My Faux Family Reunion

Sometimes I waste time reading blogs, sometimes I waste time sitting in front of reality television, sometimes I waste time staring into space with my mouth hanging open, and sometimes I waste time by creating alternate worlds to suit my needs.

In one such world, I am the backwoods hillbilly cousin of Jen Lancaster and Celia Rivenbark and Paul Feig and Wade Rouse. I see Cousin Paul as kind of a city hillbilly, what with his home town having four times the population of mine. But Cousin Wade had to pull himself up by his Ozarks bootstraps to escape Missouri and his backwoodsiness. Which he did by ending up in the backwoods of Michigan. Where Cousin Paul grew up.

Just imagine our family reunions. In Missouri, of course, because my cousins are world travelers, but I am not. I would take charge of booking the park pavilion for our potluck barbecue picnic. It would be the second best pavilion, because that girl behaving badly, Chelsea Handler, booked the best one. That's how she rolls. Because four books and two TV shows aren't enough. She's always itching to be the fly in the ointment of anybody who needs ointment...or who is simply trying to enjoy a faux family reunion.

There we'd sit, Cousin Jen and Cousin Celia imbibing some tasty cocktails and dishing on the sartorial choices of unrelated hillbillies in the park, while pointedly ignoring Chelsea's unsuccessful attention-getting antics. Of course, the cocktails would have to contain alcohol other than vodka, because Ms. Chelsea sent her minions ahead to buy up all the vodka in the county, and is, in fact, perched upon a throne made from cases of vodka.

Cousin Wade would be nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers at being back in Missouri, having worked so hard to put half a country between it and his current abode. At least he can use the trip to mine material for his next book. And I know wild raccoons couldn't keep him away from visiting me, his hillbilly Cousin Val.

I would spend some quality time with Cousin Paul, trying to persuade him to go back to memoir-writing, to chuck the whole directing/producing/acting thing. Who needs money when your words can make people laugh?

This reunion is running longer than expected. I blame the significant others who are fiddling about with the barbecue. It's enough to make me wave a white flag and ask Chelsea for some vodka. Maybe she can spare one of those little airline bottles. I'm certain there will be some type of humiliation (mine) involved for her trouble.