I hadn't seen America's (Sexy) Sheriff Mike Carona since I ratted him out for hitting on me, but I'd heard from pretty good sources (once they started talking to me again) that his wrath was the wrath of an Old Testament Jehovah. Or was it that he was pretty disappointed and felt a little betrayed?
Either way, I wasn't going to mosey over and say hey when I saw him Saturday at an Orange gun range for the Young Republicans' ATF Day. I'm all woman, and as such have only sad and puny balls. But America's (Sexy) Sheriff didn't get to be that way by failing to win over every chick in his path. As I cringed, Carona interrupted his speech to Orange County's YRs (celebrating Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms by shooting, drinking and smoking inside!) to give me a shout-out. You could see it was just killing him, the distraction I was perpetrating by standing stock-still a good 30 yards away, until he broke off right in the middle of a sentence to point me out to the masses with a Judas Kiss, and when he walked back up to the front again for a second round of hosting duties (it might have been the gun raffle, or the gifting of the ceremonial baskets, or when he gave away a beeyootiful bottle of hooch), he whacked me so hard on the back, so jovially and friendly like, I almost fell to the asphalt and broke a smooth, shapely limb.
See?I told everybody in telling distance. The sheriff can't keep his hands off me.
It's funny 'cause it's true.
After being publicly forgiven my sins, I went over for a hey and a handshake.
“Why's Moxley so mad at me?” Sheriff Yum wanted to know, vis–vis R. Scott Moxley's stories about the mob ties, and the chicks, and the appalling adventures of the Little Sheriff.
“I don't think he's mad at you!” I said, as honestly as I could. “I'm pretty sure he's voting for you!”
The sheriff looked happy for a moment, till we all realized it's just because Moxley wants four more years of gravy train.
Also? Everybody thought it was funny for the sheriff to tell everyone at ATF Day that, in his absence, I was in charge. But the funny wore off fast when I asked him to deputize me—and he told me to put up my right hand. If there was a person there who didn't immediately think “hugging mobsters in a bar,” then that was a person you wouldn't exactly pay to take your SATs.
While the sheriff admitted there's certainly been a lot of fodder, he was most disappointed with Moxley's recent story on our Department of Homeland Security super-secret installation, which Carona permitted some guy to film inside (if I'm remembering correctly, the same “filmmaker”/felon who gave noted screenwriter Dana Rohrabacher 23 large).
“It's not super-secret!” the sheriff said. “We let kindergarten classes in there! It doesn't even have any guards!”
“Why doesn't it have any guards?” I asked, really quite shocked.
“Why would it?” he asked.
“Because it's super-secret!” I explained, happy to clear it up for him.
Then he told me that at Thanksgiving, they make pies there.
“I want to make pies!” I shouted, almost-but-not-actually quivering with joy. So I was nominated to the super-secret apple-strawberry team. Apparently, the super-secret ingredient is a saucy drizzling of Meyer's rum.
* * *
The night of the YR homage to roadkill, I scooped up my super-secret boyfriend, state Senator Gil Cedillo (D-Moscow), from the League of United Latin American Citizens convention he'd keynoted and took him to a house party for the 50th birthday of Azteca's super-suavay JJJauregui. And who was there amid the hula dancers and karaoke? A bunch of goddamned YRs and Garden Grove councilfolk! And Gil—or “Senator Cedillo,” as I like to call him—didn't think they were boring at all! Men are such a mystery to me.
* * *
It was one of those weekends of such fabulous changes. The night before, I'd gone to the annual Planned Parenthood party.
The girls of Planned Parenthood are a mighty good time.
The courtyard at the Orange County Museum of Art had been set with private cabanas (to evoke thoughts of fancy pool boys, perhaps), in front of which I cornered many men named Dennis. Dennis Morin, the retired playboy who designed Laguna's Rock House specifically to get chicks, neglected to bid on a trip to Paris for me, while museum director Dennis Szakacs told me the nicotine patch delicately strapped to my arm was not just gauche but “so gauche.”
“It is not gauche, you big fucking liar!” I whipped back at him.
“Oh, but it is,” he smirked, turning snootily away. At least this time he didn't ash in my drink. I swear to God, I love that man!
Aside from that, I accidentally assed over someone's martini glass and had terrible manners in the silent auction, reaching over someone's shoulder to outbid her in the nick of time, just for a pair of Angels tix. I'm pretty sure that dull ache in my chest means I feel sort of bad. And aside from that, I had all kinds of people looking askance as I explained that I'm vaguely pro-life, and goddamn, I love Planned Parenthood. I guess it's a more nuanced discussion than I was particularly capable of post-glass-assing. Or that I feel like having right now.
* * *
I was horrified Thursday, May 18, to show up to yet another party in a store, since that's what I like making fun of Riviera for, but this one had Nick Carter hosting, and any man who leaves bruises on Paris Hilton is at least sort of okay by me. So there's a store, and it's called Ted Baker, and someone who might have been Nick Carter was there (really, I'm too old to know a Backstreet Boy if he bit me on the ass), and some girls lurked who looked like the kinds of girls who would lurk to see Nick Carter, and there were even paparazzi and a goddamn red carpet, but more delightfully it turned out to be a benefit for the Laguna Art Museum, meaning there were Art Folk there, and I knew them and the guy who might have been Nick Carter didn't, and the girls who would lurk to see Nick Carter didn't, and oh my God, I've never been so happy to see LAM director Bolton Colburn in my benighted little life. Meanwhile, a beautiful brunette named Aerielle was wearing a crazy feathered headdress that she'd appropriated from a mannequin like she was a light-fingered Cher or one of the Village People, and I'm currently so confused by the world's cavalcades of men I was just about to marry her. Sadly, though, I don't have the balls.
