I Am My Father's Daughter

My dad was a WWII baby, which basically meant that all that saving of string and rationing of butter they did when he was little had a profound effect on him.

Cut to: Patrick McGrady's pantry 30 years later, where you'd find no less than 10 pounds of rice, a can of yams larger than a human head, huge box of powdered milk, a hundred cans of soup (and worse, 10 one-gallon cans of soup. What do you do after you've opened it?). I stealthily dropped some of his ashes in Costco, because I know he would have wanted it that way.

Cut to: Patrick McGrady's work shop, where you'd be able to access all kinds of wire, 100 tyes of screws and nails and switches and epoxies and screwdrivers and thingamajigs -- but nothing you could acutally use to work with.

Cut to: Patrick McGrady's driveway, early '90s, in which he always had two pea-green old Mercedes. Whenever I asked him why he needed two, he'd say that in case one went on the fritz, he'd have a backup.

He also installed a gas tank and pump.

This was one amazingly independent person. He always needed to have stuff around, "just in case."

Last night, my friends and I headed to see the high-on-style, low-on-plot vampire flick HUNGER with David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon -- at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. We piled out of the graveyard, tired, happy, full from all the brie and popcorn and wine we'd consumed. And then we realized I had a flat tire.

This is 11 p.m. In a not-so-great neighborhood.

I've never changed a tire.

Happily, I had a handy can of Fix-a-Flat in my car, and we pumped that deflated sucker up no problem. Air in a can is a better invention than sliced bread or Ziploc baggies. It is more life-changing than the Tesla and the dirty martini and PinkBerry.

I felt especially smug and happy that I'd planned for "just in case."

Call me old fashioned and backward and anti-feminist, but I think I'll leave all that icky tire changing to my chivalrous male friends and passersby.