Richard was speeding his way to the emergency room to visit Lola. He hoped it wasn't too late. Lola had ingested a handful of M&Ms, which she had earlier mistaken for sleeping pills. Richard knew that she wasn't in any real danger---after all there aren't many medically documented cases of M&M overdoses, except perhaps for a few cases among 6th graders in the San Fernando Valley, where everything is just a little twisted. But Richard also knew Lola's was not entirely a medical case.…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 31, 2009 at 10:00pm —
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"What did I do wrong, now?" Richard pleaded with Lola.
"Richard, Honey, it' not that you DID anything wrong."
He felt relieved that he hadn't made a huge mistake, but before he could enjoy his relief, Lola added the executioner's final stroke:
"Richard, I love you, but you ARE wrong...You're just wrong in some indefinable way."
Richard felt devastated, or nearly devastated, but he also felt he could change--become something that Lola admired and…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 21, 2009 at 6:00pm —
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“So, why DO they call it ‘plastic surgery,’” Richard blurted out to Lola, before he could catch himself and refrain from making yet another foolish inquiry, “there isn’t really much plastic involved, is there?”
Lola looked at him as if looking at a ten-year-old who had just made an impossibly silly faux pas. “I don’t know why they call it ‘plastic surgery.’ Maybe it’s because no one knows what silicone is?”
Realizing now, how embarrassing his outburst had been, Richard’s…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 21, 2009 at 12:30pm —
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Looking back now, over a long marriage, John reflected on the biggest mistake his wife had ever made, “Hey Honey, let’s get a dog.”
That damn poodle turned out to be a four-footed calamity; nearly the cause, on several occasions, of his divorce. In over a decade, the kids had never played with the dog—ok maybe once in 10 years--- and “Fondue” (Jeez, his wife was insane for choosing such a cheesy name) demanded his undivided attention, 24 hours a day. John had considered homicide,…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 19, 2009 at 7:30am —
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Richard was wandering around, looking for something, as if he had misplaced something important. He didn’t know exactly what it was, or where it was, but he wasn’t worried. Everything would be OK, he reassured himself, if he just kept looking. Then he realized that he was wandering around looking for the beginning of something or the end of something. Right now, endings and beginnings were indistinguishable to him, identical. Like a train with an engine on both ends, or a human life with…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 18, 2009 at 10:15pm —
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Richard wandered aimlessly around the Walgreen’s drug store. Each aisle was filled with potions, salves, lotions, tablets, pills, ointments, scents and colognes. Why had he come in here, anyway--- what was it he was looking for?
As he walked around, seemingly in a stupefied daze, he found himself humming a tune. The chorus looped through his mind like an aural mobius strip, “Might as well face it, you're addicted to love.”
At the checkout counter, he found himself…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 18, 2009 at 9:00pm —
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9 AM in the airport restaurant, and he was eating spaghetti and meatballs. He loved spaghetti and meatballs, but never got a chance to eat these for breakfast. What a treat. Just a few moments ago, Lola had threatened to shoot him if he didn’t stop yelling at her and leave her alone, so he did, and proceed directly to the “On The Fly” Café, where he ordered his favorite comfort meal.
Richard was careful not to get any of the red sauce on his newly laundered white shirt, and he was…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 17, 2009 at 2:30pm —
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Richard turned on the air conditioner and was fumbling with the buttons, trying to set it on “Maximum Cool,” when Lola said to him, accusingly, “Richard, you don’t need to turn it on when the top’s down. Besides, its mid-winter. Why do you want to drive around Santa Monica, in December, with the top down and the air conditioner on?”
Richard sullenly pulled the convertible into the parking lot of the Walgreen’s drug store, making sure that the car occupied two parking places. He…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 15, 2009 at 5:30pm —
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“Stop shouting at me,” Lola shouted at Richard, at the top of her dainty lungs, “you’ll have airport security coming down on us in a nano-second!”
“I’m not “shouting” at you!” Richard shouted back, his dark hair trembling above his forehead, as if his head were an earthquake.
“You ARE shouting, don’t tell me your not.”
“OK, but I’m not shouting AT you, I’m shouting NEAR you.”
He quickly glanced around the crowded airport terminal gate, and although…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 13, 2009 at 11:30am —
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She knew there were a thousand kinds of love in the world, not just the two kinds they showed on TV, and which appeared in the movies: good and bad love. The world contained billions of lives, and each of these lives contained a love, like each human body contains a heart. Yet each life, and each love, is different—each is unique as a descending snowflake. Lola knew that the way she felt about Richard was different than the way she felt about any other man on earth. As she gazed at the airplane…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 13, 2009 at 8:30am —
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NEW YORK – Donald Trump has said Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean, (pray-ZHAHN'), can retain her crown.Trump, who owns the Miss USA pageant, made the announcement Tuesday at Trump Tower in New York City. The 21-year-old Prejean failed to reveal before last month's Miss USA pageant that she had posed in her underwear as a teenager. Trump says the pageant has determined the photos are "fine."*
Richard's eyes lingered over that last word in the Associated Press new story.…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 12, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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“Keep your hands to yourself,” Ariel shrieked. “I don’t care if you DO have $50 million, or that you live in a colorful ‘mushroom’ designed by Carlos Castenada. And don’t give me any of that ‘Nothing in this world is a gift. Whatever must be learned, must be learned the hard way’ shit. And do you really think, for one minute, that when your wife comes home you’re gonna to be able to introduce me to her as ‘Your Little Mermaid,’ and get away with it? Jeez, Eric, I can’t believe I EVER wanted to…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 11, 2009 at 8:30pm —
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David intercepted the FTD delivery man on the front walk. “Thanks,” he told him, “I’ll take these lovely flowers into my wife. No need to ring the bell, she’s still sleeping.” David had forgotten to order his wife flowers, but LUCKILY, someone else hadn’t. It didn’t matter now. He substituted his own card for the original, and when his wife awoke to find the beautiful bouquet on the nightstand next to her bed, she cooed, “Oh honey, you are so sweet, but you shouldn’t have gone to all that…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 10, 2009 at 12:30pm —
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Looking deep into her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she wondered what exactly he saw in her---what he
really saw? Sure, there was the physical attraction that Richard obviously felt for her, for example that time at Tommy’s, when he couldn’t control himself and with his lips puckered, had lunged at her (although, at the time, Lola had thought Richard was in desperate pursuit of her chili dog). She knew that most men were attracted to her, some almost uncontrollably attracted; they…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 10, 2009 at 10:30am —
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She wasn’t being watched—not exactly---but she had been noticed. Her name came up in certain circles. There was talk. Yes, she was pretty, almost beautiful, but she had something, something a little ‘off center,’ a little inviting, yet alarming--almost unnerving. In this town, that could be a ticket to unimaginable success, or a sentence to ‘also-ran’ obscurity and failure. Then of course, there was the challenge posed by the "Richard mistake."
Added by Brad Rose on May 9, 2009 at 3:30pm —
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The message in the bottle read, “Don’t be afraid. Dive in.” Lola snickered at this carefree aphorism, thinking its author—whoever he, or maybe even she, was-- must have been quite a rogue. Who would find themselves stranded on a desert island, with little hope of escape, and scribble such a message? Then a thought occurred to her. ‘Maybe it was someone who wanted never to be rescued?’
Added by Brad Rose on May 9, 2009 at 12:30pm —
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Ascending from the glitter of Hollywood, Lola navigated Richard’s convertible up Laurel Canyon, then right onto Mulholland, where the winding ridge road seemed to magically levitate her and Richard above the city’s smog. Lola loved this teeming city; it was so exotic, so monstrous, so unlike Kansas City. And she didn’t mind the hairpin turns on Mulholland at all—especially in the daylight. In fact, she took pleasure in them--accelerating through one so recklessly that it caused Richard to…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 9, 2009 at 11:30am —
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Richard tried to kiss her, but he missed. He had leaned into her, just when he thought she would be most receptive, just as they were both finishing their chili dogs, at Tommy’s. But his aim was off, way off, and Lola thought that he was just trying to take a bite out of the last of her sloppy chili dog. She jumped back, startled by his sudden lunge toward her lunch, “Oh no you don’t--you’ve had 6 of your own, already!”
Richard had hoped that Lola hadn’t kept such an accurate count…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 7, 2009 at 1:30pm —
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"Let’s face it," Richard scoffingly observed to himself, "everyone thinks about sex all the time, because if they didn’t, the species would not have survived as long as it has. There were 80,000 generations of proto-humans in the Pleistocene (1.6 million to 10,000 years ago.) All these "people," as it were, were thinking about sex all the time; they just had to be. OK, maybe also occasionally about food and warmth and batting order, but mostly sex. Then about 35,000 years ago, the first cave…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 7, 2009 at 11:53am —
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Walking along the beach, just north of Santa Monica, Lola glimpsed a lightly tinted green bottle tossing in the shore break. “Hmmm,” she thought “it’s odd to see a glass bottle these days, everything’s made of plastic.” With her Khaki pants rolled up to her slender calves—the ones that looked so taut in those jet black stilettos of hers---she waded into the shore break to retrieve the bobbing bottle. Inside, she could see a perfectly dry strip of paper, with a few words written in sweeping…
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Added by Brad Rose on May 6, 2009 at 3:00pm —
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