Annabelle Gurwitch Still f-ckble at Fifty - The Night I Slept With Samuel Jackson

Ed here: In Annabelle Guriwitch's new book she says as a single working
mother one of her desires was to remain f-ckable at fifty. She said going three years
without sex was getting her down. As Bill Maher pointed out when
she was on his show a few weeks ago (she was hilarious as always) she
certainly made it. She would doubtless be a fun date and she's very attractive
in her smart girl way. Much more appealing to me than all the sex bombs.
More seriously she talked about how single working mothers
fare in the culture of LA. And the struggles of being a free lance
comedy writer for almost thirty years. A funny bright sweet woman. She
as also, as she doeshere, about he lunacy of social media and its effect on TV shows.


Annabelle:

The Night I Slept With Samuel Jackson
Plus, my ideas for how we should have gotten Bowe Bergdahl back; and my
glee at Marianne Williamson’s un-miraculous political career.
I couldn’t sleep last night. I was up thinking about the latest sign of
the coming apocalypse. It did not take the form of seeing the author of
The Law of Divine Compensation, Marianne Williamson, who in that tome
reveals that “faith in God's promise of prosperity for all means no one
has to worry ever again,” on my primary ballot here in Los Angeles.
No, the sign I was worried about was that a major part of her campaign
strategy was letting folks know that she was endorsed by celebrities
including Nicole Richie.

Richie is a lovely woman, I’m sure. I am very fond of her new lilac
locks, and if I were looking for someone to take me shopping for a
handbag, she’d be my go-to girl. But when seeking political leadership,
she’s not the first person who comes to mind. But, oh, that’s right—Ms.
Williamson also got a thumbs up from that great philanthropist and
constitutional scholar, Kim Kardashian. Williamson’s supporters
reminded people on social media that the framers of the Constitution
envisioned citizen-legislators who served part time and then went back
to life in their communities. That may be so; however, most of them
studied Greek, Latin, law, and philosophy, and none were returning home
to lead workshops on A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for
Surrendering Your Weight Forever. One can only hope that at least one
of those Lessons is to eat less and exercise more.

But that’s not it either.  This week there was news, if one can call it
news, that a program titled I Slept with a Celebrity was being shopped
around to media outlets.

I’m old enough to remember that once upon a time, artists were famous
for achieving greatness in their field, like Robert Mapplethorpe or Ice
Cube; or someone might achieve a kind of notoriety for doing something
dubious but of interest to a niche audience, like Joey Chestnut, the
reigning hot-dog eating champion.  It’s not news that the term
“celebrity” is now a catch-all for any number of personalities who
happen to have been born into wealth, competed to eat insects on a
tropical island, or married a stranger who bears a resemblance to a
member of the British royal family. The only prerequisite to qualify is
someone whose raison d’etre is to be in front of a camera at all times.
Is it possible that back in 1991, Warren Beatty uttered the most
prescient indictment of our current cultural trends  in Truth or Dare ,
the Madonna-mentary, in which Beatty said of the singer, “She doesn't
want to live off-camera, much less talk. There's nothing to say
off-camera. Why would you say something if it's off-camera? What point
is there existing?”

Bravo has apparently passed on the idea, but I think we’ll hear it
finds a home and I predict we’ll soon be regularly hearing
announcements that herald this and other programs that will be “coming
to a phone near you.”  I am haunted by a related phrase that will
probably blossom into wide use: “please welcome, star of stage and
phone...”

To paraphrase author Dan Savage: It only gets lower.  And how low will
it go?  One can imagine a season two featuring porn stars who slept
with Charlie Sheen, followed season three that will be populated by the
people who slept with the people who become celebrities from having
made appearances on I Slept with a Celebrity.

I am haunted by a phrase that will probably blossom into wide use:
“please welcome, star of stage and phone...”
I suppose if I get really strapped for cash, I will also go on the
show, as I have slept with a celebrity myself. Samuel Jackson and I
were seated next to each other on a red-eye two years ago and we slept
together in and over both New York and Los Angeles for five hours,
which is longer than most Hollywood marriages.

Another thing keeping me awake at night has been the announcement from
Nielsen that a record 9.1 million people were so into the Breaking Bad
finale that they were not only following it on TV but on Twitter as
well, and that Nielsen is going to be keeping track of this second
screen viewing from now on. Entertainment companies are so desperate to
up the viewer engagement level, some are offering contests to receive
phone calls from cast members  But how short are our attention spans
that we must flit from screen to screen? So short that I just forgot
what I was writing because I was checking my email in the middle of
composing that sentence.

I also marveled that the NSA allowed Nielsen  to make this
info public. Learning that the American people were transfixed by two
screens at the same time, we’re talking about live viewing, leads me to
consider the kind of security breaches that could take place on that
sad evening next year when Madmen comes to an end and most of America
will be slack-jawed and inert in front of our televisions
sets/tablets/phones waiting to find out if we will be lucky enough to
receive a call from Pete or Roger exhorting us to follow them on
Instagram. Another sign of the apocalypse? The Matrix was real.

I was also kept awake by the second-guessing over the trade for
Sergeant Bergdahl that started almost the moment the trade was
announced and, although I try to avoid such things, I did have a few
suggestions on what have made for valuable negotiations instead.
Homeland was real!

First, with summer approaching, it might have been a great idea to
offer the Taliban leaders what is one of the most coveted “gets” at
this time of year—a summer internship for their kids. As the mother of
a teenager, I am here to tell you that there are few things I wouldn’t
part with, including a kidney, if I could find someone to hire him.

  Second: Marc Zuckerberg. No matter how infuriated I get with
exhortations to play Hugs or Jackpot Party Casino Slots I haven’t quit
Facebook yet. Zuckerberg is a genius.  But last week Facebook started
asking me how I know my friends and if I socialize with them outside of
Facebook, so I’m ready to give him up.

Finally, instead of trading for Bergdahl, we could have sent in someone
to retrieve him who appears to have mastered the art of covert
operations—celebrity prankster Vitalii Sediuk, who ambushed America
Ferrera’s dress, occupied Bradley Cooper’s crotch, and invaded Brad
Pitt’s face. Before you roll your eyes, you should know that security
is so tight at these events it’s truly incredible that he’s managed
these feats. There have been times when I could barely gain access to
movie openings for films I was in.

Sediuk is also probably fielding an offer from Andy Cohen, because
having once kissed Will Smith on the mouth probably qualifies him to be
on I Slept with a Celebrity. In fact, Cohen is probably getting a call
  from someone who slept with Sediuk who wants to be on the show as
well.
At least his name wasn’t listed along with the other endorsements for
Williamson, but the results are now in, and celebrity influence is
real! I’s clear her running helped fragment the vote and put Republican
Elan Carr in the number one spot in the primary race to replace
retiring Democrat Henry Waxman.

Williamson is most famous or notorious for her lectures on the
self-help gobbledy-gook, A Course in Miracles, but the election results
were nothing miraculous. It was just plain old math.