First, to clarify a common mistake when you look at my photo: No, I am NOT Brad Pitt! I know we look alike, but he is older.
I am not a psychiatrist or a Tarot card reader but have gone through a dozen shrinks over the years. Most of my doctors were hauled off to madhouses or are still hiding out in the sex clubs in Bangkok. Not my fault, I swear. While living in Paris years ago, I read in the Herald Tribune, my first shrink at a major university in NYC was arrested for experimenting with untested meds on young patients. Hmmm. Unfair. I loved those meds. They made me feel very high most of the time. Other times, they reassured me I had good reasons for no self-esteem or self worth. An unjust jury sent him to prison for the criminally insane where he was brutally forced to submit to the unreasonable sexual needs of thugs, murderers, pedophiles who were all innocent. I felt so bad I sent him Parisian experimental meds I bought in the streets of Amsterdam, but the warden confiscated them. Sigh.
For those of you who don't know me I'm a writer, author, filmmaker, playwright, educator, and humorist. I've travelled and lived in Europe, Asia, Middle East (but not Iran, Iraq, and have been denied entry to all Arab countries--cuz I am Jewish, Gay, and am considered over the edge).
I hope my posts become useful and inspire you to move mountains or at the very least learn to use humor in your personal struggle to survive the doses that Aliens are beaming toward earth meant to confuse and drive us all bananas. But since I'm a vegetarian, bananas is a wonderful antidote to the daily onslaught of aggravation that friends, careers, and mothers heave on us.
I live in the theater district of NYC, so there is no shortage of yentas and out-of-work actors, musicians, writers, directors, and fortunetellers. Zelda Fleigelmanburgerhoffer is the sanest. She paints her face white, wears gold and purple colored carrots in her down-to-the-ground flowing hair, and multi-layered robes. Since she no longer gets any acting roles (she is 92), she carries a folding gold opera chair and sits in doorways in Times Square where she gives tarot readings and foretells your future. For ten dollars, you not only get your fortune told, but you get all that drama.
I usually sit on a wall by the performing arts complex with my Yorkie Molly along with friend's with their Yorkies. Zelda, who walks along this block a dozen times day and night. Once she suddenly stopped and stared at me.
"Your future is all used up Elliot!"
She suddenly yanked a heliotrope feather from her scarf and waved it over my head.
"This will counteract the Voodoo curse that someone in Haiti has placed on you!" She whispered loud enough for the assembled out-of-work performers to take in. She mumbled some kind of ancient Mayan chant, and held out her shredded gloved hand.
"I'm not kissing that filthy gloved hand Zelda! I don't know where it's been. And my great great great Mayan grandmother is doing her own chants for me from that great cave in the sky above Chichen Itza!" I explained as I carefully moved Molly to a safe distance less she caught rabies or diarrhea.
"Ten dollars! And my glove is not filthy. The Grand Mullah of Flatbush has blessed it. Ten dollars or I put back the curse!" She stood as firm as her 14-inch spiked rubber heels allowed. I refused. But ten friends chipped in looking as if they knew something of her cursing powers. Oy vey. Zelda loosened her stretch waistband skirt and slipped the money into her panties, I guess. And off she rushed to the Food Emporium to get her daily dose of bananas.
Lesson here? Bananas are no substitute for psychiatric treatment.
