THIS BLOG IS RATED JULIE

There’s a Website—a dating Website of all things, and not even a Christian one—that scans blogs for objectionable material, suggesting various levels of parental supervision all the way up to FBI intervention and possible notification of the Department of Homeland Security. Mine rated the dreaded NC-17, the lowest of the low, right down there with those offering up guided tours inside Paris Hilton’s vagina, random clips of bestiality and kiddy porn, and graphic information on how to make and detonate a suicide bomb. To be directed to one or more of us, all the kids have to do is accidentally leave an “o” out of the word Google.

Since the program is only able to ferret out scandalous words rather than images, my alarming rating was apparently determined based on my aggregate usage of profanity. Over the years, I’ve employed the word fuck no less than fourteen times, although ironically this was all in one recent post meant to satirize the hypocritical nature of the relationship between language and censorship. There were ten references to porn, six to sex and three to death. I twice uttered the word dick—although I'm certain that one or more of these was in reference to a certain "private dick" played by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon—and once referred to someone, or heaven forbid something, as “anal.”

I am a dirty, dirty girl, and for that I have been bitch-slapped. That’s right, bitch-slapped, I’ve said it twice now, like a prison inmate already living under the death penalty who up and offs another guard just for sport. Damn, another death reference. And damn, another two damns!

Well, two can poke around the Internet digging up dirt and naming McCarthy-era names, which is how I came to learn that the Supreme Court twice decided that the First Amendment didn’t apply to filmmakers. Larry Flynt, yes, Alfred Hitchcock, no. Both Psycho and Some Like It Hot were released without the required Motion Picture Association of America stamp of approval due to their “objectionable themes.”

I made it all the way through film school without learning that the Hays Code—banning the glorification of “crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin” from the nation’s theaters—remained relatively intact from 1930 (coincidentally the same year they gave liquor back to the people) all the way up until 1968. The MPAA then devised a four-tiered ratings system—G, M, R and X—that lifted virtually all restrictions on what elements could lawfully be in a film. M was later changed to PG, and the elevated PG-13 was added in response to the level of violence in—gasp!—Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The dreaded NC-17 replaced the X rating not in relation to content, but because the MPAA had failed to trademark the designation by then widely in use by the porn industry.

This happened right around the time they stopped making good movies altogether, instead offering up family fare that ever so covertly slipped in adult themes like dead babysitters, rat love and monster sex in the hopes inspiring kids of all ages to forgo a week’s worth of groceries in exchange for sitting through them as a four-quadrant unit on opening weekend.

In all fairness to the contemporary American viewing public, I propose a new ratings system based not on outmoded moral self-righteousness, but rather on, oh, I don't know, audience appeal. G would be for Geeks Only, PG for Pubescent Geeks and Above, PG13 for Pubescent Geeks and Thirteen Screaming Friends, R for Really Rude Pubescent Geeks with Fake I.D.’s and NC-17 for the The 17 Remaining Films Not Created By Pixar. Damn, I miss movies with people in them. I mean, darn I miss the people movies. Darn I miss the fucking porn, sex, death, anal, dick movies about humans.

FOURTH OF JULIE

My sister’s home feels like a luxury California resort and spa, with a yard three times the size of the house itself, an outdoor kitchen and bar with built-in beer taps and an infinity-edged pool and Jacuzzi with a waterfall overlooking a canyon and protected bird sanctuary. The lawns are expansive enough for a planned putting green, as well as bocci ball, horseshoe and badminton courts. In addition to the three separate picnicking areas, there’s a wooden grape arbor shading a farmhouse table for twelve.

At night, she fires up a lava rock fire pit and a wood-burning brick fireplace and pizza oven, with tiki torches and hanging lanterns providing optional firelight. Lavender and rosemary patches become most fragrant in the noonday sun, and in the summertime peach and apricot trees drop fruit around the yard. Yesterday she gathered all that to make homemade jam, barbecue sauce, cobbler and Fuzzy Navels for an impromptu Fourth of July picnic for sixteen.

Among her well-heeled suburban guest list in North County San Diego were two financial analysts, a mortgage broker, a State Department official, an Olympic-level athlete turned swim coach, and a contractor known to have cornered the local market on epoxy flooring. There were assorted children and mix and match wives whose names I didn’t catch. At least one was pregnant, although I only did a cursory spot check, along with plenty of talk about C-sections, Elmo, healthy snacking, squirt guns and time outs.

My sister’s husband is a stockbroker who wanted to be a television producer, and my sister is a lawyer who wanted to be a gourmet chef. In college, she studied in France and learned to speak flawless French but hasn’t made it back much since. Since he is bald and so white he actually glows, it was hard not to worry about the fate of his enormous head in the scorching sunlight reflecting off the sparkling, free-form pool, where he wondered aloud what “the poor people” were doing right now.

“We’re fine,” I told him, lying in a nearby lounger with my two farting wiener dogs at my feet. “I am a screenwriter who wanted to be a screenwriter,” I thought about adding by way of explanation. But he was on to a more pressing conversation about swim diapers and how it takes seven seconds for chlorine to kill uric acid.

In a more energetic mood, I might have interjected that, given the choice between authenticity and poverty, I chose the path less traveled by, the one with no swimmers to diaper, or guns to squirt or time outs to give. And even on weekends and holidays—when I’m occasionally compelled to go out and play with those who appear to have everything—that has made all the difference.

But I didn't bother with any of that, since he probably isn't all that big on the poetry of Robert Frost or really any of your major literary figures not recently published on the sports page. Neither did I hand him a hat and a tube of sunscreen and implore him to save himself. My sister recently told me that he and I are co-beneficiaries on her life insurance policy, and I figured if he wants to check out early from malignant melanoma, who was I to interfere? I may be a dreamer, but hell, I'm no fool.

BIG DREAMS, SMALL PENISES

I happened across this charming little Website the other day that sells candy penises of every shape and variety. Succulent Hard Willies come in a handy tin courtesy of our friends across the Pond; Cocksickle Ice Pops are conveniently packaged in flexible plastic tubes; and the ever popular Vibrating Gummy Dong features a selection of five sugar-free flavors promising optimal vaginal safety and pleasure.

I think this page popped up after I expressed my admiration for the Martha Stewart Website over at Stumble Upon, a blog surfing registry that matches your interests with related content. I hadn't realized that "Hostessing & Entertaining" meant treating my sluttier bridal shower guests to the party size box of "Lollicocks".

My undying fascination with all things Martha has gotten me in trouble before, in the sense that she plays such a major role in my imaginary life as opposed to the one I live alone in a tiny Hollywood duplex with a porch the size of a doormat. Although I list cooking, gardening and home arts among my favorite hobbies whenever the opportunity to offer up such misleading personal information about myself arises, the truth is I rarely do any of that.

The closest I got to cooking last night was re-heating the barbecued chicken sandwich I ordered from Zeke's Smokehouse, after tipping the delivery boy five bucks for being both adorable and the only live human person I had spoken to all day. I did sit down to eat, as opposed to roaming around nibbling on the thing while tidying up the place, though Martha would have insisted I use a cloth napkin and light a candle if only because that's what fine linen and candlelight are there for.

After my friend B. called to tell me about his big, star-studded West Hollywood Friday Night AA meeting and how I should do some thinking about the Serenity Prayer, I tried to re-crisp my soggy sweet potato fries in the oven. I've seen Martha do this with her oven-roasted rosemary fingerling potatoes, but in my case they only got gummier.

I did catch the tail end of Antiques Roadshow from Oklahoma City and wondered what on earth happened to poor Lara Spencer's spokesmodeling career and if she would have to be on to Little Rock by dawn carrying only a tattered hobo bag.

As for my big gardening project of the day, I watered my neighbor's hydrangeas, which I've been trying very hard not to kill since she went on location in Colorado as an on-set production accountant for some Martin Lawrence Western or something equally ridiculous. I might have squirted the water too hard again, since I knocked the last of the leaves off the last of the flower blooms and lost another cup of soil over the side of the pot.

I came to Hollywood not only because I love movies, but also because I wanted to be part of something larger than life, my own in particular. All kinds of big things are indeed happening only blocks away, but most days the real action remains inside my head. Some day I will have a lavender farm in Ojai, where I will do my writing during the week and host fabulous dinner parties for artists and writers and other fascinating friends every weekend. I will sell homemade soap from an honor stand at the foot of my driveway and have affairs with the help, who only speak Cherokee and enjoy a deeply personal relationship with the earth.

God, grant me the serenity accept the things I cannot change, such as my movie being in turnaround at Universal and my ongoing failure to land a man or another assignment, the courage to change the things I can, such as declining to get dressed in the morning and sleeping with two obese, farting dogs at night, and the wisdom to know the difference, such as not having a lavender farm in Ojai yet and becoming obsessed with Websites devoted entirely to sugary penis treats. Amen.

LITTLE MISS !#%&*!#SHINE

When I told the studio executive that my new screenplay was an adult family comedy, she seemed disappointed by that first word of description. "Not too adult, I hope," she said. "If we're looking for a PG rating, and we are, I can only give you one fuck. It has to be a non-sexual fuck."

"So fuck you is okay but fuck me is out?"

"Fuck me would only work if it were an expression of disappointment as opposed to a request," she explained brightly.

"As in, say, fuck me hard?" I asked.

"Exactly," she said. "Something as specific as fuck off and die would work. Go fuck yourself is fine, or I really fucked myself good on this one. But have you gotten fucked good lately? Big red flag."

She asked if any of the principals would be fucking each other. I told her there is in fact a love scene, but I wouldn't exactly describe it as fucking, per se, since the characters have been married for thirty years. "It's more like coupling," I told her. "You definitely get the feeling it's been awhile, if that helps."

"Not really, no," she said. "It's not about the quality of the fuck. A fuck's a fuck."

I reminded her that we were looking for the Little Miss Sunshine crowd on this one. A seven-year-old stripping to the musical stylings of Rick James' "Superfreak," Grandpa shooting up heroin in the bathroom, Uncle Frank trying to off himself over a gay lover he meets up with while buying fetishistic porn at 7-11. "Yes, but there was no fucking," she insisted. "Even the parents didn't fuck. I don't remember anybody even saying fuck."

"It was Dwayne's first line, bottom of the second act," I reminded her. "He said it super loud. And he really took his time with it, spitting and drooling. Is there a penalty for volume, length and wetness of the long overdue first fuck?"

"Let me make a call on that," she said.

IF I DID IT

If I got caught violating my probation for the second time driving drunk down Santa Monica Boulevard eating a cheeseburger with my lights off, here's how I would have done it.

Let's say I was at a paid event, signing paid autographs while pretending not to like the greasy French guys taking the pictures I was pretending not to want. My biggest challenge, like always, was trying super hard not to make direct eye contact with anybody for free.

I am the consummate businesswoman. The media likes to portray me as "overprivileged," but I actually work like a mule anywhere in the vicinity of a red carpet. Day, night, day and night. On my hands, on my knees, on my hands and knees, whatever the fans are willing to pony up the big bucks to watch me do in or out of a ten thousand dollar dress I never paid for. They want you to believe I'm stupid, when I'm actually smart as one of my whips. Fiction, shallow and self-involved. Fact, introspective and spiritual. Lie, high class whore. Truth, generous lover of foreign-born orphans. I go to freaking church! I am a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, inside an enigma having stand-up sex from behind with someone to whom I've not been formally introduced while never once noticing the camera crew.

Oh, and if you think you know my family, think again. "Rick" and "Kathy" are actually Gypsy Travelers who met when she was skimming the front desk register at the Hilton Tempe Arizona and he was a part-time bellhop who'd gotten kicked out of Scottsdale Community College for running numbers. They absconded east with the Hilton name, had me, my sister and two not very interesting brothers nobody ever talks about. Us girls were pushed into becoming child models so they'd never have to work again. Work is so not hot.

By the time we were in eighth grade, Nicky and I had made very big names for ourselves on the New York party circuit, so we figured enough with the book learning. Soon making big bucks posing semi-nude in the pages of Vogue, we discovered we could get lots more if we forgot we ever had any clothes except the ones Marc Jacobs would give us when he'd go on a bender with Sofia Coppola.

Things got a little hazy once I became addicted to Red Bull and Hoodia, but we must have figured we'd already stolen the Hilton name, why not start our own hotel chain? We'd give out the big bottle of shampoo and use real satin sheets instead of the shit that burns Mexican babies to death in their cribs. Nicky started dating that twisted little gnome from Entourage--don't ask--while I dabbled with becoming a pop star in Europe, which turns out to be way easier than it is here where people have talent. I even landed a Greek shipping heir who came from a really good Nazi family that ultimately spurned me due to my lack of breeding and education. Oh, who needed them when I could begin and end my acting career by being full body waxed to death in a forgettable re-make of a cult horror classic? Like my personal idol Evita Peron, also known as that old whore Madonna, I've always had a head for what the workers wanted.

Sensing that teenage girls everywhere wanted to smell like me, for example, I started my own fragrance line that costs you minimum wage slaves a half-day's pay per spritz. I opened a couple of totally off the hook nightclubs nobody could get into except me, which was cool because you tacky bitches couldn't afford my nachos anyway. Do you think it's easy getting a reality show on Fox? Do you think they'll give one to just anybody willing to exhibit poor judgment and bad taste in a motor home? My stand-in had to hug a farmer! My hand double had to milk a cow! Year after year after year, I had to work with that tubby Nicole Ritchie, who I'm pretty sure you've heard was adopted by some has-been musician with a barren wife.

I can't explain why the law would suddenly want to target me after turning a blind eye to so many minor infractions--public urination, civil rights violations, mowing down paparazzi with my car. Why the Los Angeles Police Department up and decided to do its job and treat me like some regular person, you'll have to ask that queeny little flack of mine whose fault this whole mess is to begin with.

All I can say about the night in question is the last time I had handcuffs on, they were mink--that's right, you PETA freaks, the bloody, screaming, dead animal kind--and they looked supercute with my Todd Oldham blindfold. I don't want to get into too many details, since Fred and Kim Goldman might go after me for the publishing rights, but let's just say if I did it, I may have spewed Appletini and Double Double With Cheese all over some ugly lieutenant's shoes and then called him a fat, poor jewboy from Compton.

Anyway, I have to go back to hugging myself from the cold and rocking back and forth in my cell like Sally Field in Sybill. I'm hoping one of the guards gets a good cell phone picture, since we're planning to split the half mil they're paying us at OK! I also plan to use it on the cover of my jailtime memoir, excerpted here without permission by that no-name blogger who calls herself "Julie Goes To Hollywood." As if anybody cares where that bloated, tired-ass, Perez Hilton wannabe goes and what she does when she gets there. So, so, so not hot.

JULIE BLOWS HER COVER

I went to The Grove last weekend and paid eleven bucks to see a movie, eight bucks for a shrimp po'boy at that great Cajun place in The Farmer's Market, and twenty-two bucks for parking. For an additional three bucks I could have parked on the street and taken the expired one-hour meter ticket, so it's nice that they give you the option.

Granted, I parked at the fancy valet that looks like you could be pulling up to The Beverly Hills Four Seasons. They have couches, coffee tables, magazines and Tiffany lamps, and naturally they're going to want extra for that. There were only nineteen spots left in the regular parking, and the wait was estimated at half an hour, which would have meant missing the entire first trimester of Knocked Up. Either way, valet parking was a bold choice, since I've recently filed for unemployment, and my friend B. quit his sensible, well-paid job to find himself.

Living below the poverty line here in Hollywood, we are strangers in a strange land skulking around under cover. Since we are both loquacious, alarmingly overeducated and impeccably well-dressed, it's not much a challenge for B. and me to pull one over on our would be peers living the life that somehow eludes us. Passing muster with the ever suspicious help, however, is another matter. A guy who knows desperation when he smells it doesn't appreciate you masquerading around as one of them when you're really one of us.

I sensed I'd been made right up front when the valet made me an offer on my car. He was one of those fast talking young Latinos with a future in either high end auto sales or the ministry. I'm pretty sure he wasn't having this conversation with the drivers of the Mercedes and Lexus SUVs lining up all the way out to the curb for a crack at one of those monster salads at The Cheesecake Factory and a quick buzz through the housewares department at Barney's.

No, it was definitely the dented, 1998 Civic hatchback my mother passed down when she bought herself a new hybrid that gave me away. You have to roll your own windows up and down, so I shouldn't have been offended by his lowball offer. He seemed somehow hurt when I politely declined it, as though he couldn't imagine any other reason I'd be in this neighborhood if not to make a quick cash sale of my most valuable personal belonging.

In retrospect, my biggest mistake was laughing at him out loud, brushing him off and going back to my really important conversation with B. about Steven Spielberg's choice to support Hillary Clinton for President over Barack Obama. Three hours later, when I went to retrieve my car from the enormous, high-end operation, defying all odds, the same valet hopped out. He'd adjusted all the seats and mirrors and was listening to a festive Tejano station on the stereo. He'd either taken it to the car wash and asked for their cheapest air freshener or spent enough time driving it around town that his own cologne--I'm guessing an Aramis knock-off he picked up at Rite Aid--had perma-stamped his signature fragrance throughout the interior.

He seemed disappointed when I offered proof that I had indeed been able to pony up the colossal sum for the parking, as if my failure to do so might have resulted in his ownership of the vehicle by default. B.'s generous tip only added injury to insult. Taking my keys from him, I looked directly into his eyes, something people rarely do in this town, and I felt a twinge of guilt. While I have a dream to cling to like a life raft, bobbing up and down in this ocean of endless possibility while patiently awaiting my rescue, any number of equally deserving folks never even make it off the boat.

JULIE GETS NASTY

You can always tell whether or not you're at a big Hollywood party by how many police roadblocks you have to pass on the way. Having been instructed to turn up my nose, wave and keep driving, I counted two en route to my friend B.'s the other night. He lives in a white-washed Mediterranean villa in Whitley Heights, the fancier part of town that can't help but look down on the rest of us. He's close enough to the Hollywood Bowl to hear the late night fireworks spectaculars. Since intermittent explosions lighting up the sky are actually quite startling when you're not expecting them, somebody mentioned the firecracker scene from Boogie Nights. In the waning days of his film career, porn star Dirk Diggler sets out to rob a heavily armed coke dealer, whose stoned Asian houseboy keeps setting them off in the already tense background. B. had read somewhere that Mark Wahlberg hadn't been told when to expect them, and thus the fear on his face was real.

My host further boasted an alarming knowledge of the inner workings of the adult film industry you wouldn't necessarily expect of an accountant who reads political blogs, buttons his shirts all the way up and drives a sensible Volvo. B. shared that they know him by name at the local Triple X video store and rattled off trends, genres and names of top stars and directors with the authority of a respected porn critic for Daily Variety. His next door neighbor N., a successful location scout who just wrapped an HBO pilot, claimed he'd be just as happy arranging permitting, insurance and a good place to park the honey wagons had he been coordinating a hard core porn shoot. Sadly, he reported, there's just no below-the-line money in porn, despite the attractive benefits package, friendly co-workers and inviting workplace environment.

L., a fortyish hot chick with a really good job, freely admitted to arranging weekly porn screenings among fellow well-heeled female professionals in Boston. I'm not sure exactly what L. does, but she was in town for the big digital filmmaking show last week so I think she's partly to blame for movies no longer having people in them. She said something about her father having gone to Wharton, which I misheard as her father having been a warden, but I'm pretty sure she grew up a pampered East Coast intellectual rather than a hard scrabble civil service legacy with a sweet view of the prison yard. She said she's open to any kind of porn--girl on girl, boy on boy, animal, vegetable, mineral--in the interest of learning new positions she can explore when things get dull in her next long term relationship. When I told her that the Showtime series Weeds offers a frank and graphic look at teenage sex, she wrinkled her nose, since she finds the idea of watching teenagers having sex disgusting.

I'm not sure of the age of the average porn star, but I'm going to go with eighteen last Tuesday. I didn't share this estimate, nor did I denounce the adult film business as the modern answer to slavery. Then again, at this type of uptown gathering I am generally the only person who actually has friends working in the sex industry, and I don't know any of them who are in it for the good times. They are in it because they like to eat. They wanted to be real stars, and when that didn't pan out, their bodies were all they had left to sell. While purveyors of porn insist it's all in good fun and otherwise right thinking consumers everywhere seem to agree, I can't picture any little girl enrolling in tap, jazz and ballet class in order to become a porn star when she grows up. You do this when your dream dies, and you don't know where or how to find another one.

While I wasn't interested in ruining anybody's cinematic fantasies, it happens I have a few illusions of my own. One is I like to believe I'm the only girl in the room when I'm having sex. In fact, my little kink is feeling as though I'm the only girl in the whole wide world, if only for a few stolen hours on a rainy afternoon. I do like pirates--as in Erroll Flynn, not Johnny Depp--so some good old-fashioned pirate porn might work for me if it were nominated for a Best Costume Oscar and directed by James Ivory. Oh, and if they would just hold a breathless moment or two longer to yell "Cut!" after Daniel Day-Lewis rolls up Michelle Pfeiffer's lace sleeve in the back of the Hansom cab in The Age of Innocence, that would do me just fine. To my mind, the hottest love scene of all time was the one between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic. It involved one red Model-T Ford and one steamy hand print on the back windshield.

I also like cowboys, cops and firemen, so any movie sex scenes involving any of those guys works, Brokeback Mountain notwithstanding. I'd happily take Jake, Heath, Jake and Heath, or any combination of Jake and Heath types offering themselves up for a little harmless voyeurism among consenting adults. That is until I found somebody real to be with. At that point, I wouldn't even have to watch movies. I would be living one, and there would be no need to go up to the Bowl to watch the freaking fireworks. How's that for pornographic? Of course, I didn't share a peep of this at my hillside Hollywood gathering. I wasn't so embarrassed about being a party pooper, a prude or a former Catholic schoolgirl as much as I was loathe to admit I'm just another dreamer from the flats trying to make the rent another month without having to call home and cry. This, like even the loveliest, best-endowed and most adventurous would be starlet, eventually gets old.