Sparkle, Shirley

At the commercial I started networking with this Indian family (real Indian, like curry)about Earth Mother. It's cause I promised in the Pool of Dreams on the 4th of July that I'd do something with Earth Mother, and once you mention something in the Pool of Dreams (which is just actually a regular pool at a friend's house...or is it?) it kind of sticks in your head to follow through.

And there was this lovely Indian family in the whole Indian outfit and the mom had soft features and looked like her path to god was sort of more worked out than mine, and I kind of liked that. Her son had this long hair, I mean down to his calves. It made me feel like, man, I put the kids in soccer, but look, this kid had COMMITMENT. She showed us how she rolled it up into basically a sock ball at the back of his head. Still Nathan thought he was a girl all day and couldn't figure out why he had a motocross shirt on and was hanging with the boys. And maybe Earth Mother is a potentially snoringly boring show idea, but I like moms, I like all kinds of moms, and I am dying a slow choking death of no culture. So suddenly there was my Indian friend. By golly. That Pool of Dreams. Hoping for financing from Bollywood.

And speaking of all kinds of moms, I saw all kinds of moms in the holding room at this commercial. The kids were "acting" (jumping up and down and saying "Whoa - awesome") in this commercial Barry's doing - standing under hot lights for 8 hours. Lilly and I were hanging out both on the set and in this netherworld stage mother waiting room. Why do fat women wear tight pants? I stared in wonder at most of these mothers, just especially wondering how they could sit down, I mean, don't those things chafe? Their pants' legs were so tight they looked shiny, like porpoise bodies. Topped with a giant cinnamon roll. And I'm sure all the moms were younger than me, but it was like a hag fest. You couldn't drink enough beer to make these women attractive. Then they started talking.

You ever feel like you're drowning? When you're trapped in a room and the talking volume is so high, and all the people talking around you are talking about the auditions their kids go on, and voice lessons, and tai kwon do, and conjugating their verbs wrong, and then I realized this is what they DO, they sit in rooms while other people work with their kids. I started feeling like a slacker for not having the babies and instantly sending them out on auditions, like I'd wasted all these years they could've been working. All this time doing schmucky things like baking, taking them ice skating, going to museums, on hikes, putting them to bed, spending time with them doing nothing. Nothing...always felt like enough for me. Like bliss.

Instead I was wiping yogurt out of a wardrobe shirt, and Lilly was learning how to whisper on set and play amongst cables and apple boxes, and I was telling the kids, my wonderful kids, that even though they were tired, they had to act excited so - so - they wouldn't get fired - Sparkle Shirley! Sparkle! As Shirley Temple's mom used to say.

Ick. Yeek.

It was awesome. It's also over. Nathan, 9 years old, torn apart when things come to an end, like me. In the pool he has to talk about every crew member, and remember them. A brotherhood dissolving before his eyes. A two day marriage. Emma took it more like a man. Loved the work. Check, please. Also loves just being Emma.

I guess total commercial immersion was just one more cultural step for Opperkind. Lilly was the most fun. Aside from playing in a bank of lockers with dangling keys for hours, we did get to play out front on the lawn briefly, where we had a massive sword battle with sticks. Her in her red elastic ponytails, saying "I'll cut you to ribbons, you blaggard," at three.

She's art in motion.