My former friend Eddie Frierson. I decided 2013 would finally be my year to take action in fulfilling my own destiny, and I wanted to start it out right by realizing my dream of kissing Mara Marini at midnight on New Year's Eve. The combination of Ms. Marini's restraining order against me and my debilitating halitosis which knocks anyone out who comes closer than six inches to me made this a literal impossibility, but I had the brilliant idea of coming as close to my dream as I could by making a photograph of Ms. Marini my date for New Year's Eve (a step up from my date from the previous year – a woman's coat I would drape over chairs so I could tell my fellow partygoers that my girlfriend was in the bathroom – or the year before – a container of K-Y Jelly and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition). To make my midnight kiss fantasy closer to reality, I even found a photo of Ms. Marini in full pucker. What I didn't count on was that when I went to the punch bowl to get the photo a drink, Mr. Frierson pounced in with his Southern Gentleman moves and won the affection of the photograph, leaving me alone only moments before midnight. With no other alternative, I removed the photograph of my nemesis Misty LaRue from my dartboard just so that I would have something more-or-less female to smooch at midnight. Alas, as the clock struck 12:00 I was trying to convince the photo of Ms. LaRue that the cold sore on my lip wasn't an STD while I could see through the corner of my eye Mr. Frierson sticking his tongue down the hole that I had drilled in the photo of Ms. Marini for that very purpose. The party broke up soon afterwards and Mr. Frierson went off into the night with Ms. Marini's photo to do God knows what while I was still stuck with the photo of Ms. LaRue. I shot-gunned a half bottle of vodka and decided to clamp my eyes shut and make the best of it when the photo of Ms. LaRue told me that it had an early-morning appointment to be framed and had to get to sleep. Fortunately, I still had the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition from two years before and even though most of the best pages were mysteriously glued together, there was one print advertisement for Axe Body Spray that managed to fill my needs. All in all, I'd say it was the best New Year's Eve I've had in years.
...and how it ended.
Mara Marini showing off her 21st tattoo The fore-mentioned Mara Marini (the real one, not the photo that ran off with that bastard Frierson). Ms. Marini celebrates a birthday this Sunday and apparently she has a new personal assistant who confused her "Friends"contact list with her "Dangerous Sexual Predators"contact list, because I was sent an invitation to her party. I won't be attending because I don't relish the idea of another disfiguring beating from her bodyguards once they see past my disguise, but I have studied the invitation closely as I've cuddled with it and licked it before falling off to sleep. The most intriguing thing to me was the sentence that ended the missive: "Would be lovely to see you and ring in my 21st with my babes."I'm not sure what the 21 refers to: it could very well be Ms. Marini's age, but if that's the case she would have thrown Attempted Statutory Rape on top of all the other charges she had issued against me when we first met, so I suspect that she may be a year or two older than that. So I had my operatives (some of whom provide me with wildly inaccurate information) look into it, and they informed me that Ms. Marini is currently the possessor of not less than 20 tattoos displayed across her shapely bod. That means that she's commemorating her birthday this year by getting the 21st. Thanks to Photoshop, I have been able to make you aware that 16 of Ms. Marini's tattoos are of the world-famous Jonny caricature. My operatives have informed me (after I told them that they'd be fired if I didn't hear what I wanted to hear) that Ms. Marini's birthday body art will be a tasteful depiction of the Jonny eyesglasses, mustache and goatee on her lovely face. She'll make quite the impression when she sweeps into her gala with her visage permanently emblazoned with the Jonny logo, although I'd advise her to alert her bodyguards about her new look before she walks in the door. Take it from me, one taser to the crotch and she won't feel like blowing out any candles.
First-time Enemies List target Melinda Mckelvey, who I suspect you'll be seeing a lot more of on these pages in the weeks to come. Ms. Mckelvey posted on her Facebook newsfeed one of those cutesy-poo inspirational illustrations that litter the Internet, this one of a young woman sitting on a suitcase bearing the caption "Then one day, she decided to design a life she loved."That's a sweet thought, but the graphic artist who slapped it together failed to take into account that it's no big accomplishment to design a life you love. I personally designed a life that I love many years ago. The only problem is that it's being lived by George Clooney. That isn't to say that I'm not willing to share my design with Mr. Clooney but while he came equipped with movie star good looks, family show business connections, talent and oodles of charm to construct my design into a reality, all that I have going for me is a following of cackling yentas and a gift for cranking out moderately amusing graphics in Photoshop. It's like when I designed my Dream House at the age of 11, complete with moat, secret passages and fireman's pole that went from my toy-filled bedroom on the fifth floor to the subterranean garage that housed my Ferrari collection. It was a kick-ass design I'd created for myself, but it didn't alter in the least the fact that my first home when I moved out of my parent's house was a tiny, bug-infested studio apartment which I've only improved on slightly in the decades since. That isn't to say that I haven't held onto the design for my dream house and continue to hope that someday I'll have the raw materials to turn it into reality. There have been some revisions, though: the pole that once went to the garage is now located in the third-floor titty bar. You can see that I've gotten a few ideas on how to improve upon my design by watching George Clooney.
Tawdry Baubles lookin' good Tawdry Baubles. I frequently revise the cover image of my Facebook wall, which depicts my beloved Pug Winston and me standing disapprovingly in front of framed illustrations used from Enemies Lists past. I updated the image yesterday, this time including a picture of Ms. Baubles hiding in a closet on her birthday with a tub of chocolate frosting and several boxes of Kleenex. To my surprise the image met with her approval, as she commented "Whenever you want to post a photo of me, always, always use this one, please!"But the reason she was so delighted by the content wasn't the statement about her fragile ego, it was the fact that I had Photoshopped her face onto the body of a slim, youthful model wearing a spaghetti strap tank top. I have long been aware that targets of my acid skill with computer graphics are less inclined to give a rat's ass about the savage attacks I make about their personality so long as I depict them with a rockin' bod. If they're seen with buns of steel and washboard abs, they don't care if I show them as a recruiter for the Communist Party complete with Uncle Joe Stalin behind them. So I've decided to make it a mission of mine to tell the world the truth about Ms. Baubles but whenever I do, I'm going to be sure that she has the physique of a fitness model in whatever illustration I'm mocking her with. I'll have the pleasure of taking yet another annoying yenta down, and she'll have the ego boost of looking smokin' hot in a belly shirt and workout shorts while still being able to load up on Häagen-Dazs and red wine whenever she gets depressed. Everybody wins.
Jesse Merlin as the Troll King
My number six enemy of 2012 Jesse Merlin, who announced "I just signed a contract for my San Francisco Symphony debut. I'm playing four roles including the Troll King in Peer Gynt, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas on January 17-18-19."My operatives (some of whom are trolls) did some investigation and managed to find me a libretto of the work. Mr. Merlin plays a troll key chain at a church carnival named Asløg whose people are enslaved by an evil pig-shaped piñata named Mittelschwein (played by Ricky Martin in his operatic debut) which thinks it's superior to the trolls because you have to win 150 more tickets to claim it as a prize. Asløg's attempts to free his fellow troll key chains are sidelined by a romance with a hula dancer-shaped eraser named Machtildis, who dies a tragic death in the ninth act when Mittelschwein uses her to sadistically erase the peace treaty that the trolls have brought to him in a vain attempt to end their enslavement. Machtildis' death finally prompts Asløg into action, when he plays a carnival game called Peer Gynt in which you must jump naked onto a metallic cone with a razor-sharp point called a peer so that you land with it inserted into your cornhole (known in classic Swedish as the gynt) with such precision that the peer does not tear apart your intestines and kill you. No one has ever survived a game of Peer Gynt but Asløg has no choice and, after singing a farewell aria to his anus, leaps upon the peer. Miraculously, he lands perfectly so that his gynt is unharmed and he wins enough tickets to claim Mittelschwein and smash the evil piñata into a million pieces at his nephew's birthday party, with enough em&ems and mini-Snickers bars landing on the ground to feed the trolls for the next hundred years. Machtildis comes briefly back to life for a two hour duet with Asløg about how the afterlife is really boring, at the end of which he stuffs enough mini-Snickers down his throat that he contracts diabetes and dies, allowing him to join his lover in hell. Unfortunately, the audience had already preceded them there by the middle of Act One.
Asløg preparing to leap gynt-first onto the deadly peer in order to save the trolls at the opera's chilling climax
