My Point ... And I Do Have One (8 page)

BOOK: My Point ... And I Do Have One

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While we were in Hollywood, my mom spotted Jerry Van Dyke walking down some street. It was a big deal for us to see a celebrity, so, when my mother saw him she screamed, “There’s Dick Van Dyke’s brother!” He looked around kind of uncomfortably. Even as a child, I was humiliated. I just knew that that wasn’t a good thing.

I don’t remember how old I was at the time. Maybe my parents would remember or perhaps even Jerry Van Dyke.

I guess they had another talking-car show in the eighties:
Knight Rider
. That was much different, though. It was a drama and not a comedy.

Actually, of all those odd shows,
Mr. Ed
doesn’t sound so weird. I guess that’s because my Uncle Cookie had a talking horse. Well, it was really a dog with a saddle on it, but my Uncle Cookie thought it was a horse. He was blind and a little loopy.

We didn’t want to break his heart. It was all he had, that horse. Or dog. It was a small dog. But he never saw a horse, so he didn’t know how big it was supposed to be.

Nobody heard him talk but my Uncle Cookie. The dog would be lying on the floor (actually it was dead) and my Uncle would say, “That’s a good one, Spot. He’s telling a joke now.”

That’s right, Uncle Cookie.

I went to a
psychic

or
baloney is just salami with an
inferiority complex

A
lot of people who know I’m writing a book ask me, “So, do you think it’s going to be any good? Well, do you?”

It’s hard to tell how successful or good anything is going to be. And, to be honest, it makes me a little nervous. That’s why I decided to do the only rational thing: go to a psychic. I mean, what’s the use of putting in a lot of hard work if this book is going to be a flop? I could better use my time doing other stuff, like becoming a professional ballerina or flossing.

The first psychic I went to wasn’t that good. Do you know how some people go to student beauticians to save a little money? I went to a student psychic. There was a little psychic academy in a mini-mall between a video store and a frozen-yogurt place. It was called Gus’s Psychic School.

My student psychic was named Chuck. He was an ex-soldier who was going to psychic school on the GI Bill. The first thing he said to me was “You are at a crossroads and confused. There are questions you want answered.” “Well, yeah,” I said, “that’s why I’m here. Why else would I go to a psychic?” I should have gotten suspicious when he said, “How am I supposed to know? What am I, Kreskin?”

Chuck said “Oooooooo” and raised his hands in the air every time he made a prediction. I guess he thought it looked like he was communicating with powerful entities in the spirit world, but to me it looked like he was auditioning for a minstrel show. I knew he was bad because he wouldn’t say anything without first consulting his Time/Life book on unexplained phenomena.

His predictions were kind of vague, to say the least. “I see you pouring some kind of liquid into your mouth out of a cylindrical object. This object, it’s made of … glass. After you pour the liquid into your mouth, you will no longer be thirsty.”

“There is someone important in your life whose name Starts with either the letter E … C …B … F … or M through W.”

“You have a brother or a sister. Either that or you are an only child.” I told him I had a brother; he seemed proud of himself, then went back to psychicing.

“Your brother knows how to drive.” As a matter of fact he does. He drives an ambulance. He’s not a paramedic or anything, he just got a good deal on it. It doesn’t get very good mileage, but the upside is he’s never late to meetings.

“On Letterman tonight, Dave’s guests will be Angela Lansbury and Sting.” I had to tell him that wasn’t a prediction, it was a blurb from
TV Guide
. He tried to cover by saying he has never read
TV Guide
, even though there was one on his desk with the crossword puzzle half done. Then he said that so much came to him, he couldn’t remember if it was a prediction or if he read it somewhere.

I asked him about my past lives, hoping that I had been Cleopatra or, at the very least, someone who once had lunch with Cleopatra. He told me that once I had been a monkey, but that in my last life I was a spring roll at a Chinese restaurant. Now that’s ridiculous, even though it does explain a recurring nightmare where I’m held upside down over a dish of hot mustard sauce.

At a beautician school, there is a teacher present at all times to advise the student and make sure things don’t get too out of hand. At the psychic academy, the psychic teacher wasn’t there. He would just call in by phone now and then from his condo in Hawaii to tell his students he knew they were doing a good job. Or he would call and say things like “Tell that woman there’s something caught in her teeth.”

The student psychic finally admitted that he wasn’t very good. He was, however, able to predict where I would find a good psychic. The session wasn’t a total waste because he gave me a dollar-off coupon for the frozen-yogurt place next door.

Y
ou could tell the woman he referred me to was good because she opened the door before I rang the bell. Then she said, “You must be Ellen.” Well, that was the capper. Because Ellen is my name and all. Sure I had an appointment, and she could have been looking through the keyhole, but I prefer to think she had finely honed psychic powers.

It seems most psychics have names like Esmerelda or Cassandra—spooky kinds of names. Mine was named Shari Lewis. Not the woman with Lambchop the puppet, just somebody with the same name. I wouldn’t trust a psychic who used a puppet. I don’t think it’s because I’m prejudiced or anything. It’s just that it would disturb me to have a little puppet voice say, “You will be successful as long as you never get up on stilts. Avoid
Circus of the Stars
—don’t even watch it.”

The psychic knew that I was nervous about writing a book. This might be because the first thing I said to her was “I’m nervous about writing a book.” She looked me in the eye (or possibly both eyes, I don’t remember) and without raising her arms or saying, “Ooooooooo,” she made her predictions. The good news, she said, was that my book is going to be on best-seller lists for over twenty-five years and win a ton of awards (literally a ton; they’ll actually weigh them at one point). The bad news, though, was that I was going to have to sit down and actually write the book. I was kind of hoping that elves would come in the middle of the night while I was sleeping and write a best-seller for me; the psychic told me that though this wasn’t impossible (she claimed one or two of Danielle Steel’s books were written this way) in my case it was highly unlikely. Bummer.

Then she took out her tarot cards. She wasn’t able to get a very good reading, so then she took out a deck of regular cards. An hour and a half later she had won $150 off of me playing gin rummy. So you can see, she’s a very good psychic, even though what she really wants to do is deal blackjack in Vegas.

The good psychic would pick up the phone before it rang. Of course, it’s possible there was nobody on the other line. Once she said, “God bless you.” I said, “I didn’t sneeze.” She looked deep into my eyes and said, “You will, eventually.” And, damn if she wasn’t right. Two days later I sneezed. It felt eerie. Not the sneeze, just that she predicted it.

It sounds like a real L.A. thing to do, going to a psychic. I was thinking this as I drove away from her home in my Mercedes convertible on my way to pick up my dog from his personal trainer. What’s great about this trainer is that she also does my dog’s colors. It turns out my dog is an Autumn, which explains why he looks so good in an olive green sweater.

Well, as I was driving, the phone rang. This was weird in itself, because the psychic had predicted that I would get a phone call later in the day. As it turned out, it was my psychic calling. While we were chatting, I got a fax reminding me to call my bird psychiatrist.

Now a bird psychiatrist isn’t an actual bird; that would be ridiculous. He’s a human psychiatrist that deals with my bird’s problems. You just call him up on the phone, tell him what’s bothering your bird, and he tells you how to deal with it. He’s a bit cheaper than an actual psychiatrist—no pun intended—so sometimes I call him up with one of my problems and pretend that it’s one of my bird’s problems. Actually, I don’t even own a bird.

“Well my bird is thinking about starting a new relationship. The problem is that this other bird reminds him of somebody else, somebody who had hurt him in a previous relationship. My bird had been rejected and didn’t take it well. He drank a lot of fermented seed juice and didn’t go out much for a long time. And when he did, he took out his pain on other birds.

“Also, my bird, Paco, who has a sitcom that’s called
Paco
(he’s a very funny bird), is worried about a book he’s supposed to write. So, he’s not sure this is the best time to start a relationship.

“Paco had an interesting dream recently. I sensed the dream. I know him well enough to pick up the dreams, but not well enough to actually help him. That’s why I called you. He had this dream that he was being held upside down and dipped into a dish of hot mustard sauce …

“Oh, I see, he probably was a spring roll in a past life.”

I put on the answering machine, so I wouldn’t get any more phone calls as I drove. I felt content. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have a good feeling about this book. That’s what you asked, right?