Tuesday March 17, 2020
Dear Diary:
Today started out just like every other day. I woke up at the stroke of eleven, held my face over a simmering pot of raw wheat grass juice for eight minutes and twenty seconds, then had breakfast. Under the direction of Tom’s trainer, I’ve been eating the same breakfast for the past three weeks, consisting of five picked oats, one braised skin-on dove, and a glass of ackee juice. I call it the ‘Dr. Alex Special’ in conversation despite those nasty FTC rulings. They can say what they want, but we’ve swallowed two nickels at midnight of every day that contains the letter “u” for the past three weeks, and neither one of us has any symptoms of Catch-22, so who’s the idiot now, huh?
Anyway, as I said, it seemed like a normal day. Tom’s alarm got him out of the hyperbaric chamber around noon, and I helped him out of his lead pajamas like normal. I had settled into my afternoon routine after that. It remains my guilty pleasure, but as you know, I am a borderline-obsessive consumer of afternoon Three Stooges reruns. They’re kind of a Bundchen Family tradition, so to speak, dating back to when I was a little kid when I used to watch them with my grandmother. It was such a part of my life that in elementary school, the kids used to call me “Three Stooges Bundchen.” Well, it was Horizontina in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, so they called me “Tres Patetas Bundchen” but you get the point.
So there I was, watching Hoofs and Goofs on the couch. I don’t really consider the Joe Besser episodes to be canon, but then again I’m not the one in charge at MeTV. Anyway, just as Joe’s sister Bertie started to dump a casserole on his head, Tom comes running in. He had a wild look in his eyes and was out of breath, tripping over my sealskin ottoman and knocking over a talking lamp given to us by Yoko Ono.
I helped him up and he explained that things were going to be different from now on. Speaking very gently and calling me by my pet name, he said “Trailer Hitch, our time in the Bluegrass State is done. I am no longer a Patriot. But fear not, I am not retiring, no need to turn this into an Any Given Sunday situation. It’s just time for me… well, us I suppose, to be moving on.”
I was floored. Not literally floored like Tom, who immediately stubbed his toe on a misplaced Nintendo Switch controller, causing him to hop backward and fall into a glass-top end table handwrought by Idris Elba, but shocked. Boston – or more specifically Brookline, home of the oldest Puppet Showplace Theatre in the country – has been my home since 2006. Granted, it was a bit of a faux pas to tell a reporter that this fine megalopolis was for people “too poor or dumb to live in New York” but that was a long time ago. This is home now. I’ve been here since I left Leonardo DiCaprio, having been prescient in noticing that he was beginning to resemble a fat-faced teenager with facial hair. And now this? A new city, a new beginning, after 14 years of putting down roots in the puppetry capital of the world? What’s a girl to do?
Time to swallow Tuesday’s nickel. I will write again tomorrow.
G.B.
Wednesday March 18, 2020
Dear Diary:
No doubt about it, I am going to miss Massachusetts. I tossed and turned all night, at one point flinging a ceramic clock kiln-fired by Nicole Kidman across the room, where it struck the side of Tom’s hyperbaric chamber. Naturally, that jarred him awake, and as he drearily stumbled out of the access port he got his foot stuck in a decorative bronze bucket I use to collect juniper berries during neighborhood strolls with Conan O’Brien and Ran Blake. The bucket slid across the marble floor like a roller skate and he fell headfirst out of the bedroom window. Thankfully, he landed in our evergreen shrubs sculpted into the number “21” by a well-meaning but heavily intoxicated Alec Baldwin after a private Goo Goo Dolls concert I arranged for Tom’s 37th.
After such a calamitous morning, I was beat. I could barely touch my dove. I tried to relax on the couch by watching Three Little Beers, the one where the Stooges are stacking beer kegs in a truck and wind up trying to play in a golf tournament – not to be confused with Beer and Pretzels, where they wind up as waiters in a fancy restaurant – when Tom came sprinting into the room, just as Moe was drawing back to hit Curly in the testicles with a three wood.
Minutes later, after grabbing Tom’s ankles in order to pull him out of the fireplace in which he had fallen, and extinguishing the resultant smoldering from his therapeutic zinc-threaded cowboy hat, I asked what was so urgent. It was then that we began to discuss the potential locations of the next chapter of our lives together.
Tom mentioned the words “major market” and I thought of Los Angeles and immediately froze. There are some things I am not willing to share, even here, so let’s just say that I discussed some of my dreams with my therapist in 2016 and 2017, and made her a promise that for the sake of my marriage I would never ever live within 500 miles of Jimmy Garopollo. Luckily, after I spent hours using flashcards and windup toys to explain Sean McVay’s outside zone-based schemes to Tom, I was able to convince him that all of those weak-side runs and bunch-formation naked boot setups would be terrible for his career stats.
I’ve always considered Chicago to be a bit proletarian, but it’s a major market nonetheless. Tom sat down to do research, and after briefly electrocuting himself by sticking his tongue in the USB port, managed to type “does bears need quarter back” into Lycos, only to find out some guy named Mitchell has that job.
I wasn’t sure if Atlanta was considered a major market or not. I’ve been around enough football players to know that it’s the de facto Black capital of the United States, but Tom gets his suits from Battaglia, not Guffey’s, whatever the hell that is. Besides, they already have an aging white QB that displaced a hometown favorite.
And oh Lord I don’t want to hear another word about Tennessee. For starters, we only have the one zinc-threaded cowboy hat, and it’s still smoldering. For another, I can’t stand country music. I’ve been polite to Miley Montana or whatever her name is but the nouveau riche just dripped off of her mouse outfit. I don’t want to live in a town full of people too poor or dumb to live in Memphis! I’m really worried.
G.B.
Thursday March 19, 2020
Dear Diary:
So much for major markets, I guess. Lucky girl that I am, I am set to be the most famous international model in Tampa Bay, Florida. I checked out a map and the bay looks like a cartoon cat making a point during an argument. I think Nick from the Backstreet Boys grew up there, so at least I’ll have one friend in the neighborhood. Not sure about the puppetry scene, though.
Nick’s phone went straight to voicemail, so I’m sort of flying blind here. I had heard of some guys on T.V. called “the property brothers” so I asked my agency if they could put me in touch. When I called the number, I was very careful about cultural sensitivity, stressing to “the brothers” that even though I am a “Brazilian of German Descent,” I was nevertheless “down” to live in their “hood,” and that I was a real “Three Stooges Bundchen from tha Block” type. When I asked “what was up with the dealie-o holmes” they said I sounded very confused and hung up.
So to hell with those “brothers.” I did my own damn research and found a number for the “Palmetto Dream Estates,” which sounded appropriate. This turned out to be a stroke of luck, as when I told the man who we are, he offered up what he said was his finest available property. When I told him that price was no object, the phones cut out for a bit, as I could only hear muffled laughter. After the signal cleared up, he offered us what he referred to as a “double-wide lot,” presumably because of the acreage.
In the rush, I got so distracted I forgot to return a call from Gal Gadot asking me to sing a song over Skype. Apparently, if enough people sing it we can make the Car-54 virus so melancholy that it will stop infecting people? I love charity but I can’t say yes to everything, you know? But given the A-list status of Gal’s friends I’m sure it will work out just fine.
Better swallow my nickel and get to bed, I’ve got a plane to catch tomorrow!
G.B.
Friday March 20, 2020
Dear Diary:
I came down to Palmetto Dream Estates on SR-71 Moe first thing in the morning. When the limo dropped me off at the address that I was given, I wasn’t sure where our paradise estate was, but I saw a local and was directed to a large room. I had to walk a few steps up some stairs and noticed that the staircase was obscuring a pair of wheels. The rims were big, like the ones on Tom’s Porsche Cayenne, but with paint over them. They may have been part of someone’s art project or a new Munder-Skiles design, but they were not for my taste.
The room inside was strange. Despite being a small standalone room on a patch of gravel covered in a carpet that looks like grass, the walls were made of pure wood. It appeared to be a deep mahogany or oak, but there were intermittent black stripes that ran vertically every four to twelve inches. People think that oak interiors are passe, but I like the look; though personally I could have done without the talking-fish clock mounted on the wall. I was about to ask about the process when I noticed two small wires coming out of the top of the television. When I turned it on and moved the wires, I counted six different stations, four of which were MeTV! I got so distracted by Brideless Groom that I let the other people there handle the paperwork – how can anybody concentrate after they bash that birdcage over the head of the Justice of the Peace, you know? – and besides, I needed some self-care after a long morning.
After the Stooges were over I went outside, and thank God I did! My assistant must have booked a photoshoot without telling me, because there were four or five very gaunt, pale male models already waiting at the bottom of the staircase by the wheels! I was a bit embarrassed, as I was wearing a pair of shorts given to me by Salvatore Ferragamo and a Hard Rock Cafe Tampa” t-shirt I had purchased at the airport so as to fit in with my new neighbors. I asked the male models who the designer was, but they seemed confused. One of them said “gotta show them titties baby girl” so I guessed it was for a European book. I couldn’t see the photographer at first, but I didn’t want to seem standoffish among the newer models, none of whom I recognized, so I obliged. You never know who will turn out to be the next Marcus Schneckenberg. Before long there were plenty of cameras, and I assume the bald guy in glasses and a Megadeth t-shirt was legendary photographer Terry Richardson.
Once everything settled down, I ate some food that I found in the refrigerator. Did you know that there are fish that are just rectangle-shaped? Afterward, I tried to call Tom and ask when he would land so that he could come help me look for our actual Palmetto Dream Estate, but apparently he tripped onto a baggage carousel while reaching for a dropped pickled oat and wound up locked in an Aer Lingus cargo hold. The nice doctor with the charming accent at Royal City of Dublin Hospital says he’ll be back on his feet in no time. Good thing, too. This is our first move in over a dozen years and I’ll definitely need his help with the particulars! But I’m off to bed for now, and get a load of this; the mattress is made of rubber and completely filled with water! Must be a present from Dr. Alex – we’re so lucky to share in his wisdom when it comes to modern advancements in medicine!
G.B.
Saturday March 21-Tuesday March 24, 2020
Dear Diary today was a very interesting day I went outside and one of the models from yesterday’s shoot was walking back and forth by the freeway so I waved and he asked if I wanted to buy a crystal I had used crystals before and with this whole Caddyshack-2 thing going around you can’t be too careful so I gave him some money and he gave me the crystal but he must’ve sat on it when he brought it back from the apothecary because it was broken into powder when he gave it to me so I tried to make the best of it and placed some of it under my tongue while I sat in the lotus position but instead of reclining to shavasana the healing power of the crystal was overwhelming and I unpacked all of our belongings and put them in the room with the wheels and then I took apart the fish clock and put it back together turns out it wasn’t a real fish at all just a clock that sings Don’t Worry Be Happy and Take Me To The River by Al Green who allegedly received more royalties from the fish clock than his own recording of the song at least according to what I read on Lycos before I went for a walk that come to think of it was more like a sprint which lasted a really long time and when I got back it was dark and another one of the models was doing something under the steps by the wheels with a wrench and I told him he doesn’t have to feign an interest in the arts to impress me and if he needs some career advice he can just ask so we talked for a long time and I mean a really long time because it got light and dark a couple of times and honestly I don’t remember a lot of the conversation but at one point we became very close friends because he said I was his bottom bitch which I guess was an off-color compliment about my squat routine and that he had a present for me and then he went tearing out of the door of the room and across the gravel covered in the carpet that looks like grass and disappeared into the night and when he came back he gave me a brand new MINI Cooper and I don’t know if his agency gave it to him or maybe Tom put him up to it but it is an exclusive new model maybe 2021 or even 2022 not released to the public because I’ve never seen its equal there aren’t any doors so you just get right in and hit the pedals and it just goes along at a nice relaxing pace which is a luxury safety feature because it says EZ-GO on the front which honestly looks a bit gauche but you know how designers can be and I should really get some sleep gb
Wednesday March 25, 2020
Dear Diary:
Well, I finally got a good night’s sleep in my new hometown. Maybe it was jet lag because I think I slept for a day or so? All I know is that when I woke up the front door of the room was open and a lot of my clothes and belongings had been moved, I guess to our new Palmetto Dream Estate, which I am getting anxious to see.
I hardly had time to concentrate on that, though, because a huge dog came into the room while I was sleeping and went into the bathroom. He must be some sort of fancy breed because he has literally no hair, just bumpy dry skin, short stubby legs, a big long tail and a HUGE mouth, like big enough to eat a dozen braised skin-on doves in a single bite! You know how much I love animals, so I named him Pickles because his skin makes him look like a big old may toothed pickle. I felt bad for the poor little guy because his skin was so dry, so I used 27 tubes of Goopglow Body Luminizer and rubbed it all over his back. I wanted to top it with some Supergoop! CC Cream Daily Correct Spectrum SPF 35 Sunscreen, but he ate the whole tube! Along with my jar of Goop Moon Juice Sex Dust and my Goop Rose Quartz Egg, which I tried to tell him was not an actual egg after confirming that by reading the packaging.
I took the strap out of my Hermes Birkin Handbag Noir Ardennes and walked him to my MINI Cooper, figuring we could drive around the neighborhood in case someone was missing a dog. I tried asking the people I saw walking around, but people would come up and then run away as soon as they saw Pickles, like they had never seen a dog before! After getting such a welcome from the people in the room, the other models, and legendary photographer Terry Richardson, I was a little disappointed to be honest. Pickles’ feelings got hurt too, because after a while he closed his eyes, rolled over onto his back in the passenger seat, and completely stopped moving. I yelled at him for eating all of the sunscreen but he totally ignored me and just laid there.
My gloom didn’t last long, though, because you’ll never guess who was waiting on the steps when we got back: Gronk! He said I was “going balls out at this Florida thing,” which must be an inside joke with the boys. Apparently he’s been living here for a bit, trying to become a professional wrestler. He asked about Tom, so I called his cell, and I spoke to him for a second or two before, from what I understand, he dropped his phone into a drainage grate and concussed himself diving after it. Rob pointed to the MINI Copper and asked if I got it at the golf course. I said no, but I was thrilled that there was a local country club and that if he wanted to go get lunch there, I could secure memberships for Tom and I. He helped me carry Pickles inside and insisted that we take his BMW X5. It was nice, but it’s no ’22 MINI Cooper.
The country club was weird. The whole course is made up of the same carpet that covers the gravel and there are windmills and clown mouths and they let people wear shorts, apparently. I reminded myself that this would be a period of adjustment and did my best to fit in, resisting the urge to complain even after I ordered their best salad and was served a bowl of macaroni covered in white stuff. Talking to Gronk was fun, though, at least for the most part. He said he loves it here, making a joke about Mickey Mouse only with a different first name that I am not comfortable memorializing in print. I am the mother of two children and Bridget Moynihan’s little crumbsnatcher after all. Overall, however, lunch at the shorts-permitted country club was a welcome respite. Having a friend like Gronk in the area will be a huge benefit to Tom, if he can ever make it here on his own, LOL.
When I got back to the room, I saw that Pickles was still exhausted, sleeping in the exact same spot where we had left him. I watched “A Plumbing We Will Go” and “Punch Drunks,” both of which were of course as riveting as ever, until it was time to go to bed. Then, out of nowhere, I realized that I hadn’t swallowed a nickel in six days! At first I thought about swallowing a quarter to make up for lost time, but it turns out quarters are bigger than nickels. I swallowed six of them to be safe – I’ve never been the best speller – and before too long my skin started turning blue. Without Tom or Dr. Alex in town, I panicked, and called 911. A police officer came to the room and knocked on the door. I let him in and he saw what was left of my crushed crystal, a leftover piece of rectangle fish, the de-strapped Hermes Birkin Handbag Noir Ardennes, and Pickles lying motionless on the floor. He said that I had colloidal poisoning and that I “really needed to get my life together.” I asked if he was psychic and thanked him for his wisdom. What a day!
G.B.
Thursday March 26, 2020
Dear Diary:
Well, the press knows we’re here now. MeTV ran a double feature of “Have Rocket Will Travel” and “Around the World in a Daze” so I spent the day inside, waiting for Pickles to wake up. In the evening, I went for a drive, and the next thing I know, the next Marcus Schneckenberg went racing by, completely naked and with a police escort behind him. I waved and a camera crew surrounded me. Since it was late, they needed to use floodlights, so I couldn’t see the interviewer, but some of the equipment said “Live P.D.” I was almost embarrassed, honestly. You have to be pretty A-list for Entertainment Tonight to hire an entire “Live in Palmetto Dream” crew and send them down to the Hawkeye State!
The man asked if I knew the guy who just ran past and, remembering our inside rib, I smiled and told him I was his “bottom bitch.” His tone turned a bit more stern and he asked what a girl like me was doing around here, and how I got mixed up in all of this. I told them that my husband was a famous quarterback who is best friends with the president, and that we were excited to be making our new home in the exciting metropolis of Tampa. Remembering my media training, I said that Tampa was “in no way a town full of people too poor or dumb to live in Miami.” Then they asked me where I bought the ’22 MINI Cooper and I said that it was a gift. At that point I guess they decided to give me a police escort, but I told them that I had to keep an eye on Pickles. One of the security guys went into the room and came back out to speak to the others. Apparently, I have to go down to their studio to do a more in-depth interview? Not sure when I will be able to write again, but thus far, Tampa sure has been an adventure!
G.B.