The History of Gin
or
A Fox's Tail
Is Life Existential? You Decide.
by ' Colorado ' Gumi
...I n s p i r e d By T r u e E v e n t s...
Chapter 6
Seinmullins
In New York City Ginger Sue Mullins hangs her thong in a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment she keeps on Manhattan's Upper West Side. If one is hell-bent on living in the heart of a reinforced-concrete snake pit, then this abode is a nice enough place.
From the perspective of a hypothetical TV audience Ginny's NYC apartment is laid out with a large multipurpose living area in the center and to the left, and with a small kitchenette on the right. To the extreme left is the apartment building's outer wall, with a double window looking out on some Manhattan street. The windows have the old style, wide venetian blinds. Old fashioned cast iron radiators sit under the two windows and a desk with Ginny's IBM thinkpad on it fills the corner beyond windows. In the foreground the living area has a small sofa, a coffee table and a large TV on a low stand. However, one rarely notices the TV unless it happens to be part of the action in the apartment. Eventually the sofa grouping came to include an end table with a lamp and upholstered chair. To the extreme right, the kitchenette is bound by the inner wall of the apartment. On the other side of that wall is the apartment building's corridor. Looking from the elevator at one end of this corridor, the apartment is on the left at the opposite end. The apartment number is "5 A." The kitchenette has cabinets along the wall, usually filled with Ginny's cereal collection, an island in the foreground separating the main living area from the kitchenette and a refrigerator in the background. The kitchen seems vestigial, as if largely unused for cooking or other productive work -- As if the kitchen's only purpose is to be a place to stand that isn't the living area. The door to the apartment, with the typical Manhattan collection of locks, is behind the refrigerator nook. In the extreme central background is an alcove that leads to the bathroom, which can be seen into on direct line of sight beyond the alcove entry. The bathroom window looks directly into a brick wall. There is more of a hint, rather than hard evidence, that the bedroom door is on the alcove's left side wall. When looking into the alcove along the centerline of the apartment, the bedroom cannot be perceived. People rarely, if ever, see inside the bedroom and not much ever happens there. A bicycle hangs from the ceiling in the alcove and in the main living area, against the wall to the left of the alcove's entry, is a bookcase filled with Ginger's stereo components and entertainment media.
On reflection, the proportions of the apartment seem out of whack, with the angles between the walls greater than 90 degrees, as if the whole thing was constructed on a stage with a foreground of extreme width that diminishes to a narrow background.
Ginny's life in her apartment always has seemed strangely episodic rather than progressing in a continuum; the closest analogy would be a weekly television sitcom. These episodes revolve around tableaus of the antic interactions among a small cast consisting of Ginny and her three particular friends: Wayne Bemes, a former lover but now platonic friend; Georgina Costamza, whom she's known since high school (or before), and Kramner, the lovably odd neighbor across the hall.
The following personal profiles provide insight to these friends of Gin's:
Wayne Bemes - Like Ginny, much of Wayne's life revolves around trying to arrange relationships with attractive individuals, although some of his last longer than Ginny's. His most memorable is his on-again, off-again relationship with a boy named Sue, whose parents were big Johnny Cash fans. He has held jobs as an "Idea Man" for Little Golden Book Publishing, a copy writer for Adam and Eve Adult Toy Catalog (specializing in dildo descriptions), and a personal assistant to the wealthy Ms. Carley Simon, who according to Donald Trump had the chutzpah to live in a rent-controlled apartment. Wayne and Gin dated and broke-up, but remain good friends. The couple rekindled their romance after watching the "Seinfeld" episode entitled "The Deal" and they slept together (to save their friendship, which was deteriorating due to the revelation that Wayne faked his orgasms while they dated) after watching "The Mango" from that same series. The relationship reverted to platonic in both instances without any significant explanation.
Wayne is from Maryland (isn't he lucky), went to Princeton University (his luck is boundless) and usually works as a writer-editor. Wayne is most often a victim of circumstance, usually coming into conflict with inadequate boyfriends or the arbitrary demands of his eccentric employers. He usually is fairly apathetic to the problems of others, unless of course they affect him directly. He can be surprisingly ruthless, and seems to be inwardly bitter about the state his life is in (which is New York, so the feeling is understandable). In a discussion about what he had wanted to be when he grew up, Wayne once said he didn't remember, but "it wasn't this." He also occasionally remarks that he needs to find new friends, but try as he may to fit in, usually they reject him. He also is known for his unusual, spastic dancing style, described by Georgina as a "full body dry heave".
Georgina Costamza - A short, stocky, slow-witted woman who, inexplicably, is balding. The neurotic Georgina is a self-loathing, pathological liar domineered by her parents, Frank and Estelle. She is also best friends with Ginny, and seems to have been so since their school years. She has held many jobs, including that of Starbuck's latte-foamer and assistant to the fluffer for porn star Ron Jeremy. She also worked briefly as president of Cornell Law School, was a mechanic at the BMW dealership in Ithaca, NY, and nearly acquired a job as a bra saleswoman for a friend of her father's. Georgina also was a hand model for less than a day.
Her relationships with men always have been unsuccessful, although ironically, her most disastrous relationship, an engagement to a woman named Susan was one of the few that ended "well" for Georgina. She feared marriage and the death of Susan bailed her out, although Susan's parents continued to torment her after there daughter's demise. Her talents include lying, the video game Frogger, parallel parking, finding good deals, making "good" time, knowing whether someone's uncomfortable at a party, the ability to recall the best public rest room near a given location in Manhattan, and the ability to correctly spell unusual last names. She also has excellent hearing.
Georgina often manufactures elaborate deceptions at work or in her relationships, usually to gain or maintain some small or imagined advantage. Most of Georgina's reprehensible actions are the result of taking the advice of others too seriously. For example, Ginny once jokingly suggested she should only do the opposite of what her instinct tells her, as her instincts seem to lead only to misfortune. This comment led Georgina to try and center her whole life around the principle. Her disastrous engagement to Susan also began with a remark made by Ginny. (In fact it was the result of an impulsive pact for both to plunge into matrimony with the persons they were seeing at the time.). Thus it is arguable that Georgina is not really a bad person, but just easily swayed by others. Coincidentally, many of Georgina's predicaments mirror those that Larry David, of "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" fame, had found himself in at one point or another in his own life. For example, Georgina once quit her job in a fury only to realize her actions were a mistake. She goes back the next day as if nothing happened; which, remarkably, is identical to an incident when Larry David, working as a writer for Saturday Night Live, quit and returned to his job in the same manner. That's some coincidence, huh?
Kramner - Tall, wild-haired, and almost always wearing pants too short for her, Kramner is the most eccentric and animated of Ginny's friends. Looking even more like an over-grown weed than Emilia Earhart, Kramner often enters Ginny's apartment by violently swinging open the door and sliding into the room unexpectedly. For the first six years Ginny had her apartment Kramner's first name was unknown; once her full name was revealed by her mother, Babs Kramner, everyone forgot it. I think it was something like "Cosmo", but I might have it mixed up with the magazine. Initially, Kramner was referred to as "Kessler" by Ginny, but no one knows why... It's not as if Kramner was a TV show character based on a real person and the writers were concerned in the pilot that person might object to use of the name. -- Again coincidentally, "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David had a New York neighbor named Kenny Kramer, which sounds lots like Kramner but there is no connection.
Kramner has been perpetually unemployed after going on strike from a bagel shop that she worked at before meeting Ginny. Nine years after meeting Ginny, Kramner briefly goes back to work at the shop after six years of striking only to go back on strike a few days later. She frequently pursues hare-brained, money-making schemes -- nearly all of them her own invention. Despite the failure of the majority of these schemes and her unwillingness even to apply for a normal job, she always seems to have more than enough money when she needs it; once George made a comment about Kramner "falling ass-backward into money", suggesting she could have inherited some money or won some kind of lottery, but there is no evidence to support this theory. Kenny Kramer, the previously mentioned neighbor of Larry David's, supported himself with the residual profits that he earned from a patent that he developed in the 1970s for the disco ball. At one point when Ginny was being audited, Kramner stated that she had stopped paying taxes years ago, prompting Ginny to quip "that's easy when you have no income".
One of the more popular of Ginny's friends, Kramner is often described as an "action character" who draws onlookers with her wild and unusual antics in a display of skillful physical comedy. She usually enters Ginny's apartment very suddenly, bursting through the door, sometimes hitting someone. In contrast to the other friends, her eccentricities lead her to be almost always painfully honest. She is friends with another acquaintance of Ginny's named Newman, who had a supporting role as dinosaur chow in the mega-hit movie, "Jurassic Park". It always is very funny when Ginny and Newman meet because she invariably acknowledges his presence by sneering the name, "Newman", with a hilarious tone of disgust as if she just met a cockroach -- but that would be impossible because this isn't even that book.
Kramner's Inventions and Ideas
1.) A coffee table book about coffee tables. The book has diminutive fold-out legs so it looks like a coffee table when set on a coffee table.
2.) A pizza place where you make your own pizza from scratch.
3.) Cologne that smells like the beach.
4.) The Bro, a bra for men with man-boobs.
[Author's Note: I must thank Wikipedia for feeding my plagiaristic mill. . .although actually acknowledging the act and citing the source in advance perhaps dilutes the spirit of intellectual theft -- For that I apologize.]
From the perspective of a hypothetical TV audience Ginny's NYC apartment is laid out with a large multipurpose living area in the center and to the left, and with a small kitchenette on the right. To the extreme left is the apartment building's outer wall, with a double window looking out on some Manhattan street. The windows have the old style, wide venetian blinds. Old fashioned cast iron radiators sit under the two windows and a desk with Ginny's IBM thinkpad on it fills the corner beyond windows. In the foreground the living area has a small sofa, a coffee table and a large TV on a low stand. However, one rarely notices the TV unless it happens to be part of the action in the apartment. Eventually the sofa grouping came to include an end table with a lamp and upholstered chair. To the extreme right, the kitchenette is bound by the inner wall of the apartment. On the other side of that wall is the apartment building's corridor. Looking from the elevator at one end of this corridor, the apartment is on the left at the opposite end. The apartment number is "5 A." The kitchenette has cabinets along the wall, usually filled with Ginny's cereal collection, an island in the foreground separating the main living area from the kitchenette and a refrigerator in the background. The kitchen seems vestigial, as if largely unused for cooking or other productive work -- As if the kitchen's only purpose is to be a place to stand that isn't the living area. The door to the apartment, with the typical Manhattan collection of locks, is behind the refrigerator nook. In the extreme central background is an alcove that leads to the bathroom, which can be seen into on direct line of sight beyond the alcove entry. The bathroom window looks directly into a brick wall. There is more of a hint, rather than hard evidence, that the bedroom door is on the alcove's left side wall. When looking into the alcove along the centerline of the apartment, the bedroom cannot be perceived. People rarely, if ever, see inside the bedroom and not much ever happens there. A bicycle hangs from the ceiling in the alcove and in the main living area, against the wall to the left of the alcove's entry, is a bookcase filled with Ginger's stereo components and entertainment media.
On reflection, the proportions of the apartment seem out of whack, with the angles between the walls greater than 90 degrees, as if the whole thing was constructed on a stage with a foreground of extreme width that diminishes to a narrow background.
Ginny's life in her apartment always has seemed strangely episodic rather than progressing in a continuum; the closest analogy would be a weekly television sitcom. These episodes revolve around tableaus of the antic interactions among a small cast consisting of Ginny and her three particular friends: Wayne Bemes, a former lover but now platonic friend; Georgina Costamza, whom she's known since high school (or before), and Kramner, the lovably odd neighbor across the hall.
The following personal profiles provide insight to these friends of Gin's:
Wayne Bemes - Like Ginny, much of Wayne's life revolves around trying to arrange relationships with attractive individuals, although some of his last longer than Ginny's. His most memorable is his on-again, off-again relationship with a boy named Sue, whose parents were big Johnny Cash fans. He has held jobs as an "Idea Man" for Little Golden Book Publishing, a copy writer for Adam and Eve Adult Toy Catalog (specializing in dildo descriptions), and a personal assistant to the wealthy Ms. Carley Simon, who according to Donald Trump had the chutzpah to live in a rent-controlled apartment. Wayne and Gin dated and broke-up, but remain good friends. The couple rekindled their romance after watching the "Seinfeld" episode entitled "The Deal" and they slept together (to save their friendship, which was deteriorating due to the revelation that Wayne faked his orgasms while they dated) after watching "The Mango" from that same series. The relationship reverted to platonic in both instances without any significant explanation.
Wayne is from Maryland (isn't he lucky), went to Princeton University (his luck is boundless) and usually works as a writer-editor. Wayne is most often a victim of circumstance, usually coming into conflict with inadequate boyfriends or the arbitrary demands of his eccentric employers. He usually is fairly apathetic to the problems of others, unless of course they affect him directly. He can be surprisingly ruthless, and seems to be inwardly bitter about the state his life is in (which is New York, so the feeling is understandable). In a discussion about what he had wanted to be when he grew up, Wayne once said he didn't remember, but "it wasn't this." He also occasionally remarks that he needs to find new friends, but try as he may to fit in, usually they reject him. He also is known for his unusual, spastic dancing style, described by Georgina as a "full body dry heave".
Georgina Costamza - A short, stocky, slow-witted woman who, inexplicably, is balding. The neurotic Georgina is a self-loathing, pathological liar domineered by her parents, Frank and Estelle. She is also best friends with Ginny, and seems to have been so since their school years. She has held many jobs, including that of Starbuck's latte-foamer and assistant to the fluffer for porn star Ron Jeremy. She also worked briefly as president of Cornell Law School, was a mechanic at the BMW dealership in Ithaca, NY, and nearly acquired a job as a bra saleswoman for a friend of her father's. Georgina also was a hand model for less than a day.
Her relationships with men always have been unsuccessful, although ironically, her most disastrous relationship, an engagement to a woman named Susan was one of the few that ended "well" for Georgina. She feared marriage and the death of Susan bailed her out, although Susan's parents continued to torment her after there daughter's demise. Her talents include lying, the video game Frogger, parallel parking, finding good deals, making "good" time, knowing whether someone's uncomfortable at a party, the ability to recall the best public rest room near a given location in Manhattan, and the ability to correctly spell unusual last names. She also has excellent hearing.
Georgina often manufactures elaborate deceptions at work or in her relationships, usually to gain or maintain some small or imagined advantage. Most of Georgina's reprehensible actions are the result of taking the advice of others too seriously. For example, Ginny once jokingly suggested she should only do the opposite of what her instinct tells her, as her instincts seem to lead only to misfortune. This comment led Georgina to try and center her whole life around the principle. Her disastrous engagement to Susan also began with a remark made by Ginny. (In fact it was the result of an impulsive pact for both to plunge into matrimony with the persons they were seeing at the time.). Thus it is arguable that Georgina is not really a bad person, but just easily swayed by others. Coincidentally, many of Georgina's predicaments mirror those that Larry David, of "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" fame, had found himself in at one point or another in his own life. For example, Georgina once quit her job in a fury only to realize her actions were a mistake. She goes back the next day as if nothing happened; which, remarkably, is identical to an incident when Larry David, working as a writer for Saturday Night Live, quit and returned to his job in the same manner. That's some coincidence, huh?
Kramner - Tall, wild-haired, and almost always wearing pants too short for her, Kramner is the most eccentric and animated of Ginny's friends. Looking even more like an over-grown weed than Emilia Earhart, Kramner often enters Ginny's apartment by violently swinging open the door and sliding into the room unexpectedly. For the first six years Ginny had her apartment Kramner's first name was unknown; once her full name was revealed by her mother, Babs Kramner, everyone forgot it. I think it was something like "Cosmo", but I might have it mixed up with the magazine. Initially, Kramner was referred to as "Kessler" by Ginny, but no one knows why... It's not as if Kramner was a TV show character based on a real person and the writers were concerned in the pilot that person might object to use of the name. -- Again coincidentally, "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David had a New York neighbor named Kenny Kramer, which sounds lots like Kramner but there is no connection.
Kramner has been perpetually unemployed after going on strike from a bagel shop that she worked at before meeting Ginny. Nine years after meeting Ginny, Kramner briefly goes back to work at the shop after six years of striking only to go back on strike a few days later. She frequently pursues hare-brained, money-making schemes -- nearly all of them her own invention. Despite the failure of the majority of these schemes and her unwillingness even to apply for a normal job, she always seems to have more than enough money when she needs it; once George made a comment about Kramner "falling ass-backward into money", suggesting she could have inherited some money or won some kind of lottery, but there is no evidence to support this theory. Kenny Kramer, the previously mentioned neighbor of Larry David's, supported himself with the residual profits that he earned from a patent that he developed in the 1970s for the disco ball. At one point when Ginny was being audited, Kramner stated that she had stopped paying taxes years ago, prompting Ginny to quip "that's easy when you have no income".
One of the more popular of Ginny's friends, Kramner is often described as an "action character" who draws onlookers with her wild and unusual antics in a display of skillful physical comedy. She usually enters Ginny's apartment very suddenly, bursting through the door, sometimes hitting someone. In contrast to the other friends, her eccentricities lead her to be almost always painfully honest. She is friends with another acquaintance of Ginny's named Newman, who had a supporting role as dinosaur chow in the mega-hit movie, "Jurassic Park". It always is very funny when Ginny and Newman meet because she invariably acknowledges his presence by sneering the name, "Newman", with a hilarious tone of disgust as if she just met a cockroach -- but that would be impossible because this isn't even that book.
Kramner's Inventions and Ideas
1.) A coffee table book about coffee tables. The book has diminutive fold-out legs so it looks like a coffee table when set on a coffee table.
2.) A pizza place where you make your own pizza from scratch.
3.) Cologne that smells like the beach.
4.) The Bro, a bra for men with man-boobs.
[Author's Note: I must thank Wikipedia for feeding my plagiaristic mill. . .although actually acknowledging the act and citing the source in advance perhaps dilutes the spirit of intellectual theft -- For that I apologize.]
To Be Continued
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