NEW STRING OF FORTUNES

We've been ordering from a new Chinese restaurant -- two especially good dishes: ISLAND PRAWNS -- apples, pineapple, lichee sauce; CURRY CHICKEN -- thin sliced white breasts, ultra spicy sauce. JC likes their PEPPER STEAK and loves their PORK LO MEIN so it's "our place" for now.

Our new place has a fast delivery guy on a motorcycle, and the girl who answer the phone and takes the order speaks reasonably clear English.

BUT the fortunes in their cookies .. well, these fortunes cookies are different.

IT'S FUN, BEING A KID
Huh? That's a fortune?

MORALITY IS TRUTH IN FULL BLOOM
Religious, philosophical message. Old fashioned, stiff, and a bit boring.

MAY THE WARM WINDS OF HEAVEN BLOW SOFTLY ON YOUR SPIRIT
Pleasant, not thrilling, okay fortune.

OVER EVERY MOUNTAIN THERE IS A PATH, THOUGH IT MAY NOT BE SEEN FROM THE VALLEY
True, wise, mature, and even hopeful. I might paste it on the string on my door.

DO YOU WANT TO BE A POWER IN THE WORLD? THEN BE YOURSELF.
Is the writer guy into Scientology?

LOVE GOES NOWHERE UNINVITED.
Now he's cooking with gas.

IT'S NICE TO BE IMPORTANT, BUT IT'S MORE IMPORTANT TO BE NICE.
I think I'd appreciate this fortune more if the second phrase came first. Or if the whole thing was reversed.

LUCKY YOU. GET OUT OF YOUR PARTY CLOTHES.
Huh? Maybe the guy who wrote the fortune is a girl?

EVERY DAY THERE IS SAD NEWS, BUT EACH DAY IS GLAD NEWS.
Philosophical, a little dull, but optimistic.

SOMETHING NICE IS COMING TO YOU IN THE MAIL.
Boring.

LOVE IS THE FIRST THING PEOPLE FEEL, BECAUSE LOVE IS NICE.
Nice? (Boring, and simplistic.)

EVERY IMPORTANT CALL IS A CLOSE ONE.
JC likes this one. I don't.

I have about eight more cookies to eat. I love the new Chinese restaurant's two specials, but these fortunes .... Oh well ... maybe the fortune cookie writer is on Prozac.

If you want any of them, let me know, Click the Ask Em icon, and I'll send you a copy.

So -- -- see my post, "Fortune String" -- June 22.
Big question: DO I, DON'T I keep them?
Should I paste the new fortunes on the string that's on my office door?

NEW CAR BABY

JD has been looking at a 2009 Mini Cooper all year. He phoned yesterday from the dealers, as he bought it. He sent us a photo of it parked in his driveway (in N. Hollywood.)

MOM EMAILED HIM ===============
Got the photos of your new car. It's GREAT looking!

Did you get the car cover? Don't economize -- with all those Mini Wheat commercials you've been doing, you can afford it!

Worrying about money is one of your worry things. You won't run out of money, and if you do -- financially, (as well as in 100,000 other ways) we are always there for you.

Hug from yr Ma -- I'm glad you bought what you wanted!

JD REPLY ================
Hey Ma -- I went on the MINI COOPER blog last night. You wouldn't believe how dangerous the environment is for a car. Apparently I have to wax and wash this thing IMMEDIATELY. I'm not sure why, but it has something to do with the wax job that dealers do to make the car look fresh. If you wax the dirt INTO the car, you'll never smile again. If a bird shits on it or a tree saps on it, the doomsday clock begins to tick as the acids eat through the coating towards the paint, where damage will ensue and you'll never smile again.

I have to learn about "claying" the car. I have to learn how to wax the car and apply special cleaners for each of the surfaces - windows, wheels, tires, paint, interior.

Yes, I bought the car cover but that was just a 200 dollar joke. And if the car is dirty when I put the cover on, the grains of dirt will come off on the cover and then the cover will grind the grit into the finish and nobody will ever smile again!

I shouldn't have converted my garage into a gym. I should maybe construct a new garage. Or find somewhere to garage the car.

And never drive it. Just "clay" it and clear-coat it continually.

I can sit inside the car but I must wear a mask, in case I sneeze and bacteria eats through the leatherette steering wheel.

We have adopted a child. I need a new therapist just for this car. Someone to help me, to talk me through this. I didn't know a man could have a baby. They can!

You can blog about this if you want.

Love, Mini Wheat

(Instruction for Em's blog readers: Click "Mini Wheat" and you'll see my favorite commercial. Here's the link: Http: frostedminiwheat.com/ if you want to see what our-son-the-actor has been doing between readings of Shakespeare's "Richard the Second.")

MOM REPLY=====================

Dear Mini,
I'm not able to stop laffing -- got to use your "HOWL" in a blog!

What you read in the MINI COOPER blog is what I was told by the pro car washer who came to our log cabin to wash, wax, and point my Acura Legend. All the scary stuff you learned about dirt ruining the metal , this pro PROVED TO ME, showing me three places where the metal was already showing signs of serious damage.

So naturally I never called him back. We washed and waxed it ourselves.

Well, my dear Mini Wheat. here's Mama's not-mini advice. Treat it the way you have been treating your previous cars. Cars wear out, and so do people, and this car will be a big wearer outer. You do not have to keep it pure. It is yours; it can lose its virginity.

I'm still chuckling over "having a baby would have been easier." Let the fucker wear out, and if birds shit, or life doo-doos on it, so what? Life shits, and does doo-doo on you, while good things are happening!

Love from the Maxi- Mama who bore the Mini-Wheat.

JD UPDATE======================
I got the windows tinted for $275 and there are already some imperfections in the tint. There's a small scratch in the window glass on the rear. A couple of paint chips on the front of the car, one of the wheels has a small scratch. The big news: I'm not in love with driving it right now. It's cramped, the controls are very confusing, I can't seem to get comfortable (my old Legend is much more comfortable). Also, it rides on "run-flat" tires which are very hard. I could spend $2500 to get new tires but then there's no spare with the car, so I'd be in a major hassle if I got a flat... Oh well. It's kind of funny to me that I wanted the car so badly and now I'm kind of disenchanted with it. It looks very cute, though. The gas mileage is good and the acceleration is terrific.
More later...

I PHONED a few minutes ago and said -- "You're going to love the very things that are making you uncomfortable, annoyed, disenchanted. Motherly Advice: When you get up, every morning for a week, throw a pebble at it. And take it for a drive around the block."

BRITNEY AND MADONNA ON THE HILL

What's the hill?

" ...You never know exactly the minute, the place. You climb the hill all your life and you're going on and on. You reach a flat place now and then but a flat place is going someplace on the way up your hill. And then ... Well, it feels the same. The wind's the same. You're still walking but ... but the top of the hill is gone and done with and you're going down. Not up. Going down. You don't quite know how or when going up got to be going down. But you're going ... down ..."

That's a quote from my play "Bdway Arts." Jim, a tap dancer, part time janitor says it, as he's eating peanuts, drinking beer, polishing the mirrors in a rehearsal studio.

Is Jim me? Am I on that hill? I felt that I was. Jim was, and still is a way of expressing my thoughts.

Britney Spears -- on a comeback, back to looking beautiful, is singing and doing her sexy dance moves -- once again thrilling her audiences and paparazzi. There are still headlines in columns, but rarely major attention being paid to her right now. Here's "On the Run," (if you see an ad first, be patient, the next clip is Britney nowadays.

(Whew ... how would you feel if people were looking at a clip of you in your life, running to the john? NOT GOOD!)

Madonna made a surprise appearance at Britney Spears' sold-out show a few months ago, in New York City.

Shortly before Spears, 27, took the stage, Madonna, 50, arrived with her manager and several bodyguards. She walked up the main stairs to the VIP "suites" -- everyone noticed her -- celebrities don't need to use the main stairs to get to their VIP seats in a suite.

During the 90-minute show, Spears gyrated her way through mostly tunes from her last two albums. Just before Spears' encore, Madonna left, with hordes of screaming fans gathered around her. A columnist wrote -- "The little smirk on her face tells us Madonna loved being a distraction to her friend's final number."

Madonna gets a few headlines, not as much as last year when things between her and A-Rod were serious -- quite a few comments about where, what spots on her face have been improved with plastic surgery. Here's a recent video of "Give It 2 me," by Madonna.

I'm not a gossip columnist; they're both professional celebrities, doing what every famous female can do -- to look great, be admired, adored, loved, emulated, and continue to be more famous, sell more albums, be seen everywhere, all over the world.

Me ... I never was in that league. So why am I writing this? Why do I pick them, not other Grammy, Emmy, Oscar, major leading ladies? Is it because their names have been so marvelously promoted, that even I, who shy away from shows like "Entertainment Tonight" and "Access Hollywood," nevertheless absorb the gossip?. (It's an osmosis process -- that's why you need a staff of PR people if you want your NAME to be a NAME, remain a NAME for more than fifteen minutes.)

A hill is a hill -- a slope, an incline, a rounded natural elevation of land lower than a mountain. So here's the big question again -- why did I write this? If you clicked the link, you saw the clips. They were the most recent ones I could find.

"... You don't quite know how or when going up got to be going down. But you're going ... down... " I wouldn't want to be on the mountain with Britney and Madonna.

MOURNING MY PLANT

Be green! I am green! I have a "green thumb." I conserve water, paper, and use the swirly energy-saver bulbs, even though they don't illuminate reading material as well as old fashioned bulbs do. And of course I recycle.

Oh dear, alas ... my poor skimpy, droopy jade plant sitting on the bench in my hallway, under the bright fluorescent in the ceiling -- it's going, going, not quite gone -- I can't throw it out! Small, not exceptional, special, or beautiful even in its youth, this plant -- for more than three-hundred-sixty-five days I've given it some dew with my sprayer, and said hello! (That's me -- I greet favorite things in the morning.)

Actually, sweet potato plants are what I love, but sweet potatoes in NYC are invariably banged and bruised. (When they're trucked into town, they're probably thrown into the bushel baskets.)

Of course, I examine each potato carefully at the store. But when I put six under my table, with tooth picks suspending them in jars of water, I may get one or possibly two that will sprout after three weeks in the dark.

Store-bought plants, even ones from the Union Square farmers' market ... ridiculously over-priced. I won't do it! I can afford it, but the days when I was poor have scarred me -- not with a "red A" over my heart -- with a C (for cheapskate).

When JC brings me flowers, I'm delighted, and the next day, upset, knowing they'll soon be wilting, not wanting to see them droop, and start the watching process -- the checking, then postponing with an aspirin and fresh water, their inevitable demise.

Fish in my three fish tanks have always, invariably turned into woe. Though I kept the tanks under-populated, and mothered, fed carefully, and cleaned the tanks, fishes go -- TOO soon they die. In my own, inimitable way, I created interesting, artistic driftwood arrangements for the tank interiors, but keep the lavender lights out -- I still find myself remembering "George the Koi, and Goldy, my year-old goldfish.

Birds? Fran my friend, web designer and blog coach, lost a bird last week -- a sweet friend who perched on her head, and ate from her hand -- a beloved pet whom she found five years ago on the ground, and nurtured.

I'm not sure I could face it -- a real living creature ... I'll think on about it -- New York City air, the noise, the unexpected things that happen with our heat ... oh dear ....

I'll just keep hovering over my poor jade plant. And on my way to the grocery store, I'll look for something very hardy -- a geranium -- I'd love a bunch of them in that old green pot ... maybe I'll plant a bulb - - - - - - - - - >

I'll settle for cactus.