— Fiction —

The Love Letters of Cintra Wilson and Dennis Miller

Babe—

So I watched your little Charlotte Rampling–Night Porter–China Syndrome meltdown along the information superhighway recently. I don’t care what anyone says, while you were Lucy Liu-ing full throttle in the H.O.V. lane of political indignation like Lisa Nowak in a remake of Vanishing Point, well, let’s just say that I was singlehandedly overthrowing the hierarchy of the Catholic church in an act of saturnalia that would make Deeley Plaza look like Crimson Tide. I love watching you blogsmack everything under the low-cultural radar; color me Golden Earring, but we’ve got a thing they call.

Dennis

* * *

Oh, Denny, Oobie-doo…

I miss you like a Taliban suicide-bomber misses DICK Cheney. In spite of, or perhaps because of (I do so love a challenge) your increasingly rightwing leanings (you don’t so much lean as you do stand … offish), I still have a Camilla-like Orange Crush on you, my darling weirdo-beardo, and I’m delighted to know you enjoyed my Plan 9 Tosca smackdown. That said, or written as the case may be, it’s a good thing I have thick skin—Nay—not only thick skin, but aluminum siding! I TOIL of OLAY. I am waterproof, cool in the summer and when it gets cold I trap the heat inside! Sauce for the goose for my foul-line crossing guard; throw in some stinky tofu, the severed heads of foreign correspondents, and the vegetables in the Bush administration and you’ve got a Bourdain bouillabaisse to feast upon. Though I prefer lighter fare to that fricasseed chickenshit bastard who calls himself a “wartime president,” (and who couldn’t be a “Hammer-Time” President); I am hungry for discourse and miss your sweet kiss. I long to feast with you again: a long-lingering meal worthy of a Food Network after-school special as opposed to the fleeting satisfaction of Chinese military buildup on the border of Tibet or tangy Spanish Revolution appetizers … but I regress. More soon! Have to go—Tapas fugit!

It’s Prilosec time!
Cin

* * *

Hey Cingular~!

Been thinking about you … Went to the phone store today. I had to buy a new cellphone. Now I don’t have anything against technology, per se; but whatever happened to the days when a spade was just a spade and not a five-thousand-dollar Swiss Army knife with an MP3 player and hi-def video conferencing? All I want to do is call my agent; I don’t need to download the Crazy Frog ringtone, play Tetris or get directions to the Paramus Mall. When did we get so fucking needy and lazy and stupid? This is supposed to be an instrument for communication and we’ve turned it into a BusyBox for adults with fractured psyches who want to be James Bond. And all of these fucking things are unwieldy, ugly, and useless. I can touch one button and instantly download the birdsongs of an endangered species in the Brazilian rainforest while they’re dying in real time, but I can’t get service in my house? Hey, Q—even Don Adams’s wingtips didn’t have push-button dialing and I know he got better reception in that underground phone booth than I do on the 401. Did you see that thing on the Discovery Channel? They had Shatner talking about how Star Trek was influential on contemporary technology. That may very well be, but I remember more than a few episodes when Kirk couldn’t contact the Enterprise because his communicator-slash-phaser was busted. It’s comforting to know that we’ll be just as fucked in the future as we are now, so when the salt monster comes looking to give us a sodium-chloride facial, no amount of rollover minutes is going to save us when we can’t get a signal.

Hey, my little sugar-cookie—call me!

D.M.

* * *

D-Day,

How sweet you are to make me feel so scented candle and Gracious Home when lately I’ve been feeling like a mocktail at the Bar Association dinner for Nancy Grace; you praise me like Orwell praised Tropic of Cancer and yet sometimes I still feel like a character in an Antonin Artaud production. There are days when a scant precious hour of television does not offer me, à la Tennessee Williams or Anna Nicole Smith, a distraction from panic, but rather, I feel like a GEICO Gecko tied up on the veranda, longing to scuttle away. Days like this I might as well pour Drāno down my throat, Woolite my ass, and have that clitorectomy I’ve been saving up for. Then I can ship off to Iraq or Iran or some godforsaken Hellmouth and liberate millions of gallons of oil from the EVILDOERS who are holding the world hostage with the turgidity of a Cross Your Heart for A-cups. Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of my Craftmatic Adjustable. Visit me soon … and stop going on Fox News already! They are the concubines of the élite Republican Guard festering with anal warts and mental Chlamydia and you’re FTD rush-delivering beautiful bouquets to people with hay fever (and the clap) who dip their fondue forks into American cheese and spoon-feed the masses unsavory tasteless Velveeta-goo which is supposed to pass for an unbiased media! BLAH, BLAH, BLAH-DE-BLAH! Come on’a my house, my house …

Dig You Later!
Cin

* * *

Hey!

I dreg your “Against the Wind” Bob Seger–thing. In fact, I think we’re overdue for a Horizontal Bop, and I’m feeling kinda Coors Light, if you know what I mean, babe. But let’s Turn the Page Plant-style and buy a Stairway To Heaven ’cuz there’s a bustle in my hedgerow … now I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but if that Hooters waitress from Rocketboom can land a gig as a network news Talking Head, and you can’t, well someone tell Peter Finch and Paddy Chayefsky to roll over in the graveyard because I’m mad as hell and this ain’t no Mudd Club, no CBGB’s. Fa-fa-fa, fa-fa fa-fa-fa. I really think you ought to do more of those video-blog-things; you’re like a Hot Topic Shana Alexander butterflying through snark-infested waters faster than Amanda Beard doing the Athens breaststroke. You’re the Douglas Coupland spokesmodel for the Next Gen and I find your work to be very Proactiv, exfoliating the media Replicants like Torquemada returning khakis at the Beverly Center Gap. Now I don’t want to get all William Carlos Williams but some of these Sunday-morning punters are little more than Monday-morning quarterbacks throwing hitch-and-go Hail Marys when it’s 1st and 10 and really all they needed is a Nickelback man-in-motion for All the Right Reasons to make a ten-yard pass completion. You savvy? So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow, and we’re just a couple Animals. My point is, you need to get on Meet the Press where you’ll have those beltway Humbert Humberts fressing out of your leather Isotoners, babe-o. Anyway, I’m feeling the heat of our superconductivity and really can’t wait to show you my Long Josephson Junction. Let’s hook up!

D.M.

* * *

Hey Daddy-O!

I was knitting you a dead-skin mask of Iraqi soldiers and refugees from Dafur when I realized that maybe blood isn’t your color. So now I’m making you a Do Ho lei crafted from the tiny little arms of dead children who were killed by American Oil Interests overseas. I think it’s really something and, again, though it might not be your color, I think it would suit you given your Republican proclivities. That gets me steamed, Dennis … what happened to the man I worshipped in college? Now you’re playing Caesars Palace and that’s great … but you’re in danger of becoming a partisan comic, and what’s worse, NOT FUNNY. But I love you, my sweet, sweet angry man. I hope I can coax you back from the brink of insanity, and that you’re not a lost cause, like the members of the current administration. I want you back; we all want you back … back where you belong. What happened to the man who openly supported Ross Perot? We need that guy back… or it’s Cheney and ear-necklaces for the next eight years. I miss you. I’m going to go listen to some old Joe Jackson and channel some nice memories about you. AND, hey—guess what? That’s the news and I am outta here…

Cintra with a “C”