A Double Pleasure Is Waiting For You...!

I actually see the sun today...like real sun, not just a few rays poking through the clouds...and it's not Wizard of Oz windy and penetratingly chilly....it's finally, actually, really May. Just in time for June....or well, actually, it's Memorial Day Weekend....yay! Parades and BBQs and cocktails and parties all weekend long....my signature perfect margaritas definitely making an appearance (which they did at Suse's house on Mother's Day weekend as well, causing quite a few moms in town to wake that morning with massive hangovers...sorry girls, but damn they taste good!).

So a few weeks ago I received an email from the web editor for stonehill.edu...and to make a long story much longer, she was apparently desperate for alums to agree to be profiled in the alumni section of the site, so she turned to TL who sent her a list of names that eventually pointed her in my direction. So, it is not like I am all accomplished or anything, or that I am desperate for a venue to promote my resume (hello, friends....I have this blog for that, right???). But, she was nice and friendly and sounded like she needed help....but the key was that she dropped TL's name...and the lesson is this -- if you need something from me, just tell me that TL sent you.

At any rate, I answered the web gal's questions and told my stories and she sent me a proof that I then sent over to my soul brother (soul patrol!), RJP (whose blog you must bookmark, by the way...), who suggested some edits, yada yada yada. So...along with approval of the final proof, she asked that I send a photo to accompany the piece online. And I panicked...completely freaked...a PICTURE??? You mean, people were going to read this and know about me and see my face on top of it?? Well, of course they wanted to illustrate the piece....and you know I have no problem exposing myself metaphorically and photographically in this forum right here...because this blog is kind of not always very serious, and you are all my friends...and frankly, aside from being naughty, my favorite pastime of all is making a jacka** out of myself (hey, when you do something well...). But in a serious forum? Did I even have a serious picture to submit?

Ok, so...I bounce a few selections off of Rob, and he suggests that I send two and let the web gal choose. Which is what I did...and what brings me to my point in a roundabout way...I sent along the shots and only afterwards looked at the two of them side by side and, if you didn't know for certain, you might assume they were of two completely different people...sisters maybe, twins even, but not the same girl. The first is of blond tousle-haired (or JFH...you know, I am dying to decode that acronym for you as it is my preferred euphemism for messy hair, but it is a little NC-17-rated and my Daddy reads this blog....), fresh-faced, rosy skin and cheery smile Suz. The second was a darker Suz...all tan and sleek-haired, a playful wink just barely decipherable behind the smile. This web gal was going to think I was a g*ddamned lunatic (thanks YAZ!) sending shots of two separate people and I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before I had done so. So as I sat there taking them in after the fact, all I could think was:

"Samantha Stephens and Cousin Serena"

Remember them????? Samantha, the bouncy blond heroine of that classic '60's sitcom, Bewitched, and her raven-haired cousin/sister/double/clone witch, Serena... I loved Samantha -- who didn't? I mean, aside from the fact that she was the hottest housewife in all of Salem, MA...and aside from the fact that she could clean her house and make a pie and get ready for a romantic dinner with Darren/Durwood (love that Endora!) with a twinkle of her pert little mouth, what I most envied about Samantha was the lucky fact that she had Serena, her mischievious twin cousin in her sassy hair-do, mod mini-skirts, go-go boots and little peace sign beauty mark on her left cheek. Serena was some sexy, worldly outgrowth of Samantha's id or psyche, breaking the hell out of that little suburban existence with her controlling (and patently unattractive...let's be honest) husband, her intrusive old crow of a mom and a gaggle of nosy neighbors (wait, did she live in Wyckoff...oh snap!...heehee...). Serena was free and happy and, though she may have been a bit of a brat, she was ultra cool too, right? And every time I watched Bewitched, I twinkled my nose and wished that this episode would feature the rebel clone, Serena. I so wish I had a Serena...or maybe, I am Serena...I am still mulling that one....

So, by the time Bewitched was on my radar it was 1975 and I was a little teeny tiny kindergartner (making you feel old yet??) watching '60's reruns everyday during lunch while RJ napped and my mom yapped on the phone to Millie or Aunt Annette or Mrs. Hegarty... And it wasn't just Bewitched of course, there was The Monkees too, a show that inspired my very first ever crush on the quirky Micky Dolenz (and yes, I know he lost his cuteness well before the 70's had come to a close...) and there were also the standards -- Brady Bunch, Get Smart, My Three Sons. So, as soon as I looked at my twin cousin pictures and remembered Samantha and Serena, I thought back to all of those old shows...and one after the other I remembered that on at least one episode of each series, there was a storyline featuring one of the main characters embroiled in a dilemma with a "double" of themselves.

Think about it...there was Peter Brady and that time he met the guy, who was really just him with a pair of black Woody Allen glasses on (way to commit, Brady Bunch producers!)...and I don't even fully recall the storyline...wasn't there a tag-team double date to a drive-in movie with smarmy Greg or something...I mean, this is the sh*t stupid Peter Brady could come up when stumbling upon his exact double??? No world domination? What a bad show.

And on The Monkees there was the one when cute little midget Davy Jones (who, by the way is the original uncredited genius behind the Axl Rose "Snake" dance...need proof? click away...) bumped into his doppelganger, the Prince of Peruvia...and the Prince happened to be a boring dorky introvert...and Davy came to the rescue, saving all of Peruvia, by posing as the Prince and wooing him some hot future princess bride. Oh great...woo me with Davy Jones and leave me with the dorky boring introvert...that poor pre-Diana princess of misery probably wanted to drink herself to death once she figured on the switch. But, she was the first lady of Peruvia, so maybe that was consolation enough for being duped...

And I am pretty sure Maxwell Smart doubled up at some point...but I am not so sure about the brothers on My Three Sons...but I do know that in real life two of them (Chip and Ernie) were actual brothers, so that kind of qualifies, no? Yes...that is a stretch.

So I guess meeting the "Surprise Double" was the '60's equivalent to the '80's "Very Special Episode"..."Tonight on a very special episode of Gimme A Break, the trampy older sister is hospitalized with a defective IUD..."... you know what I mean. Even my true love Pa Ingalls pulled that "very special" crap with the Sylvia r*pe episode...and we all cried with Albert when she fell off that ladder...am I right or what? So anyway, that twin thing was a ratings grabber back in the day...and it showcased that fancy newfangled camera/editing trickery that Hollywood was producing circa '62...all starting with that Patty Duke cousin/twin show, which never even made it to my early '70's rerun rotation like the others. The "twins" standing a good 5 feet apart facing one another in a room with a bland, easy to edit background...go back and look....that is the scene in every one of these aforementioned TV moments.

So anyway, back to my original point (points?)... Samantha and Serena... do we all have a little bit of both inside? You know, especially the moms and wives and professionals that we girls of the '70's have become...is that cousin/sister/double/clone just a fantasy or does she live within our souls...does she pop out randomly and show herself on camera every once in a while... I know for certain that I have that do-gooder little blond inside me who is working 9 to 5 and making dinner and tending to the garden and checking homework and scrubbing my kids' faces, dressing them perfectly in coordinating colors for the visit to Gram's house....my Samantha. And then there is my Serena...I think most of you know her even better...the snarky, flirty social butterfly...making a jacka** out of myself while dive-barring and gourmet cooking and adult toy partying and shoe-buying and fun-seeking. And both are totally real to me...both feel exactly right....which I guess is good, yes? Because I have to live with both of them and all the choices they make.

So, like I said....I decided to leave it up to the web gal to pick which shot she preferred...and I know a lot of you have already read the profile and know the real answer...but some of you don't. Am I Samantha or Serena on stonehill.edu?

Well, truth be told, the profile is all about my Samantha....but web gal got it right...the picture is my Serena...which is about spot on, I'd say...

Love you all...both sides of you... xo, Suz

Photo 1: That pitcher of my perfect margaritas is all for me...a full bottle Rob's Gosling's making an appearance too, I see...won't be full for long....

Photo 2: Serena and Samantha Rittereiser Anderson....oddly and truthfully, my Serena looks exactly like my Dad and my Samantha is my Mom's blond twin...spooky as hell...

Photos 3 & 4: 1960's fashion and beauty/homemaking icons Samantha Stephens and Cousin Serena...an inspiration to our bipolar generation...what, can't we be perfect suburban moms and wild fun-loving sexpots all at once???

Photo 5: The Monkees, that hot b*tch, Micky Dolenz, stealing Davy Jones' thunder as always...

Photo 6: Boring...snooze-fest middle son Peter Brady...even with the clone episode he's still the most forgettable of the six, more so than Jan even, no? Oh my g*d! I forgot about her double/twin episode with Imogene Coca!!! Now that was a classic!

Photo 7: Axl Rose doing "The Snake"...taking credit for Davy Jones' kickass contribution to the world of dance...could Davy have been the true master behind "November Rain" too?

Photo 8: My Three (very unattractive) Sons...that was the original title actually...

Photo 9: The perfect product of my hardworking, deeply loving inner Samantha...Ellie, Tim and Will...

Photo 10: Lyncher, Darts, Al and Welbis...out for the night with my inner and outer Serena...you know, she can be a pretty fun chick...