Thank you for being a friend

Bea Arthur, the acid-tongued but endearing comedic genius after my own heart who was known by my generation primarily as Dorothy on "The Golden Girls," died today at 86. It really seems like just yesterday I was cracking up at her signature one-liners with my mom, my aunt and my grandma on Saturday nights in the 80s when GG was part of that line-up that began with "227" and ended with "Empty Nest." Even at age 10, I found her crusty deadpan inspiring.

Twenty years later and I'm a devotee of the reruns on Lifetime. Just hearing that opening theme song is like downing a bunch of comfort food. I'm not embarrassed to admit ... OK maybe a little embarrassed to admit ... that my friend got me a bona fide "Stay Golden" Golden Girls t-shirt for my birthday. I've seen every episode dozens of times but they never seem to get old-- a feat owed largely to Bea's brilliant portrayal of 6-foot tall Dorothy and the timelessly wicked onscreen chemistry she had with "Ma," played by 5-foot tall Estelle Getty (another recently fallen Golden Girl). Definitely one of the great female comics of all time, as evidenced by the tens of thousands of mourners who have lamented her passing on YouTube and all throughout cyberspace.

I love you, Bea! Thank you for being a friend!

Some of her most memorable lines as Dorothy:

Sophia: I'm saving the money for my old age.
Dorothy: Old age?? You don't leave fingerprints anymore!
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Rose: Well, I'm here if you want to pick my brain.
Dorothy: Rose, maybe we should leave it alone and let it heal.
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Blanche: I'm jumpier than a virgin at a prison rodeo.
Dorothy: That's . . . pretty jumpy.
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Rose: Can I ask a really dumb question?
Dorothy: Better than anyone I know.
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Rose: I'm concerned about nuclear war!
Dorothy: And just yesterday, her biggest concern was whether Bubbles the Chimp was traveling with Michael Jackson against his will.
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Rose: I couldn't sleep, so I whipped up a batch of Sverhoeven Crispies. It's a traditional midnight snack from St. Olaf dating back to Viking times.
Dorothy: Well, I guess after a hard night of pillaging and raping, a Viking would want a little something to go with his cocoa.
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Mr. Haha (the clown): Well, it says here on my “Haha Birthday List” that Bobby is 7, Jeanie is 9, and Dorothy is...
Dorothy: I’ll punch your heart out, Haha.
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Blanche: I was once told I bore a striking resemblance to Cheryl Ladd... but my bosoms are perkier.
Dorothy: Not even if you were hanging upside-down from a trapeze.
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Rose: I don't think lying is really a good idea. I once cut school and that proved very bad.
Dorothy: Oh, Rose. We've all cut school. It couldn't have been that bad.
Rose: Oh, yes it was. That was the day they taught EVERYTHING.
Dorothy: The final piece of the puzzle.
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[Sophia wants a new TV, but Dorothy plans to use the money to pave the driveway over]
Sophia: And what will I do when every other old lady on the block is watching The Cosby Show?
Dorothy: Well, Ma, I guess you can sit on the new driveway and hope an amusing black family comes along.
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[Discussing a bad actress who played Anne Frank in a community theater play]
Dorothy: I mean, for the entire second act, the audience kept yelling, "She's in the attic, she's in the attic!"
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Rose: I just found out that baked Alaska can actually be made locally.
Dorothy: Rose, I have an even bigger scoop for you: Mars Bars are made right here on Earth.
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[Introducing her ex-husband, who she hates and who always wears a bad toupee]
Dorothy: This is my ex-husband, Stan. And this is his hair.
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(knock on door. Dorothy opens it, and it's Stan)
Stan: It's me, Stan.
Dorothy: Oh, really? With that hair I thought you were Ted Danson.
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[Plumber knocks on the door. Dorothy opens the door and sees the plumber standing there, holding a toilet]
Plumber: You called for a plumber?
Dorothy: Could I see some identification?
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[Rose and Dorothy are attempting to move a new toilet into the bathroom]
Rose: Oh, don't give up, Dorothy. If the ancient Egyptians could move 20-ton stone blocks to build the pyramids, we can move a toilet.
Dorothy: Fine, Rose. Get me 20,000 Hebrews and I'll see what I can do.

fuck off, grandpa

I've been taking it up the ass from a lot of old men lately.

The first incident occurred a few nights ago while my friend and I were sitting in a movie theater watching "The Wrestler" (a phenomenal flick by the way). We were whispering back and forth, admittedly, when this prickly old bastard in a white-collared shirt who was sitting by himself in the row in front of us spun around and shamed us. He didn't "shush" us exactly, but he definitely threw his hands up in the air and let out this sigh of unbridled rage, like the red-faced Dad at the Little League game who disagrees with the ref's call.

Why am I the one who's miffed when I was obviously talking during the movie like an asshole and probably deserved to be chastised, you ask? Because a). We weren't talking that loudly and b). the breach of etiquette in question took place during a pivotal moment in the film when literally everybody else in the theater was talking, too. I mean, I'm sorry, sir, that I can't watch Mickey Rourke fish staples out of his bleeding flesh without uttering a single sound. And I'm sorry that you're obviously such a repressed automaton that you have no higher-level emotional reaction to a scene like that.

Whatever.

The second incident, the one that really provoked violent sex offender fantasies involving fish hooks and deep-fried scrotum in me, took place a couple nights later in Berkeley. I had just finished shopping and returned to my parked car on College Avenue. There I was sitting inside with the motor running, rifling through my purse trying to find my cell phone before I drove off, when I was surprised by a rap on the window. It was another angry old man, this time some professor-looking motherfucker in a tweed jacket. I couldn't hear exactly what he was saying through the window, but the gist of it was that he wanted me to shit or get off the pot. I guess he had been waiting for me to pull out so he could take my parking spot. He had this look of total righteous indignation on his face, like I had deliberately wronged him. His angry-old-man eyebrows were knitted together like two fat, gray caterpillars locked in a death match over a maple leaf.

Now granted, driving in any city sucks ass and Berkeley is no exception. College Ave. in particular is so irritatingly congested at all hours of the day and night that, at times, I myself have felt like beating the shit out of someone for their parking space. And yes, it is especially annoying when there's a long, angry line of cars forming behind you and you're double-parked with your signal on, waiting for the dipshit whose space you're after to stop jerking off and get the fuck out of there so you can park your damn car. But that said, when did it become a socially acceptable practice to actually walk up to a person sitting in their vehicle and demand that they move for you? I mean, how did this guy even know I was planning to leave my spot, anyway? What if I had just returned to my car for a second to grab a condom from the glove compartment and was about to head back inside the bar? Or what if I was waiting there for my paraplegic mother to finish using the ATM machine and roll back to the car in her wheelchair?

Anyway, my point is that he was a pushy, presumptuous old prick. And if I had had a copy of "War and Peace" handy, I would have turned off the ignition, rolled down the window and started reading aloud just to spite him.