"Crack Ho' Glow and you!" the Interview with Mrs. Grandma Lopez...
In addition to the Tiny-Fisted Tantrum publishing venture, and The world's first One-woman Food Stamp Variety Show, NOTHING LEFT BUT THE SMELL: A Republican on Welfare, Grandma Lopez is also debuting her line of homemade welfare beauty products, "Crack Ho' Glow," using fine cosmetic-grade ingredients and bases. They're not tested on animals, but tested on her foster children instead.
Inspired by self righteous non-profit art organizations constantly asking the government for handouts while holding others below them to stringent capitalistic standards, Grandma Lopez has begun an aggressive fund-raising campaign so she can have electrolysis on her Puerto Rican goatee. She already has the parking lots of 24-hour supermarkets to herself as she sells damaged and recently-expired Girl Scout cookies for half-price at 4 a.m.; she's also finding cash through telethon-style performances of her solo show, "Nothing Left But the Smell." So you can buy from Grandma Lopez with the kind of confidence and titillation that you'd normally reserve for Catholic school girls without goatees selling 2-dollar chocolate bars at the laundromat.
Which finally brings us to our recent interview with Grandma Lopez at her home one afternoon shortly after "Days of Our Lives" was over: We sit on the small, front cement-slab porch with her and a creepy dog, a special "bargain-bred" Presa Canario-Pomeranian mix. Its conception brings to mind images of Farrah Fawcett in "Extremeties"; a time in a pretty thing's life when it is forced to get ugly, turn around and claw at whatever is trying to mount it. The dog belongs to the father of her granddaughter's third child and it's here while he's doing a stint in County for missing his Anger Management classes.
We push the dog's strange face from our soon-to-be camel-toe crotches, try to air-dry the huge wet slippery spot and finally ask Grandma Lopez, "So, why welfare beauty?" Grandma Lopez winks and slaps her thigh, "Good quality grease, honey! It casts good shine under a street light and don't rub off easily, if you get my meaning," she nudges us and chuckles. "Hell, at the very least, maybe your case worker'll tack an extra ten bucks on to your check at the first of each month."
Whoa, Grandma!--Now you're talking my language. Sounds like products that pay for themselves! That's cash on the barrel head! And that's a bonus if you're long past the day when a two-dollar flame-red lipstick will land the kind of man who can keep his job and afford his own beer--right ladies?
When asked about her new venture and its growing success, Grandma Lopez uses her three remaining teeth to chew on a corn cob pipe that'd gone out fifteen minutes earlier, looks out at the rusting Cadillac on blocks in the front yard with "Pantera" sloppily spray-painted on the side in primer grey, and eventually turns her face to us and smiles: "Why, I feel like the Madame CJ Walker of the untapped welfare-office beauty market!"
As we get up to leave, we notice a few Kool-Aid stained neighbors have congregated in the front yard of the trailer home next door and have begun to eat Sloppy Joes, smack each other around with the leftovers, then pull out their kazoos and play, "Dueling Banjos." It's beautiful. Truly beautiful like we'll be after using Grandma Lopez's NEW "Crack Ho' Glow" Smack n' Blow! That's for sure.
--Grandma suddenly grabs our arm to remind us in a hushed voice that as long as she doesn't get busted for using the social security numbers of dead children to get extra welfare money for this good-cause start-up, one bright and cheery day in the future we can expect to see these other new and exciting products listed below: "Brother can you spare a dime?" Soap with a real sterilized dime suspended inside ... Big Welfare Queen pin-up posters ... WELFARE body MIST IN MIDDLE-CLASS SCENT: freshly-mown lawn for those Chevron Showers and Texaco touch-ups ... also coming-- Fried egg penis amulets ... and the long-awaited VPL Panty-Line Creme to make your panty lines shine (Yes! Panty lines are back!-- At least they will be any day now! Panty lines are sure to be the hottest, sexiest new thing at the beginning of this surgically smooth century!...Like garters for the new millenium.)
Go to appearances for schedules of upcoming NOTHING LEFT... shows and electrolysis telethons. And finally, we're introducing the cornerstone of her NEW "Crack Ho' Glow" Welfare Beauty Line!~
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Erika Lopez P.O. Box 410011 / San Francisco, CA 94141