Po-Boy Views
Smart Cocktails With The Boys or Socks In The City
By Phil LaMancusaShove over Sarah Jessicas of the world - I’m not taking this insult to my fellow fellows lying down. I’m putting to paper my own pilot that I just KNOW HBO is gonna snap up, and yes, it’s called “Socks In The City”! And yes, it’s about four lovable friends (guys this time) and their adventures in this big metropolis that we call ‘The Easy.’
I, of course, will be the star and every episode will begin with me strolling down the uptown Freret neighborhood, past the rubble that was once public housing, and I’m dressed in a cute ruffled shirt and seersucker trousers with sweet shiny saddle shoes, when BAM! A bus comes by and splashes a puddle that remains from yesterday’s rain that the city has not turned the pumps on to clear, and I stare adoringly into the camera as the bus whizzes by with Emeril’s picture on it, and jeering school children throw fried chicken bones at me and a sweet little ditty plays in the background by Barry Manilow because he does such sweet jingly tunes. Are you with me?
Next the tube shows me walking down a busy street (if we can find a busy street) with my three chums.
1.Miranda Pedro, my Hispanic lawyer buddy that was here under the radar until he married a stripper and moved to Metairie with his red-headed step child. Miranda is his first name because his father is dyslexic and told the people at the hospital the baby’s last name first or something (we’ll get to that in a sequel episode). He’s an overachiever that adores hats from Meyer and wonders why he hasn’t had sex in the last six months, and even at that, his wife is prone to faking orgasms and asking him if he’s done yet.
2. My next buddy we just refer to by his last name Carrlotte. He is a gay African American (actually half Sicilian) in a committed relationship with a sweet British bloke, Harold, with whom he has an adopted Asian child. They’ll go through some hilarious episodes as they try to get married, find a nanny, get profiled, and try to find an apartment that will rent to them.
3. Then there’s Sam Hoover, a tall, strapping blond fashion designer. A tall, strapping, oversexed fashion designer, who splits his time between here and Los Angeles, where he manages his cute but dumb starlet fiancée, Sam is nearing fifty and worries about ED, incontinence, and going bald. His girlfriend works too hard and Sam feels neglected except when he’s around me and the guys or getting seriously laid.
Me? I’m Charlie Bradshaw. I sit around in my boxers and type one word on my computer and hope for inspiration for a column to inspire my hordes of readers who look to me to bring joy into their otherwise dull existences. I’m secretly in love with a woman that we all refer to as ‘Big,’ but not to her face because she’d kick our collective asses up to our stylish collars. Ergo, I go to Paris with a ballerina and that doesn’t work out like all the other relationships that I have… do not work out (at least on the show). Big does something for a living that I clearly can’t figure out, except that she’s constantly finding excuses to break dates with me. Big rarely smiles, but you can just tell that she adores me and is great in bed.
Here we all come walking down the crowded (we’ll get a crowd somewhere) street and we’ve gotten dressed to the nines with outfits from Rubinstein’s and jewels from Adler’s, and as we sidestep broken sidewalks and bodily fluids and trash that STD is eagerly pursuing, you can clearly tell that we’re talking about where to dine and how much we can drink, gossip, and complain, and still be our lovable selves.
Here we are sitting around the table drinking Kamikaze-politans, which are just like those other drinks (cosmopolitans), except there’s less cranberry juice and you have to drink them a lot faster. We’re all stylishly coifed and talk about relationships and orgasms and tend to get misty at the mention of movies like It Happened One Night and An Affair To Remember. Sam has his eyes on the waitress who later corners him in the john, much to the annoyance of the man in the next stall trying to quietly shoot up.
Today is full of chatter because Miranda has found out that his wife, Stephanie, is selling her body on the side (explaining her performances in her own bed). Sam is explaining the best way to get those nasty stains from the crotches of trousers, and Carrlotte is ecstatic because his child has learned to fold laundry. That’s when I drop the bomb on them: “Big has asked me to move in with her,” I remark, cool as the cucumber on my chef salad (dressing on the side). To which they all shriek like schoolgirls.
What do you think? Does it have legs?
Of course it does! I mean, I LOVE Sex and the City, I ADORE Will and Grace, I DIG Desperate Housewives and I think Ugly Betty RULES! I believe that I can show that guys are sensitive, caring, funny, and have great taste in shoes and fashion accessories.
In the show, I’ll start to get married several times in every conceivable (named) fashion designer outfit, have steamy love scenes without taking off my clothes, and at the end of each episode be able to dash off another brilliant article for Where Y’at.
Sam will sleep with dozens of women of every conceivable description while searching for a true identity and inner peace instead of screwing pieces with little or no identity.
Carrlotte will redecorate his house a half a dozen times with every conceivable matching outfit, adopt stray animals, go to art openings with his lesbian chums, and wonder why his husband has premature ejaculations.
Miranda will start taking a cut of his wife’s earnings, rent an apartment for his mistress, learn to tango with every conceivable guest star, and become the first man to become pregnant from a toilet seat.
And moi? I will sit back and let the money roll in, dream of syndication and practice my acceptance speech for the Grammy’ with my three new best friends.