CINDY F'N BRADY

I think a school traffic cop near my home has a crush on me.

Every day I drive past her on the way to work. I always turn right and she smiles and waves at me and I always try to smile and wave back. But two days ago, I was taking the curb pretty sharply to avoid hitting a truckload of kittens and didn't have time to wave back at her.

As I drove past her yesterday, I could SWEAR she flipped me off.

I SWEAR it.

Oh boy...color that baby SWEARED ...

So anyway...

(I don't know where all that came from. My school traffic lady is an elderly black woman who waves at me every day, but I'm pretty sure she's just waving my car through the traffic and not actually being flirtaceous. I apologize for starting the diary off with a bold faced lie. Hopefully the rest of the diary will be truthful in some form or fashion.

I thought "Will and Grace" was hilarious last night. That Jack guy deserves any awards he receives. I guarantee you, he won't have much of a career outside of "Will and Grace".

Two words...Arnold Horshack.

In my day (Uncle Bob pulls up a rocker, lights his pipe, grins big and begins...)...

"Welcome Back Kotter" was the big show of the day. Gabe Kaplan was a freakin' genius and John Travolta stole hearts.

Mine was already promised to Farrah Fawcett-Majors, thank you.

God...I remember when she dropped the "Majors". I was like..."How is she going to make it as Farrah Fawcett?"

...I was an odd kid. Always fascinated with Hollywood gossip, I was.

Back then, we had no Entertainment Tonight or People.

We read Rona Barrett's Hollywood.

God. Ten years old and reading about Barbra Streisand and Elliot Gould's torrid marriage.

...If, in fact, they were ever married.

For YEARS, my mother would go to the grocery store on Monday, buy the National Enquirer, The Star and a few other gossip rags, and the entire family would all read them on Monday evenings.

I filled my head with so much pop culture knowledge at the time.

Maybe that's why I'm good at game shows.

At home at least.

They say it's a lot harder when you're up there on the stage, trying to actually win money.

Yeah, right.

I think I'd do good.

Do I have what it takes to sit by a touch-tone phone and dial a number that will cost me $3.99 a minute to sit on hold while all circuits are busy??

No, I don't think so, Regis.

So I just sit in the comfort of my own recliner and keep guessing Wheel of Fortune puzzles after just one letter is revealed on SEVERAL occasions (ahem) and dream of dreams that were never meant to be.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww....

Shit.

Let's face it.

I'd get up on that stage and completely freak my ass OUT.

In my family, we'd call it "Pullin' a Cindy Brady" after the time on "The Brady Bunch" that Cindy had to go on a quiz show on television, and was bragging about it to all her brothers and sisters, and when she got on and saw the camera focus on her, she froze solid. Couldn't answer a question, couldn't even blink.

Did I ever tell you kids about the time I got a letter from Cindy Brady??

I wrote her at the age of 9 after finding her address in the back of Tiger Beat magazine and told her how much I liked her show, blah, blah, blah. Like I remember the exact specifics of the letter now.

Anyway...months go by ... I don't hear back from her. I get the feeling my nine-year-old ass ain't gonna be nailing no Brady broad anytime soon.

One day, I waltz out to the mailbox (which, quite frankly, was an uncomfortably strange way for a nine-year-old kid to retrieve the mail), and there's a letter from Paramount Studios addressed to my sister!!

(I had signed my sister's name on the letter that I sent to Cindy. My sister was five at the time and didn't really grasp the concept of letter-writing at the time. Besides...I was a boy. I wanted to look like I was macho and out playing softball or catching frogs, rather than writing gushy fan letters to little famous girls on the other side of the country.)

I tore open the envelope and there it was...

"Dear Friend,"

Oh, mother of God and everything holy. She called me her friend.

I'm Cindy Brady's friend.

I AM CINDY BRADY'S FRIEND.

The kids at school would be SOOOOO jealous.

School Lunchroom: 1971

DAVY: "Hey Bob, why the big grin?"

NEPHEW BOB: "Damn shit pee Cindy butt ass Brady fuck damn ass piss wrote me a letter!"

(I hadn't mastered the fine art of cursing at nine. Sue me.)

DAVY: "Wow! Lemme see!!"

NEPHEW BOB: "Here."

DAVY: (Reading the letter)"Wow!! You're too cool, Nephew Bob!!"

NEPHEW BOB: "Yeah, I know. Too bad we're too young to have sex or I'd be nailing me some poontang from here to Egypt. Know whut I'm sayin'?"

DAVY: "Word."

NEPHEW BOB: "To yo' Mutha, child. To yo' Mutha".

That's EXACTLY how it went.

Anyway ... it wasn't until a few years later that I heard that celebrities don't really handwrite their letters, they just run off Xeroxed copies of a form letter and send it out.

Ahhhh...

This explained why she didn't answer any of my questions about marrying me and stuck to safer topics like talking about her horses and what it's like to work on "The Brady Bunch" and how they're all like brothers and sisters off the set.

Uhhhhhhh....yeah, right. Whatever. Soooo...Cindy .... are you and I going to be tying the knot or not??? I've gotta know, dear. I've got Jan on the other line.

It was phat like dat, y'all.

The truth be told, I was always hot for Marcia. She was the first one to get a body ... or as much of a body as a 88 lb. anorexic 14 year old can have ... and she was a WOMAN in my eyes.

However, at the tender age of 9, I thought she would rebuke me and not write me back because she was 5 years older. I felt I had a better chance of Cindy writing me back since we were the same age.

I loved that woman.

Marcia...not Cindy.

I was using Cindy to work my way up the Brady ladder to get to Marcia.

Even at nine, I had the plans goin' on.

Alright...I've gotta go get the family up. Have a great weekend...I'll update sometime this weekend if I get the chance.

Peace out.