all these superstar people, but you live here. This place is total sheethole. I give you job cleaning toilets, and you afford nicer place. It crazy situation, Meess Sasha. You beautiful redheaded woman, even though you’re pale as a ghost and dress like old man. Why not you find some rich celebrity boytoy, so you can have sweeming pool?”
“Actually, I’ve got a boyfriend,” I protested.
“He invisible?”
“No, he lives in Hawaii. I’m moving out there to be with him next summer.”
“Like I said: Invisible. Why not you try eCupidMatch.com? I help you write profile.”
“I’ve gotta go, Mr. Zglagovvcini.”
“On rusty bicycle? You madwoman! Why not you buy a car?”
“Because I’m saving money.”
“Life too short to be so tight in the ass, Meess Sasha. You young. You should leeve a little.”
Mr. Zglagovvcini went on like this pretty much every day—or at least until things got so crazy at work, I was getting home at one in the morning, only to leave again at dawn, when he was safely in bed and snoring with enough force to make the pipes in my bathroom vibrate.
I suppose it should have come as a relief to avoid his nagging.
And yet… I kind of missed it.
So: the first of the potential Crowther replacements to come in for an interview was none other than Joey Lovecraft. Yeah, that Joey Lovecraft. Not that Len allowed us to use the word “interview,” of course. God, no. Officially, it was a “strategy session.” In reality… it was neither of those things. It was a sanity check. Joey Lovecraft had a reputation, after all. And Sir Harold had already made it clear he didn’t think Joey was mentally fit for the job—any job, not least as a celebrity judge on the world’s most-watched TV show. (Given the recent YouTube clip of his “accident” in Houston—for God’s sake don’t Google on a full stomach—there wasn’t much point in arguing.)
Nevertheless, the executives at Rabbit were convinced Joey could be managed. It was just going to take a little patience. That, and a fulltime squad of Joey-minders.
Actually, the fact that Joey had been given any kind of meeting at all was pretty incredible. After all, when news first broke about Nigel Crowther leaving Icon, Len’s cell phone turned so hot—1,438 missed calls in ten minutes—it literally began to melt. Every agent in Hollywood wanted to set up a meet and greet for their client. And it wasn’t just the reality TV crowd who wanted in: It was some of the most famous people alive—people whose names come above Coca-Cola in global brand surveys. Did any of them give a crap about “finding the next Elvis” or whatever bullshit their reps came up with to explain their sudden interest in a singing competition? No. What they cared about—what they really cared about—was the Triple Oprah.
Joey was different, though. He didn’t need the money. Maybe that’s why Rabbit wanted him so bad, regardless of Sir Harold’s very public misgivings.
Clearly, the job of vetting judges couldn’t be done at Greenlit Studios: It was June, so the set was being dismantled, and we were getting ready to move out until the following year, when the live shows of season thirteen would begin. The meetings also couldn’t be held at the offices of Two Svens’ company, Zero Management, because the enormous Swede was still crippled with rage over the whole Talent Machine situation—that, and the hour-long “farewell ceremony” Nigel Crowther had bullied Rabbit into staging for him during Icon’s season twelve finale. In terms of pomp, the latter had been pitched somewhere between a papal death and the Beijing Olympics—and Crowther’s fellow judges had to sit there for the duration, grinning and clapping, in the full knowledge that he was single-handedly responsible for getting them all fired. (Apart from JD Coolz, that is—but he didn’t know it at the time.)
Hence Joey was told to go to The Lot, the walled minitropolis out in the San Fernando Valley where Rabbit Studios makes its movies and respectable, scripted TV shows. More specifically, he was booked to sit down with Ed “Big Guy” Rossitto, president of Rabbit’s Mainstream Entertainment division, whose office is located about a half-mile north of the twin golden bunnies that sit atop The Lot’s entrance on Sir Harold Killoch Drive. Len was also asked to come along—or maybe he invited himself, hard to tell—which meant I also needed to be there for moral support. Or to “look smart and fuckable” as Len put it helpfully, with a disapproving nod at