Don't call me on the telephone!

Well, one cosmo turned into two, and then Drew convinced me that you have to chase cosmos with cheap margaritas, and so we went for greasey quesadillas at this little hole in the wall that hasn't seen the patronage of a health inspector since Ronnie was the Governor of California. Can I tell you? Before it was all over, Cameryn had me in a corner trying to convince me to be in her next movie -- she's directing a re-make of "Year of Living Dangerously," and she thinks I would be great in the Linda Hunt role -- not sure how to take that, but boy is Cameryn aggressive!

Anyway, my brain hasn't felt this achey since the summer of 1978, the morning after I went to a party at Tom Selleck's house. Everyone was there, of course -- the Hustons, Lucille Ball, Chuck Woolery, Diane Keaton, one of the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, Maureen O'Hara, Althea Gibbs, Omar, Wayne Newton, Donna Summer, Betty Ford (not Gerald), Eva Gabor, Zsa Zsa, Sammy Davis, Henry Kissinger, etc., etc. -- you know, the crowd. And there were little cubes of jello, and it was just incredibly hot that summer, and I thought, well isn't this the most refreshing idea I've ever heard of! And so I just kept popping them into my mouth, trying to cool off, and before I knew it I was waking up in John Wayne's bungalow on the Paramount lot. That was the year before he died.

And for those of you with dirty minds, don't even go there! I woke up next to Florence Henderson, Anne B. Davis and Charles Nelson Reilly. How Charles Nelson Reilly had a key to John Wayne's bungalow, I will never know. But let me tell you, Florence can make an omlette! Over omlettes, they told me horrifying stories about my behaviour the night before, something having to do with Tom Selleck's luggage and Linda Blaire's brazier. God, Hollywood isn't what it used to be.

Michael

Well, I guess you were all waiting for me to write something about Michael Jackson.

At first I didn't want to pile on, but. . . well, I did know Michael, and I'm also a Hollywood person, so I think I know a little bit about who he really was behind all of his celebrity.

I always thought of Michael as a mix of Judy Garland, Liberace and Sidney Poitier. Judy because they were both vulnerable and damaged, Liberace because they both wore such fabulous outfits, and Sidney because they were both black. But then Michael became less like Sidney Poitier and more like Omar Sharif. Sort of like a person who you look at and say, Oh, I remember you being browner than you are. I always said that about Omar, because I knew he was an Arab. I would go to dinner parties, thinking of Omar as probably three or four shades darker than he was, and I'd get there and he'd be white, just like Michael.

Anyway, Michael came to visit Ronnie and I in the White House. He was so nice and friendly, and we had lots of things in common. For instance, we were all Hollywood people, so we could talk about being famous stars. And Michael and Ronnie talked about monkeys, because after all Ronnie had been in a movie with a monkey, and Michael was already thinking about getting a monkey for a pet. Ronnie told him to go with it, because Bonzo had been such wonderful company, certainly a better co-star than Doris Day ever was*. It was only a year later that Michael adopted Bubbles.

I was always glad that Ronnie started getting forgetful around the same time when Michael was being accused of all those terrible things -- Ronnie would have been so angry, just like he got angry when the world made Mickey Rooney fat.

Well, goodbye Michael. Now I'm going to have to call my dear friend Liz Taylor. She is devastated I'm sure and probably knee deep in a gallon of ice cream.

* Doris was just about as smart as you would have thought! Let's put it this way, you never had to paint a line on the floor from the dressing room to the set so Bonzo could find his way around the studio!

(PS: I was going to make another photo collage because there are so many pictures of me and Michael, but then this one seemed appropriate because it's just the two of us and we both sort of look wistful and sort of like we're thinking, "We're both mega-celebrities I wonder what the future holds for us both?" I guess they're right, less can be more.)