Kind of like a cat, the car lurks patiently on all fours waiting for a break, then Teslaccelerates across two lanes of west-bound traffic and into the middle lane, then zips like a giant slot car into traffic headed east in the direction of Los Angeles.
Ike watches until the Tesla is gone in traffic and not even his cat eyes can see it. He settles down on the balcony, in the sun, and lets the sounds and smells of ocean and traffic lull him to sleep. When he wakes up, his humans will be back and there will be scratches and snacks and laps and company. (3288 words 6-4-21 5115 words 6-8-21 4625 words 6-24-21 7-15-21)
Ike the Cat, the inspiration for Ike the Cat. (RIP)