Aprilbaby's California Life

Van Nuys History Tour

(Photo: Richard Hilton, while standing at Sylvan Street and Van Nuys Blvd, unfolds photo of the same area of Van Nuys in the early 1900s.)

The Museum of the San Fernando Valley's Richard Hilton led a Van Nuys history tour, which began right at Van Nuys Boulevard and Sylvan Street. The first Daily News building sat not far from Van Nuys city Hall on Sylvan.  The first church was just down the street on Tyrone.

The Museum of SFV's President, Gerry Fecht, who attended school in the neighborhood, remembered how Tyrone Street (parallel and one street over from Van Nuys Blvd.) would flood so badly from rains pouring down the mountains, he couldn't go to school and cars would be washed away.

We later walked west down Sylvan Street to what used to be Van Nuys Public Library. Gerry used to study there as a young student and told me he'd seen Jane Russell there, back in the day. The building, after years had become worn and dilapidated, was eventually purchased and renovated by lawyers Straussner & Sherman. Gerry and some of the others who remember the library as it once was seemed very impressed by the lawyers' renovations. It's beautiful. They even kept the wooden card index shelving.

 

 

(Interior of former Van Nuys Public Library)

Another highlight of the tour - meeting Luigi Dellaripa of Luigi's Tailoring. Originally from Naples, Italy, Luigi began working at the Sylvan Street shop in 1960 and has been working there ever since. He says business is doing well thanks to great reviews on Yelp.com. But the malls, of course, hurt his business. And now the city of Los Angeles isn't helping small business owners like Luigi by placing parking meters in front of all the shops - just another obstacle that keeps customers from businesses.

(Photo: Luigi, on left, Richard Hilton, Museum of San Fernand Valley Tour Guide, on right)

I'd give more detail, but I forgot to bring my pen and a pad. Better yet, attend an upcoming history Museum of San Fernando Valley tour. They're very knowledgeable about the Valley.

 

 

Republic Pictures 75th Anniversary

Yesterday, I volunteered at the 75th Anniversary of Republic Pictures event and had a blast. Republic Pictures was one of the San  Fernando Valley's great movie studios of Westerns and B movies. As a lover of California history and Hollywood's past, I enjoyed every minute.

 

Many of the Republic Pictures stars or their children were there to speak on panels and sign photos. Since I was working elsewhere on the CBS lot, I wasn't able to see many of the events. But I did spend my last two hours checking out the memorabilia and taking photos.

Awkward Celebrity Moment!

What's the matter with me, flirting with a man in his 80s? How inappropriate! When I came upon Hugh O'Brian (Wyatt Earp) signing photographs, he asked, as I checked out his photos, "Do you see anything you like?"

So I pointed to a photo of him - bronzed skin, wearing only a skimpi mankini - and said, "Yeah, that!"

 

Then he said, "You show me yours and I'll show you mine." After some more inappropriate back and forth that's now a blur, the blonde lady to his right asked me, "Do you want to purchase anything?" Then Hugh mentioned his "Wyatt Earp" DVDs. But I muttered something about my DVD player not working and scampered away when someone else came to ask Mr. O'Brian a question.

So there it is - I flirted with Hugh O'Brian and then ditched him when he gave me a sales pitch. Yes, I am pathetic.

Of course, I meant no disrespect to the still charming Mr. O'Brian. I honestly do have a broken DVD player and am watching my dollars.

 

Cool Hollywood Encounter

After my Hugh O'Brian blunder, I turned around to find an elegant older man, looking cool and refined in spite of the 100 + degree weather, dressed in a pinstriped seersucker suit. He took my right hand in his hands and looked into my eyes. I smiled and said, "And how are you?" To which he responded, "Fine right now." And then I moved on.

I asked one of the event coordinators, "Who is that elegant man in the pinstriped suit?" and told her about my encounter.

"Oh, yeah, that's A.C. Lyles, Mr. Paramount."

Intrigued, I Googled him when I got home. Yep, A.C. Lyles is one of the great Hollywood producers. He started as a young man in Hollywood under Adolph Zukor. So cool!

I adore old Hollywood! (photo: A. C. Lyles posing with costumed event attendee)

More fun Hollywood Moments

I met beautiful Republic Pictures actress Linda Stirling's son Chris Nibley, a Director of Photography. Since his parents met on the Republic lot (his father was screenwriter Sloan Nibley), he practically grew up on the Republic lot. A real sweet guy, Chris had great stories about the caves that were once there, the Gunsmoke set, the L.A. River before it was paved over and how his mom faked knowing how to ride a horse to get her first starring role as "Tiger Woman".

I never tire of hearing about Hollywood history. Those stories are how imagined Hollywood to be. They're why I moved to Los Angeles and dreamed of being in movies. I told Chris that the Hollywood I encountered didn't really live up to my dreams, "You know" I said. "Too many dirty old camermen asking me if I wanted to look into their cameras." D'oh! Could I stick my foot in my mouth any farther? He's a cameraman.

Chris just laughed.

Another great guy I met was Ben Costello, author of "Gunsmoke: An American Insitution" and "Jack & Walter" about Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. I love Lemmon and Matthau, and struck up a conversation with Ben and got to hear some of his jaw-droppingly wonderful Hollywood tales of Jack Lemmon, Steve McQueen and more.

Who else did I see? Adrian Booth, Dan Haggerty, Theodore Bikel, Leonard Maltin, Chuck Connors' son, Robert Blake (yes, that Robert Blake!) and more.

So I just had a blast spending the day with so many kind, creative and entertaining people, while soaking in the Valley's history and hearing some great Hollywood stories. In spite of the 100 plus degree heat, all seemed to have a great time.

The Studio City Neighborhood Council and San Fernando Valley Museum put this entire event on for absolutely no charge. Great job!

(Left Photo - Adrian Booth/Right Photo - Dan Haggerty and fan)

More of my photos here and this blog, Hollywoodland, has some great photos.

 

 

 

Get In the Car and Drive

Get in the car and drive. That’s what my husband, Ian, and I like to do when Friday night rolls around and we’d forgotten to make plans. Usually we won’t have a destination in mind, only vague ideas – Let’s drive over Topanga toward the ocean, drive along Wilshire, head over to Santa Monica, maybe downtown…

 

One recent Friday night, we hopped on Wilshire near Beverly Hills and just kept going toward downtown. We stopped to pay our respects to the desolate and nearly empty lot where t he Ambassador Hotel once stood. With just the sound of cars wooshing by now, I stared at the haunting space and thought I could almost hear a big band blaring from the Cocoanut Grove.  B ut  the Ambassador is but a memory; meanwhile across the street, an old neighbor, the Gaylord apartment building still stands lit up and full of life.

Back in our car, we continued down Wilshire, and turned down a street beside Macarthur Park. There, we stumbled upon a whole new universe for us. Out of the dark, with downtown LA skyscrapers glowing in the background, a bandstand lit up in pink  and purple lights, seeming to float in the dark. We rolled down the window and could hear a band playing - conga drums, quick and energetic. We could see silhouettes of people dancing.  Latin music filled the air.  We got out, listened to the band and then walked near the park’s lake.

 

There was a festival – parents and children rode on tiny roller-coasters and whirling rides; the smell of roasted meats and corn floated by. A Mexican man and woman tried to tame an angry miniature horse that seemed to finally have enough of begin humiliated for the public’s humor.

 

Only a half-hour car ride from home and yet we’d felt like we were miles from home.

 

So last Friday night, we headed to Santa Monica with the idea of stopping in a café or a pub… or whatever we’d stumble upon along the way.

 

It was just after 8pm, when got to Main Street.  The cool little bead shop, the eclectic toy store, the collectible store and California bohemian clothing stores were already closed. But the pubs, cantinas and outdoor cafes swarmed with people. Each time we walked by one happening spot we’d hear the sounds of chatter and laughter, and even caught snatches of conversation. One long-haired surfer dude to another guy:  ”Dude, he’s totally  involved, dude, in organized crime… dude.” One dude per every three words, I figured. My husband nodded. We passed a night time painting and wine drinking class taking place on a patio. Students painted and studied their easels while sipping glasses of wine.

 

Then we came to Jadis, a shop we’d peeked into many times before but had never seen opened. This night it was. In the window stands a replica of the robot, Maria, from the film “Metropolis”. It’s surrounded by a crowd of whirling and flapping gadgets, whose-its, what’s-its and whatcha-ma-callits that look like they came from a Dr. Seuss story. With the store lit up, my electronic engineer husband gaped at the floor to ceiling collection of antiquey-looking electronics with dials, coils, meters and knobs. I think I saw him drool.

 

While Ian ogled the gadgetry through the window, I walked to the front door and studied the posted signs: “Knowledge ain’t nothin’” and “Disorganize what you don’t know.” And then I saw a sign that said we could knock on the door and enter for $2 per person. But no cameras or laughing are allowed, one sign warned.

 

My husband knocked. I stood behind him. A skinny man with a long white-haired ponytail opened the door.  We put our dollars in a dish and entered. The skinny man began to tell us what the store was all about. First he asked if we knew anything about Ray and Charles Eames. Ian and I nodded, we were both big collectors of mid-century furniture back in the 1980s. We were so into our mid-century furniture that on our first date when Ian entered my apartment and saw my amoeba shaped coffee table (I’d bought at a garage sale), he knew we were a match. That and the way I devoured my Moroccan food later that evening. So, yeah, we knew all about the Eames' designs, have been to some of their art exhibits, have books about them and have their films on DVD. We love the Eames.

 

Well, the man told us, then we’d appreciate what the shop’s all about since the owner Parke Meek - a man with only a sixth-grade education and an inquisitive and imaginative mind - who worked with Ray and Charles Eames, designed props for Hollywood and collected his shop-full of curiosities along the way. Since Ian also designs and engineers recording consoles (and is real into vintage electronics) it was an extra bonus, considering our tour guide once worked in some capacity for the Rolling Stones and Frank Sinatra. So Ian and our tour-guide hit it off. They stopped at every techno, electro sort of meter-type of object and discussed them in detail, nodding and shaking their heads in mutual amazement.

 

While they talked, I roamed the room. As I ogled the collectible curiosities, I thought about the shop’s owner Parke Meek - his work, his imagination, his curiosity and his lack of schooling. I thought about the quote that’s been attributed to Mark Twain: “I never let schooling get in the way of my education". And realized some of the most amazing people I’ve met and know, have never stopped asking questions – Why? What? How? Why not? They’ve never forgotten to be childlike and curious.

 

Ian and the pony-tailed man shook hands, and we thanked him for his tour.

 

Then we went across the street to the Irish pub, Finn McCools, for a plate of garlic fries and two black and tans. As an extra bonus, the baseball game between Colorado and LA Dodgers was playing on a TV screen just above our heads. Curiosities, garlicky-fries, black and tans and baseball, too. 

 

Sometimes there's nothing better than just getting in the car and driving - like when I was a kid, and I'd get on my bike and ride. I'd explore and wonder what else is out there. I never want to stop doing that.

 

 

My Slideshow of the San Fernando Valley

As I wrote in my Daily News piece, "Valley State of Mind":

The Valley is constantly portrayed in the media, and by those who dwell on “the other side of the hill,” as nothing more than a sun-baked wasteland of mini-mall strewn streets under a tangle of wires and smog, where only illiterate meth addicts, porn stars, and frosted-haired simpletons would choose to live; where cuisine no more exotic than canned ravioli can be found, and where the suburban sprawl is consuming us Valley-dwellers under its mass, oozing over us until we suffocate beneath it, rendering our brains (what little brain matter we have) useless.  The Valley, the critics repeatedly tell us, is making us all fat, dull, stupid and soulless.

But we Valleyites know the Valley is home to more than mini-malls. Here's my San Fernando Valley Slideshow.

Like some music to accompany the San Fernando Valley slideshow?

Bruce & Doug had a Knack for Living

Bruce Gary (drummer of the Knack) and Doug Fieger (lead singer/songwriter of the Knack) were friends of my husband and mine. Bruce died in the summer of 2006 and Doug died just this past Valentine's day, February 14, 2010.

 

(Photo: Bruce and my friend Toni at Burton Cummings surprise 60s themed birthday.)

Tall lanky Bruce, with that great smile and frenetic energy, grew up right here in the Valley. Here's a nice tribute about his life and influences.

 

(Photo: The only photo I took of Doug with the Knack. I sat in the audience for the filming of Rock n Roll Fun House.)

Doug was a ferociously curious and intelligent guy, quoted Shakespeare, doled out the best advice, gave great support to anyone who needed it, always knew the best Italian restaurants. He had a head full of musical facts and his eyes lit up talking about music or anything else he loved. He had life down - and lived every minute as if he couldn't get enough. 

It's hard to believe Bruce and Doug, two guys with such brilliant energy and passion for life, are no longer on this earth.

********************************************************************

While I can't imagine my childhood without the Beatles music playing in the background, I can't recall my teen years without the Knack. I hear "My Sharona" and I'm transported back to 1979, when disco was just waning and I wanted some music of my own.

 

(Photo: Me daydreaming in class)

1979, "Days of My Sharona":Just entering high school, I smelled of Love's Baby Soft, day-dreamed through school, scribbled boys' names on my Pee Chee folders, loved going to the beach, loved dancing and listening to music. One song I couldn't get enough of, couldn't sit still through and sang out loud, and badly, was "My Sharona". Thumping, heart-pounding rhythm and racy, pleading lyrics and harmonies - it was contagious.

Hearing it now brings back coconut-oil scented beach days when I knew no true heartache, had few responsibilities and my whole wide future stretched before me like the ocean.

Back then, I never imagined I'd know Doug or Bruce personally, or that I'd be heartbroken to have lost these two unique and special people. They both grabbed every moment from life and lived with passion as contagious as their music. Their spirits, so electric and inspiring, live on in their music, in our memories and in the light.

The World Feels Emptier

My husband and I lost a dear friend yesterday, Doug Fieger. The world feels emptier.

In happier days, Doug invited us to the taping of "Rock and Roll Fun House." We were in the audience cheering during this video shoot.

I believe we all come in the world wanting to make a difference in our own unique way - and Doug did through his optimistic passion for life, his music, his mentoring and friendship to many, and, in his final months, his extraordinary fortitude and appreciation for life.

Appreciate each moment and the people in your life.

Life's the road we ride upon, love's the hope we're hanging on, a brief time here a long time gone - Doug Fieger from "It's Not Me"

"Oscar's Cuba": Documentary on Dr. Biscet's Struggle for Cuba's Freedom

 

Cuban prisoner of Conscience, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, wrote from prison:

"I am convinced of my ethical principles, the suffering of another human

being is also mine, I cannot accept evil, because if I did my bones will erode

and my soul will never be at peace.”  (From Oscarscuba.com)

 

 

In an earlier post, I mentioned my older Cuban friend who grew up in Havana, Cuba, before Castro’s revolution .  My friend showed me photos and told me his memories of Cuba’s turquoise waters, palm trees, balmy air, the wonderful Cuban folk music… But it all came to an end when three of Castro’s thugs entered his home. They took his belongings, took his business and put him in prison. He escaped imprisonment only by a fluke of timing and some sort of mistake. He then fled to the United States and hasn’t been back to Havana since.  He now has only memories and photos to share with his children.

My friend’s story made me appreciate, with passion, the freedom I have – freedom to speak  without fear of neighbors reporting me and without fear of my home being bugged by the government. So last night, after Joe Lima posted about the documentary, I attended a pre-screening of “Oscar’s Cuba.” The documentary's about Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet’s imprisonment in Cuba and the Communist government’s treatment of the Cuban people. Filmmaker Jordan Allott became passionate about Dr. Biscet’s story, went undercover into Cuba and secretly filmed about Dr. Biscet’s and the Cuban peoples’ plight.

Born shortly after Cuba’s Communist revolution, Dr. Biscet had been indoctrinated with government propaganda his entire life; he was told since he was small that individual rights were evil and other ideas to make the government more powerful and the individual  weaker. Even with a lifetime of Communist-attempted brainwashing, Dr. Biscet grew up to speak out against the totalitarian government. And for that he’s in prison - in a dark, isolated, filthy and miserable cell - for 25 years.

But there’s hope.

In "Oscar's Cuba", Cuban punk rocker Gorki Aguila, of the band Porno Para Ricardo, tells how he was imprisoned for being “socially dangerous,” for crimes he may commit in the future (twisted government, huh?). But, thanks to social media and the outcry of the International community, the Cuban government didn’t want the negative publicity and so released Aguila.

Like all involved in the making and promoting “Oscar’s Cuba”, I want to believe that if more people around the world become informed about the Cuban people’s struggle for freedom and if more speak out for them, they may have a chance to live in freedom once again.

Until then, this is the rot that is today's Cuba.

About the screening and pre-show:

The screening for “Oscar’s Cuba” was at the Barnsdall Theater, up on a hill with a view of the Hollywood sign and the Griffith Park Observatory. During the cocktail hour, I sipped wine and ate many, many delicious Cuban pastries from Porto's Bakery (a sponsor for the film) and met some really nice people. We then went inside the theater where the host Maria Conchita Alonso spoke. I’d tell you what she said, but it was in Spanish. Next, the filmmaker Jordan Allott spoke about how he was so moved learning about Dr. Biscet’s fight for Cuba's freedom, he wanted to let the world know about Dr. Biscet’s and the Cuban people’s story.

Before the film, photos streamed above on the movie screen: paint-worn Havana, despondent looking Cubans, and the Damas de Blanco, the Ladies in White: wives, sisters and mothers of men imprisoned in Cuba for opposing the government. When these women appeared on screen, the audience erupted in applause.

 

The Ladies in White are often beaten by government-led mobs for standing up for freedom. Mobs also gather in front of prisoners' homes, as shown in the film, and yell with total vitriol: “Down with human rights!” and “Long live Castro!”

Angry mobs, a brutal government – it doesn’t matter to the independent thinkers of Cuba, they refuse to be silenced. And for that they are beaten and put in prison.

What can we do?

Please spread the word and write to political leaders about Dr. Biscet and other Cuban prisoners.

If enough people speak out for the Cubans who have been silenced, they may one day get to speak and live in freedom. One day soon, I hope.

Four-time Grammy winning musician, Arturo Sandoval, created the musical score for "Oscar's Cuba". Here, in the video, he explains well the struggle in Cuba.

 

For more info: Dr. Biscet's site.

In Support of Iranian People Risking Their Lives for Freedom

In honor of protesters in Iran and those who risk it all for an important cause: my slideshow of a recent protest in Los Angeles.

 

Why I Get Up on My Soapbox

 

(Photo: 1969, London, England. I'm spouting my mouth off on a soapbox at the Anarchist Forum at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. My parents said I even gathered a small crowd.)

 

Demure? Without opinions? Someone who doesn't question? That's not me.

Born only months after JFK’s assassination, at the beginning of the civil rights movement, my brain was formed on the cusp of an era of transformation. And while big things were taking place around the world, my own little world transformed too.

Almost everything that my curious and questioning four-year-old mind could absorb changed before my eyes when my parents sold our San Franciscan suburban home to buy a trailer in England. From there, our entire family – mom, dad, my little sister and I – would travel the world. Every day, every moment there after was something new to take in, something to question.

As we traveled the world from Turkey to Morocco, we saw true poverty, children begging in the streets and gypsies wanting our clothes. We’d made day-trips into the institutional bleakness and war-pocked Communist East Berlin, to emerge into the colorful and shining outside world upon leaving. Only later would I learn, while we visitors were able to come and go, the East Berliners would be shot if they tried to leave.

These experiences, whether I knew it or not at the time, became etched into my brain.

 

Upon returning to San Francisco in the early 1970s, we bounced around from my grandparents house in the Sunset District to a rental cottage in the Richmond and finally landed in Gatorville: San Francisco State University’s Family Student Housing. It was only a small community of sagging, dingy-white army barrack-style apartments, which surrounded a playground of tarnished metal swings and slides stuck into dirty sand, sand that served as a litter box for stray cats. The place didn't look like much. But it was. 

It was a slice of pure 1970’s counterculture – a commune feel without the annoying rules and with the ability to live and let live. We kids dealt with things other generations might not have had to deal with.

The reason the place was so special to me: I wasn't alone. 

Until Gatorville, many of us moved around, didn’t really have a chance to make friends, and might not have had patterns to our days. We kids of all races and ages - from kindergartners to teens - seemed to have the community to ourselves during the day. We'd come home, let ourselves in with the keys we kept on silver-beaded chains around our necks, and then we'd run off, totally free from adults. By the time the street lights came on, the apartments were turned over to the parents.

Most of us seemed savvy beyond our years. Maybe it was because the parents acted childlike. Maybe it was from seeing so much change in so little time - our surroundings, the culture, the way adults dressed and spoke - everything was far-out, groovy, out of sight or a bummer, which I always thought was so odd because none of them dressed and spoke that way when I was younger. It was all a little unsettling. Question was: what could I depend on if styles of living came and went?

Early on, I looked at the world around me with a sideways glance, always a little skeptical.

Many of us were kids of divorce, most (if not all) were latchkey kids, kids who worried about parents pot smoking (and having one kid announce this parental pot-smoking in class to the third grade teacher in front of the entire room of children!); kids fending off the neighborhood child-molester and being savvy enough to call him a “pervert!” but not savvy enough to avoid going with him to a porn theater with him; kids so free we took the Muni (city bus), roamed the city, seemed to build our own society,  all with the backdrop of great music – funk, soul, great rock and roll (now called “classic”). The experience was yin and yang, making the sun-filled long summer days only brighter when it all came to dark and abrupt end.

We were told by San Francisco State we’d have to leave Gatorville, because the university wanted the area for some other use. But we fought, and kids led the way. We protested “Hell no, we won’t go!”. “My dad put a huge sign above my apartment porch:“We Stand Together”.  I called local news stations and asked to speak with my favorite (I was a news junky even back then) anchorman: Van Amburg. Once he came to the phone, I told him how we were being forced from our home, would have to move from our friends and our school. We refused to leave because we had rights, I said. Intrigued (or more likely humored), Van Amburg told me he would send a news crew out to interview me. I took a shower, put on my best dress and waited on my porch at 97 Campus Circle. But no news crew ever showed up.

In 1976, we left Gatorville behind. But it’s always been with me - just as my experiences of having traveled the world have never left.

Throughout my life, the people I meet and the experiences I have continue to create new grooves in my brain - raising my child, running a business, and meeting people who’ve left repressive regimes, for instance, have made an impact.

I edited film for a business associate who grew up in Havana, Cuba. He wanted me to edit his photos of 1930s through 1950s Havana along to his favorite Cuban folk songs; the film was going to be a Christmas present for his adult children. My friend had wonderful memories of growing up surrounded by the turquoise waters and balmy air of Havana, something his children would only know through his stories. After the Communist Revolution in Cuba, three of Fidel Castro’s thugs came into my friend's home, removed him, his wife and two sons, then confiscated all of their belongings and his business. They put my friend in prison. He and his family escaped by a mere fluke in timing and paperwork. They fled to America.

Another friend fled Iran with his life. His story is similar to my Cuban friend’s experiences - all of his money, his business, his home and belongings were taken just after the Islamic revolution. He, too, fled to the United States with only his family and his life.

Having looked into the eyes of these men who've had their hopes and freedom taken by dictators is something I'll never forget. The emotional impact of their stories, along with my own memories of seeing the world as a child, have made me all the more certain of my own fortune in life, a life of freedom I will never take for granted.

Because of what I've learned in my life I don't have the luxury of ignorance or apathy.

There are now many, even those oh-so rebellious flower children who constantly yelled "Question the man!" when I was a kid, who now compliantly believe whatever the media or political groups tell them without questioning. They vote for candidates based on cool icons and snappy bumper stickers.

And there are many younger people who are coming out of universities, degrees in hand, without the ability of critical thinking and lacking wisdom. A huge portion of society no longer questions what they're told and they don't go looking for answers.

I recently met a thirty-year-old college grad who, after someone flippantly used the word communist, said: "What's so bad about communism? Isn't it like the Israeli Kibbutz?" Oy! How does an adult get a college degree and yet think communism is merely a large commune (i.e., you bake the bread and I'll grow the tomatoes and we'll get along just fine.) No, communism throughout history always requires repression of humans under violence - firing squads, genocide, gulags, interment camps. It's not peace, love and happiness.

There are a plethora of books he could read and plenty Information just a click away about what really goes on in Cuba if he were at all curious. But that seemed to be his problem, his lack of curiosity and (from what I could tell from the rest of our conversation) an amazing ability to parrot professors, the media and politicians without question. The man spoke in prepackaged phrases, even calling me a racist for questioning Obama on a few specific issues, ie Card Check and his meddling in Honduras. This dude nonchalantly calling me a racist was so ridiculous and thoughtless, I didn't even get angry. I actually felt sorry for this guy who spent years in college but seemed to have no ability to think for himself.

Because so many are misinformed and indoctrinated rather than truly educated, I find it even more necessary to watch, to learn, to educate myself and to always question. And when I see things that get me angry and that are obviously wrong, I stand up on my soapbox, like I did as a five-year-old in Hyde Park at Speakers’ Corner, and I shout out.

No one can tell me the: "The debate is closed!". I don't go silent and cower when told to shut up and stop questioning. I never have and never will.

 

I'm Coming Out... Politically Speaking

“Our lives begin to die the day we become silent about things that matter” - Martin Luther King Jr.

I've kept my political opinions to myself for a long time now, simply because it's easier. It's been extremely hard because I am passionate about my philosophies. Fact is, people tell me their opinions about politics, economics, etc. on a daily basis and I might make a vague comment, but - in the name of "let's all get along", I keep my mouth shut. I can't any longer.

There's way too much corruption. I've seen too many people affected in the last years by what goes on in local, state, federal and world governments to sit by with my mouth shut listening to everyone else. If people don't like me for my politics, so what.

I've posted some of my views here, the others I sometimes bare on my Facebook account.

I'm a registered Independent. I never want to have to claim a party and become defensive of the individual politicians. I don't care about the politicians, I care about the philosophies. I am an anti-collectivist, small-government business owner who understands how business (when unhampered by mandates & taxes) benefits people, communities and the country... heck, the world - even. I believe I would be a "classic" Liberal, in the JFK ideal if that were the case today.

With California and the country in a financial mess - while trying to run a few businesses in this cesspool of useless, money-grubbing California legislators and minions and threats of Federal mandates - I am only hurting myself and my country by staying silent.

Stuffed with Turkey & Awkward Family Photos

I hope everyone had a really nice and un-awkward thanksgiving! My only cringe-inducing moment came while my husband sliced my perfectly bronzed, brandy-basted turkey and discovered that I had accidentally left the little baggy of gizzards inside the turkey as it roasted. He then pulled the bagging from my bronzed turkey in front of my horrified family. Oh well... at least this year there weren't any kitchen fires!

After sitting around with family, I did a little surfing on the internet and discovered my new favorite site: Awkward Family Photos. I looked through the photos for nearly a half hour laughing out loud, maybe because I could relate. What is it they say about tragedy mixed with comedy?

I sent the link to my sister, knowing she could relate. She then wrote back mentioning some of our own family photos that would qualify for the site. But my first thought went to this photo below of my just-out-of-the-navy father spending a little quality time with me.

Recently, I did a little Photoshop work (below) on the photo and emailed it to my dad. He still has a twisted sense of humor.

 

This LA Girl Loves (No... Lurves!) NYC - It's So Obvious!!

Here's a slideshow of photos from only our first evening and the following day in NYC. I kept them in the same order as I took them. So click on the link, sit back and spend a little time in New York City with me.

In the movie “Annie Hall”, Woody Allen's character Alvy said to Annie about his feelings for her: “Love is, is too weak a word for what I feel - I lurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you…”

That’s how I feel about New York City: I lurve it! 

My husband and his partner Steve Firlotte were nominated for a Tec Award in NYC for the recording console they designed and built: the Tree Audio 500. So off we went to New York to attend the awards. He didn’t win.  But we devoured New York City every day, every minute that we were there…  I can’t believe I’ve lived my whole life without really experiencing the city (one visit as a child and once as a parent on a 5th grade field trip don't count) until now.

I fell in love the moment we stepped out of JFK Airport when a cab dispatcher barked at us. My husband got into the JFK airport cab line the wrong way - "That's the wrong way. The line is over there! It's so obvious!" the cab dispatcher yelled in a nasal New York accent, sounding like this: It's so awwwwb-veeeeeuhhsss!

Seconds later, as we stood in the cab line, a Russian-sounding cab driver argued with his passengers as they tried to squeeze large packages into his taxi trunk. The large Russian cab driver yelled, "No! Packages not fit.. I can not" But he was interrupted by a female cab driver who heard the commotion and yelled to him out of her taxi window, "What the hell you talkin' 'bout?! Just put the damn packages in!"

"Welcome to New York!" The out-of-towners behind us said in unison.

I loved the place from that moment on.

And my love only multiplied from there, like a multi-sensory kaleidoscope effect with colors, shapes, sounds, smells, flavors compounded into a dizzying array in my head. One sensation layered upon another. I think I blurted out one night in Greenwich Village "I want to lick the sidewalks!"

Don't worry, I didn't.

I love how the city smells so thick of food (lamb kabobs, sauteing garlic, pizza, Indian food...) it almost makes the air seem edible, as if I could bite into it. The entire city - the people, the racing cabs, the subways, the street musicians, the colorful corner vegetable stands - invigorated me. I loved stepping out our door and into the middle of life, life moving so fast if you stop in the midst of it you'll be plowed down. In NYC I felt like I was in some sort of time warp, super-humanly capable of experiencing more in four and a half days than I have in a normal month. Yet we were never tired.

Here's a video from our first day in NY. Ian and I entered Central Park, heard music and singing... Beatles' songs. Then we stumbled upon a group of people celebrating John Lennon's birthday.

Stay tuned! Many more photos of our NYC week to follow.

My Change of Mind from Liberalism

My my... how life experience can change a person's political views, huh? Here's a piece I wrote about the Republican party before I left liberalism behind:

 

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Mr. Republican

A suit and tied man,

briefcase in hand,

walks his tight ass walk.

Breaks stride to lift his polished leather shoes

over the face of a soiled, leather-faced man lying on the sidewalk.

As the suited man steps over the other, he does not look down.

He does step OVER and not on him.

 

A decent man,

                        Mr. Republican

God fearing, too.

Wants prayer in school.

Take away the poor, empty stomached children’s free lunch program.

They can PRAY for food.

 

A man who wants equal rights,

                        Mr. Republican

Who no longer wants affirmative action -

The white man has suffered long enough.

He believes everyone deserves an equal opportunity.

 

A man who knows how to cut the budget,

                        Mr. Republican

Who laughs when Nova, Masterpiece Theater and Big Bird plead for funds, while tits and ass, Jerry Springer and other freaks on talk shows litter the television airwaves to numb and stunt the brain activity of Americans into a dozy, compliant, shoulder shrugging, I could care less mentality.

                         Mr. Republican

Loather of liberals, lover of Limbaugh, squelcher of creativity and culture, champion of the almighty dollar, who – at night after he screws his salon coiffed, college-degreed, four-door sedan driving wife – tucks his GOP member neatly back into his starched, white boxer shorts and

sleeps.

And so does the man on the sidewalk.

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I didn't think. I just emoted what I'd learned growing up in '70s San Francisco. Back then, I don't think I ever knew any conservatives. I'd certainly never heard their points of view. I'd grown up with young, liberal, bohemian parents - traveling the world in a trailer, living on nude beaches, hitchhiking, living a semi-communal life in SF State University student housing. I'd gone to public schools, listened to the media and pop culture... went to a protest or two. I even stood adoring Jane Fonda as she yelled about the Vietnam War, one day, in Golden Gate Park.

Then I got life experience of my own. Moved out by myself, got married, raised a child, put her in public school, started (and still run) a business. And along the way I've had mind-altering, life-learning, mind-shattering, gut-wrenching experiences, experiences that were completely counter to what I'd believed.

Those experiences opened my eyes enough to look further. I questioned. I researched. I confirmed. No longer could I simply walk blindly into the voting both punching D, D, D, D for Democrat right down the line. I no longer believed that my party was the good guy, the compassionate one, the party for the people. The decades of their lack of results was an inkling, I'd been duped.

When I have more time I'll write about experiences that open my eyes and mind.

Caution: Very Graphic!

Along with my writing, I have graphic design skills - having designed business cards, ad graphics and websites. Here are a few samples:

(More sample graphics on my writing site)

Modifications of one face. Starting with this image:  Using a variety of filters and other effects, I distorted this face into nine different images -

LA Will Miss You, Julius Shulman!!

*I wrote this last month, the day I found out Julius Shulman died. But I just found some photos I took of the day I met Julius on his 95th birthday, and wanted to add them. They show how alive and exuberant he was, even at 95. 1) Julius and Me 2) Julius hoisting a beer -

 

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(Julius Shulman photo of Stahl House, Case Study #22)

Julius Shulman died 7/15/2009. This post, below, was originally written 7/16/2009

I just learned Julius Shulman, iconic LA photographer, died Wednesday at the age of 98. As a writer, I was incredibly fortunate to attend his 95th Birthday at the Getty Museum, which coincided with his Modernity and the Metropolis photography exhibit.

Just two days ago, I told someone how inspirational Julius is to me. The day of his 95th birthday at the Getty, after his lecture, people mingled, sipped cocktails - a rather stiff and stuffy affair. Then Julius wheeled into the room. With a huge smile on his face and eyes so alive they seemed to radiate electricity, the entire space buzzed with new energy. Eventually, he got up to talk about the book he was workING on. Yes," ing", not past tense - but at the moment and in the future. The man was 95 and still excited about his work!

And what a lifetime of work he already had accumulated. His stunning photographs conveyed the best of LA: creativity, innovation, sleek style, landmark-worthy architecture. From his lecture, he seemed to say his life in photography all began in a mystical fluke of events. As for mystical, His decades of photographs helped to make LA seem that way, mystical, nearly mythical, a city that stands out as unique from anywhere else, a place where a person can do anything, even build (earthquakes be damned!) a home that seems to float in the air, jutting out from the Hollywood Hills, above the sparkling lights and palm trees of Los Angeles. Julius' photographs captured these midcentury modern architectural masterpieces in such a way that LA looks like a fantasy of possibilities.

Now gone, Julius will live on in his photos and within this city. He made a difference and will be greatly missed.

Confusion Can Be a Very Creative State of Mind

The Museum of Jurassic Technology - 9341 Venice Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232 - (310) 836-6131

 

Founder David Wilson has created a mystery emporium, an odditorium - and like carnival mirrors, the exhibits bend and distort.... well, you'll have to see for yourself.

But think about this before going to the Museum of Jurassic Technology:

"Confusion can be a very creative state of mind," said David Wilson (museum founder) in an interview with author Lawrence Weschler, originally aired on NPR, October 27, 2001.
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As my husband and I stand just feet from the museum's entrance, a couple exit the building. The man, looking perplexed, rubs and bats his eyes. The woman with him has a thought bubble over her confused face that says, "What did  we just experience?!!" But they themselves say nothing at all. My husband and I don't know what to expect. We enter.

It's dark inside. There are disembodied sounds - howling coyotes and Indian chants - floating around the serious looking, yet curious, exhibits; many of these odd exhibits are accompanied by recordings of verbose, Latin-filled double speak, sounding very authoritative and knowing. After seconds of listening to this, my brain starts to feel like it's spinning in my skull on puree.

After nearly an hour of repeating "What?" about a thousand times, we stumble upon the tea room with a high Moorish ceiling and a pixy in a Russian dress who asks if we want tea and cookies. Of course, my husband and I don't resist. We sit down at a candle lit table and think. A threesome (a guy and two girls) entwined in a velvety corner alcove, sip tea while discussing Nietzsche and existentialism. Meanwhile, I'm just thinking, "Hey, these almond cookies are really good."

Horned humans, bats who can fly through solid matter, theories on forgetting, yellowed Victorian-era telegrams that come across as scammy as Nigerian Spam... What? Do you question? Do you simply trust? Do you have a good ironic laugh? Yep, and you may just see things a little differently after.

Upon returning to the glare and noise of mid-day Venice Boulevard, everything looks a little askew, like entering an alternate universe. I probably look as perplexed as those other people I saw leaving earlier, but actually I'm just thinking (and not about cookies, this time): "Question everything."

David Wilson is right: "Confusion can be a very creative state of mind."

Westwood Theaters Closing

My husband and I were just in Westwood, last Friday night. We stopped to walk around and find something sweet to eat. As we strolled, we noticed, sadly, that there were two theaters closed. Ugh.

But still, the other theaters - the beautiful old movie cinemas from the '30s glamour days: the Village and the Bruin - are opened, I thought. But when I opened the next morning's Saturday LA Times and read this article, I learned I was wrong.

LA Times: "Preservationists are also bracing for the potential loss of the village's two most architecturally distinctive theaters: the Village and Bruin, which date from the 1930s. Encino-based Mann Theatres has given notice that it intends not to renew its leases on the Broxton Avenue theaters -- one Spanish Mission style with the famed neon-lighted Fox tower, the other Art Moderne with a distinctive wraparound marquee. Both are city historic-cultural monuments."

How sad.

Now, they'll join the other "Cinema Treasures", those once beautiful, magical buildings now demolished or turned into T-shirt shops.

I’m a Movie-Lusting Vidiot!

Vidiots: 302 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405 – 310-392-8508

What’s a Vidiot? From their website I learned Vidiot is derived from “Vidiots’ Delight”: someone who loves the pleasure of a prolonged movie trance.

Movie Nirvana

Do you lust after movies? I found the best Video & DVD store I’ve ever been to: Vidiots. I can’t believe they’ve been opened since 1985. Where have I been? Their film selection (more than 45,000 titles – specializing in foreign, documentary, independent and rare out of print titles) is so vast and eclectic, you can find that Jean-Luc Godard or Akira Kurosawa film you’ve been searching for. Or you might stumble upon a Frank Zappa video you never knew existed.  And then you may just get so excited to discover this film-nirvana that you’ll join other new Vidiots and spontaneously tear up your Blockbuster card.  I was told people did this so often upon discovering Vidiots, there used to be a wall covered in shredded blue, white and yellow plastic.

Big Deal!!

Here’s a secret! I discovered this while fondling the foreign films and drooling over documentaries –  Vidiots is having a sale, half-off membership (lifetime and annual), now through August 15, 2009. Check out the regular membership prices on their site. Yep, those prices will be cut in half! Also, if you stop into Vidiots anytime until July 31^st and say, “Summer”, you’ll receive a free rental with another rental (limit one per customer).

Vidiots and the Film Industry

If the amount of titles is a bit overwhelming Vidiots’ employees are all so passionate and knowledgeable, they’ll be able to give you great recommendations. They even help film production companies with research, rent to film critics and host in-store appearances by Angelica Huston, Wes Craven, Oliver Stone, Callie Khouri, Kenneth Anger and other biggies in the film industry.

Vidiots film collection is so large it’s divided into very specific sections: English Language Directors and Foreign Directors, for example. These sections make an impact. Director Nicolas Roeg came to Vidiots to have his photo taken in front of his film section. And some Directors have been known to get insulted if they don’t have their own section; one Director even had a letter sent to Vidiots asking why his section was so small.  

Vidiots, what a huge selection you have!

A few other sections are: Cult films (Betty Page, Mexican wrestling, etc.); Noir; Vintage Comedies; British TV; Silent; A documentary section so large it’s broken down into many areas, including – Beats, Space, Philosophy, Americana, World History, etc., And the Music area is sectioned into types (Funk & Soul, Gospel & A Capella, etc.) and Artists area, such as Elvis and Les Banks. They’ve got things you’ve been searching for and things you may have never imagined existed - even a DVD titled “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” with this review: “Unintentionally hilarious.”  

 In the beginning…

Vidiots' owners, Cathy Tauber and Patty Polinger, grew up in West LA, and have been friends since they were three years old. Cathy used to work as an office manager for late musical genius/rocker Frank Zappa and Patty worked for MGM/UA in foreign distribution. They were frustrated film-lovers who could never find the movies they wanted at video stores. After reading an Esquire magazine article about a few unique video stores in other states that specialized in independent films and such, Cathy and Patty got the idea to open Vidiots. They started with only 800 titles.

Things Happen at Vidiots!!

24 years later, they’re still in business and have experienced nearly everything: The ’94 earthquake, fire, floods, Elvis impersonators, people disrobing, girl fights, women flashing boobs to have them signed by Russ Meyer (Director of “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”). Director Henry Jaglom, at one of the Vidiots' events, hired a guy on the spot, after he raised his hand and asked how to get into the industry. Jaglom's answer, "You've got a job." Then there are the various animals and reptiles that’ve escaped from the pet store next-door, and have been found amongst the aisles and up in the rafters:  An Australian Monitor lizard and three boa constrictors; the last snake – a white boa – was given away to a customer, after many warnings to the pet store owner. (photo of Australian monitor lizard taken by Maureen)

Become a Vidiot, too!

So film-freaks and cinephiles, instead of depending on the artificial intelligence of computer generated film recommendations, or rather than aimlessly drifting through the drab aisles of those boring chain video stores, have an experience! Walk past the brightly painted windows (painted by assistant manager and artist Patrick McGilligan) and into the doorway of Vidiots. You’ll discover a film nirvana, a place where vintage film favorites of your past sit beside those until-now undiscovered film rarities. If you’re like me, you’ll become a Vidiot, too.

Hey check Vidiots out here on Youtube with Michael Cera. Vidiots appears at 5:45 on the video.

 

LA Farmers Market 75th Anniversary

Farmers Market celebrates their 75th anniversary (opened since 1934), July 13-19. See the details and events here at their site.

This has always been one of my favorite places in LA, somewhere to grab a bite, shop and people watch. And, unlike its neighbor The Grove, Farmers Market wasn't just manufactured recently to look like it came from another era. Farmers Market is the real thing, a rare LA survivor (unlike the Ambassador Hotel or Schwabs, places now gone) from another time - when Marilyn Monroe was just an LA kid with a dream, when the Ambassador Hotel was still swinging, before James Dean ever filmed Rebel Without a Cause at the Griffith Park Observatory. And not only has Farmers Market survived, but it's aged gracefully... without lots of "plastic surgery".

It's a real community, where Angelenos come sit and talk, sip a glass of wine at the French Cafe, shop at the gourmet market, or the butcher, or grab a cone at Bennett's Ice Cream. My favorite new food stand there is a Brazilian place, Pampas Grill, that charges based on the price of your plate. The grilled meats are a little spicy, really juicy and come with a huge assortment (all buffet-style) of side orders: plantain, cheese rolls, salads, black beans and more.

But then, any place at Farmers Market is worth the visit.

Bargain Babe's Frugal Festival 2009

 
Bargain Babe, Julia Scott, held her first ever Frugal Festival in Encino's Woodley Park - and I volunteered. Julia's a former LA Daily News writer, known for her Bargain Hunter columns (and my Facebook Friend). When she announced her Frugal Festival on Facebook, I thought, "Hey, this sounds like a great idea. Why not get off my butt and help?" So I did... it was great. And what a good turn out!

Plus, I was given a fun task. Julia put me in charge of the Frugal Tip Box, where I encouraged people to write down and submit their best money-saving tips. Not only did I meet some really friendly people, but I got to hear some great ideas, and some interesting ones - like the "tip" from guy who wanted to be anonymous who told me he buys his girlfriend JC Penny's lingerie, cuts off the labels and wraps it all up inside Victoria Secret packaging. Yikes!

There was a financial writer giving financial advice; coupon exchanges; a free swap table with all kinds of items; food, fun, prizes, good people in a nice park - and it was all free-of-charge.

More photos here.

"California has always been a figment of its own imagination..." Kevin Starr

(photo of Kevin Starr from the LA Times)

My mom's cousin, author and California Historian, Kevin Starr is in the LA Times today in the Patt Morrison Asks piece. He very candidly talks a little about his childhood, our Irish family and his beloved grandma (my mom's grandma and my great-grandma). It's a very fun, interesting piece. I love his constant adoration for our state: California. And his rightful outrage for how it's now being run. I truly admire his clear, non-political, unapologetic opinions. No wonder, I can't stand political hacks - it's in my blood not to.

Last I saw Kevin and his beautiful wife Sheila was at UCLA. I invited them over for dinner. While we dined on spaghetti, salad and garlic bread, I selfishly picked Kevin's brain about writing, publishing, our family history. Why didn't I ask him more about himself? And when I published my first big piece in the LA Daily News: "Valley State of Mind," Kevin was the first to congratulate me on being a published California writer.

This photo is of Thomas Norton and Maggie Driscoll Norton, my great-grandmother Mollie Norton Collins' parents (whom Kevin refers to in this article).
 

Kooky Stuff I Never Noticed Before

It's hard to believe I've lived near Pierce College in Woodland Hills for years and only just discovered John Ehn's folk art statues. For more info about John Ehn and his Kooky and sort of creepy statues, Check out this site and this one.

 

Ebook and Website for "Craving Normal" Coming Soon!

Pierce College Farmer's Market

I just drove by Pierce College in Woodland Hills and saw a sign that said Certified Farmer's Market, April-September,  Thursdays from 5 pm-9pm. I don't know how it is, but I'm going to check it out. It'll be located at the corner of De Soto Ave. & Victory Bl.

 

 

Gadzook-illions, incomprehensi-billions... New Numbers for Our New Economy

(

(That's my photo on the $100 bill.That's how worthless US $ has become)

Writer and Bargain Hunter, Julia Scott (the Bargain Babe), is a Facebook Friend of mine. She liked my Facebook status, where I mentioned my husband and I are busy thinking up new numbers (i.e. Gadzook-illions and incomprehensi-billions) since the Fed is printing money like toilet paper. So she posted about it in her Bargain Babe Blog. (photo from Julia's site).

Check out her blog! She's got lots of great money-saving tips!

Oh, here are more numbers I thought of:

What-chu-talkin-bout-Willis-ions

Can-never-be-paid-off-in-a-lifetime-zillions

I’m-a-slave-to-the-government-kabillions

Take-my-first-born-plus-an-arm-and-a-leg-trillions

Just-shoot-me-now-quadrillions

My Utopia or Your Utopia? A "New" Concept of Communing in California

Here's an intriguing NPR story about people returning to the idea of communal living here in California, due to the economy.

What's most interesting to me are the comments. One commenter named Andrew Huston wrote:"I lived in an "Intentional Community" in Silicon Valley that eventually broke down due to the power dynamic. The founders of the community were all about harmony and making decisions by consensus, EXCEPT when anyone disagreed with them and then they became despots. Others got into arguments about who could be "Greener than thou". Finally there were always arguments about who was putting in enough time in the communal garden, or making communal meals etc. The whole thing ended in tears."

Which is how I always assumed "Utopian" living would be, because we all have different ideas about what would be Utopia, so the only way to live "as one" would be to force one person's idea of Utopia onto others through enforcement of rules, etc.

Many of the commenters conclude that it might be best if we all just got back to the good old fashion knowing  your neighbors, having parents home to keep an eye out for the kids, kids who should be playing out in the sunshine and not alone inside with video games and junk food.

Now that's my idea of Utopia: Live and let live, but keep an out for each other.

 

Here's a little post about my week in a commune.

A Day in Malibu, Better - and Cheaper - Than Therapy

Sit back, relax and watch my Malibu Slideshow.

When Things Were So Bad They Were Good: My Goofy Website

Here's a goofy website (When Things Were So Bad They Were Good) I created (and need to tweak) as an assignment in my web design class. If you click on it and the Kodachrome navigation buttons don't light up, can you please tell me? Thanks! Sometimes they don't work in Internet Explorer.

As I said, I'm still working on it; it needs more text and meta tags, etc. And the theme is completely useless other than to humor myself. But, these days, humor is one thing I can still afford.

I Finally Made it to Glamour Magazine!!

*Update: I was zoning out on reality TV last night, watching the Rachel Zoe Project, when I saw the Glamour Magazine editor, Susan Cernek, who wrote to me asking to post my photo in Glamour's online mag... I know, my brush with fame is such a tenuous stretch most people wouldn't even mention it. But most people aren't as pathetic as I am. And most people wouldn't have yelled at the TV, when seeing Susan, "Ohhh... she emailed me!"

No, I didn't contribute an article... but check it out. Yep, that's me!

In the '80s I lived my life according to Glamour Magazine, following every home-made facial religiously, taking every personality quiz, i.e. "How Date-able Are you?", and trying out every hairstyle and smokey-eyed make-up technique. Finally, it all paid off!!

OK, so it's a few decades later than I hoped. I never imagined my fashion faux pas would catch up to me so many years later. Oh well, the editor Susan did mention I have a killer guacamole recipe. That's something, right?

Lesson to be learned? If you're going to be a slave to fashion, you, too, may end up in a "Real Person or American Apparel Ad" under the category "Believe it or Not" years later.

For more of my questionable '80s fashion moments visit my Flickr page.

How Seahorses are Like Pizza and The Beatles

Recently, I got a call to audition for a new game show based on the Trivial Pursuit game, so I said "What the heck." I tried out. And what do you know, I passed the trivia test and went on to play a mock game on video. So I felt good about that. Even though, just after finding out I passed the test, a guy who didn't pass the test said to me before leaving, "Well, I guess you must be trivial." Ouch!

Trivia: of little value or importance

Thinking back to my last few days of conversations I've had with people, I think my fellow game show auditioner might be right. I am trivial. But these days (with rising food prices, sliding economy, warring nations), sometimes I crave those moments of little value or importance... as long as they make me laugh.
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While we picked our car up at the repair shop, my husband asked the mechanic why he had a bunch of tacks pinned into a wall-sized map. The mechanic said, "Oh, those are all the countries I've been to."

I said, "Wow, that's great!" and looked closer at the map. "Thailand?"

"Yep," the mechanic nodded. "Beautiful place. Wonderful people."

"Australia?"

"Uh huh, another great place."

"New Zealand?"

"Yep. Really beautiful, but cold."

"Kazakhstan, too?" I asked, seeing a tack in the middle of the country. That one really impressed me.

"Uh no. That tack is just holding up the map."
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With my phone to one ear and a pen in my right hand, I struggled to make out every letter of an extremely long email address I needed.

"Okay, B as in Bob? A as in Apple... (blah blah blah)... at U mail? Is that U as in..." I struggled to think of a word that starts with U. "U as in... underwear?"

Doh! Only after hanging up did I realized the "U" in U mail is for University, as in university mail.
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Because my husband and I have been married nearly twenty years, it's rare that I can tell him something he doesn't know about me. So when he mentioned a story in the newspaper about seahorses, I got excited. Seahorses!!  Now, that's a new subject for us, I thought.

"When I was a kid," I started to tell him, remembering trips to the San Francisco Aquarium, "I loooooooooved seahorses, was fascinated by seahorses..."

He lowered the newspaper and looked at me. "You and every other kid. Who doesn't love seahorses? Seahorses are like The Beatles and Pizza -everyone loves them."  
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So not only am I trivial, but I'm completely average. 

 

My Life in Lyrics

For Sunday Scribblings writing prompt - "Observations"

Ever notice how you can relate to whatever’s playing on the radio? Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just an egomanic-drama queen who sees my life as a film and the music playing in the background as my own soundtrack. I mean, didn't The Beatles get together right before I was born just to write songs for me? Hey, they did sing "Michelle"... and that's my name, so I practically thought so.

It’s the morning of my eighteenth birthday. I’m driving my metallic-green VW bug to school. I turn on the radio. The Beatles are singing “They say it’s your birthday…” And I smile wide as though they wrote that just for me.

It’s a brilliant blue-skied June afternoon. I just got out of school and am driving to the beach in the same VW bug. The sun is landing like diamonds on cars that I zoom by. Wind whistles through my car’s little winged windows, whipping my hair around my face.  The guy I went to the prom with is sitting in the passenger seat. “Hey, can I drive your car?” he asks. I pull over and let him take the wheel. The radio is on. He pulls away from the curb as The Beatles sing “Baby, you can drive my car…”

An earlier summer, while cruising down El Camino Boulevard with my girlfriends, I see a cute boy driving in a car somewhere between Heidi’s Pies and the Hillsdale Mall. We meet, and spend the following weeks talking on the phone. On weekends we rendezvous at a McDonald’s on El Camino Boulevard. Then one rainy Saturday night, he and his friend Mark never show up to meet me and my friend Jackie. After almost an hour of waiting, we get back into Jackie’s Nova to return home to Pacifica. As her windshield wipers swish-swop, Phil Collins' voice pours out of her radio: “There must be some misunderstanding. There must be some kind of mistake. I waited in the rain for hours… and you were late…” Oh, as if my pain isn’t sharp enough, those lyrics make the night all the more tragic (because as a teenage girl, a boy not showing up is a tragedy).

Yesterday, I’m driving down the 101, taking my daughter to live on her own for the first time, to her very own college apartment up the coast. My husband is following us in a van carrying all of her stuff. We’re excited for her. Her future, like the ocean below the 101, is spread out and waiting. Sarah Mclachlan’s voice oozes from the radio, “I will remember you. Will you remember me? Don’t let your life pass you by… weep not for the memories…” My glasses get steamy. I’m such a mellow-dramatic sap. As the music plays, one part of my brain focuses on the road ahead of me while another part of my brain plays a transparent slideshow of my daughter’s childhood. The photographic-memories overlap on top of the dotted lines of the 101. There she is dressed as a kitty for Halloween, selling lemonade for 5 cents, graduating from eighth grade, carrying her surfboard down the beach…

Back in the Valley, just hours after moving our daughter into her apartment and returning the moving van to the rental company, my husband and I drive over to Brent’s Deli in Northridge. We split a pastrami reuben and fries. It’s a weird day. The sky is mottled-gray. The air feels thick and muggy. I munch on pickles and look around. There’s a rocker dude in the booth in front of us – jet black hair, goatee, tattoos up his arms, maybe a little eyeliner smudged under his eyes. He’s wearing a Joan Jett and the Black Hearts T-shirt. That reminds me of driving with my daughter earlier in the day. I remember a Joan Jett song came on the radio. I try to remember what song it was, but can’t recall. Guess I was feeling foggy.

Music is floating from the speakers at Brent’s Deli. Here we are, just minutes from Reseda, as Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin” plays overhead: “She’s a good girl, loves her mama, loves Jesus and America, too. She’s a good girl, crazy bout Elvis…Loves horses and her boyfriend too. It’s a long day living in Reseda…” And then I hear my daughter’s words in my head from the day before. “Welp, it’s my last day in the Valley.” Just the week before she told me how she was excited about leaving, and how she’ll miss everyone, “But, you know, it’ll be nice to get away.” I know. That’s how I felt twenty years earlier when I left home.

So… she’s on to her new life. And so are we. Before leaving, Lauren finally returned my guitar, so I’m going to pick up where I left off teaching myself chords, and playing mangling the few songs I taught myself, like “Mrs. Robinson” and “Moon River”…

Moon river wider than a mile
I’m crossing you in style someday
You dream maker, you heartbreaker
Wherever you’re going I’m going your way
Two drifters off to see the world
There’s such a lot of world to see

As The Beatles would say, “Obla Di Obla Da… life goes on.”  And I'm pretty sure they wrote that just for me, just for days like yesterday. Or does everyone think that?

RANT: If You Want Good Italian Food in Hollywood...

Don't go to Miceli's on Las Palmas!

*This is old, I just edited it and now it popped up to the top of my posts, so maybe Miceli's has improved since this experience.

I wanted my daughter's birthday dinner to be special.  Her only request?  To go out to an Italian dinner in Hollywood.  She's a Valley kid who likes to escape whenever she can.  And she also happens to love the sort of Italian food that's covered in red sauce and mozzarella. So I Googled Chowhound messageboards for an old style Italian place. I wanted the sort of restaurant that would make my daughter feel special, some place festive. That's why I chose Miceli's. Actually, someone on Chowhound recommended it, and they threw in that the Beatles once ate there. Well, I looooove the Beatles! But they were skinny Liverpool lads too involved with their incredible music to know bangers from Bruschetta, so I should have known better.

The problems were... Uh, where do I begin? The food. The food...how shall I put this? Okay. Two words: Canned mushrooms. Yes, this is an old Hollywood establishment; it's been around since 1949, and back then canned food was all the rage. My gawd! People were excited about Spam back in '49. But it's 2006, people! Canned mushrooms on chicken marsala? That's not acceptable. Sorry.

Horrified by the shiny canned mushrooms, my daughter put the marsala aside and ordered a cheese pizza. When it came, it was swimming under an ooze of greasy cheese. My husband said the side dish of pasta in tomato sauce he was given was not even edible. He also ordered the Marsala and - once he scraped off the mushrooms - managed to eat some of it.

But before we ever tasted the practically-inedible main course, there was the appetizer combo: A platter of supposedly different items: calamari, zucchini, mozzarella sticks. But they all tasted the same, like old fried batter. The only way I knew the difference was the texture. The calamari was chewy. The zucchini was mushy.

Honestly, if the other parts of the experience were good enough to compensate for the food, I wouldn't be complaining. But no! The service was also a disaster. I had to wait five minutes at the bar (before we were seated) to order drinks. No one else was ordering drinks. The bartender just felt like walking away and leaving me there. And when he came back to take my drink order... well, I think he was some sort of soul-sucking zombie. First, he just stood in front of me without talking. Scary! "Can I help you?" would have been nice. Then the sad eyes in his somber face passed my gaze and I felt all the joy I've ever felt in my life leave. He was like a vacuum of doom. I shuttered and gave him my order, "Whiskey sour, one coke, two Shirley Temples." He didn't smile. He didn't nod his head or say "Alrighty then" or "I'll be right back with your order." No jaunty little tap on the counter. Nothing! He just sort of slunked away and left me with a chill crawling over my skin. And his soul sucking was only magnified by the creepy 1920's era music from the sad, hunched over woman playing on the piano. I guess when I mentioned on Chowhound I wanted atmosphere, I should've been specific: A fun, festive atmosphere; not "Night of the Living Dead" goes Italian. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.

And then there was our waiter. I thought he knew it was my daughter's birthday. They did ask when I made the reservation. Silly me, I thought they asked that for a reason. But then maybe they ask, "Will this be for a birthday?" like AT&T asks me to input every personal identification code I have into the automated system only to get a human on the line who then asks for all the numbers again. Argh! "I just spent fifteen minutes pushing these numbers on my phone key pad!" I tell them, and all they can say is "sorry." My life is being piddled away by people who ask questions and don't care about the answer. Just like at Miceli's tonight. Why did they ask if no one cared anyway? Once our joyless wonder of a waiter, who I will refer to as "Lurch," came to our table, all thoughts of a festive occasion left for good. We'd be on our own, chatting and laughing...which we could have done at home around a table of good food.

While the bartender zapped my joy, the waiter seemed to usurp my energy, leaving me zero energy to tell him it was my daughter's birthday. Plus, I had an absurd image in my head of the completely bored man singing Happy Birthday in monotone. Anyway, I didn't want anyone to sing Happy Birthday. That would've embarrassed her. I just wanted her to feel special. "Hey! It's your birthday today? Well, then I'll take your order first." Anything. Something. But the waiter never smiled. He brought her canned mushroom covered Chicken marsala last, which was actually to her benefit. When we dropped my daughter's friend off at her house, I said, "See you later! Just let us know the next time you want to go out of your way for some less than average Italian Food." She laughed. I laughed. We all laughed. So I guess we have that.

Zivjo! What in the World are You Eating?

Hello, World!! To my visitors from Slovenia I say, "Zivjo! Dober Dan!" To my visitors from Indonesia I say, "Selamat Pagi!" To my Swedish visitors I give you a big "God dag!" And "Hello!" Arlington, Virginia.

About a day ago, I put this new Feedjit map web-counter on my site. It tracks where people who come to my site are located around the world. I find it fascinating! The first thing I think is, "Wow, someone in Sao Paulo, Brazil has found me!" The next thing I think, because my mind always goes to food, is "Hmmm, I wonder what they had for dinner on their side of the world?"

So please tell me, What's one of your favorite foods or meals?

Ever since I traveled as a child, and took a bite of Paella made over a fire-pit in the hills above Estepona, Spain, I've been fascinated by how people eat in other countries. I even think I had a children's cookbook with recipes from around the world.

So here's what I've been eating in California every single day: Avocados. They're soooo good, I top my eggs with avocado and salsa. I put avocado in my turkey on wheat sandwiches with sprouts and tomatoes. I slice them open and pour salsa or hot sauce inside and eat the dreamy-green creaminess in scoops with a spoon. I must eat two whole avocados a day, at least.

Here's my favorite guacamole recipe:

2 avocados, soft to the touch

1 ripe tomato, diced

Two Tablespoons red onion, diced

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 lime

1 or 2 serrano chiles, (cooked under broiler or on a grill until skin is blackened, remove charred skin). Then dice.

2 to 3 Tablespoons of fresh cilantro

Sea Salt to taste

*Red pepper flakes or Tobasco sauce can be added for more heat

Slice open avocados. Remove pit and scoop insides into a bowl. Mix together all ingredients above and add in fresh lime and salt to taste. Mash with back of fork until chunky, not too blended. Then dip, pour, slather, lick...douse yourself in the stuff!

So what about you? What are your favorite foods in your part of the world?

Don't Fear the Spatula

Well, that went by in a blur!

Wasn’t it just days ago we brought our newborn home from the hospital, driving a cautious fifteen miles per hour? I swear I was just wondering when I’d ever get to sleep again. In those demanding Desitin ointment and diaper months after, I was convinced I’d spend the rest of my life covered in creamed spinach and pureed pears.

We thought we were going to go insane, her dad and I, once she learned to climb out of her crib. Entire evenings were spent doing nothing but listening to toddler screams as we took turns watching her bedroom door, picking up our squirming two-year-old and placing her back in her crib, only to have her escape over and over again.  So exhausted and desperate, we did two things: 1) called a local hospital’s Baby Help Line begging for a solution to our baby’s all-night screaming, but got no help at all. 2) Out of desperation, we crammed a rubber spatula under our toddler’s sliding wooden bedroom door and thick carpeting, thinking that would keep her from running from her room. It didn’t work. She was too determined to escape. The kitchen utensil did buy us enough time to take two minute breaks, so we kept using it. But we were afraid she’d grow up with a fear and resentment of spatulas.

At three years old, she’d wear outfits for months at a time. Her raincoat she wore everyday until it rained, then she refused to ever wear it again. Her cowboy boots she wore with her dinosaur shirt and sailor shorts, and then her teacher called to say, “Lauren should be happy to hear, considering she wears her cowboy boots everyday, that Friday is Western dress-up day." Of course, that’s the day she stopped wearing cowboy boots.

She seemed to have no fear. When she was about eight, the weekend after that Thanksgiving, while stuck in the San Francisco airport, she took out her flute she had packed and joined a fellow flutist to entertain weary travelers.

She’d skateboard down steep hills, splash in the ocean waves on foggy December days and later sit herself in the middle front row at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice awards. She later called her dad and me to say, “Turn on the TV. You’ll see me.” We did, sitting right next to the host Ben Stiller, as she casually chomped on her gum.  

Dressed in surf shorts, t-shirts and hi-top Converse, she's drop-in off steep ramps at skateboard parks and play on co-ed basketball or t-ball teams, usually the only girl. When she was twelve we bought her a basketball hoop for Christmas, only to have her decide she’d rather put on lip gloss, listen to music and style her hair.

Her earlier teen years convinced me her terrible-twos weren’t so terrible after all. But I’d rather savour the good memories, so I’ll just sum up those years with this look (See photo on right). I received this expression a lot.

But there were nice moments, too. She and I had nice talks while driving to and from school. We’d see movies together and spend days at the beach. Though thirteen through fifteen were the stormiest years, by sixteen she began working and making her own spending money. She saved up for a car, and then we saw her a lot less. No more nice talks on the way to school, no more driving over Topanga Canyon, music blasting, toward the ocean, just the two of us. Her car was her first big step to freedom.

Now, she’s just about to head off for school and live in a college beach town. She bought a coffee table and a gray with pink beach cruiser with skull decals, and has already paid her (thanks to her grandparents) deposit on her apartment. Her own apartment? Weird! I swear she was just telling me, “Mommy, I never wanna leave you.” And I said, “Sweetie, believe me, one day you’ll want to leave.” Funny, I didn’t think that day would come so soon.

In a few days, I’m taking her to buy things she’ll need for her apartment kitchen. One of those things will be a spatula. Thankfully, she has no fear of them... or much else.

Bumper Cars Driven By Drunks

Because I love to write as much as I love to eat and drink, I'm going to start adding recipes themed to my posts. So with that in mind, here's a drink I just made up I call:

A Bumper Car

8 oz. Coca Cola

2 oz. Rum (or more)

8 oz. Ice

1 Cherry popsicle (after removing sticks)

Blend well. Then drink while eating carnival food (corn dogs, chili fries or kettle corn, for instance), and then you'll wake up feeling like you've been hit by a bumper car.
**********************************************************

Sometimes my brain works about as smoothly as bumper cars driven by drunks. It's not pretty.  Here, I'll give you a glimpse of my writing process today. Believe me, you’ll feel much better about yourself once you have some idea of what’s occurring in my head.

I sit myself down to write and my mind conjures a million ideas. Again, imagine those whisky-breathed drunkards slamming bumper cars into each other. Or imagine every concert-goer at, say, Woodstock simultaneously raising hands and shouting, “Write about the time you spilled drinks on Ted Danson” or “Hey, no! Write about taking the wrong plane!” or “Forget those! Write about living in Greece with your pet octopus and tortoise!” or “No, you’ve gotta write about the car-thief-roommate you had put in jail!” “What about all the jobs you screwed up? You were a drink-spilling waitress, an overly enthusiastic aerobics instructor, and an over-the-top-gum-chewing-boa-flinging hooker on ‘Cagney and Lacey’.” Then, just as I’m trying to listen to these frenetic thoughts, my husband walks in and says to me, after seeing me stare at the computer screen, “Why don’t you write about that credit card guy from this morning?”

Here’s what happened this morning: First, you should know, I hate credit cards. I'm not one of those numb-skulls that waves around the card squealing "Free money!! Charge! it" But we needed a few things for our business... Anyway, I think of the little beasty-bills as landmines, landmines that will blow up if I pay one hour later than they are due, landmines that can change instantly from 0% to double digit interest rates if late.  Well, last week, I made sure (as I always do) to pay one of the bills early to avoid any sort of explosions.  Yesterday (Tuesday) I realized I paid the wrong one and left the one that was due before it sitting in my bill folder. That meant the one I thought I paid early didn't get paid, but it was due this past Monday!!!! so I hyperventilated. Then I called the credit card company, paid the late-bill by phone and was told I could call Wednesday (today) to reinstate my 0% interest rate, since I had proof I simply paid the wrong bill.

Cut to the phone call this morning:

Me: Hi, yes, a nice man I spoke to yesterday told me that I could reinstate my interest rate because I have proof I simply paid the wrong bill, when I met to pay the one that was due.

Creepy Credit Card Man: Well, not exactly.

And then in a weird twist -something similar to going to the doctor expecting to have a splinter removed and then ending up having a gynecological exam - the Creepy Credit Card Man began asking invasive questions about my finances: my income, my home equity, all about our business, whether I’ve made funeral plans… (Well, not quite, but almost)...  Whatever numbers I gave him were just some that I threw out to get to the reason I called.  Since he had the power to raise my rate, I thought I would be abnormally polite.  Normally, I would’ve told him this information was none of his business.  But I grasped that he was a little man in an uncomfortable suit with a tie strangling his neck. He needed to feel important. So I took pity and tossed him some phony numbers.

The Creepy Credit Card Man (after hearing my supposed financials) took a deep breath and blew into the phone as if he were really disappointed with me.  Yes!  He huffed.  He huffed as I used to when my daughter would come into the house covered in mud after I just mopped.

Me: (laughing) Uh… are you huffing on my account? You really don’t have to worry…

The CCC Man ignored me and (after feeling quite satisfied of his own self-importance) reinstated my interest rate.  

Sorry, folks, that’s about as exciting as it got for me today. Sad, I know.

I really do have better stories - full-written stories that need editing; partially written stories that need finishing, and then there’s the traffic jam of stories clogging the 101 and 405 junctions in my skull. It’s just a matter of kicking off the drunks, pointing the cars forward and going full speed ahead.

It's July and I'm Thinking About Christmas

Yep, it's about 90 degrees in the San Fernando Valley and 165 days, 4 hours and 54 minutes until Christmas and I'm thinking about the holidays already.

Here's why: I realized I can really relate to Ralphie from  "A Christmas Story." Yes, it's true, we each have eccentric fathers (Ralphie's dad and his leg lamp/my dad's suicidal Santa - photo below). But here's why I relate to Ralphie most - Ralphie, in " A Christmas Story," imagines his essay about his wish for a Red Ryder BB gun will thrill his teacher into marking it with A++++; he drifts off daydreaming about how ecstatic his teacher will become upon reading his stunning written work. It will be, he imagines, an essay so amazing his entire class can't help but cheer and chant his name..."Ralphie! Ralphie! Ralphie!"

That's how I felt yesterday as checked my e-mail. I'd sent a pitch letter to a big New York magazine only last week. And Like Ralphie, in the daydream bubble above my head, I imagine the straight-laced New York magazine editor becoming nearly unglued with joy upon reading my wonderful story idea; an idea so spectacular she says to her assistant, "Get this writer, Michele Miles Gardiner, on the phone immediately.  Tell her we love the idea! It's spectacular!!!" That's when I see her usually-unflappable assistant tripping over her desk to reach a phone to call me.  Unable to reach me, the assistant pounds out an e-mail with the subject line: "Your fantastic story idea - call us immediately".

Cut to reality:

I checked my e-mail to see it cluttered with spam:"Single and Lonely?" "Make Millions Working at Home" "Need your Organ Extended?"

Logically I know it may be months to get any sort of answer to my query letter... but I can dream. (photo below: I know I've posted this before, but, heck, why not post it again?  My dad built this Santa  and later stuck him on our roof with a gun to his head.)

The Reluctant Groupies

I just realized I have a large enough collection of “Awkward Celebrity Encounters” to create a new blog category just for them.

Here’s another one:

In 1984, I was twenty and won tickets to see a Paul Young concert at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco. I wasn’t necessarily a huge fan of Paul Young; I mean, I liked his songs. But mostly I was a huge fan of winning stuff off the radio. So my friend Dayna and I got all decked out in our lace tights, studded belts, bangles and big hair and went to the concert.

During the show, we were happy enough lost in the middle of the concert crowd when two of the theater’s security guards said to Dayna and me, “Hey, follow us. We’ll get you better spots.” They led us to an area right near the stage.  “Cool,” I thought. “We’re close enough to see Paul sweat.” And we were happy to be there and had no plans to get closer.

Once the show ended, the security guards again said, “Follow us.” We did.  And they took us backstage… no, actually, they pushed us backstage.  Once there, I thought, Now what? I didn’t particularly care to be back there. And Dayna, always way more cool than I was, cared even less. But once we were back there, with the security guards no where in sight, we started feeling mischievous. So we quietly walked down the hallway, covering our mouths as we tried not to laugh too loudly.

Then we poked our heads into an opened door, and there, all covered in sweat, stood Paul Young with his band.

Paul didn’t say anything, but his band or crew members started shouting, “Get out of here, you bitches!”

Yow! Now that wasn’t the reaction I expected, I thought. “We’re not bitches,” I think I squeaked, just before running behind Dayna in fear.

Dayna and I stumbled out of there and looked at each other. “Well that was weird,” Dayna said. “Yeah, quite an experience,” I agreed. And that was the end that - except that every time I’d hear a Paul Young song from then on, I’d get a little queasy.

Years later, one night in the early to mid 1990s, I went to pick my husband up at the recording studio he was working at in North Hollywood. When I arrived, he stood on the street in the dark talking to our songwriter/producer friend John Capek and some other man. It was too dark to see the other person well.  I approached the group.

“Oh, this is my wife, Michele,” my husband said to the mystery man.

As I reached out to shake the guy’s hand, my husband said, “Michele, this is Paul. Paul Young.”

I wonder if Paul thought it was weird that I laughed as I shook his hand?

A Weekend of Celebrity Encounters, 1986

Sunday Scribblings writing prompt this week:Write about a chance encounter you've had with an old friend or flame, or perhaps with a stranger -- or even a celebrity.

1986 – I was twenty-two and had lived in LA less than a year when my friend since childhood, Cindy, came to visit from San Francisco. I was living in a Spanish-style house, which I shared with three other people, on the hillside just above Poquito Mas (a tiny Mexican fastfood place) in Universal City. I worked as a movie extra, so I didn’t have a lot of money. But somehow – due to a crazy fluke of luck – Cindy and I had so many celebrity encounters that weekend, it almost seemed like my life was kind of exciting.

First, I couldn’t have planned Cindy’s arrival any better. She would be landing at LAX (LA Airport) that Friday afternoon. Coincidentally, my agency called to see if I could work on a film called “No Way Out,” which would be filming at LAX that same Friday. So I told Cindy, once her plane lands, to find the film crew and I’d be there.

Early that Friday morning, I reported to the “No Way Out” film set, got my wardrobe and went to the make-up chair where a hair-stylist wrestled my huge ‘80s hair into an elegant French twist. Then the stylist told me to wait in the trailer for a make-up person. While I waited alone – or so I thought - I checked out my wardrobe and my new up-swept do in the mirror, looking at myself from all angles. As time past, I swiveled in the chair and zoned out. Then I heard a male voice in the back of the trailer croak a laidback “Hello,” like maybe he just woke up.

I jumped in my seat, realizing, Uhh…I’m not alone. There - lounging on a couch in the back of the trailer, propped up on one tanned and toned arm, wearing faded Levi jeans and a white T-shirt – was an all-American boy-man with sandy-blonde hair. He'd been there the entire time. Ugh! Did I make any stupid faces in the mirror? And did he see me? My face felt hot. I mumbled, ”Hello,” and stared into my lap. I didn’t know who he was, maybe a crew member – a boom operator or an electrician – taking a break. I only knew he was cute.

About an hour later, I heard “Action!” So I did as directed and began walking in the background beside a taxi cab at the center of the scene. That’s when I saw the cute guy I met in the trailer again. He was dressed in a crisp, blue naval uniform… and he was the actor in this taxi cab scene.  He was the star of the film: Kevin Costner! That’s when I noticed his amazingly blue eyes, eyes that seemed all the bluer once I knew he was the film's star. Eh, I’m shallow.

Right after the scene, I saw my friend Cindy waving in the airport crowd. “Cindy, you’re here!!” I yelled, running toward her, still wearing my khaki pencil-skirt and heels, and then proceeded to slide and fall right on my face in front of the film crew. Some welcoming committee, huh?

But I made up for the sloppy welcome by introducing her to my “new friend” Kevin, between scenes. My eyelids wore out from batting them so furiously - which was especially pathetic because most of his attention seemed to be focused on my gorgeous green-eyed-brunette friend Cindy.

“What’s your name again?” Kevin asked her. “Cindy? Hmmm…” he said as his eyes climbed up her legs.

Little did we know then, Cindy also happens to be the name of the woman he was married to at the time.  Funny, he didn't mention that.

After filming, Cindy and I rode an airport elevator down with Kevin, and I said, in a way-too-loud voice, “So, Cindy, where should we go for lunch?” hinting (or shouting) maybe he might want to join us. Cindy elbowed me and whispered, “You are sooo obvious.”

Obvious, yes. But I was twenty-two and knew that if there’s anytime to take chances, to be lamely obvious, to make a fool of myself, it’s a good age to do it. But instead of sharing lunch with Kevin Costner, we watched him – again wearing his Levis and T-shirt - walk off into perfect, golden afternoon. He must’ve felt our eyes burning into him, because he turned around, smiled a dimpled smile and waved good-bye.

Later that night Cindy and I went to the Improv comedy club in Hollywood. Richard Jeni was one of the comedians who performed that evening. Cindy and I sat at a little round table in the front row, just the two of us, until Ray Parker, Jr. – the singer of “Ghostbusters” sat down with us. Again, Cindy elbowed me, but not to tell me how lame I was. Instead, she whispered, “That’s Ray Parker, Jr.” I smiled as nonchalantly as possible, as if I always sit at tables with singers whose catchy songs I can't get out of my head. 

After the show, Cindy and I got drinks at the Improv bar and were immediately approached by Richard Jeni. He and Cindy hit it off right away.

“Hey, wanna get something to eat at Canter’s?” He asked her.

I shrugged.

“Yeah, sounds great,” Cindy chirped.

At Canter’s, I picked at my pastrami on rye as Richard and Cindy had one of those immediate-connection conversations - not one pause or bored sigh; everything she or he said was amazing, brilliant, incredibly interesting or adorable! Yick.

Meanwhile, I ate pickles, let out bored sighs and mumbled about how we (meaning just Cindy and I) should head out to go dancing.

“Hey,” Richard said, looking deeply into Cindy’s eyes, completely forgetting I was there. “Why don’t I take you out tonight?”

“Well…” Cindy started to say until I interrupted.

“Eh, eh, eh… Look, Cindy’s here to see me. You can talk to her later,” I told Richard, thinking I was saving Cindy’s butt and she’d thank me later. Now that I look back, that was a lame-brain move on my part. Cindy paid for her own plane ticket and I should’ve shut-up and let her make her own decision. But at the time, I thought I was some sorta hero.

Anyway, Cindy - being the smart, thoughtful and kind friend she was/is - would have said what I said...only with a lot more tact and a less snotty attitude than I used. But I didn't give her a chance to speak.

Before we left Canter’s, Richard ran into Andrew Dice Clay, so we joined him and his mouth at another table. I think Dice talked until breakfast, at least it seemed like that.

Cindy left about a day later. She returned home to San Francisco where she and Richard Jeni had many long-distance phone calls and a year long relationship, making me realize I was no hero at all and more of a lame-brain than I thought.

But, hey, I did show her one heck of a star-studded weekend.

I'm The Uncoolest Mom I Know

If you’re the parent of a toddler and you think prying stuck suckers from hair, keeping your two-year-old from eating a wad of old, chewed gum off the sidewalk, or trying to write a check at the grocery counter as your kid is lifting up your skirt are difficult tasks - you’re right.  But just wait until you have a teenager.

Your children may ask to “hang out” with friends without parents around, they’ll ask you to just trust them - even though you were once a teenager yourself - and know better, but most frightening of all they will eventually ask if another hormonally-crazed adolescent, prone to distractions  - like themselves - can drive them around in a car, on the street with other cars going very, very fast.

Those are the years when you will be compared with all the other parents: the cool parents; the parents who let their kids have unsupervised parties,  who know that their kids ditch school on a sunny day to drive to Santa Monica (but are cool with it), who buy their teens beer, which they justify by saying, “Well, they’re gonna do it anyway.  At least I know when and where they’re doing it.”

If those are the cool parents, I’m so uncool, it’s scary.

This is how uncool I am: my daughter and I were invited to her friend’s fourteenth birthday party at a restaurant on once trendy, now trashy (in my opinion), Melrose Avenue - where the typical clothing boutique has mannequins clad in black leather, holding whips.  The birthday girl’s mom thought it would be fun for the kids to shop after lunch, and asked me to come and help supervise the dozen or so girls.  She and another mom led the coltish group of fourteen year olds down the street and into a shop.  As my daughter, her friend and I were about to enter the store, I heard the girls who were already inside shrieking with delight.  I entered and looked around, then realized the mother had taken the girls into a head-shop loaded with bongs of all sizes, shapes and colors, stash boxes for ecstasy and pot patches for the casual drug taker’s wearing pleasure.

“Turn around.  It’s not appropriate,” I said to my daughter, though she and her friend had already peeked inside.

The three of us stood on the sidewalk - two fourteen year olds and a very uncool mother.

Ever since I’ve been a parent, I’ve been exposed to more peer pressure than I ever was in high school - and I’m not talking about teens pressuring teens; I mean parents pressuring other parents - specifically, me.

I’ve actually been taunted by another mother, in a group of women, for not letting my ten-year-old daughter, who was much younger than their girls, walk to a store, many blocks and a busy intersection away.  The mother practically tucked her hands under her arms and mocked me with chicken sounds, “Bock...bock...bock.” Not really, but she might as well have. 

She said, “Come on!  You’re such a worry wart,” while scanning the group of women, to see if they were in agreement.  The women nodded along.  That wasn’t it; she wouldn’t let up.  The mother prodded and taunted until I'd had enough - which was not long.

I eventually shook my head, took my daughter’s hand and left the park get-together entirely.

The mother who taunted me called the next day to apologize, which was big of her - but, by then, I’d already had it with parenting peer pressure, from nearly day one as a mother.  It started early, other parents questioning my decisions.  But they are my decisions for my child. 

I’ve had plenty of conversations on this subject with people who question my “too structured,” “old-fashioned” ideas, yet my daughter, now at fifteen, still hasn’t runaway or rebelled, taken to the streets of Hollywood or any other of the predicted responses to my parenting.  She does her job, which is to try and get more freedom, while I give it with guidelines and as my husband and I feel comfortable.

I had those “cool” parents who gave me all the freedom a teenager could desire, and still I needed to push my, nonexistent, boundaries, to extremely dangerous limits.

So I let people - “cool" parent types - tell me what I’m doing wrong.  It doesn’t bother me, because I know that my daughter has plenty of friends, she doesn’t need me to be another one; she needs a mother who makes decisions based on my common sense, my experiences and my good judgment - not measured on a barometer of coolness.

Told you I was uncool.

 

King Cotton and the Bonedaddys Pay Tribute to Bo Diddley

So King said to Paul Laques (former Bonedaddy's guitarist), last Thursday night, before going on stage: "Shoot, these two shoulda named her King-ette," pointing to me and my husband (the Bonedaddy's former record producer).

And then King proceeded to explain to Paul how twenty years earlier he jumped down off the stage of a warehouse party, with his head covered in a mask, flicked his tongue at me, a twenty-two-year-old, as I was about to leave the "Tape Heads" wrap party at 1 a.m, and said, "Hey, come back inside. There's someone I want you to meet."

His mask, flickering tongue and raspy Southern accent almost scared me off.  But I did go back inside.  Long story short - he introduced me to his record producer, we've been married nearly twenty years and now have an 18-year-old daughter. Unfortunately, we didn't name her King-ette - but we should've.  She wouldn't be here without King.

I met King only months before these videos of him with the Bonedaddys were taped on this late show (see video). So you can imagine why - at one a.m. on a dark, warehouse jammed street of downtown LA - I might be frightened.  Also around this time, King and the Bonedaddys were playing and recording with Bo Diddley (See the second video).

Last night, King, Marv Kanarek (another great friend and an ex-Bonedaddy drummer), Mike Tempo (percussion), Paul Laques (on guitar and now with I See Hawks in LA) - and more, to be named when I'm more awake -rejoined the Bonedaddys at the opening night of the Santa Monica Twilight Dance Series.  The band paid tribute to Bo Diddley.  It was one throbbing, thumping, jamming, funk-fueled, wickedly great evening.   

Here's a Slide Show of the evening.  To make the photos move faster, click the button on the bottom left corner.

Happy Endings

I'd read Sunday Scribblings writing prompt this week and had nothing... until I dove into my swimming pool.  It's 110 degrees at my home right now and I'm still dripping wet from swimming, but my "happy endings" snapped into my head the second I hit the water.

Happy endings...

Diving into a swimming pool - feeling the jolt of cool water - after sweltering in San Fernando Valley's heat.

An icy-chilled bottle of Sun Drop soda after a long, hot drive in the desert.

Finally receiving a phone call from my daughter after not hearing from her for too long.

Finding out something I submitted will be published.

Getting an email from my eighteen-year-old daughter, who is now vacationing in Ireland, that ends with "I love and miss you."

I'd write more, but chlorine is burning my eyes.

Driving in LA

Driving in LA, with our nearly constant traffic and the price of gas heading toward $5 per gallon, is stressful.  So in order to keep my blood pressure down, I try to entertain myself and avoid looking at my gas gauge as I drive.  Instead, I do other things... like listen to music and read bumper stickers. Here are some  recent ones that stuck in my head:

"People are no damned good"
"Aardvark.com for all your aardvark needs"
"What if the hokey pokey is what it's all about?"
H8MYEX (vanity plate)

Then there's this guy (see photo), with his foot out the driver window and making a peace sign, who doesn't appear to find driving in LA stressful at all.

But, for me, the only way I can avoid the stress of driving entirely is to head to the ocean.  There, with the salty breeze, soft sand and rhythmic waves, I completely forget the price of gasoline... almost.

From the Valley to Paris

My daughter Lauren is in Paris right now, living on my mom's boat in a port near the Bastille.  When I called this morning (my time) it was late afternoon in Paris and she was about to go for a run around the port.  As we spoke, I had a live webcam of the Eiffel Tower on my computer screen.  How cool is that?  I could see that it was a beautiful afternoon there - the winding down of a serenely sunny Parisian day.  Meanwhile, I was just waking up in the San Fernando Valley.

Weird.  Lauren had already experienced most of Monday, June 9th, and I was just sipping my coffee to begin my Monday.  And here my daughter is in Paris - the city of lights, the city of romance, the city where Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Josephine Baker once roamed -  yet Lauren asked, "So what's going on in the Valley?"

My answer:  "Uhh... it's hot."

Oh, to be in Paris.

(I copied this photo from a live webcam of June 9th, 6:45 p.m. Paris time/9:45 a.m. in California)

Spring in the Valley - Balboa Park

Pierce College Farm Walk - May 4th

Bring the kids out to experience the Valley as it once was!  Pierce College will have their annual Farm Walk this week. 

                        May 4, 2008 - Sunday                         
                        9:30am - 4:00pm                         
                        $5.00 donation per person                         
                        Children under 12 free

                                        6201 Winnetka Ave., Woodland Hills.

There will be sheep shearing, wool spinning, live music, cow milking, a petting zoo, cowchip bingo, horse activities (whatever that means), a barbecue and more.  so come on out to the Valley and get a taste of the farm life!

Sunday Scribblings: Writing - A Pirate took My Cookie and Other Stuff That Happened Instead of Writing

Updated Note: I forgot to mention, the skateboarding CEO who pissed me off near the end of this post is some loser (got tossed out right away) from Donald Trump's "Apprentice" show.

For Sunday Scribblings prompt:  Writing (officially my longest post ever, two weeks worth)

Here's a summary of what little writing I've accomplished in two weeks:

 March 1st, Saturday- I planned on writing after picking my daughter up at the train station.  She spent two days visiting a friend near Santa Barbara.  About 8:30 am, my daughter called from Santa Barbara to say she was just getting a ride to the train station.  I told her to call me when she's on the train.  The train was to leave at 9am.  By 9:15 am, I still hadn't heard from my daughter. 

I called her cell phone.  No answer.  She's always so good about picking up soon or calling right back.  So I waited.  But she didn't call.  I called her again and again.  Still, no answer.  About 9:40 I started hyperventilating.  My husband and I called her friend in Santa Barbara.  The friend told us that she took a cab and that she hadn't heard from my daughter either.  I then started to officially freak out (pacing, talking to the walls, mumbling prayers).  I called the cab company, spoke to the dispatcher and asked if any of their drivers have criminal records.  Do they check that sort of thing?  The cab guy snapped at me.  I snapped back. "Hey, I'm a worried mother."  My husband tried my daughter's cell phone.  There was an answer... oh, what a relief.  I finally breathed.  What?!  Wrong number?  He was yelling at a strange woman.  In short, more drama for another painfully long twenty minutes.  We finally reached my daughter.  She was on the train sleeping and didn't hear the phone.

My nerves were so jangled, I decided to write later.  I picked her up at the station, just happy to see her face.

Sunday - My husband and I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Kandinsky. Miro.  Picasso!  They're all so inspiring.  In the evening, we watched "La Vie En Rose" about Edith Piaf's tragic life.  It's amazing.  Yes, I want to create something, too.  Tomorrow, I'll put off my tax preparations and write.

Monday - It's a beautiful day.  Morning sun is shining slanted through the floor to celing window in my office.  I decide to use the Time Machine prompt from Sunday Scribblings, and start rambling about the scent of Coppertone making all my sea-salty childhood summers tumble by like the ocean waves...  Then I hear my dog in a frenzy - growling, claws scraping the pavement.  I look through the window.  What's she doing?  I hear my little cat meow weakly.

Oh my God!!  My feet barely hit the ground and my legs feel like rubber as I run frantically through my house and into the backyard, screaming my dog's name.  She had my cat in her mouth and dropped her when I screamed.

My cat was a lump.  Her mouth and eyes were open in shock.  I grabbed her and wrapped her in a towel.  My daughter and I drove her to the nearest vet.

The morning went by in a blur; literally, I couldn't see through my tears.  Don't even remember driving home from the vet.  My cat had to stay there overnight in an oxygen tent.  The doctor warned that because she may be paralyzed, she might have to... I can't even write the words.

I cried.  No.  Just the day before I was admiring how nothing gets by my cat.  she takes nothing for granted - the trees are for climbing, bugs are for chasing, the sun is for sprawling.  I've even thought I wouldn't mind changing places with her.  She has no bills and sleeps half the day - who wouldn't want that life?  If only cats could get passports and eat in five star restaurants...

I never would've thought I would be so cat crazy.  At home, my daughter made me soup, vegetable with alphabet pasta.  I swear my spoon had the letters c-a-t.  Yes, I am officially cat crazy.  

Convinced my cat will get better, I try to write.  I can't.  I Google "Edith Piaf" to see photos of her.  If Edith could live through what she did, I should be able to function this day.  What's the first thing I see when I Google?  Her stuffed cat sitting in a Parisian window.

Tuesday - First thing in the morning, my husband and my daughter told me to call the vet.  I dialed as they stood there to hear the news.  "What? Her tail's moving and she can move one leg?"  All our shoulders relax.  Later, I pick her up and bring her home to rest.  Still, the doctor doesn't know if she'll ever move her right leg.

Wednesday - Ok, later I will do my tax prep.  But first a little writing, I tell myself.  No, first I'll check my email.  A while ago I sent essays off to Smithsonian Magazine and Geek Monthly (they sounded like my kind of people).  Nope.  Still nothing.  I stare at the computer screen.  I'm empty.  I wish I were like Jack Kerouac and all those other writers who use/used negative stuff as fuel.  Poverty?  Alcoholism?  No problem!  They pour out their souls on a scroll.  But me, all the urge is there, pent up inside - but there's so much swirling around, bouncing against the sides of my skull like bumper cars, lots of noise and slamming around, but the ideas don't go far... and like those carnival rides, once the cars stand still, the electrical sparks stop... so I go and make a sandwich to gather my thoughts.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday - Writing?  Not so much.

Sunday - I cleaned the yard.  It's a good excuse for having a cold beer.  Plus, I can think about writing.

Monday - In the evening, my husband and I planned to go to a classical concert downtown at the Colburn school of music, across from Disney Hall.  So I ran to Target to buy some lipgloss and other girly things I don't get to use when writing alone at my computer.  Because I am watching pennies, I took a long time picking items and using coupons.  After paying for all that stuff and some household items, I got to my car and realized I had none of my make-up and hair products.  I ran back to the store.  The cashier shrugged her shoulders.  I went to stand in the long customer service line and began worrying that I wouldn't have time to get ready.  After waiting nearly ten minutes, I felt a tap on my shoulder.  The man who was standing beside me in line earlier accidentally got my bag.  He didn't notice until he got home.  I patted him on the back.  "You are a good, good man for coming all the way back here."  I thank him so profusely, he must've thought "But it's only makeup, lady."  I just appreciate when people take time to do the right thing.  He could've just waited to return the items later.  I told his daughter, "Your dad is a really nice guy."  She smiled.

The concert was beautiful.  "Is this corny to say?"  I asked my husband.  "But the way the bass player is using his bow... moving so fluidly and cradling the bass, almost like he's holding  a woman, it's like a dance."

"Yeah, that's corny.  But you're right.  It is like a dance," my bass player husband said.  I just knew no other way to describe the movement.  Again, I am inspired.  I love watching people who are passionate about what they do and do it well.

Tuesday - Until this day, my cat has been dragging her leg and hopping on her others.  My family has started calling her tripod.  That makes me sad.  She should be jumping around.  Her limp foot is getting dingy from scraping the floor.  Not only am I not writing, but I'm not doing not much cleaning either.  But today she's putting pressure on the right foot.  I've been having to keep my dog separate from the cats.  From now on, I always will.

Wednesday - My writer friend, Donna, got me on the list to preview a new Nintendo fitness training game, called Wii Fit, she's writing about.  We were to meet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.  I get there a little late, thinking it was going to be a large conference type deal.  I didn't see Donna.  The concierge gave me an electronic key and directed me to the elevator to go to the twelfth floor.  I push the button and get up to the 10th floor, where an English guy got in and we both went back down to the lobby.  "Hey, what's going on?"  I said.  He doesn't know.  Maybe I didn't push the button.  But I did.  "Oh well, at least it's a nice elevator," I said, and push the button again.  At the fifth floor, a group of young women got in. And back down I went.  What?

I got back in.  This time a hotel employee got in and told me I need to use the electronic key for the 12th floor.  Oh.... good thing.  I was beginning to feel like I was in some sort of video game myself, like Super Mario Brothers or Frogger..... up, down and spit back out again.  I lose!

I enter the room, and other than the Nintendo people who were expecting me - Ooops... if I'd known that, I would've left my house earlier - there's only Donna and two of her friends.  They're having a blast trying out the Wii Fit program.  It is extremely cool.  As Donna bends, the sensor on the foot pad can detect if she is out of alignment.  Apparently, you gain points and keep track of your weight and progress as you workout overtime. Very cool.

I try the downhill skiing game.  If I were really on skis, I would have been in pain from all the mogul flag poles I ran into.

Afterward, Donna, her friends and I left our cars at the Roosevelt Hotel and walked across Hollywood Boulevard for lunch.  We ate outside and watched tourists take photos of the Hollywood sign.  It was a beautiful day.  As we were leaving, I realized I needed to break a twenty dollar bill to give a tip to the hotel valet.  Donna suggested I buy a cookie at the nearby Tollhouse store.  I did.  I munched on it as we walked down the boulevard.  I noticed the Johnny Depp look-a-like (well, if you squint) pirate eyeing my cookie.  "Want some?" I asked, not thinking he'd take me up on it.  I mean, I did already bite it.  "Yes, I'd like some cookie," he said.  So I gave it to him.

"Hey, Donna, a pirate took my cookie!" 

"Well, there's your blog post title right there." 

We blog-writers are always thinking that way.   Anything can be blog-worthy, especially when it has a catchy title.

Thursday - My cat is now limping like Ratzo Rizzo from "Midnight Cowboy".  "Poor thing" I say.  "She's alive!" my husband reminds me.

I check my e-mail, still no love letters from Oprah Magazine for the essay I wrote about how one of my best friends is my husband's ex-wife.  I thought for sure, that was a match for that magazine.  I could practically hear Oprah whooping as she read my tale of an unusual friendship.  Is it possible her editors take this many months to respond?  Or should I consider doing something else for a living?  What am I thinking?  I know Oprah seems to run the world, but she can't stop me from writing... that is, from thinking about writing.

Whatever I'm doing lately, it's sure not writing.  I'm cat-sitting, crying, accusing and yelling at cab drivers, feeding pirates, skiing badly down electronic moguls, cleaning the yard and sipping beer, gushing over the kindness of strangers at Target, listening to music, watching movies and enjoying the art of people who may be dead but at least have created something.

What I'm saying is, I'm no Jack Kerouac spilling my guts in one long spew.  Lately, I cough.  I sputter.  I wonder.  But, write?  Not in the last little while.

So.... today - Well, I've been self-employed most of my adult life - except for a momentary period of cubicle asylum - but today I went on an interview.  I've been thinking it would be nice to get in some more income.  Extra money!  I love when I see ads that say "Would you like EXTRA money?"  Extra money is not something I can relate to.  As in, oh... what should I do with all this extra money?  Paste it on the walls?

So I put on a skirt and heels, grabbed my resume and portfolio, and went to a place in West Hollywood.  Things seemed to be going well until the CEO of the company came in wearing a t-shirt, shaggy hair and black rimmed glasses.

"In ten words or less, what perspective do you write from?" He asked.

"Well, it's my perspective... but if it's an interview piece, for instance..."

"Nuh uh... in ten words.  If you can't tell me in ten words, how can you convey what it is you write?

"Well, it depends.  I write non-fiction.  But if it's an interview, I'm not writing with "Me" or "I" usually, I am writing..."

"You can't explain your perpspective?"

(Now, if he had actually read my resume and portfolio I emailed, he would have seen my over-ten-word, but still concise profile, and saved me the gas, time and annoyance.)

"Well, whatever I write, it's from my perspective.  Like I say in my resume..."

"Uh uh... in ten words."

"... It's a fresh, offbeat perspective, I guess you could say."

"I still don't know what you write."

"Nonfiction: memoir pieces, op-eds, essays, interviews, reviews.  Sometimes poems, sometimes fiction.  Always with my own look at life.  I avoid what's already been said before.  For instance..."

"Mostly nonfiction?  Ok.  But I had to get that out of you."

Hmmm... I was frustrated and not hiding it well.

This is what I was thinking: Nonfiction is what I write.  It's not my perspective, which would be my view, my slant... And if he means style, well, If I always had the same style, for me, that would be like wearing beige everyday.  I don't get up in the morning and put on one-size-fits-all khakis.  Why would I want to write that way?  I write like me, me - a person who can be upbeat or cranky; motherly or flirty; practical or outrageous; sometimes optimistic, sometimes cynical.  I mean, who among us is mood-less?  I write in my moods, and those change often according to the writing material and the ideas I am responding to.  I can start an interview with an idea of the story, and then realize it went in another direction.  That's exciting.  Keeping my views the same is not.  So, no, my perspective isn't always the same.  My philosophies, my values, my experiences... those are steady.  And my style?  Well, that changes.  Try writing about September 11th with humor.  It doesn't work.  Try writing about raising a teenager without humor... it's painful.

When I write, I just want my words to always, always, come from my own honest way of looking at things.  But that wasn't the answer he was looking for.  I didn't care.

"Look, I can't say my perspective is always the same.  But I can tell you this, I see no point in writing what someone has already written.  That's what never changes." 

Not that I am making up new words and ideas, just that I make sure I say them in my own way.

The idea of coming up with a ten-word perspective for myself sounds about as appealing to me as wearing a big label on my ass that says "Suburban Woman".  Yeah, I'm a woman.  But not all women think alike.  Yeah, I live in the suburbs.  But not all Suburban-dwellers have the same views.  That's why I like to write about life in the California suburbs, because we don't all roam the malls and consider shopping to be a hobby.   

He started walking out the door and shrugged, as if to say:  Whatever, it might be good enough for you but not for me.  He was adamant I describe my "perspective" (a word which, I believe, we disagree about the meaning) in ten words.

"You don't like my answer, but I'm sticking to it.  The only thing that stays the same is that I don't want to write what I've already seen written." 

Again, he shrugged and went out the door.

I gathered my things, said goodbye to the others and left.  As I walked, I thought about this guy's need for ideas in ten-words, and chalked it up to Hollywood speak - where some guy (usually in a suit) wants to hear a movie pitch in one breath.

Screenwriter: "Rambo Goes Green.  Just think of all the product placements - rather than tanks there'll be priuses."

Suit Guy:  Eh... (shakes his head) That's over ten words.  Next!!

Before I reached my car, I spotted "the ten-word-perpective-CEO" rolling across the street on his skateboard.

Maybe I'm better off on my own.  Just me.  My computer.  My cat.  And all my bumper-car thoughts waiting to go for a ride.

Hey, I wrote something!

Here's my cat, June, the survivor!  Doing what she loves:  Sitting in a box with paper.  Good as new, with not even a limp.

 

Like, Oh My Gawd! She's a Valley Girl and There is No Cure

I totally can't believe it's been, like, 25 years since the movie "Valley Girl" came out.  It seems like just yesterday I was working the big hair - and that took work, too!  I went through a canister of hair mousse a week - lace stockings, shoulder pads, Flash Dance shirts and bangles . 

I moved to the Valley right after the movies Valley Girl and Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Moon Unit Zappa's Valley Girl song came out.  So, naturally, I had to spend time at the Sherman Oaks Galleria.   Even though I was from Northern California, I fit right in.  You see, being a Valley Girl was all about attitude.

That and the annoying over usage of "like" - as in "I am, like, so in love with him!  Oh my Gawd!"  And of course everything to a Valley Girl was "Awesome!"

I had Valley girl slang-itis bad enough that while on a trip to Hawaii, someone heard me speaking and asked, "Are you from California?  You have a California accent."  I had no idea what they were talking about. Clueless.

Here's a photo, circa 1983.  Are we totally tubular, or what?!!  Okay, so how about or What?  As in what was I thinking?!

I'm the one on the left. If you look closely under my bangs you will see proof that I lost whatever brain tissue I'd managed to accumulate during my lifetime. Yes, under my bangs you are actually witnessing a head band, a HEAD BAND that matches my dress...a head band worn by someone other than Mike Reno from the band Lover Boy.

My only explanation for going out in public in this belted shirt I'm trying to pull of as a dress is that my headband is so tight it must have cut off the blood flow to my brain.   

But, hey, it was the '80s.  So that's my excuse.

Yet I'm still a Valley Girl.  Like Moon Unit sang "She's a Valley girl and there is no cure..."  That's totally fer sure!

Sunday Scribblings: Passion (Going over the Hedge)

The following is from Sunday Scribbling’s prompt: Passion.

 
Passion can be what drives me into the zone – that timeless, limitless, spaceless, bottomless, topless place where dancing never tires me. I am thumping on beats, floating on notes, writhing on rhythms.

It’s when I’m brushing thick, gloppy oils on canvas, almost unaware or maybe too aware… so aware that I am in the medium, I am down in the paint, swimming in the pigment – in cobalt blue seas, saffron meadows and azure skies.

It’s when I’m chopping, stirring and whipping as the aromas of garlic, olive oil, tarragon and thyme rise.

It’s when my writing fills the screen – one letter joins another, becoming a word. Words seem to almost link together by themselves, they flow quickly, becoming sentences - making nearly virtual what pours out the grooves of my brain.

Passion is what once drove me in my crazy-youthful-chaotic years to live in LA where I knew not one soul and the only thing I had was my 1950's amoeba shaped coffee table and my naiveté. It’s what had me dancing on tabletops, moving through every LA area code in a year.

Passion was once the only thing that fueled me.

Then I introduced my wild, insatiable Passion to logic and – as if pouring my fuel it into a funnel - I began driving myself in specific directions, sometimes getting lost, sometimes running empty…but it always there -

It was in my newborn daughter’s eyes, in my hope for her future, it’s what kept me going in those sleepless baby days-blurred-into-nights of crying, rocking, feeding; it’s what kept me up late over tear-stained homework and flashcards; it’s what let me be the “only parent in the whole world” (or so my daughter told me) who would dare create rules she found ridiculous, even when I was worn out from enforcing them.

It's what drove me to start a business.  It's what lets me think it's a good idea to write my words in public.  It’s what drowns out all the other voices so loud they become visible, like those cartoon word filled caption bubbles - from message boards, talk shows, and repetitive advertising to allow me to stick to my beliefs – no matter how hard, how unpopular, how un-trendy they may be. Passion is what makes life, to me, more than about surviving. It’s a flame illuminating what’s truly important to me. In the end, all I’ve got, beside the love of my family, are my principles, my philosophies which I've developed like a very slow Polaroid from a lifetime of experiences, experiences I’ve come by often due to my PASSION.

Okay, now that I've taken myself way too seriously...

*I think I'll blame PASSION for those times when I do things that aren't always sane.  For instance, in the photos below (taken at a friend's wedding) I was spinning on a slanted lawn (in my four inch BCBG platform shoes, may I add) overlooking the Palos Verdes coast.  I was a little giddy from sunset and the music playing in the background - all fueled up on passion and little sense - I spun right over a hedge and landed on my head. (photo 1: me spinning/ photo 2: That's my foot sticking up over the hedge).  It's not pretty, but passion got in the way and, of course, my husband was there to capture it on film.  Hey, it's life and I'm  still learning.  This is what I learned:  spinning on a hill in platform shoes - not good.

 

L.A. Can Be A Cliché...

...But if you look a little closer, you just might find the unexpected.

In a recent issue of Travel + Leisure Magazine, their readers ranked L.A. as having the least intelligent and most unfriendly people of the U.S. cities they judged.  Yep!  Check it out for yourself.

And even with all our glamour, they didn't find us all that attractive either.  What nerve!!  Apparently, one of the few areas we do rank high in is good shoe shopping. What? Come on! Do people actually travel the nation in search of shoes?  Is that a new destination trip - shoe excursions?

Okay, so we in LA might not greet strangers on the street with a big old "Welcome to Los Angeles!" and then drape them with designer sunglasses, in lieu of Hawaiian leis.  But if out-of-towners find us in our favorite coffee places, restaurants, beaches, farmers markets or festivals, they'd see us smiling.  We've even been known to talk to people, people not from here even.

We can be friendly, damn it! 

As for intelligence, well, some of us can even read.  I mean, we do have the largest book festival (Los Angeles Times Festival of Books) in the nation.  Who would have expected that, huh?  But that's what I like about LA - the best parts, to me, are the unexpected. Those places and things I've had to find myself over the years.

But don't be discouraged, LA - we came in #2 in shoe shopping!!  So we've got that going for us.

**************************************

Here's a sampling of how people in other cities rated:

#1 Most Friendly -        Charleston
#1 Most Intelligent -     Seattle
#1 Most Attractive -     Miami
#1 Overall Best People - San Francisco 

Chipmunk Stalking, Underwear Showing & Kooky Dancing

My Home Movies! My dad and my grandpa took 8mm movies during my childhood and my mom's in California and Europe, so I edited and accompanied them with the Bealtes' "Obla Di Obla Da"  -

*San Francisco, 1947 - Aunty Pat (older one) & mom (smaller one).

*Same two, playing near S.F. Great Highway

*Cut to: 1968, S.F., Golden Gate Park below Hippie Hill.  My sister (small, cute one) and I dance.  Notice rust jacket guy in hat who hands joint to guitar player.

*S.F. zoo train - my sister, friend & me

*Greece, 1970 - lady with thick black hair who tousles my hair is someone we called "the Goat lady." She'd bring her goats by selling goat milk and cheese at our camp above a cove near Varkiza.

*London (Dad, us, mom, changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace)

*Christmas '67 - I'm the kid with the underwear showing.

*Disneyland '68 - Here's where I, in short hair (I cut it myself), tell a blond girl to keep her stinkin' hands off Chip or Dale, 'cuz he's all mine!!!

*More various hilarity ensues back in California

It all ends in one big extravaganza type show put on by my sister, me and our cousins (Dudley and Nancy) from Texas.  We were forever "entertaining" our family with our shows.

The End