Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me - Chelsea's Family, Friends [73]
This is a formal apology to everyone we have encountered and to those we are yet to meet. I apologize. Chelsea is a really good person, but she is sick and can’t help herself.
E IS FOR EXCEDRIN
Once, on a Monday (TRUE FUCKING STORY) I picked up an Excedrin bottle, took two pills, put them in my mouth, and swallowed. I had a horrible headache. Chelsea had a really busy day: a show taping, followed by a post-tape interview, followed by a meeting in Tom’s office with her agents, followed by a fitting to get her dressed so she could dash out the door and go to a red carpet event. No room for fuck-ups. Period.
An hour before I dressed Chelsea for the show, I started to feel weird. Waves of nausea began to roll through me. I was unable to focus on the type on my computer screen. Something was seriously wrong with me. A chemical reaction was occurring in my body. I decided that I must be diabetic and was headed for a diabetic coma. It also crossed my mind that this was karma for dressing up the guys from the show as the Jonas Brothers for a skit where we talked about Kevin Jonas having diabetes: type 2.
I told my assistant, Linda, that after the last fitting, she was going to have to take me to the emergency room. In the meantime she was not allowed to leave my side. Linda was not amused. She was looking at me as if I were crazy. I was. Instead of a chair at my desk, I have one of those large workout balls. For an hour I sat on it bouncing and shopping for shoes on the Barneys Web site, while telling Linda and the production assistants that I hoped I wasn’t dying. Chelsea walked by and asked if we had some sexy dresses for an event. I said, “Totally!” After she was gone I turned to Linda and said, “What are we going to do?” She replied, “Dress her, Amy. Like we do every day?” and looked at me as if I were bat-shit crazy.
Let’s take a second to discuss Linda, my amazing Vietnamese American assistant. She is the consummate professional. I am the creative force of our department, but she helps legitimize my professional existence. Linda stands at about five feet, two inches tall, and she has a perfectly round, beautiful Vietnamese face. When she started working on our show, she was a little on the thick side. Chelsea nicknamed her Paccy, as in Ms Pac Man. Anytime Linda walked into Chelsea’s office, Chelsea would say, “Wocca wocca wocca!” Everyone in our office still calls her Paccy, except me. I call her Shorty.
Chelsea still texts Linda from time to time to ask how many ghosts she caught over the weekend, and what her high score is. She will also ask her, in complete seriousness, if it’s hard for her to get down the stairs with no legs. After I informed Chelsea that Linda had hired a trainer and lost twenty pounds because of her nickname, Chelsea was appalled at her own behavior. She had no idea that nicknaming her Paccy would have any sort of negative impact on Pacc. Instead of apologizing, Chelsea bought Paccy her very own Ms Pac Man machine and had it delivered to Linda’s parents’ house, where she will reside until marriage. The note read, “This is for all the nights you are stuck at home living with your parents in the seventeenth century, while you could be out wocca wocca-ing your coslopus. P.S. I liked you better with a little meat on you.”
Dressing Chelsea is fun, but it is not always easy. Never mind the distraction of e-mails and Twitters she constantly gets from fans informing her that her stylist must hate her. She does not like to try on clothes. There are better things she could be doing with her time. Bitch is busy. With her, you get one or two shots. Precision is key, and when it is hard to focus on objects in front of you, as it was for me that Monday when I took the Excedrin, precise you are not. If