An Open Letter to Channing Tatum.

The Day We Met, near my home, Morehead Heights, which is where I took you, before then taking you to my house.

Dear Channing Tatum, my dearest,

I have some shocking news for you. You may be very upset, and even disoriented by this surprising news, but nonetheless, this is hard reality, as hard as possible. Perhaps you better take a seat. Oh look; my face is vacant. (For decades critics have remarked on my "Usual Vacant Expression" that was as much my acting signature as my trademark wobbling gait.)

Mffflgmmmgmph.

Now Channing dear, not to put too fine a point on it; you are married to me. I know you have absolutely no idea who the friggin' hell I am. I could tell from your shriek. I know that you think we've never met, ever; but you're wrong. We met on the beach one day, as seen in the photo at the top of the page. In this third photo, well, maybe you can recall, or guess, what I was doing while I shredded your pants legs with my nails.

I offered to replace your pants myself, but all you did was repeat my last name over and over, trying to remember who I am.

You see, here's what happened, honest: Not long after our whirlwind wedding and honeymoon last - ah - week, you were in a terrible accident and suffered a severe brain injury. We all felt just awful about it. You lost all your memories of me, of your suddenly developing a passion for women the age of your great-grandmother, of your accident, and of your recuperation, and nothing else. It is a very specific brain injury.

You made the switch,
From twink to witch.
Now scratch my itch.
SON OF A BITCH!

But I am your wife. I have proof. See? Here's our wedding portrait:

The Tatum-Morehead Nuptials.
(I picked out Channing's tuxedo myself.)

Here we are on our honeymoon. We went someplace really nice, I'm sure.

My second-favorite Honeymoon pastime is sight-seeing.

I know it's really odd to wake up and find yourself married to a total stranger. Believe me, I know. It's happened to me three or four times that I can remember. Aren't you fortunate that it was me? I once woke up married to Boris Karloff! The ringing screams of mortal terror woke up the entire household. I finally had to slap Boris across the face to get him to stop screaming.

But pretending it never happened won't help. This restraining order isn't productive. The armed guards are genuinely overkill, although, could you keep the big, burly black one, and "suggest" to him to rough me up all I like? Mmmm. Where was I? Oh yes!

Here you are carrying me over the threshold, and with NO HANDS!
I have something better for you to chew on than my sunglasses.

Why do you have no head scar from your brain injury and the, oh, several, brain operations? Ah, they went in through your toe. Really good surgeon. And the head injury scar? Ah, It got knocked off in the accident. Why are there no wedding videos or archived news footage of when a Big Movie Star was married to a washed-up old Has-Been (Nothing personal, Channing darling, but I know you only married me to restart your career. Would a real star have made The Vow unless his career was in a tailspin?) by the Pope in Westminster Abbey? (Which is an Anglican cathedral. Oy! The clearances and Indulgences we had to obtain to even get the old Nazi Pope admitted through the front doors! They made him pay his pound like a tourist!)

Well, all the existing wedding footage was with you in the accident and got burned up. Yeah, and all the living witnesses are dead. And all the dead witnesses are - ah - undead?

Darling, I'm your wife; let me in. Let me in, or at least pass the booze bottle out to me.

Don't listen to your family, or your career advisers, or your friends, or yourself; they were all against us from the beginning, especially yourself. Ours was a Forbidden Love! In fact, prior to April 26, 1998, it was illegal in all 50 states. But extra-especially, don't listen to your "wife," by which I mean your former wife. You also forgot divorcing her after she did the worst thing to you she could possibly do, so you hate her forever. What did she do to you? Well, just think for a moment. Think of whatever the worst, most utterly-unforgivable-forever thing she could ever do to you is. Got it in your mind all vivid now? Good. That's exactly what she did. You just forgot about it because of the injury, plus they grew right back. That's why they call them "organs of reproduction".

Oh wait! Oh wait! I got it now! It was HER doing! Yeah. She did it! The "accident." It was her! It wasn't an accident; it was a "deliberate"! The bitch! Here baby, let me kiss it and make it all better.

And while I'm not in the habit of making threats - publicly, in fairness, I must warn you that I have Jessie Metcalf waiting in my bullpen if you don't wise up. And once the sedatives wear off and he wakes up, he's going to be hard to keep in there. Detectives sent to find out why he's missing from the set of the Dallas revival (He's grown-up Christopher Ewing, and JR is promised to be up to his old tricks, only more so. I can't wait!) have already been sniffing around here once, so get with the program, Chan my man. Tick-tock, Clarice! (What's more reassuring and romantic from a stranger than a Hanibal Lector reference?)

Jessie Metcalf, in the bullpen. If Channing can't love me "again," I suppose I could "make do" with Jess. Mmm. Time to ask the Dallas Question: WWJRD? : "What would JR do?" Blackmail or kidnap?

After all, I have more in common with you than she does. I am a Big Movie Star, just like you were, and can be again with me. Perhaps you read my memoir, My Lush Life, of which Dame Edna Everage herself (with the help of Barry Humphires) wrote thusly: "Douglas McEwan has outdone himself. One of the most inspiring stories in the annals of frock-n-roll." (Of course, Little Dougie merely took down my words as I spoke them. I "wrote" the book!")

You're probably eagerly awaiting the second volume of my memoirs, Tallyho Tallulah, coming out this summer or late spring, though it shan't help you remember your romance with me, as it's entirely set 6 years before you were born. I may have robbed a few cradles in my time, but I've never robbed the womb.

Actually, a handful of very lucky folks have had the pleasure of reading advance copies of Tallyho Tallulah now, and their raves are flooding my male-slot.

“A hilarious, campy saga of a woman ‘under the influence’. Long live Tallulah Moorhead!..If the 1970s didn't kill her, nothing will.”
- David Isaacs, Emmy award-winning writer/producer, M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier, Mad Men.

“If Tallulah Morehead were 100 years younger I would marry her. And as opposed to her many other husbands, this one would stick. She is quite simply the funniest woman who ever never-died. Tallyho, Tallulah! is the latest edition of her wonderfully hilarious tales. You will laugh out loud and, like me, fall in love with this remarkable Hollywood star/drunk.”
 - Ken Levine, Emmy-winning writer/producer/director M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier, Becker.

"Watch out Mame Dennis. Out of her way Belle Poitrine. Tallulah Morehead's in town. If you are tempted to think 'This story could not possibly get any more outlandish, any more ribald, any zanier' you have but to turn the page to disabuse yourself of that notion."
-David Lee, Emmy-winning writer/producer/director The Jeffersons, Cheers, Co-creator of Frasier and Wings.

Would these men lie? Channing, my Latest One-True Love, must you also be a shallow ageist like Ken Levine, who lets a mere century age-difference lie between us? After all, Channing my dearest, your age difference from mine is but a mere 83 years. And those years mean less and less as your age catches up with mine. (Fortunately, I have my age on "Pause".)

So believe me, Channing darling. Don't let the brain injurers win. You're hot for me! Trust me, and hop on!

I await you, my beloved. Don't leave me hanging at the wedding feast like a 21st Century Miss Havasham-Wow. (She's the crazy old biddy you probably ignored in an "old" Ethan Hawke-Gwenyth Paltrow movie from back when you were in high school. There's also a book of it, but the guy who novelized Great Expectations really fucked with the story, moving it back in time a century and a half for no good reason, as everyone knows that no one under 35 gives a crap about anything that happened before the Reagan Administration, and the women's clothes are hideous! The novelizer also wrote the whole thing in this fancy-pants posh language that it's barely intelligible. It's almost as horrible as Shakespeare. Hey Charles Dickens: "Word!") (Having a brain-injured 30 year old husband does keep me young.)

I love you, Channing, as I've never loved anyone else today. I have whipped vodka (whatever the hell that is) waiting in an ice bucket by my bed. Come to me, my beloved, and shag my brains into the next century. Never mind that vodka-stench on my breath - and body. You've just forgotten that it turns you on. No really, it does. And wrinkles get you hard.

Cheers darling

Don't come a-knockin',
If my pelvic girdle is a-rockin'.