Television Lady isn't just an alias that has to do with me being an obsessive freak about television. There was an actual television lady, a real woman that we met in Kona. I'll tell you about her now.
We'd been watching REQUIEM FOR A DREAM with my brother and Leah for maybe a few nights in a row. Nice, I know. It's not a comedy, but this film is not something that you can really get out of your head, it's THAT disturbing. Anyway, the parts that we got the most out of were Sarah Goldfarb's lines about the red dress and being on television. We'd say it to each other in the grossest old lady voice we could muster, "I'M SARAH GOLDFARB! I'M GONNA BE ON TELEVISION!" I guess we did this kind of a lot while we were down there. This was in January of 2004; I was six months pregnant with Bubby and recovering from an awful experience that required an ER visit at 1 in the morning the first night we were there. (I won't go any further with it; there's nothin' good about it.)
So we pull up into the farmer's market one afternoon in search of avocados for guacamole. We had a silver mustang convertible; Matt probably had Jay Z or Dre blasting when we did this. Matt and Leah were in the front seat, I was in the back. So as we pulled into the driveway of the parking lot, some old chick was strolling along with her headphones on, listening to what, I have no idea, maybe John Tesch or Mac Hammond on "The Winner's Way," but whatever it was, she was quite absorbed in it, so much so that she didn't see us pulling into the driveway. She damned near walked right into us, but Matt was partially at fault for not yielding to her, I suppose. She suddenly saw us, jumped, and I think even squawked a little. We drove into the parking lot and whipped around to park. As we were getting ready to get out, I saw the old lady, STOMPING into the farmer's market, obviously upset, and obviously looking for us, the ones that almost ran her over. I knew she was going to freak out about it, I KNEW IT! I informed Matt that she was obviously not going to let it lie, she was pissed off, and that we needed to leave and come back later.
Matt, completely oblivious, I mean, I don't even know that he even realized that anything out of the ordinary had happened (codger nearly gets run down by a car, what?), refuses to listen to me. I was very strenuously advising him to drive away. Soon the old bat had spotted us, and made a bee-line for our car. Leah wasn't saying much during this whole thing, I think she had learned by then to just sit back and snicker at our ridiculousness. Then it was too late to do anything. Matt just got out of the car, acted as if nothing had happened, and basically walked right by her. I was in the back seat of the car, cringing and waiting for what would follow.
"YOU ALMOST HIT ME!" she shouted, loudly.
"Oh? Sorry about that!" Matt said, and hardly even broke his stride.
After that I covered my ears and hid behind the seat. I hate confrontation, I hate it. And Matt goddamned well knew it, too! I was so uncomfortable, I about tensed myself into labor. Leah of course was laughing. HARD. When I uncovered my ears I heard Matt say something like, "Ma'am, I told you I was sorry, now I'm done talking to you about it!" He came back with a bag full of avocados and of course, acted as if nothing had happened. And as if the whole verbal exchange wasn't enough, there was the issue of us having two (unclaimed) extra people in our condo. Somehow I just knew that this old broad was staying at the Casa, it was almost like a given, and after something like this, it would only be fitting that she should see us hanging around and then bust us and get us kicked out, or something equally horrid. Matt and Leah completely dismissed all of my paranoia and pretty much giggled about it the entire way home. When I was finally able to unclench my hands from the seat in front of me, I asked Leah if she had heard the whole conversation, which she had.
"Was she American? I mean, she kind of sounded like she had an accent or something, maybe Italian? Did you hear it?"
"Oh, I feel it was just full on TELEVISION," Leah said.
"What, like Sarah Goldfarb?"
"Totally."
"I'M GONNA BE ON TELEVISON! AND YOU ALMOST HIT ME!!" Matt chimed in.
So for the rest of the vacation, which was a good four days or so, I had to always be on the lookout for Television Lady. Funny thing, she WAS staying there, and she obviously DID hold a grudge, for one evening when some local riff-raff came up and were hanging out by the lava rocks, she and her husband were patrolling the grounds with a cordless phone at the ready, I suppose to report them. When her husband saw us he said something like, "YOU KNOW THIS IS A PRIVATE ESTABLISHMENT," to Leah, who said (in her best "you wanna fuck with me?" voice) "YEAH, I KNOW. WE'RE STAYING HERE," without breaking her stride.
I find this all extremely funny now, but at the time I was actually scared of what she would do to us. So when it came time to name my blog, I thought it only fitting that I should take on a piece of her identity, together with the original original, that is.
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