Look what they've done to our baby!

Here is fluffy, cuddly, cute-as-a-teddy Coco:

Here's the same dog after we picked her up from our insane dog groomer:

Sweet Mother of Jesus! I simply cannot stop laughing. Just look at the humiliated, "How could you do this to me?" expression in her eyes. Every time I hear "Shut up, Dad! It's not funny!" I laugh harder. Hang in there, Coco. I know what it's like to suffer a bad haircut. It'll grow back. But that's cold comfort today.

*     *     *

Katie Holmes is my new pretend girlfriend. For a long time, Mary Louise Parker was my pretend girlfriend. Mary Louise has the pretty face and girl-next-door looks I swoon over. I saw her in a few plays. Sat damn close to the stage, too. On more than one occasion, we made eye contact. I’m sure of it. We had a moment of mutual understanding. I was hers. She was mine. It's no matter that she had a baby with that barbarian Billy Crudup. That boy. That oaf. We still had an understanding about each other.

I once had a brief flirtation with Marisa Tomei. She tried to steal me away from Mary Louise. Same modus operandi. We locked eyes when she was on stage and I sat in the second row. It was an electric moment. For a while after that, all I thought about was being with Marisa. But I went back to Mary Louise. Crudup abandoned her for bony old Claire Danes. While she was pregnant, no less! I couldn’t abandon her, too.

But I’m sorry, Mary Louise. I just saw Katie Holmes in a play and I belong to her now. What a face! I love her crooked little smile. Her button nose. We couldn't lock eyes because I sat in row P. I had to use my theater binoculars to even see her eyes. But the feeling was absolutely electric, absolutely present in the house and absolutely correct. She is mine.

Her hair is long now. Did you know!? Three quarters of the way down her back. Throughout the play, her hair was in a ponytail. In the last scene, she wanted to make her desire known to some idiot boy on stage, so she whipped off her ponytail band and fluffed her hair through splayed fingers. She shook it out and although it didn’t happen in slow motion, that's how I replay it in my mind’s eye. I think she did that just for me. Don’t you?

I was so smitten that it wasn't until an hour after the final curtain that I realized the play wasn't very good. Her acting was serviceable if not, dare I say?, a bit flat. That evening, they had announced an early closing date due to mixed-to-poor reviews and declining ticket sales, which would account for the dispirited performances.

Earlier in the day that rag, the New York Daily News, splashed across its front page the fact that Tom Cruise was dating some hatchet-faced skank who lives out in Queens. They made a big deal out of him dating someone “…right in Katie’s back yard!” That, plus the early closing of her play? She needs a sympathetic ear. Someone to bring her a cup of hot cocoa with a marshmallow on top.

*     *     *

Happy New Year, bitches! At 6:40 a.m., Times Square was already in semi-lockdown mode. As usual, I'll be hiding under my bed.