A View From a Broad Read Free

set me off on the wildest kind of daydreaming.
    As I looked through the purple folder again, those old luscious waves of Longing and Romance crested and crashed upon the shores of my very being. For a moment, I felt ten again, and I realized that even though I had never done it before, going around the world would be, for me, a kind of a sentimental journey. And the only thing I put above Sentiment is Revenge.
    And so it was that as the sun set somewhere in the middle of August, I gathered up the broken shards of my Buddha and my life and committed myself. The Bette Midler World Tour was on. I would pick up the gauntlet my manager had thrown down and touch the whole earth with my Divinity.
    Dizzy with exhilaration and dread, I took my favorite Paper Mate in hand and began to do what I always do in a situation that demands bold and forthright action: I made lists.

• THE BAND AUDITION •
    “How I uncover talent . . ”

For the Reader ’s Edification: Often I am asked how I have managed so consistently to surround myself with people of the highest creative caliber. I offer the following application as but one of the ways in which I uncover talent and excellence that might otherwise lie fallow in the fetid hog wallow that we call the field of entertainment.
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    BAND APPLICATION
    Name_____
    Alias_____
    Ht_____Wt_____Color of eyes_____
    Favorite Female Performer_____
    Please answer the following questions:
    Will you work for scale? Yes_____No_____
    When was the last time you were in jail?_____
    Offense and length of term_____
    Have you ever physically attacked a performer under whose employ you were at the time? Yes_____No_____
    If yes, was it: Onstage_____Offstage_____In the privacy of her home_____
    Do you take drugs? Yes_____No_____Not sure_____
    Can you arrange for your own supply? Yes_____No_____On occasion_____
    Can you arrange for mine? Yes_____No_____On occasion_____
    List your major contacts in a. Europe_____b. Australia_____c. Seattle_____
    Do you consider your sex drive to be:
    Normal_____Above normal_____Monklike_____
    In a no-sex situation do you: Play well_____Play badly_____
    Quit_____
    Have you been able to read this application by yourself? Yes_____No_____Sort of_____

• CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON •
    “The World is my shoehorn; I shall not shlep . . .”
    DIVINE REVELATION, Chapter 8: Verse 6

• CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON •
    T here is no rest for the weary. No sooner had the gathering-of-the-forces been accomplished than I had to throw myself into the excruciating process of creating a show that would do two things at one and the same time: a) bring the world to its knees, and b) fit into a footlocker.
    Unfortunately, these two objectives were not easily reconciled, and this was causing a severe change in my ordinarily placid, even decorous behavior.
    For days on end, I would hardly speak, and when I did only the vilest sort of gibberish would spout forth. I became morose and fat. Unapproachable, except when eating—and then only by waiters. I became, in short, a walking fountain of misery and despair. And not only were my metaphors mixed: my entire thinking process was deranged, and I found myself dwelling, in the most morbid fashion, on the very things I had vowed not to think about at all. Every day, for example, I’d get up and stare in total panic at the seven little phrase books hanging so cheerily from my bedpost.
    You see, on stage, as in life, I talk a lot. In fact, random, rambling raillery makes up a rather large part of my act and I absolutely depend on it. People often say, “My, but the little vixen has a lot of energy,” mostly because I never shut up. But chatter is a respite for me, like treading water after miles of the Australian crawl, and the water that keeps me afloat, the English language. What would I do in, let’s say, Sweden? The few basicwords I was gleaning from my phrase books hardly scratched the surface of my needs. I was, indeed, one scared piece of Divinity.
    I