Remember that old showbiz truism, “Never work with kids or animals”? I was so glad Tammy Faye had never heard that. She sat holding Tuppins so tightly that the poor thing started yelping more than usual. On TV, this loving act of strangulation actually read as if Tuppins were howling in misery over Tammy Faye’s singing. It was a crazy, fantastic moment. The interview was a classic.
When we said good-bye, Tammy and I went outside in the rising sun to take a picture by the fake lake—which became my Christmas card that year—before she presented me with a batch of fudge that she’d made me the night before. It was a priceless piece of pop culture memorabilia, and I took it home without sampling a bite so I could preserve it in my freezer for years to come. That fudge went with me through two apartment moves, until I finally summoned the willpower to pitch it, sometime after the turn of the century.
As you know, Tamara Faye LaValley Bakker Messner fought a long battle with cancer that took her from us in 2007. She was a good person who opened her home to me and treated me like a friend. And, because I’m sure you’re wondering, I was indeed sent up to Petaluma. But I still don’t know if a video (adult or otherwise) ever resulted from that naked aerobics session at the resort. If it did, I hope there isn’t a shot of a young guy in the background with unruly hair and an expression of horrified glee. But if there is, and you have it, please send me a copy. I want to hide it under my mother’s couch.
CRY INDIAN
I wasn’t kidding about hiding that porno under my mom’s couch. There was a long period of time where I absolutely loved pranks. Let me be more specific: I loved playing pranks on my parents. So indulge me in kind of a long (but worth it) ramble down Memory Lane for a story that’s become something of an urban legend among my friends, and will either make you think I’m a brilliantly creative fool, or just a fool.
Though I have lived away from them for more time than under the same roof, my family is in constant touch. One of the ways this manifested itself in the early nineties was in the form of a weekly phone call that started the same ridiculous way every Sunday.
When I was “ready” to speak to my parents, I’d call them collect—usually using a pseudonym. (It was always one of the male characters from All My Children.) The phone would ring at my parents’ house. The operator would announce, “I have Adam Chandler calling collect,” as we all struggled to keep our composure. The parentals would reject the call, I’d act dejected for the operator, and then my phone would ring a minute later.
“Hello, Adam Chandler,” my mom would say. “It’s Brooke. BROOKE ENGLISH!”
And … scene! The conversation could go down in flames thirty-five seconds later, but the call always started with a big laugh. This system of scheduled family calls was devised by Evelyn Cohen during my freshman year at Boston University. The reasoning behind it was twofold. See if you can follow this line of thinking:
First, my collect call would be a signal that I was available to talk so they wouldn’t have to “disturb” me by calling me first. This, of course, was bullshit, because I got phone calls from them all week long with no regard to my mental state. I guess since Sunday was the “Lord’s day” it was sacred? Even though we weren’t Christian?
Second, Evelyn’s careful consumer research had told her this was somehow cheaper and smarter than actually accepting the collect charge or one of us dialing up an unprompted direct call. Looking back now, I do wonder if this elaborate ruse—two phone calls and a fake name just to have an actual family conversation—didn’t somehow influence a thing I’ll refer to as “the Shawnee Incident.” But first, some background.
The further I was from my parents, the closer I got to Graciela. Our senses of humor fused into one demented organism, and we were constantly laughing about the doings of my parents in St. Louis. She’d fallen in love with them when they visited me in London, but she had a funny way of showing it. Grac, sensing immediately that my mother was gullible and fun to prank, took the possibly imprudent tactic of winning my mother over by torment. Her first misstep was telling my mom I had a crush on a gawky, mannish girl in college. By the time we graduated, the stage was set for a prank, masterminded by Graciela, that was wildly funny at the time but, in hindsight, might’ve gone too far.
The hijinks started small.
It was the dawn of the cordless phone—very early nineties. Graciela and I were each living and working in New York—I in midtown at CBS, and Graciela for future Bravolebrity Kelly Cutrone’s downtown boutique public relations agency repping, among others, an unknown young Tyra Banks. One afternoon, I was lying on my bed chatting like a schoolgirl to my mom while my Agent Zero, Graciela, listened in on the living room extension. I told my mother that I was sorting and folding my laundry—not such a crazy thing, except that I wasn’t doing that at all. My only task at that moment was playing a joke on my mom. So we talked about the latest in St. Louis and who my dad had run into while he was out jogging, and occasionally I’d make reference to a fave T-shirt I was “folding” or throw in a Metropolitan Diaryesque yarn about my laundry room experience … all made
