BACK TO BASICS

Clarence Thomas, Emmys, and More!

2006-08-28T12:28:00.000-05:00

Well dear friends, it’s clearly been quite some time since I’ve regaled you with another smash-hit showbiz story. As I’m sure inquiring minds want to know, I’ll give you a little dish on where I’ve been, who I’ve seen, and what I’ve been doing since late March.

First, as I’m sure you read in Washed Up Weekly, I’ve been touring Back to Basics, my ever changing cabaret act, around this lovely country of ours (and in a few, very select, very drunken engagements in Mexico. Don’t drink the water. Trust me.) The show has brought a whirlwind of press, emotions, and hurled Molotov cocktails. Geoffrey met a lovely fella named Jeffrey. Clarence Thomas said he liked my cans. Oh, and Winnie Mandela took time off from ordering people’s murders and gave me a lovely boxed set of Small Wonder DVDs.

Other than the show, I did have a little legal ballyhoo that needed settling. It seems that in New York State, strolling down the street to get some eggs in the nude is against John Q. Law’s idea of decency. Well, what can I tell you? I was drunk, bored and needed eggs. And as Dr. Kitty Carlysle Hart used to say: “Who’s got time for pants?” Well, fear not faithful Gomes fan; I eluded charges with a slap on the wrist. Well, it was more a slap on the bottom. Seems there’s one judge in this county who enjoys a little Regis Philbin action…if you get my drift.

Well, now that you know what I’ve been up to, let’s get down to brass tax. Lots of people are hemming and hawing about this Mel Gibson fiasco. But I say it’s all hooey. If I was scrutinized for every anti-Semitic thing I said, Elie Wiesel wouldn’t have officiated my 8th wedding to celebrated novelist Irving Berlin. So, I won’t rag on Mel. Instead I’d like to address some of the hoopla that’s surrounding the upcoming Emmy awards, to be broadcast on NBC; that network of undateable gays named Will and poor starving people weeping on a desert island. I thought this would make an interesting story as I could shed some light on my ill-fated 1972 television show Face Down in the Alley Way: Crystal Gomes Reads the News. So turn off your pagers, silence your telegraph machines, and leave your crying babies with the ushers, because here we go.

I was living in Los Angeles for a month or two in the early 70’s, trying to make a go at it in the pictures. Later on, as I’m sure you know, I found some success in the films Daytona Call Girl: P.I., Four Monkeys Rob the Louvre, and Three Men and a Little Quaalude Habit. But, in the beginning, the going was rough. It wasn’t until Merv Griffin, drunk at Elliot Gould’s Yum Kippur party, approached me about this pilot he had bouncing around that the storm clouds began to part.

The concept was crackerjack: Me and some weekly celebrity guests discuss love, life, and never architecture in a real urban environment. The strange thing about this little project was that while appearing to be spontaneous, it was all scripted. I liked the idea, as I was not one to speak off-the-cuff at that time. We booked a young upstart named Bill Cosby and a bejeweled Lloyd Bridges for the pilot. Buzz was big, my drinks were cold, and little Geoffrey was floggin’ the bishop to a picture of Joey Heatherton somewhere in suburban Dallas. (Geoffrey, honey don’t get mad about that. I’m going for verite.)

Well shooting came and went, and we were hearing cash registers. Literally. We couldn’t afford studio space, so we filmed the show at an Ocean State Job Lot in Pawtucket. But what can you do, it was a gig. On the first episode we discussed Watergate, the growing crisis in Iran, and sandwiches. Lloyd Bridges always loved a Reuben. Me? I could take ‘em or leave ‘em.

But, I digress. The important thing about this is that we were an instant success. When we premiered in September we were number four. Which, for a new show, with far more drinking than Sherwood Schwartz’s little priss fest, was a big deal. We had eight glorious episodes filled with interesting debate, fabulous celebrities, and expertly choreographed wig changes (a young Kenny Ortega, doing his finest work before High School Musical.) Then, as always, disaster struck. It was episode nine. Shooting went fine, we saw no bumps in the road. The viewing audience, apparently, begged to differ. Apparently they didn’t like that fifteen minutes in, the episode devolved into a grainy snuff film where a young starlet named Faye Dunaway almost got the knife. We thought it was dynamite. Faye loved it. But…the public is fickle, my friends. After all the arrests (our 2nd AD, Gill Withers, was sent to prison for ten to fifteen,) things did cool down. But needless to say, we were given the ax and come Emmy time, we got nothing.

There are many awards I’ve lost and many I’ve never been nominated for. Lady Emmy, sadly, is one of the latter. I’ve never gone back to television, save the taped version of Songs for a New Face: Let’s Save Kenny Rogers, that was aired recently on Spokane public access. So…I’ll raise a glass to the current Emmy nominees. My pick to win it all? Jon Cryer. Two and Half Men is Albee done right. Believe me, I’ve seen enough bum productions of Zoo Story to know the difference.

How about you dear fans? Have you missed me? Who are your Emmy favorites? Leave a note with your email address and I promise to get back to you personally.

Well, this is Ms. Gomes signing off for the evening. And remember, you’re all gems. Whether you’re scraping the horse grease off the griddle at McDonald’s or contemplating suicide as a failed and scandal-embroiled investment banker, you’re only as small as you wanna be. Hell, that little kid who played Webster (another Emmy fave) was actually six feet tall. He just never believed.

Please believe. Goodnight. Remember to shave. And come see the show. I’ll be at the St. James, Utah Econolodge next Tuesday night. Save the date.

Celebrity Animal Stories!

2006-03-28T14:43:00.000-05:00

In light of the exposee that came out recently in PETA Monthy regarding Crystal and her fur consumption, we here in The Gomes Group would like to share a story that proves Crystal's love for animals as well as combats the allegations that she is "a heartless Cruella Deville, intent on killing and wearing anything that grows hair."

As anyone knows who’s seen me at the stage door, I love furs. I have twenty-eight fur coats (all Russian hamster), three mink hats, two pairs of Irish Setter booties, and sixteen salmon stoles. Many people get angry at me for my choice of wearing fur. On one horrible occasion in the early 90’s, a patchouli smelling lesbian-type threw paint on me because “she” thought I was wearing a rhino skin trench coat. I was in actuality just wearing my bathing suit at the public pool. It was, needless to say, something of an insult. But let me set the record straight: I love animals. Any fur I wear was collected from an already dead animal. If Geoffrey’s ’92 Geo Prizm happens to be the cause of that animal’s unfortunate death, well then who am I to say anything?
I’m talking about animals because I think that many of you would be curious to know about some of my celebrity pals’ various encounters and dealings with their pets and other, perhaps more exotic animals. So let’s go down a wonderful road through the Showbiz Zoo.
First is a story that many of you are probably already familiar with. I am of course talking about the time that my lover for many years, Pablo Escobar, saved my front teeth. I was down in Colombia rehearsing my show “I Can’t Fake It With You: A Tribute to the 1978 Finnish Olympic Swimming Team” and Pablo and I were enjoying a lovely little fling. Now, I had no knowledge of Pablo’s illegal dealings with druggery, I thought he was a baking soda salesman, so everything was just peachy. Well, there was one night when he and I enjoyed a nice dinner of rice and beans at a little café in Bogota. After dinner and several pitchers of sangria (all mine, by the way; Pablo never drank or smoked or rode escalators,) we decided to go for a nice evening stroll. Well wouldn’t you know it? I innocently tossed my cigarette into the wrong ass’s ass, and before I know it, he’s bucking his back legs like Gloria Steinem at a Wellesley mixer. Now Pablo, ever the gentleman, jumped in front of me, blocking the ass’s kicks from my highly valuable face. Poor Pablo took two right in the kisser, knocking out most of his teeth. Interestingly enough, his subsequent denture use led to his arrest for his various drug associations. (If I told him once, I told him a thousand times: Never leave your dentures at the Burbank Marriot!) Poor Pablo. There’s one animal I’d like to see skinned and mounted in a six by ten at Leavenworth.
Another wonderful animal story is the time that Betty Grable was brutally attacked by her helper monkey, Dr. Ernesto Livingston. Well, on second thought, that story isn’t so much wonderful as it is deeply terrifying. Betty was never able to look at a tennis racquet or a Ming vase again.
Oh let’s see…let’s see. Animal stories… Oh! Me and some of my pals, notably Peter Lorre, Montgomery Cliff, Burt Lancaster, and Glenda Jackson, used to call Johnny Weissmuller “the Animal” because of his strange and interesting sexual habits. Geoffrey? Geoffrey honey? Can I talk about that thing. Oh you know the thing, with the croquet… No? No, I can’t? Oh. Okay. Well then. Moving on
Oh here we go. June Lockhart, that walking brandy distillery, had a cat named Claudio Morales that she used to carry in a brown paper bag. She carried this thing everywhere. There’s a photo, I’m sure you can find it on that interweb thing, on that Gogol thing, of June at the ’68 Governor’s Ball with Claudio in an Yves Saint Laurent brown paper bag. I remember that night so well. I wasn’t drinking that night, because I was trying to change my life (and because, earlier that night, I had taken a small Chinese man’s weight in barbiturates in the ladies’ loo at the Shriner’s Auditorium.) So I very clearly remember Coco Chanel, back when she was in that dangerous romance with Gregory Peck and his sixth wife Donna Dewberry, throwing the brown paper bag, full of Claudio Morales, into a trash can. June Lockhart just about plotzed. She ended up spiking Coco’s drink with No. 5, nearly killing Coco. Luckily, due to a series of painful surgeries, Coco learned to live with her subsequent perfume addiction. Claudio Morales lived to be eighteen years old. He was buried in his favorite brown paper bag, while June played “Nearer My God to Thee” on the left-handed harmonica.
There are celebrities who have imaginary pets. Some examples? Well, there was Annette O’Toole’s “Shar Pei” Dominic who was just molded Gruyere cheese. Julie Newmar’s parakeet Shoe Shiner was actually a pile of dried cranberries (Geoffrey tells me they’re now called “craisins.”) Gomer Pyle thought he had a mastodon named Agatha that later turned out to be a dead hobo by the name of Gill Withers who had curled up and died in Gomer’s backyard. Vanessa Redgrave thought that her beautiful daughter, Natasha Richardson, was a Persian cat named Maliki Haki Mu for thirteen years. And Sergio Mendes’ pet pig Lulu? A drugged Peter Finch wearing a coal miner’s hat.
In the end, all of this animal talk makes me fondly remember my late pet puma, Lady Eleanor Grimlywicke, who at her lowest tried to eat my housecleaner’s four year old daughter, and at her highest held a very important seat in the House of Commons. I first met Ellie in the jungles of the Belgian Congo. I was there on an ill-fated trip to find King Solomon’s mines, but all I ran into was a pack of murderous gray gorillas and one black one that tried to speak to me in sign language, which I promptly shot.
Well on our last day, Ellie came out of the woods and, after devouring my first assistant, Clydesdale, nuzzled herself against my leg and began to purr. We fell instantly in love. Ellie died three winters ago, after I mistakenly tried to feed her a few Beefeater bottles in an effort to hide my (very, very light) drinking from a few Japanese businessmen who were looking to fund my show “One of These Things is Not Like Two Thousand Others: Crystal Live at the Apollo.” Well, I felt terrible, but I resolved to only remember the good times. Oh, and I suppose I miss Clydesdale every now and then. But really, he wasn’t much of an assistant. He was always trying to get me to go out for a walk or donate my hard earned money to some charity. Nah, give me Geoffrey any day. He keeps my gin cold, my elbows waxed, and Ellie’s taxidermied corpse full of fresh Bermuda sand.
Animals and assistants, ain’t they just grand?

Gayle/Gomes Feud Revealed!

2006-03-15T15:50:00.000-05:00

After quite a bit of soul-searching, Crystal has asked that we finally release the details of her ongoing feud with country legend, Crystal Gayle. Come see Crystal recount the painful story in person at her next show in the visitors center at the Hoover Dam. Thanks and enjoy.

"I have always been known for my generous and loving nature, which is why it confuses people when a publicly insult and denigrate Crystal Gayle. The truth is that I haven’t always hated that ratfink bitch. And I would like to set the record straight about our sordid past.

Back in our youth, Crystal and I used to be the best of friends. We did everything together. In fact, it was my idea to grow our hair long and sing country-western music. We were known as a pair; The Nashville Crystal Combo and we were an overnight success. We were singing sold-out shows every night and we regularly opened for Dolly, Loretta and Johnny, whenever they happened back into town. Of course, Jimmy Tunes accompanied and wrote much of our act. We had a knee-slapping “Dueling Banjos” number where Crystal played the Jew-harp and I smoked cigarettes that was one of Jimmy’s favorite bits.

Things couldn’t have been better. We were young, successful and all three of us lived in an apartment that the Nashville elite referred to as The Combo’s Condo. As you can imagine success changes people, and as soon as we were getting some notoriety Crystal started to cop an attitude. She claimed that I cared more about bedding the mayor of Nashville than I cared about our music. She claimed that showing up three hours late for rehearsals was “unprofessional” and that I “was drunk for every performance.” Well, it was clear to me that Crystal was teeming with jealousy. It wasn’t my fault that the mayor was taking a liking to me, and that he gave me a case of Tennessee bourbon for my birthday. What was I going to do? Not drink it? Show up on time? Please. But, I was trying to be the bigger Crystal and not let her bickering get the best of our act.

The final straw came on a blustery day in October. I came home from a long night at the mayor’s mansion, with the heel broken off of my Bob Mackie pumps and my floor length hair in a tangle. I arrived in the condo and was having a struggle unbuckling my shoe and not walking on my hair when I looked up and saw Crystal and Jimmy Tunes in a compromising position that is burned in my memory from now until the end of time. I won’t get into the unsavory details here, but let’s just say that Jimmy was using Gayle’s hair like a horse’s reigns and Crystal found a new way to play the Jew-harp that will never make it to the stage.

I was enraged. I could not believe that the two of them would betray me like that. Sure, I know that I wasn’t involved with Jimmy (at least that’s what I told the mayor) and that I had said to Crystal the previous afternoon, “Gayle, why don’t you get a stiff rodgering? You look like ten miles of bad road.” But she knew full-well that I didn’t mean Jimmy and how I felt and still feel about Mr. Tunes from Tallahassee on.

Well, I hobbled straight into the bathroom and took some gardening shears to my signature locks. I didn’t want to have any association with Gayle or The Nashville Crystal Combo ever again.

I could hear Crystal screaming from the bedroom, “We’re in love, Crystal! You good-for-nothing drunk!” I always knew that Crystal had a thing for Jimmy, but I also knew that she meant nothing to my darling Mr. Tunes. He would never love another woman, especially not another Crystal. I swung open the bathroom door, took my handful of newly shorn hair, and started to strangle Crystal with it (who was still very naked). In order to defend herself, she started strangling me with her attached hair, which was slightly less effective. As we strangled and hurled obscenities at each other, Jimmy managed to break a vase full of geraniums over my head, rendering me immobile. I’m very grateful to Jimmy for this, because I was moments away from completely suffocating that bitch and I’ve never looked good in a neon-orange jumpsuit (I’m a “spring”).

Well, we both woke up the next morning in the Nashville hospital. I never spoke to her directly again, although we’ve had several run-ins since. Jimmy and I moved out of The Combo Condo as soon as I was released from the hospital and we started our second journey to the Big Apple. A few months after the incident, Crystal came out with her hit, “Don’t You Make my Brown Eyes Blue” which was meant as a declaration of love for Jimmy and a jab at my struggle with nearsightedness. "

Oscar Party of One

2006-03-14T16:41:00.000-05:00

We've had a lot of emails and phone calls inquiring after why Ms. Gomes was not seen at the Academy Awards this year. Although Ms. Gomes was invited to the Oscars and had dress and formal turban prepared, she unexpectectedly and due to unforseen circumstances, passed out on her kitchen floor. Crystal is perfectly fine however and even made this remark after she was helped up;
"Geoffrey, did I go to the Oscars? No? Damn it. "

Delightful Tony Memories

2006-02-21T00:45:00.000-05:00

Here's another excerpt from America's favorite tell-all! Ms Gomes would also like to send the following message: "Dear Sir or Madam: It was not me who ran over your pet duck. I was nowhere near the scene and have not driven since that horrible incident with Princess Grace (she came out of nowhere, I swear!) I am terribly sorry for your loss, I'm sure he was a nice duck. Enclosed are two seats to my latest show, Back to Basics, which will be playing the Duane Reade stock room this coming Tuesday night. Warmest regards, Crystal."

And here it is...

"You know what they say, the first time is always the best. Except of course when it comes to making whoopee. Or, as the case may be (and is), when it comes to winning a Tony. In fact, the third time I won a Tony was the most memorable. It was a night filled with drunken recriminations, several murder attempts, and the inevitable tarring and feathering of celebrated flutist/ornery detective Jerry Orbach. But, as that particular night is documented so thoroughly in my groundbreaking 1978 show, Time to Pay the Piper: Conversations with Pol Pot, I won’t go into it here. But, on the Tony theme, I will tell you about my first..

The year was 1968, I was a young thing just out of Tallahassee, with nothing but a dashingly drunk accompanist named Jimmy Tunes and a sack of oranges. Well, back then I was living in an old refrigerator on 145^th St. Jimmy managed to curl up in the freezer on nights when he wasn’t staying at the Plaza with some dizzy dame. He and I were playing shows at Dinah Shore’s Hoedown Hut every Tuesday morning. The crowd wasn’t huge, usually just Dinah and a confused hobo or Dutch tourist, but we were living the dream. They paid us in refrigerator magnets, and I eventually got enough to put my name, address, and a warning to stay away from my sack of oranges on the front of my house.

Well, as luck would have it, one of Dinah Shore’s prize acts, Mandy Patinkin, who did sword swallowing and German burlesque, called in sick for the very popular Friday night slot. And who did crazy old Dinah call to fill in? That valium machine Debbie Reynolds. But, as luck would have it again, Debbie accidentally killed a dancer from 42^nd Street and was tied up in legal ballyhoo. So we were on. What a rush. I wore my favorite denim pantsuit and soiled footy pajama turban. (Well, they weren’t my favorite, but they were all I had. Hell, Diller used to wear an old Chinese sailor suit when she first started.) Jimmy tore up the piano. Literally. It cost us 700 hundred magnets to replace it.

Anyway there was a big time Broadway producer in the audience that night . After the show, I was going from glass to glass, drinking whatever people had left, and he sidled up to me and said, “You’re gonna be a star.” I nearly choked on the 28 maraschino cherries and 17 olives I had stuffed in my mouth to eat later. “Phhanks miffftah.” I said, as smooth as can be. Turns out he was producing what would later become one of my biggest hits, Kandor & Ebbs little known masterpiece, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, Pussy in a Cold Dark Basement. A young whippersnapper named Bobby Fosse was the choreographer and head queer (it was all very official back then, not like the fairy fest you have down on the White way these days.)

Well, needless to say, I was a hit, and come June was nominated for a Tony. It was a lovely ceremony that year, Abe Vigoda hosted, with musical numbers sung by a nearly comatose Vivienne Leigh, backed up by the Vienna Boys Choir. Their rendition of “Talky Talky” from South Pacific lives in infamy as the noise that scared Hal Prince straight. (For about a minute. I saw him and Fosse messing around in the ladies’ powder room during a commercial break.) Now I had had a little fun before the show started, and at the time that my category was being called, I was trying to coax a coat rack to buy me another old-fashioned. Suddenly I heard a great round of applause and some little lady ran up to me and said “Ms. Gomes you won! You won!!” I assumed she was talking about the Russian mafia’s numbers racket, which I still play every day, so I looked the girl straight in the eyes and said “Don’t take my numbers. They’re my numbers!” The girl looked very confused and ran off.

Well, just then I had the urge to run to the ladies room, but wasn’t quite sure where it was. So I began wandering around, and wouldn’t you know, ended up stumbling on stage with my unspeakables around my ankles. Boy was Al Hirschfeld surprised! Either way, I took the award, remembered to wipe, and promptly went to lie down on the set they’d brought out for a Carousel number. The spinning wasn’t all that fun, but the look on Vivienne’s face as I threw up on her dress and she finally woke up and realized that she wasn’t at home with the girls was priceless. She ended up running off stage and I did the rest of the musical numbers. I didn’t have anything prepared so I just sang off the cuff about whatever was on my mind. The crowd especially loved my piece called “Refrigerator Days” for which I had boys from the choir sing the angry Puerto Rican hooker part.

I knew I was in when the crowd gave me a standing ovation at the end of the night. Abe Vigoda felt a little upstaged, but I just patted his withered old head (it’s always been like that, ever since a horrible snow shoeing accident) and said “Get used to it, Abey. Get used to it.” Well, it turns out that I wasn’t talking to Abe Vigoda at all, just a pile of oily rags that someone had left backstage. But I think he got the message. Jimmy Tunes was there to congratulate me and Dinah Shore sent a big bag of old cocktail olives to the refrigerator. Needless to say I didn’t stay there much longer; I found a place next to Mamie Eisenhower’s Summer Palace (as she insisted on calling it) down at 38^th and 8^th.

Most days I don’t give one look to old Tony sitting up there on the mantle. Why you can hardly see him amongst the numerous other awards, medals, medallions, empty gin bottles, and Peruvian shrunken heads I’ve crammed up there. He’s alone in a crowded world, just as I was when I moved up to New York. Lost, alone, and surrounded by shrunken heads. But hey, at least he’s not living in a refrigerator.

Man, Jimmy really hated that freezer."

Crystal's Very Special Family

2006-02-06T15:01:00.000-05:00

Well, we're back with another rousing excerpt from Ms. Gomes' show, "Back to Basics," which just finished a smash-hit run at the Branson, MO Stuff 'N' Go or Stay a family-style buffet restaurant, gas station, and 3 Aluminum Star Motel. Enjoy!

"I’m sure everyone has at least one cherished family memory. Maybe it was a very special Christmas when daddy put down the bottle and picked up a Santa hat. Maybe it’s when cousin Jenny showed you how to fly solo all the way to tingly town. I too have some very cherished family memories. Now, I don’t mean my actual family. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I had a rough and tumble upbringing. More tumble than rough, as I had a debilitating disease that prevented me from properly descending staircases. Anyway, my father was an admiral in the Merchant Marines, traveling the globe protecting but more often accidentally slaying merchants. It was on his travels that he met my mother, the daughter of a Danish governor. They had a brief courtship and were soon married and living in Cheyenne, Wyoming where yours truly was born. Or so I’m told. The truth of the matter is, both Mum and the Admiral (as I was made to call him) were so knee deep in snuff and opium addictions they don’t really remember when or where I was born. So, needless to say, I don’t have very many fond memories of them, except for looking back at them from the window of a DeSoto sedan as I sped east to the big city.

When I say family, I mean the extended network of friends that I have made during my years in showbiz. These friends include, of course, many beloved celebrities; Peebo Bryson, the late Alan Alda (mongoloid attack, I’m told), and TV’s first lady, Joy Philbin, but also my assistant Geoffrey and his dog Ethel Steinberg, and my lover for many years, Senator Strom Thurmond. Oh I have many lovely memories of this family, boating accidents in Biarritz, hilarious misunderstandings at the Vietnamese border, performing on stage for two hours with my shoes and wig on backwards. But I think that one of my favorites has to be the first time Uta Hagen tried to poison me.

At the time I was in the Big Apple wrapping up my one woman show “Crystal Can Can-Can, but Doesn’t Wanna,” a hilarious send up of the French told through song, dance, and ethnic slurs. Well, the night of my last performance, Geoffrey told me that Uta Hagen was in the audience, disguising herself as she often did as a Japanese business man. Uta and I had met once before, at one of Jackie Mason’s most horrifying Arbor Day parties on record, and I told Geoffrey to send a note that I’d love to say hello afterwards. Of course when she got the note she pretended to not understand “Eng-rish” and just shook her head, but after the show, there she was waiting at the bar around the corner, The Bloody Tap Shoe. We had a few drinks, a few laughs, and got to talking about our mutual friend Agatha Christie who had, for a number of reasons (a heavy gambling debt chief among them,) recently taken up both the bottle and the Communist party. Now before all this happened Aggie had promised Uta that she’d write her into her next mystery as a wise-cracking private eye named Uta St. Pierre, so Uta was a little worried that Agatha’s new political habits would get in the way of the book being written. I told her not to worry, that the same thing happened with Valerie Harper and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and everything had worked out just fine. Now what I didn’t tell her, but I will say here, is that I wanted Uta off the Commie subject fast. I was worried she’d start asking too many questions and would eventually find out that I’d been sending Chairman Mao three thousand dollar care packages every six months.

But that Uta, she was a tricky broad, and eventually in her quest to cure Aggie of her case of Pinko, she uncovered my various dealings with extremist groups, from Mao to the Simbianese Liberation Army (Patty Hearst had it coming. She knows why.) But now I didn’t know she had figured this out. So when Uta telegrammed a few months later to invite me over for a few glasses of sherry and some corn fritters, I happily obliged.

Now Uta’s house was a really wild sight. Candy wrappers and empty cans of Dr. Pepper everywhere. A very strange smell, something like gasoline and old gyros (a smell I’ve come to love later in life.) Patty Duke and Andy Griffith were passed out in her mudroom. But I figured what the hell, I’d stay and have a little sherry and then make my exit. Well, six glasses later, Uta and I were playing Chutes & Ladders and laughing our heads off. Then, all of a sudden, Uta gets this glassy look in her eyes and says to me “Oh Crystal, I’m sorry.” And I just said, “Sorry? Uta baby, for what?” And that’s when she told me that she had put rubbing alcohol in my sherry. She told me how she found out that I was giving money to Chairman Mao and that she just hated communists more than anything. I then told her that I wasn’t giving money to the Communists, I just owed the little chinaman for a bet we made about Judy Garland’s Oscar chances for A Star is Born.

But what I couldn’t figure out is why she put rubbing alcohol in my drink. Well poor Uta is very impressionable, turns out some of her students had been funning her, telling her all kinds of things when she asked about how to poison someone. Well one of them said rubbing alcohol would do the trick and that I’d never notice (that student was a young Carl Reiner!). Well, I sure didn’t notice, but like I told her, if rubbing alcohol was poison, Gladys Knight and all of the Pips would have been dead years ago. After that, Uta and I made up, had a few more laughs, a few more glasses of rubbing alcohol, and called it a night.

Of course Uta tried to poison me a few more times after that, the last attempt resulting in her own death. But, why you may ask is this one of my favorite “family” memories? Well, mainly because it’s one of the few that I can remember fully given that I only had sixteen glasses of sherry, but also because it reminds me of a simpler place and time, when poisoning someone was pretty run of the mill. When Agatha Christie was still alive and writing mysteries about Uta St. Pierre and her trusty Peregrine falcon Alfonso (Uta’s idea.) It was a different, better time, chock full of absolute crazies like Uta, people who aren’t with us anymore. And if that’s not what a family memory is all about, well then you can call me crazy. And pass the rubbing alcohol."

We'll Miss You Wendy

2006-01-31T00:07:00.000-05:00

Ms. Gomes recently shared the following words about her friend and colleague, playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who succumbed to cancer yesterday.

"You know, Geoffrey it's funny. It's real, real funny. There are some broads, some dizzy dames who just don't get it. You know? Bo Derek comes to mind. She was always running around, trying to make everyone happy, trying to sleep with all the best in the business. I mean, come on! Burt Lancaster?? Old Burt hadn't had a crisp pickle since Ursula Andress ran off with that hang-gliding instructor. But man oh man. Wendy? Yeah she was the real deal. I saw "Rosensweig" in London. I was there doing my show "How to Suceed in Crystal Without Really Trying: A Tribute to Daniel Day Lewis," and I got to catch a Sunday matinee of that show. And what a funny, sad, little tart it was. Just like Wendy herself, who I met at the Tony's the following June. Just a strong little bundle of energy and smarts and "lady-tude." Well, she'll certainly be missed here on the Great White Way. I've always said: 'We need more Mermans, more Channings, more Striches.' And now I'll add Wassersteins. I mean, the Jew thing I can get over. When it comes to a gal like Wendy, there ain't anything I can't get over. Except of course, her being gone... So, let's raise our glasses to a hell of a writer, a hell of a New Yorker, and a hell of a lady."

Wendy Wasserstein 1951-2006. She will be missed.

Cher's Gams and More!

2006-01-29T15:08:00.000-05:00

While Ms. Gomes is taking a brief break from her tour (Ethel's septum is healing up nicely), The Gomes Group would like to reward her fans for their patience with another thrilling excerpt from her verbal memoirs.

I know that it’s en vogue to talk about your plastic surgery these day so Geoffrey thought that I should include some tell-all stories about my zany cosmetic surgery mishaps. Well, I thought about it for quite some time (and by that I mean that I had Geoffrey write it on a post-it and stick it to the john) and I figured if that tight-faced troll Joan Rivers could do it, so could I.

Now, I have a theory that women should age gracefully and should be proud of their wrinkles. I also have a theory about Lee Harvey Oswald and the cast of Three’s Company but that’s neither here nor there. But I also believe that a lady should look her best if she’s going to be inspiring and entertaining throngs of adoring masses. That’s why I’ve compromised and only had the bare essentials done (three face lifts, a chemical peel, rhinoplasty, boob job, calf implant (but just the one calf), full body liposuction, and ankle replacements). And I have to tip my hat to the Merlin of the scalpel Dr. H.J. Rosenwigenhammerstein of Beverly Hills for believing in a poor international superstar who was down on her luck and let me get most of these procedures done on credit.

The first time that I ever had plastic surgery was in 1978 after my television series “The Facts of Crystal” was about to be cancelled midseason. The producers said to me, “Crystal you’re a dynamo, but it looks like you’re face is melting worse that a Malibu igloo. Get something done or we’ll have to replace you.” Now I was absolutely appalled. No one had ever spoken to Crystal Gomes like that (except for maybe Sinatra, but after that night in Reno, I really had it coming).

So, I told off the producers, got Geoffrey to pull the car around, and then had Geoffrey apologize to the producers as he drove me to Dr. Rosenwigenhammerstein’s office. I wasn’t prepared to let go of a hit show just because of something silly like self-respect.

Dr. Rosenwigenhammerstein was a miracle worker. With a stroke of his trusty surgical equipment I went from George Burns to Lena Horn is three short weeks. After the swelling went down I went back to the studio to try to get “The Facts of Crystal” up and running.

The producers took one look at me and said, “Crystal your face looks great, but I think that left calf of yours looks a little flat. Get something done about it or we’re calling Cher. That woman’s calves could stop a locomotive full of jews.” I know for a fact that that was a true statement. I had seen Cher, with my own eyes, stop a train in Munich just by showing a little gam. And it was also true that I had taken some shrapnel in my left calf during the war when I was trying to get to the officer’s lounge from Schwartzkopf’s tent to refill my martini bowl during a little friendly fire.

At that time, “The Facts of Crystal” meant more to me than a few thousand dollars and a quickie in the locker room of LA General. So I called Dr. Rosenwigenhammerstein again for a little of his surgical voodoo. Geoffrey was a little worried about me going under the knife so quickly after my last surgery but I assured him that the good doctor knew what he was doing and that Geoffrey could have a reoccurring walk-on part in “The Facts of Crystal” if he would just shut his fancy little mouth for once. He started weeping like a woman and said that he was just worried that he may lose me and that he wouldn’t be able to go on living if that was the case. I patted the boy on the head and reminded him that I couldn’t stand to see people crying due to my bothersome lack of personal moisture. He got a hold of himself and flounced out of the room as I prepped my calf for surgery.

Well, to make a long story the appropriate length, the surgery went like gangbusters. I got the implant and rushed back to the studio to show of my new stems to the producers. They were finally satisfied and I went back to work the next day, where I filmed the infamous scene where Lucy Ricardo guest-starred as my Chinese houseboy.

I went under the knife again four years after that to get my full-body liposuction after the steroids that I had been taken had given me a fatty gall-bladder and I just decided to get the whole shebang taken care of in one fell swoop. Geoffrey wept again right before that surgery and begged me not to get it done, and I reminded him of the success of the Lucy Ricardo episode and I asked him if I had ever steered him wrong before. He clung to my leg the whole way to the operating room, but after feeling my taut, shapely calf, realized how silly he had been acting.

Take that Joan Rivers.

Crystal Survives Tour Bus Roll-over

2006-01-21T18:40:00.000-05:00

We regret to report that Crystal will be cancelling some of her tour engagements due to a minor bus accident. Although no one was hurt, Crystal's "do-it-yourself" winery was lost, Ethel Steinberg--Crystal's Saint Bernard/Tshizu mix suffered a diviated septum (although it is unknown as to whether that was due to the accident or not), and the bus driver was striken with an unexpected case of coma. Unfortunately, the following tour dates are postponed indefinitely until a cure can be found for Ethel Steinberg's sneeze-whistles:

The Old Country Buffet in St. Louis
The Rent-a-Center of Tulsa, OK
The Bergen County Fair, Bergen, NJ

Although it is unknown what caused the bus to rollover, Crystal had this to say to her dissapointed and concerned fans:

"I told that homely bus driver bus-made wine is just as good as the store bought kind. Goes down the ol' gullet like sweet, alcoholc motor-oil. As soon as he gets out of that coma he better fork over that buffalo nickel he bet me. Ethel, stop that noise. Geoffrey, get Ethel out of here, that wheezing is repulsive. Someone needs to rewrap my turban. Holy Moses, what the hell happened to the bus?"

Show Biz Eating Habits Revealed!

2006-01-18T14:08:00.000-05:00

Here's another juicy tidbit from Ms. Gomes' show, which just ended a sold-out three night run at the Sioux City Community Airport Inn & Suites & Suds. Check back soon for more! Enjoy!

"One thing that few people know about me is that I’ve never eaten a vegetable. Not one. Not ever. While some hotheaded “doctors” may raise their eyebrows and say that this is the cause of my several cases of gout, or my Polack’s Knee, or my five month tryst with Transcendentalism, I say pish to them. I’m a renowned superstar, I don’t have to eat green beans if I don’t want to. Geoffrey is always telling me that I should at least nibble on some lettuce, to which I say “Who do I look like? Shelly Duvall? I’m no rabbit.” Well, now that I’ve shared this little tidbit about my eating habits, I thought I’d tell you about the habits of some of my dearest celebrity friends.

Eva Gabor, sister to slapping sensation ZsaZsa Gabor, wouldn’t eat anything that was prepared by a person under five foot six inches. She had been terrified of little people ever since she witnessed a druken dwarf devour the right hind leg of her family dog, Zachary Taylor. Speaking of dogs, Geoffrey’s Basset hound/Lhasa Apso mix Ethel Steinberg only eats dog biscuits in the shape of Mamie Eisenhower’s head.

There was one time about twenty years ago, or maybe it was yesterday, when I was having lunch at the Ivy with French figure skater Suriya Bonaly and the grand duke of comedy, Dr. Ed McMahon, Esq. Now Ed always orders the same thing, a Cobb Salad, hold the salad, with a side of Cuttysark. I always have a lamb steak and a dirty martini bowl. Suriya ordered the crab cakes. It was really a lovely meal. When she finished, though, Suriya had to rush off for some sort of practice, so Ed and I were left alone to have an after lunch drink. Well, by about the third martini bowl, Ed was looking more dashing than Don Knotts singing at Carnegie Hall (which happened once and only once. God bless the Tokyo Philharmonic.)

Ed had the idea that we order a little dessert, have one more drink, and then go pull some pranks on Dick Clark. Dick and Ed have secretly hated each other ever since Dick, at the height of his hashish use, called Ed a “walking blooper” and slept with all three of Ed’s wives (I’m talking about you too, Pia.) This feat, while pretty amazing considering Dick was 98 years old at the time, was the final nail in the friendship’s coffin, which had been rocky ever since Dick pantsed Ed at the Peabody awards in ’72.

Now Ed and I both knew that the best way to really stick it to Dick would be to somehow interfere with his nightly Chinese food delivery (three wontons, two fortune cookies, and three pounds of shrimp lo mein). I had the idea that we pants Suriya Bonaly, but Ed failed to see how that would really zing Dick. Instead he chose to beat the delivery man over the head with a giant check he had in the back seat of his car and, when Dick opened to door, yell “Hey Dickie, looks like there’s a dead Chinaman on your lawn.” (For legal reasons I do have to state that this anecdote was not in any way the inspiration for my 1983 recording, “Hey Linda Ronstadt, I Think You Killed that Hindi Couple.”)

Now Dick, burdened by his one hundred and three years, wasn’t entirely clued into what was going on, so it’s my understanding that he ate the delivery man and tipped the three pounds of shrimp lo mein four dollars.

Isn’t it wild what celebrities eat?

Lucille Ball used to eat cigarette butts she found outside the studio and sneak down to the garbage dump to eat old cans like a common goat. And Desi Arnez? Forget about it. Let’s just say he never met a house cat he didn’t like. Or eat.

Yes, it seems that you really are what you eat in showbiz, although if that’s the case I’m not quite sure why Rosemary Clooney never turned into a giant pack of Sara Lee honey ham. I was discussing this very same issue with my friend, accompanist, and six time ex husband Jimmy Tunes and he turned to me and said “Who knows, Crystal baby, I mean you never saw her without that dress on.”

Of course I couldn’t tell him that he was wrong; that’s a long dark story that only ends with Danny Kaye’s second suicide attempt.

All of this just goes to show that I don’t need to eat vegetables to be a superstar. If anything the vegetables should eat me to become superstars. Which is a horrifying thought. That’s why I pushed Geoffrey down a flight of stairs when I saw him coming up to my apartment with a bag of salad (it’s not, as he claims, because in a drunken stupor I mistook him for Mindy Cohn coming to collect on an old debt.)

Now if you’ll excuse me, one of my stylists is coming over to wrap my turban. I have to look good for court, you know. Someone’s got to convince that jury that Dick Clark isn’t a cannibal…on purpose. "

RIP Shelley Winters.

2006-01-14T16:17:00.000-05:00

Ms. Gomes wished to express the following thoughts about the death of her friend Shelley Winters.

"Well everyone, let's all raise our glasses to one of the classiest broads out there. Shelley and I first met at one of Marvin Hamlisch's box luncheons. We hit it off over a couple of quarts of hooch I nicked from Kitty Carlyle's pantry the night before. I think my favorite thing about Shell was her ability to bed the most eligible of Hollywood's non-fancy bachelors, and still eat a whole ham steak at supper. We'll miss you Shell. I'll be seeing you someday soon, I'm sure. Save me a seat at Dino's table, and get yourself a whiskey neat, on me."

Another Crystal Chronicle...

2006-01-11T16:19:00.000-05:00

Thanks to all the fans for making Back to Basics a sucess! We've sold out shows in King of Prussia, PA and The Golden Banana outside of Revere, MA. As a little thank you, we've included another zany story from Crystal's act. Enjoy!

Whenever I’m introduced to new people, they almost always ask me the same questions: “How did you meet Burt Bacharach?” and “Can you please get up, you’re on my coat?” And I always tell them the same thing: “I’m not answering any questions until you get me a sloe gin fizz and a leg of lamb.” But, I figure I’ll answer the first of those questions now (hopefully so people will stop asking in the future and head straight towards the gin and lamb, which will invariably answer the second question).

I met Larry in 1965 (he likes when I call him Larry, only myself and the extraordinary Sandy Duncan are permitted to do so) in Calcutta at a piano bar called “Montenegro.” The details on our first rendezvous are a little hazy since Geoffrey was on vacation in Provincetown at the time and was not around to document the situation in its entirety. But, I will say that he was rather tall and I was wearing an extravagant necklace I had nicked from Golda Meir’s private collection when she thought I was going to vomit in the bathtub.

Now, this whole thing was happening during my 30 year long feud with that ratfink bitch Crystal Gayle. And I think that Larry had been made aware of this (if not from the tabloids then definitely from that long-haired hussy herself) so he was acting rather demure. I, on the other hand, was quite enamored with Mr. Larry and I had asked him to play me one of the old songs on the baby grand that was currently being neglected by the Indian piano boy. He obliged and I kissed him squarely on the lips which I think threw him for a loop because he began playing a toe-tapping rendition of “Send in the Clowns” that Calcutta won’t soon forget. When the applause had died down he said, “Crystal, I need you desperately. Sing on my next record.” I, of course, said yes, but only after he had gotten me a sloe gin fizz and a leg of lamb and I begrudgingly relinquished his coat.

Who can believe it, but at that very moment Crystal Gayle burst in the door yelling and screaming like the crazy bitch that she is. She said something about me murdering her chinchilla. I very calmly told her that her ugly little rat probably got tangled in her hair and hanged itself. She was quite upset at this comment and, though I don’t remember much after this, I do remember that Larry was a gentleman the entire time and I’m pretty sure Crystal Gayle never came back to Calcutta. I did have one last encounter with that slattern, but it was well into the 70’s and a little too involved to be included in the “How I met Larry Bacharach” story.

So I ended up singing several songs on Larry’s record as you all might remember (the most fun of which was a duet of “Flight of the Bumblebee” with a fetal Bernadette Peters). His record, as you can imagine was a hit. I can remember leaving the studio after our last day of recording and we were mobbed by a mob of what I can only assume were reporters (although they may very well have been the mob).

Now these reporters starting snapping pictures and asking all sorts of personal questions about Larry and my relationship. Luckily Geoffrey had come back from his vacation by this time (he had gotten his hair done in those delightful corn-rows that vacationers and housekeepers tend to have) and he informed me that pictures had been leaked (by who I can only assume was that damn Gayle woman) of myself and Larry in a carnal embrace. Larry and I had never had a carnal embrace or even a vegetative embrace separate from that first kiss in “Montenegro.” Well, I was livid. I asked Geoffrey for copies of the photos which he happened to have in his backpack. Sure enough, Crystal Gayle had positioned me and Larry in a compromising way long after we had passed out on the piano that first night in Calcutta. I assured Geoffrey and Larry that I would get that bitch for this and I hoped it would not jeopardize the success of the new record.

Well, did those little shenanigans ever backfire on Miss Gayle, let me tell you. That record, which Larry later entitled “Hit Maker! Burt Bacharach Plays the Burt Bacharach Hits” became an overnight success regardless of the fact that Larry hadn’t included any of my songs. He did assure me that it had nothing to do with the Crystal Gayle debacle, though Geoffrey couldn’t find Ethel Steinberg, his dog, for several weeks.

A Tuesday Afternoon at the House.

2006-01-09T18:14:00.000-05:00

Recently a photographer from "Lady Fancy" magazine came to Ms. Gomes' New York apartment to do a shoot for an upcoming article on our favorite chanteuse. Here's an exclusive alternate shot that you can only get here! Enjoy!

-The Gomes Group Staff.

Another Thrilling Excerpt

2006-01-09T15:33:00.000-05:00

Here's a lovely excerpt from "Back to Basics" about her loyal accompanist, Jimmy Tunes. Enjoy!

So many young kids who want to get into showbiz always ask me, “Ms. Gomes, you can’t have always been the international superstar that we are blessed with today. How did you get your start?” Most people think that it was something that happened overnight, or that I worked my way to the top. Well, none of that hogwash is true. I’m not going to beat around the bush; it took a little elbow grease and a lot of sleeping around. But there was a moment it my life when I thought, “Hey, Crystal get off the can and open your eyes, you’ve made it, sweet heart!”

It all started when I stepped off the bus in the windy apple itself: Tallahassee. I was down on my luck at the time (yes, Crystal Gomes had humble beginnings just like you, reader). I thought that I had gotten on the bus for New York City, but it turns out that giving the ticket-monger a what-for in the men’s room only gets you as far as Northern Florida. I had actually gotten on the bus in Northern New Jersey, but I thought the bus driver had hit some traffic on the George Washington. Nope, Tallahassee. I wasn’t deterred though, I put down my sack of oranges and said to myself, “Myself, you’re home.”

I decided that I needed to devise a plan if I was going to make it in this whirlwind called Tallahassee. I went to a phone booth and looked in the yellow pages under “booze.” There wasn’t anything there. I thought, “What kind of rinky-dink town is this if you can’t even look up booze in the phone book?” I started to hyperventilate until I realized that across the street from that very phone booth was a gin joint just like I was looking for. I cursed the city of Tallahassee for keeping secrets from me (a curse that is still on the books today) and waltzed over to sell my wares. I said to the barkeep (this was in the days before Geoffrey was around to speak to strangers for me),

“Barkeep, my name is Crystal Gomes and I’m here in Tallahassee to make it big. Do you have any room in your cabaret for a future star?”

That barkeep looked at me and said, “We don’t have a cabaret, sweet cheeks.”

“Get me a gin milk punch, hold the milk and give me some extra punch. I’m starting a cabaret in this here establishment and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Well I threw down my other sack of oranges and hopped on the piano. I yelled, “Is there anyone in this stink hole of a bar that can play a tune on this music box?”

Some one from the audience yelled, “It’s three in the afternoon and that’s a crate of Jose Cuervo. That’s the piano over there.”

Well, as I was embarking from the crate, a liquor soaked voice from the corner squeaked, “I can play it Miss Gomes.”

And do you know who that someone was? You guessed it, the incomparable Jimmy Tunes himself. He had a lay over for a flight from Key West to Cincinnati four years earlier, fell in love with the city, and never left. I didn’t learn that, though, until much later. I just said to him:

“Hey stranger, get on these ivories in the key of C.”

To make a long story short, he did, I sang, and we brought down the house like a crippling electrical fire (which was actually the final fate of this gin joint in 1993, ironically enough). That day, the two of us promised to stick together through thick and thicker. The barkeep came up to the two of us after the applause had died down and said,

“Hey kids, that wasn’t half bad. If you want a regular gig, you’ve got it.”

And that was the start of Jimmy’s and my time in Tallahassee. We played to a packed house every night to the delight of the Floridian barflies and Japanese businessmen who frequented that establishment. I made enough in tips and drinks to pay our rent in a boxcar by the quarry. It wasn’t much, but it was home. In retrospect, I’m not exactly sure who I was paying rent too for that boxcar (I addressed the check to “Boxcar” and sent it on its way) but I definitely never missed a payment.

Well, after eight months had gone by, I looked at Jimmy and I said,

“Jimmy, this is it. If we don’t get on a bus and try to make it to New York, Tallahassee will never let us leave. We’ve breathed a new life into this town, and it’s time we shared our talent with the rest of the world.”

Jimmy didn’t answer because he was asleep under the burlap sack that we used as a duvet. But he most definitely agreed and as soon as he woke up, we went to the bus station from whence this story began and made sure to get on the right bus (Jimmy supplied the what-for this time just for good measure). On that bus ride, I happened to sit myself down next to a gentleman and strike up a conversation about the joys and uses of beeswax that I found quite engaging. After I told him about our little story and the gentleman stranger said to me, “Crystal Gomes. I am famous producer. I will make you a star.” Well, sure enough he was lying and Jimmy and I ended up tying him up and leaving him at a Roy Rogers that we stopped at near Charleston.

The next morning we found ourselves in the capital of the universe, New York City. We both immediately felt like we had found our home away from the boxcar and made it our first order of business to find me an agent. We both ditched our sacks of oranges in a Port Authority locker and got to work.

Now, you all know the rest of this story is the basis of the movie, “The Muppets Take Manhattan” so I needn’t bore you with the details. But I want to get back to the point at hand, which is the moment that I realized I had hit the big time. I think it was when Jimmy and I were tying up that dirty liar in the Roy Rogers bathroom. I looked over at Jimmy and I thought to myself, “This is it. This is what show biz is about. If Jimmy and I can win over Tallahassee, survive in a box car and take down this stranger with a doozy of a two fisted wallop, there’s no telling what we can do. The only other time I’ve felt a surge of euphoria like that was when former President Jimmy Carter goosed me at the Kennedy Center Honors (turns out he had actually mistaken me for Ladybird Johnson…which I get a lot).

So, what I want to impart to the future of show biz is this: even if you get on the wrong bus at first, don’t stop giving out what-fors because eventually you’ll make it to that shiny big apple in the sky.
You're welcome.

New Excerpt from Back to Basics!

2006-01-06T18:32:00.000-05:00

The following is an excerpt from Ms. Gomes' latest touring show, "Back to Basics." Stay tuned for more! Enjoy!

-The Gomes Group Staff.

"One thing I like to do occasionally after shows is a little Q&A talk back with the audience. While these are not as popular as my T&A talk backs I was once so famous for, I still like them. I remember one of these as if it were yesterday. I was in Boise, or Wichita, or one of those horrible places where everyone’s ugly and couldn’t make a good gin gimlet if their sorry lives depended on it. Well, whatever Stinktown I was stranded in, I had just finished a show and decided to spice up the evening by doing one of my unabashedly anti-Protestant and Irish Q&A’s. So this one little lady who looks like Don Rickles in an egg costume raises her hand. She wanted to know who was the one person in my life that I simply couldn’t live without.
I thought about this for some time. Surely my milkman, Dr. Barnabus Nickleby was invaluable. Or what about Eileen Dagmire, who gets the smell of schnapps and lost dignity out of my carpets? And who could live without Johnny Gielgud and his hilarious “dog-in-a-bee-suit” photo diaries? Many people in my life are reliably good for a laugh and a stiff drink, but in the end I settled on one person; my loyal assistant, possible illegitimate son, and valet, Geoffrey. Geoffrey has been with me for a number of years, ever since he found me wandering around downtown Encino looking for Barbara Eden’s Cadillac El Dorado. (As it turned out, Barbara had taken the car back to the shooting range and thought I would meet her there after she picked up Shirley Jones from the dry cleaners. But Barbara never told me that. Or maybe I forgot. Either way Geoffrey took me to a coffee shop to sober up and we eventually found Barbara and Shirley taking shots at old cans down by the water.)
Geoffrey is absolutely priceless. He drives me places, he books my shows, he picks little crusties out of my eyes while I sleep. While the last one may be a little strange, few could argue that those crusties don’t get really annoying after a while. Well, I guess all of this testimonial wasn’t enough because little Miss Rickles wanted me to tell a story about what Geoffrey means to me. What resulted was the preliminary ground work for my twenty-third album, “Sad Songs For And About The Late Carol Burnett: A Tribute to Carol Burnett” Now, I don’t remember what the story was, exactly. But I know it involved Geoffrey, sixteen pounds of Quaaludes and a young Nigerian boy named Tse-Tse. I do wish I could remember that story right now. If you want to hear it, listen to the record. For now I’ll give you another little yarn about just how much I need Geoffrey in my life.
The year was 1986, Geoffrey and I had been on a whirlwind tour of the Dutch West Indies while I performed my show “A Black Thai Affair: My Oriental Travels with Harry Belafonte.” Well, when we finally got back to New York, we were exhausted. I had just one engagement that weekend, singing a small cabaret act down at Mr. Moriarty’s Midtown. Geoffrey, unbelievably, requested the weekend off. Now normally I don’t believe in giving anyone time off. What am I supposed to do, tie my own shoes? Take my own baths? Throw my own rotten yams at hobos from the backseat of my limo while I chuckle and sip sterling hooch straight from Noel Coward’s private stock? I think not. But on that day, maybe it was the look in his eyes or the seven glasses of bitters I drank on the plane, I decided to give in. Geoffrey jumped and clapped like a little girl and pranced away to Chelsea.
So later that night I was all alone and bored. I decided to call my old pal Yul Brynner and see if he wanted to have a few laughs. Now Geoffrey has warned me time and time again. He says he knows how Yul and I get, and he doesn’t want me getting into any trouble. But, Geoffrey wasn’t there to tell me this time, so I gave Yul a ring. Well, three hours later I’m wearing nothing but an old pillowcase, drinking Riesling from a salad bowl, making wigs out of spaghetti in Yul’s kitchen.
Now Yul really loved his spaghetti wig. The moment he put it on, he started running around the house singing Anna’s part from “King and I” in an Italian accent, occasionally stopping to yell “Etcetera” in a traditional Siamese accent. (Harry and I learned on our travels that Siam is now called Thailand. They do not like to be called Siamese. It’s just like how you can’t call Sumner Redstone “Ol’ Jewy” anymore.) I put my spaghetti wig on and began a five hour tirade against Annette Funicello, accusing her of rooting around in my trash late at night. (Which, as it turns out, she was. She was pretty heavy into Mescaline in those days and was trying to find her long dead cat, Inspector Jonathon. )
Needless to say, I woke up the next day with a doozy of a hangover. Yul was lying halfway in the dishwasher, wearing an old Sears & Roebuck catalogue as underwear and sucking his thumb. I woke up on his terrace, still wearing the pillowcase, with a snow boot full of drinking ammonia next to me. I stumbled to the clock and to my horror saw that it was seven-thirty at night. My gig at Mr. Moriarty’s Downtown was in half an hour. Now, normally I would have called Geoffrey to come pick me up with a change of clothes, a thermos of Sanka, and some Doral Extra Longs. But, little lord Fauntleroy was on vacation, so I was without assistance.
After ten minutes of waiting on the curb, I finally caught a ride in a gypsy cab that cost me fifty dollars. I didn’t have the money so I gave him the boot full of ammonia, which I had brought along as a little pick-me-up. I got to the club at 7:55, just in time to run backstage, smoke a cigarette, and do a few quick “Red Leather, Yellow Leather’s”. It was very tight. I was exhausted. But all in all, the show went fine. The audience, however, was a little confused by my appearance as, in my hurry to get to the club, I had no time to pick up my bag of wigs at the cleaners, and so was forced to wear the spaghetti wig I’d fashioned at Yul’s the night before.
The moral of this story, really, is that I cannot function without Geoffrey. Where was he to remind me why Yul and I mix about as well as Michael Landon and a malignant cancer cell? Where was Geoffrey with my costume and bag of wigs? Where was Geoffrey later that night when I fell down a flight of stairs and engaged in a misguided late night lawsuit against the entire cast of “Starlight Express?" He was on vacation when I needed him most. Which is why I decided that Geoffrey should never be unavailable to me. The very next day (after losing my lawsuit in court because of what the judge called “flagrant disregard for the American legal system and violation of numerous New York state decency statutes) I set up a cot for him in my pantry where he’s been very happy for the past twenty years.
Come to think of it, I should have told that girl in Bumsburg this story. It has more zing than the Nigerian drug running story ever did. I think. I really wish I remembered that one. I should go listen to the album. Whose title, by the way, I changed to “Lovely Love, Love: Songs for Yakov.” I changed it because, as it turns out, Carol Burnett isn't dead. And you want to know who informed me of that (albeit seven months and several confusing conversations later)?
Yup, you guessed it.
My darling Geoffrey.
What a guy. "
Copyright 2006 Gomes Group Inc.

Crystal Needs Your Help

2006-01-05T16:26:00.000-05:00

Ms. Gomes would like your help in identifying the papparazzo who took these unauthorized photographs before her latest show in Daytona Beach, FL. There was the typical mob of six to eight people waiting for her at the venue (Ricky Ticky's Contiki Shoppe and Grille). Of course Ms. Gomes was her usual camera-shy self, covering her face in her Fashion Bug afghan as she made her way gracefully (only one major spill) into the building. Even the cameras couldn't stop this class act. If you have any information about the photographer please contact us. He was described by Ms. Gomes as "shortish, probably a mongoloid. A little like F. Murray Abraham. He had hair. And pants. I don't know Geoffrey. What am I, a detective? Where's my gin thermos?"

2005-12-31T11:50:00.000-05:00

Dear Fans. This is Crystal here. Since this is the holiday season, I wanted to share my favorite Christmas memory.

We’re all gathered around on December 24th, decorating the Christmas tree. The whole gang is there; me, Rita, Geoffrey, Jimmy Tunes, Mickey Rooney, Cole Porter and Camilla Parker-Bowles. Cole is stringing popcorn and Tylenol to hang as garland on the tree while Rita Moreno and I take turns putting the star on top of Mickey Rooney. The room is filled with the woody warmth of a hearth ablaze and friends together. Jimmy Tunes begins to play a little Christmas diddy medley on the piano when Camilla, in a fit of Christmas spirit (specifically egg nog), begins to undress and roll around on the bear skin rug (that, coincidently, Rita had just had professionally cleaned). Right when Jimmy reaches the musical climax of ‘Rock Around the Christmas Tree,” Camilla bumps right into the menorah that we had set up in case that Jew-bastard Irving Berlin ever shows up. Well, think of the beautiful sight that incurred as the Christmas tree (which no one had watered in weeks) just set ablaze in the most wondrous light show on this side of the Rio Grande. Even while Geoffrey was rushing to put it out, we couldn’t help but hoot and clap and admire the wonderful spectacle that Camilla had set before us. Sure, she had to be hospitalized for several days, but it’s a memory that we’ll all treasure forever.

So there you have it. Merry New Year and come see the show.

TOUR UPDATE!

2005-12-31T11:17:00.000-05:00

Great news! Some of Crystal's tour dates have officially been set for the new year.
1/15 Elks Club Bangor, ME
1/27 Hilton Garden Inn Baltimore, MA
2/4 Shenenahoa Middle School Albany, NY
2/13 The conference center at the rest stop off I-95, 10 miles outside of King of Prussia, PA
2/23 The Mall of America

Crystal wanted to post something personal about her excitement to get back on the road.

"Dear fans, I wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making my come back tour possible. I was telling my good friend Sally Struthers the other day about the overwhelming support that I've received and she said, 'Crystal of course the fans are supporting you, you're a superstar. Now get up, you're sitting on my poncho. I have to take a crap.' And you know what, she's never been so right. Geoffrey, is that good for your little outerspace box website? Did I leave my gimlet in dryer again?"

Welcome to Back to Basics...

2005-12-26T16:34:00.000-05:00

Hello Crystal Gomes Fan!

Welcome to Ms. Gomes' latest forray into the cyber world. Due to various lawsuits with Earnest Hemingway's estate, Ms. Gomes' old website, OldManInTheMe.com, had to be temporarily shut down. So, Ms. Gomes and her PR team have decided that a web journal like this one is the best (and most legal!) way to keep in touch with her myriad fans! Please continue to check back with us for updates on upcoming performances of "Back to Basics," CD release info, and of course, wonderful show biz anecdotes straight from Ms. Gomes' show!

Thanks for visiting, and don't be a stranger!

Best,

The Gomes Group Staff