I recently did a half-hour book-oriented TV show where the host interviews one author per episode, and it was a lovely, in-depth conversation with an interested and personable host who really did her homework. She got several character names wrong, and a number of rather important factual details, but hey, I’m a first time author and it was a half hour all about me, so I shut my fat trap.

Although I work in television, I am new to this kind of above-the-title, in front of the camera stuff.  So when she asked me, in closing, if I would read the last page of the book aloud, I replied with a line that is considered, in live television, to be unforgivable.

“Can we cut?”

The show wasn’t live, but unbeknownst to me, they shoot it as if it is – straight through, without edits. The host looked at me as if I had just asked her what flavor feminine hygiene spray she uses.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to read the last page aloud because it gives away a crucial moment that defines the relationship between my mother and I. It wasn’t even that, without context for what came before, this moment wouldn’t have the resonance I might want it to have.

It was that I didn’t have my glasses on. And I’ve recently hit that age where things close up are starting to blur.

“Can we cut?”

“No,” she said flatly. She handed me the open book.

I held it at arm’s length. I squinted. I crossed my eyes. The cameraman zoomed in for a hilarious close-up. I began to sweat, reading slowly, picking out words I could decipher. I stumbled through the final paragraphs, editing it down inadvertently, trying to give the few sentences I could make out the humor and heart they were meant to have.

Curiously, when I finished the interview, no one present said, “Hey, wow, you really f***ed that up. Why don’t we try a pickup?” No one said, “Oh, don’t worry, you didn’t read that badly.” No one said anything.

Until it began to air. And then my friends began to say a few things.

Things like, “That was priceless. Bet you didn’t see that coming!”

And “Wow, you looked like a moron. That cracked me up!”

And, “Oh, I’m sure that won’t be the only thing people remember. At least, not everybody.”

Maybe I should stick to radio.

On weekdays, I generally arrive at my gym by 6:30a.m. – bleary-eyed, cranky, and eerily resembling a troll doll. Recently, through the slits of my crusty eyelids, I noticed a new employee at the front desk. I noticed her mostly because of her penchant for shrieking “Good morning!” or “Happy Tuesday!” (above the din of my iPod) in an obscenely perky voice. When I turned to politely acknowledge her in hopes of shutting her piehole, I discovered that she’s a beautiful young Latina – who is, apparently, heading straight from Bally’s to the set of Cleopatra.

Every freaking day.

I know she’s like 22, but really, who starts work at 5:30 a.m. (the time the gym opens) in FULL MAKEUP AND HAIR? I consider myself a morning person, but at that hour, the fact that I’ve managed to insert a toothbrush into my mouth without taking out an eye is, for my money, worthy of commendation and a plaque.

The hosts of the Today Show – who get up at a similar hour – lie in a chair asleep while their makeup is troweled on, and they make ten million dollars a year. This girl gets up at the same time, applies just as much (okay, a lot more) makeup and makes ten dollars an hour.

What’s her damage?

Maybe she’s incredibly insecure and believes that her beauty is her only asset.

Maybe she’s convinced that Bally’s is Schwab’s Drugstore in 1952 and she’s gonna be discovered by Swifty Lazar.

Or maybe she’s just one of those annoying overachievers who sleeps four hours a night, collects recyclables for the homeless, and will eventually be running the world.

Just in case, I’d better start being nice to her. And maybe I should comb my hair.

A while back we attended a charity event at an estate in Beverly Hills that was on the market for $125,000,000.  And no, that is not, unfortunately, a typo. This home, a brand new, 45,000 square foot villa with inlaid marble floors, frescoes, leather walls and gallons of gold leaf, is modeled after the Palace of Versailles.

I’m not kidding.

Although guests weren’t allowed inside (it was a garden party), the owner is close with a friend of mine, and my friend took us on a hush-hush private tour of some of the rooms, like the 40-seat theatre (with adjacent candy room), the ballroom, the wine cave, and the catering kitchen, which is larger than our entire house and had racks of flatware and china for 200 – always a plus if your friends work up an appetite trying to find their way back from one of the 15 bathrooms.

“Holy crap,” I thought as I stood in one of said bathrooms, where a masterpiece was mounted over the toilet, “I’m peeing under a Renoir.” What kind of person builds a home like this? What kind of desperate need to impress is this?

As we wandered back through the gardens and out to the pool, my friend walked up to the lady of the manor and introduced us. A well-preserved fiftysomething blond, she was standing with her gorgeous 26-year-old Italian boyfriend who appeared to have fallen out of the pages of the most recent Vanity Fair. I noticed that she was holding a plastic iced tea cup, so I said, by way of conversation with someone who had about six more zeroes behind her name than I did, “Oh, a Starbucks fan, huh?”

She glanced at the glass, and laughed heartily. “Are you kidding me? They charge three bucks for an iced tea. I make my own!”

I am not a car snob. 

I’ve owned a higher-end hybrid SUV for several years, and while it does make me feel good to drive a “luxury” car (burled wood! Seats that have everything except Magic Fingers!), I am SO not attached to it. I’m basically a bargain shopper who buys everything on sale, with coupons, plus extra early bird savings for showing up at the store at 5a.m., puffy and wild-eyed, wearing two different shoes.

 But the company I work for (which is admirably green-conscious) offers us cash incentives to buy hybrids – and the highest incentive, for the Toyota Prius, is $4,000.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I cannot pass up $4,000 in free money. Even to buy a car I don’t really like.

 Well, it’s not that I don’t like the Prius, it just lacks some of the amenities of my other car.

 Sure, I get the satisfaction of getting 50 miles to the gallon. And of thumbing my nose at less ecologically-conscious drivers, whose selfishness is so 2005.

 But climbing out of a Prius at the valet stand just doesn’t have the same cachet. Washing your car at the $2 do-it-yourself place doesn’t feel as gratifying – “See, I’m just like you common folk!” – when you’re in the same car as half the patrons. Driving through McDonald’s and smiling at the cashier as if to say, “I’m not too good to eat crappy 99-cent burgers” loses something when you’re in an economobile.

 Apparently, I AM a car snob. God, I feel so ashamed of myself.

 But I would look so much more attractively ashamed in a Lexus.

I work for a TV network which is housed on a movie lot in LA. It’s a wonderful place to work, although we rarely have either of the types of moments most associated with movie lots: groups of costumed gladiators and nuns scurrying down the street to a soundstage, or people doing blow off the hitch of a makeup trailer.

 What we do have is ducks.

Last year, a group of cute brown ducks decided that the pond in front of the network’s headquarters building was a desirable location in which to relocate, and they promptly moved in.

Mama duck, who is either really accommodating or a common street whore, began popping out babies like there was a conveyor belt in her va-j-j. The babies began charming the employees – me included – with their fluffy little bodies and their adorable waddle.

And then, as these sweet little ducklings became full-fledged ducks, they became something else entirely.

Squatters.

A condo was built on the pond to shelter the family, but they decided that the entire lot was now their backyard, and they began waltzing back and forth between the film studio headquarters – where they would, as the mood struck them, either dine or bathe – and the TV network building. This necessitated that a (human) security guard be stationed in between to insure that no one runs over the darling little beasts.

Then they began s***ing everywhere. Uncontent to confine their defecation to fouling the waters of the pond, they decided to leave their gifts along the walkways leading to and from the building. (Perhaps this was some kind of veiled comment on our programming – everyone’s a critic.)

This week, they’ve taken their insouciance to a whole new level. Small gangs of them have begun planting themselves in front of the doors with a menacing look, like a group of alleyway thugs. This is obviously some kind of gang initiation, and one can only imagine what they plan to do once they get their little webbed feet on us. I’ve taken to leaving the building from the side exit.  

I generally LOVE animals. But why, I ask you, couldn’t they have stayed young, and adorable, and remembered their place?

 This must be what it’s like to have teenagers.