The Toughness of the Times

As Johnny Census, I think I’ve acquired an especially clear vision of the extraordinary toughness of the times. Would you not have shared my amazement during training week to discover that Nicolas Cage, the second worst actor of his generation, but one who’s been in a lot of big-budget blockbusters, was in your midst, in dark glasses and a hairpiece that rendered him unrecognizable until he kept excusing himself to take calls from Wm. Morris? During a break, we were able to chat for the first time since working together on Peggy Sue Got Married, in which he was spectacularly awful, in 1985. He claimed that he did indeed remember me from the high school reunion scene in which I portrayed one of Kathleen Turner’s character’s classmates.

I was no less surprised to recognize Barry Bonds, the controversial home run hitter and human growth hormone abuser. He’s lost a lot of mass since he stopped playing ball, and was very much more cordial than various biographies had led me to expect. On the second morning of training, he brought homemade cornbread and preserves to share with everyone. I asked during one of the breaks during which I wasn’t chilling with Nick if he wanted to arm-wrestle, but he declined. Punk.

Alanis Morisette, the Canadian songbird whose screeching and yodeling made the early 1990s so unpleasant for anyone with a car radio and ears, was there. Her hair was no more attractive than at the height of her fame, and she got very snippy when one of our fellow trainees asked if she would reveal at last whom “You’re So Vain” was about. The now-jowly Morisette pointed out that “Vain” wasn’t hers, but Paul Simon’s, or Carly Simon’s, or Simon Cowell’s, or somebody’s. I didn’t see why she needed to be so scabrous.

Philip Roth, the novelist, was there, jotting down frequent notes for the latest in his Zuckerman trilogy, which now numbers 27 books. I guess in this era of electronic publishing, poor Phil isn’t making the money he used to make back before the Kindle and iPad and what-have-you. I wasn’t surprised, given his reputation for wanton priapism, to see him trying to lower the boom on our pretty, young crew leader during one of our breaks, her wedding ring be damned.

That Monica Lewinsky was the one female trainee Phil didn’t try to hit on over the course of our training hardly surprised me, as it would ill become one who’s written so eloquently about Jewish self-loathing to try to get into the panties of another of The Tribe. I personally had never been able to ascertain Lewinsky’s appeal, but over the course of our training it became clear that she has an unusually bubbly personality, and I know that for many men a combination of a bubbly personality and mad fellatial skills make up for a lack of blonde hair and perfect implanted breasts.

I noticed that Lewinsky spent most of her breaks with Lorena Alice Hickok, the late Eleanor Roosevelt’s late alleged lesbian lover. Heaven knows what they found to talk about. I had always expected Lewinsky to be given an afternoon talk show on TV.

My impression, from her constant longing glances, is that Hickok would have been happier talking to Jessica Rabbit, who was of course voiced by the odious Turner. I would love to know if, when she’s out ringing doorbells, Jess (as she invited us to call her) makes the eyes of male respondents fly out of their skulls as though spring-loadedwhen they open the door. But it could be that she’s dressing no less modestly in The Field than she did for training, to which she commonly wore baggy sweatpants with sweatshirts or pullover sweaters that revealed not an inch of her remarkable décolletage.

I wish I had more to tell you.

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