How To Hurry A Curry 9/16/09

Everyone has at least one thing they have never done that seems to put them at odds with the entire world.

When I told some friends that I had never listened to an episode of The Archers, for instance, they pulled away suspiciously, as if I had approached a group of small children with a bag of sweets.

The same happens in LA when I say that I don’t have a car. I have lived six months without one now, and still walk or take the bus everywhere. This week, a friend visiting from Sydney, told me that he lived here for five years without a car. We huddled together in a Century City café, proudly giggling over this act of aberrant defiance.

Now for the real confession: until Sunday, I had never been in a Starbucks. The friend I was with nearly went under a car as we crossed the road and I made my announcement, as the dreaded green logo loomed ever closer.

I’ve passed them thousands of times, of course, in cities across the world, but have never been tempted to enter. I’m not a big fan of chains, and I don’t drink coffee, so it was always going to be hard to see the attraction.

I won’t be going to one again, either. The one on Melrose Avenue was filthy. Leftover dregs on the table, bits of food on the floor – it was less like feeding time at the zoo than post-prandial regurgitation.

It took ten minutes to establish that I wanted plain black tea, not Earl Grey (I have more trouble with English here than I did in eight years in Paris with my not very good French); another two minutes to get the cup filled up more than halfway; another five minutes to carry it, overflowing, to the milk trolley; 40 minutes to drink the worst hot drink I have ever had in my life. Star****s to that.

I think perhaps one of the main reasons I never tried one out was that it took me so long when they first arrived to know exactly what I would get, once inside.

I like places that deliver what they say on the tin, and Starbucks sounds more like a "saddle up yer horse and grab a Bourbon" kind of place (as well as not drinking coffee, I don’t have a horse and don’t drink Bourbon).

You don’t get the same ambiguity with, say Pizza Express or Bella Pasta. And this week, having inadvertently stumbled upon a Japanese quarter of LA, I was sure that Hurry Curry would deliver what it promised.

I quickly discovered that the trouble with Hurry Curry is that there are so many people in a hurry for their curry, you have to queue for a table. In fact, you have to queue so long, you could have gone to a restaurant, tucked into a three course lunch, and returned to Hurry Curry to find that you were still three people from the front of the queue.

It was rather impressive, though. I was immediately asked what I would like to drink (the five star SLS hotel took 20 minutes to ask me last week), and a waiter helpfully pointed me towards the “light” meal of half portions – clearly I looked way too slender at my new weight to be able to handle the bucket-sized portions of Vindaloo I used to consume in Cardiff at three in the morning.

The food was terrific; the clientele less so. People in a hurry wolf their food down so quickly, they belch a lot – at least, they do when that food is curry.

I sat among people who were hurrying their curry at such a pace, it was as if it had decided to bypass the throat on its route to the stomach. The evidence of its arrival repeated in the atmosphere like a space shuttle returning to earth and breaking the sound barrier (which I also had last week, funnily enough, so I know what I'm talking about here).

Barely had I finished the last grain of rice than my bill was on the table. I said that I wasn’t in that much of a hurry, an explanation that was greeted with much mirth, incredulity, and even gratefulness, when I asked for the menu back.

But I couldn’t be persuaded to stay for the lychee sake martini, as I had to get to the gym, which I had been putting off in favour of my curry lunch. I managed a few miles on the treadmill, plus 30 lengths in the pool and a three-mile walk back to my apartment. Hurrying a curry is easy; it’s the exercising it away from your hips afterwards that takes the time.

Credit Where Credit's Not Due 9/12/09

Here’s the dilemma. I can’t afford it, I don’t need it, and waving a bit of titanium around in Beverly Hills 90210 just because I can, won’t impress any of my friends.

So: do I shell out £1800 pa for the new, all-singing, all-dancing American Express titanium black card that I currently pay £650 pa (black plastic) for?

It’s a brilliant marketing ploy. Ever since I was promoted to be a holder of the exclusive black Centurion card over ten years ago, I have spent month after month whingeing that I don’t get my money’s worth from it.

Retailers in the UK don’t like Amex, anyway. Invariably, they charge customers 5% on top of what they purchase, as opposed to Mastercard’s 2%, because Amex charges them more in the first place.

When the Centurion book comes through every quarter, my friends and I spend hours on the phone, laughing about the dozens of things on which we have no intention of spending the hundred million points we have managed to accumulate.

The new deal arrived in a box the size of a multi-storey car-park, though a hundred times more beautiful. There were ribbons and recesses that kept me occupied for hours while I read through all the wonderful things that, as a Centurion card holder, Amex had decided to offer me.

Just off the top of my head: Gold membership to enable me to use the Virgin Atlantic lounge at Heathrow (which I get anyway, as I travel with them so much); Eurostar lounge access (which, again, I get anyway, with my Carte Blanche Eurostar card); Priority Pass membership to other lounges (which I get with my Coutts World card); travel insurance (ditto); Starwood Preferred Guest membership (free to anyone, online).

So many things I already had, or didn’t need, or want. And, here’s the rub: as a result of all these great new redundant services, Amex was putting up the price from £650 pa to £1800 pa. Disgraceful.

So, naturally, seeing no benefit whatsoever, but recognising that the card I didn’t want was suddenly even more exclusive than it had hitherto been (ie even fewer people wanted it than they did before), I had to have it.

I got in touch with some friends who had the old black card (plastic – so passé!) and discussed our options. We all spend a lot of time in the US, where you have to spend about a million dollars a year just to get a black Amex, so wouldn’t we be improving our social status on the other side of the Atlantic if we had the new one?

If we travelled Virgin Premium Economy, we could save about a grand a flight, and given that we only paid Upper Class in order to get the lounge benefits at Heathrow, wouldn’t the annual fee be cost-effective?

Then there was the automatic travel insurance: up to £5 million. So if you got too drunk in the lounge and wrecked it, injured a couple of passengers and hospitalised yourself in the process, the card would cover everything.

In southern California, the cards you carry mean far more than they do to people in the UK. I have it on good authority that Sir Richard Branson, for example, has only a green, no-fee Amex, but then he doesn’t have to lie awake at night worrying about whether he is going to make it past security into the Heathrow Virgin Upper Class lounge.

But when you produce any kind of credit card in LA (and the Centurion card isn’t even that – you pay up at the end of the month, or you’re out of the club), it is examined along with the rest of your attire.

Anything blue guarantees you mediocre service; gold means aspirational but unable to afford platinum (ie good service, but you are made aware of your relatively lowly status); platinum gets you terrific service, but is laughed at (everyone knows the benefits are no better than gold – except the platinum card holders, who live under the delusion they are going to the Oscars next year with 2000 points); and black gets you anything you want. In theory.

I am very grateful to the Centurion staff who have been counselling me through this difficult decision, and as I don't have to pay my new fee until March, they have managed to get me to book a flight that also provides a limo service from the airport the next time I fly into LA.

But will I have to tip the driver who, knowing he is picking up a TIT (Titanium Idiot Traveller), will be expecting ten times as much money in a tip as I would have paid in normal cab fare?

Who needs the stress. Who needs the card. Call me a TIT, but I do. The pain of knowing I wouldn’t have it is far worse than the pain of calculating how much I need to spend to make it pay its way. That’s why Mr Branson is rich – and green – and I’m not.

See you in the lounge, Richard. I'm the tit waving the £1800 bit of metal.

Route 66zzzzzzzzzzzzz 8/30/09

What is it about getting behind the wheel of a car that brings out the Wee Willie Winkie in me?

I’ve never been a great sleeper, even as a baby, and these days it still takes me a couple of hours and at least two episodes of late night Law and Order and CSI before I feel even remotely tired.

But put a steering wheel in my hand, and in the same amount of time I turn into Tarmac Temazepam, snoring away while drivers around me beep, scream and shout, and try to wake me while waving bits of their vehicles I have managed to lob off in my slumber.

The first car I bought was in 1983. It was an orange Hillman Avenger, and I smashed it up when I had drunk too much during a bout of severe depression. No excuse. I woke to see a row of trees coming towards me at lightning speed, and when I had established that I was not in a production of Macbeth, and that this was not Burnam Wood, came to in time to turn the wheel away from them.

It wasn’t quick enough for me to regain balance, though, and the car went over. And over. And over. It landed bonnet side down. Had I not been wearing a seat belt, I would undoubtedly have been killed outright; had I been six inches taller, my head would have been crushed to pulp.

Although not drinking now, and feeling safe enough to get behind a wheel again without fear of endangering life, it hasn’t inspired me to get a car in LA. Despite the fact that everyone tells me that I just have to have one, I have resisted.

Well, resistance implies some degree of doubt; in reality, I don’t want one, don’t intend to get one, and if people want to see me that much, they can get in their own damned cars and come to me. I walk up to 10 miles a day, and when I’m not walking I catch the very cheap buses, which run all night.

Push came to shove, however, on the morning of Blake’s funeral. Readers of this column will know that Blake was my dear mentor and screenwriter friend who died suddenly in August. The funeral had been kept very quiet, but when I heard it was taking place felt I had to be there.

Blake’s death has hit me very hard, and the day before I heard he was to be buried I again hadn’t slept the entire night. Yet never having driven on the right hand side of the road, never having driven in the States, and in a hire car without sat nav, I set off, very tired, for Santa Barbara, over two hours’ drive away.

I had only ever heard tales of one Route - 66 – and it turned out to be a rather sanitised and romanticised version of what actually happens on these freeways. I had to take 401 and 405, and both were the closest to hell I think I will get before I actually take up residence in that place.

I have no idea whether there was a speed limit, I just went with the flow, which was fast. Very. I managed to veer off at a service station, but it was no Little Chef, and it took me about 30 minutes to find my way out of it and back onto my route, which, after 90 minutes, I still had no evidence was the one going in the right direction.

Getting to the church on time was fine, although the funeral itself was utterly devastating. Going back was the problem. I should not have been driving: first, with no sleep, and, second, severely traumatised.

Blake was one of the people who kept telling me that I had to get a car. The irony that my first one was ferrying me to and from his funeral, meant that I spent most of the journey both ways, blurry-eyed and sobbing.

On my return, I took the west, instead of the east exit, for Wilshire Boulevard, and ended up at Santa Monica beach. And it was in the slowness of the traffic getting back to the right road that I dozed off, hit a guy’s wing mirror, and endured my first experience of US road rage. Think Death Row on acid.

I took the car back instantly and went to the shop to stock up on change for my forthcoming bus journeys.

It’s incredibly hard steering our way without you, Blake: in more ways than one.

Blake Snyder 1957-2009: Dearest Friend, Mentor, In My Heart Forever 8/4/09

Readers of this blog will be familiar with the name of the screenwriter Blake Snyder.

It was through his encouragement that I first came to LA, having sent him the title and logline for my budding screenplay, Celebrity Stalker, in response to which I received the most incredible, encouraging e-mail.

I subsequently travelled to the city to do Blake’s Beats course, and it was the start of a friendship that would see me end up living 6000 miles across the Atlantic and pursuing my dream of being what I called a “real writer”.

Blake died suddenly this morning. I found out on Facebook, where I daily looked at his profile to see how many more inspiring stories there were from the people across the world whom he had helped in their screenwriting struggles.

His passion and enthusiasm for what he did never faltered, and everyone who came into contact with him became the beneficiary of that.

From my first contact with Blake in May 2008, he taught me many things, not only in relation to screenwriting. He was also a wonderful human being: full of compassion and love for his fellow men. The person I refer to in the blog Shopping For Niceness was him: a man who did not think that we were the best judges of other people’s foibles, and who saw the good in everyone he met.

When we had lunch two weeks ago, I remarked that although we had known each other face to face for just five months, it seemed that a lot had happened: I was living in LA, for starters. It was a move that he had positively encouraged, and he listened and supported me through what have been some very bleak moments.

I just cannot believe that he is gone, and my sympathies go out to his family, colleagues, and everyone whose lives were blessed to have been touched by this giving, wonderful man.

Facebook and his website are already full of entries expressing shock and disbelief at his sudden parting. But what comes through in all of them is his goodness, kindness, and ability to embrace people who reached out, both professionally and personally. He had that rarest of things: the gift of spirit.

My dearest Blake: my heart is breaking. In a screenplay, you would call it the All Is Lost moment that precedes Dark Night of the Soul. But as I sit here with your book before me – as you know, it never leaves my side – I look to the finale and the final image that follows. The final image, you say, is “the opposite of the opening image. It is proof that change has occurred and that it’s real.”

The image of my life now, compared to before you came into it, is very much the opposite of what it was, and I have you to thank for that.

I will celebrate your life, not with a drink (thank you for saving me from that, too), but by doing the work of which you constantly told me I was capable, and it will always be with immense gratitude and love that I remember you.

God bless, and, as you say in Save the Cat, when you describe dropping that script in the mail: “It is what it is.”

Your death is what it is.

Quite how we will all move on without you being among us is too early to say; but we will – and you will be with us in so many ways.

I told you over our last lunch that for me, everlasting life was about the things we left behind – the laughter, the ideas, the wisdom, the insight, the love – and that it was this, rather than any notion of God, that gave me great joy.

There's no joy today, and the Dark Night of the Soul looks never-ending.

But you will live on, my sweet, darling friend. Eternally.

Keeping Up With The Beckhams 8/4/09

Peas in a pod. That’s what they were doubtless saying at the LA Sports Club this week, when they saw me working out on the treadmill just feet from Victoria Beckham.

Okay, so she’s younger, prettier, and even thinner than I have managed to become, but we both have dark, short hair.

Never mind that she is the tiny, sweet pea at the end of the pod, and I am the over-ripe, hard one in the middle: as peas in pods go, there’s likeness enough for me.

According to the papers, Victoria runs eight miles a day; I can’t say whether she does or not, because in my attempt to equal her performance, the paramedics always get to me long before she finishes her run. When they are scooping my body parts off the floor, I can usually see Victoria’s perfect, bobbing form in the distance, but then I lose consciousness again.

The Sports Club, which is reported to be the best in the world, has two branches: one in LA West, and one in Beverly Hills, which is where I see Victoria. Until this week, I hadn’t spoken to her and, I confess, I was beside myself with excitement when I did. So much so, that I had to calm myself down by eating two muffins, three slices of cranberry spice bread (a subliminal spice connection, perhaps?), and half a tub of Haagen Dazs vanilla ice-cream.

I’m a big fan of Ms Beckham, who was my favourite of all the Spice Girls. Not only did I think she was the most beautiful, but the most talented. I enjoyed her music as a solo artist, and she recorded some really catchy tunes. Even she would acknowledge she’s not Ella Fitzgerald, but she knows how to entertain and, in a tough industry, how to reinvent herself.

In her television work, she has displayed a wonderful sardonic wit in various documentaries; and her flair for fashion design has won her accolades from the highest in the industry. Add to all this, the fact that she is a wonderfully loyal and supportive wife, and a terrific, adoring mother, and you have to wonder what on earth the poor woman has done wrong to warrant abuse on a daily basis.

It doesn’t matter how much money you have, to manage a hugely successful career, while bringing up a young family – in different countries, to boot - is tough. Surely she deserves our admiration, not the admonition that has pretty much become a national sport.

The couple haven’t had an easy ride in LA, either, where David’s recent altercations with two fans earned him criticism. But all that seemed to dissipate on Sunday, when his brilliant free kick helped LA Galaxy save face in what was finally a 1-2 victory for Barcelona.

I watched the match on TV, and, for some reason, could only get the commentary in Spanish. My Spanish stretches on to “Una birra”, which is useless (a) because I don’t drink alcohol, and (b) because it is Italian. So all I heard were long stretches of what sounded like someone being very ill after a long night out – “Ellebrooghutrescuatenta” – followed by “Spicy Boy.”

I kid you not. Only once during the entire match did the Spanish commentator say the word “Beckham”; he was always Spicy Boy.

I didn’t get to meet David, but I did catch sight of the Barcelona team, who were staying at the Beverly Hills’ truly spectacular SLS Hotel. In an effort to lose the half stone I had acquired in my eating binge after meeting Victoria, I was very picky with the menu and ordered water melon and tomato cubes, with a Brussel sprout and lemon puree salad, topped with “lemon air”.

Under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t catch me in the same room as a Brussels sprout, unless there was also a Christmas tree and a whacking great sack of presents from Santa (I used to wonder whether all those presents were just a bribe to get kids to eat the sprouts on their Christmas dinner; and why ARE they compulsory, when we hate them for the other 364 days of the year?); but it all sounded very low-cal.

I was certainly right on that score; there aren’t many calories in lemon air, I can tell you. In fact, you can barely see it, because it is, well, mostly air, in a smidgen of white, citrusy foam.

It was fantastic. Honestly. Better than the muffins. I can’t wait to tell my new running mate about it. I’ll be slipping into a pair of her designer jeans before you can say Spicy Boy.

Shopping For Niceness 7/30/2009

Give or take the odd earthquake or two, my life here is quite undramatic.

Imagine my shock, therefore, when I was walking back from the gym this week, and witnessed an outburst of such uncharacteristic abuse, I nearly licked my ice-cream scoop clean from its cone.

Standing outside Whole Foods (I am seriously considering getting therapy for my addiction to that shop – it has easily replaced alcohol in my life), I was just minding my own business. I had just purchased a Baskin Robbins 50% fat-reduced vanilla cone, having tried the full-fat variety and instantly thrown it in the trash for being too sweet and creamy.

But I digress. So there I was, licking away, when I heard a commotion coming from the car-park opposite. Suddenly, a man with a red face emerged, shouting back at whoever had caused him such distress. “You homosexual!” he yelled. “Your mother’s a whore!”

The horror! The horror! Having spent most of my life in the UK, where insults are traded on a daily basis, and in just about every conceivable circumstance, I hadn’t realised how immune I had become to abuse. Since arriving in LA, I haven’t heard one person swear, much less raise their voice to another human being.

In fact, apart from the sound of my own screams when I am told how much I owe at the end of my daily shop in Whole Foods, noise of any kind is pretty absent from my life.

So, hearing the word “homosexual” being hurled with such venom (something I do not think I have ever experienced, even in the UK, although doubtless it occurs – probably in kids’ playgrounds) rather upset my equilibrium. And as for “whore” being used in conjunction with anyone’s mother, well, that was straight out of Cagney and Lacey, I was sure; and when did that come off the air? About 110 years ago?

You just don’t normally get this kind of behaviour in Beverly Hills 90210, the home of the TV series of beautiful people and even more beautiful Chihuahuas who everyone wants to make movies about.

Everyone here is so incredibly, wonderfully, nice, nice, nice. In Whole Foods, they ask me, every day, when I arrive at the cash register: “Did you find everything you wanted today?” and I always answer, very politely: “Yes, thank you very much.”

They are so nice to me, and I am so nice back, I have taken to helping pack my own bags, a gesture that has impressed them so much that they this week offered me a job.

But the man in the suit temporarily put me in a different frame of mind and reminded me how good it can feel sometimes just to let rip. I decided that next time the cashier asked me if I found everything I wanted, I was going to answer:

I wanted yoghurt and found it reduced to $2.69, and also white peaches at $2.49 a lb. I picked up cinnamon spiced bread at $7.49 a loaf which, quite frankly, is a joke – not least, because I didn’t want it until I saw it.

And besides: what do you mean by “want”? I want to find the meaning of life, but did I find it hidden among the packages of Vindaloo sauce at $4.99 a pack? If I bought a pot of your ridiculously priced water melon at $6.99, would I find the meaning of life in there?

I want to find a man who prefers to collect Marriott Rewards points than save money by going camping (fat chance, as I am discovering, among LA’s rather keen outdoor enthusiast males); or, failing that, any man.

I want to be able to play the piano to classical concert standard. Heck, I want to have a piano, which I think would help me in trying to accomplish this.

So, when you ask me if I found everything that I wanted today, the answer would have to be No.

Calming as all this LA niceness is, I’m still rather suspicious of the whole upbeat thing. I’ve always been a fan of what we call “healthy scepticism” in the UK, and have found the endless flow of LA goodness rather indiscriminate. How do you know what’s good or bad, if you don’t have some kind of scale by which to measure things by?

I mentioned this to an LA friend, who oozes kindness and generosity in his relationships with each and every person he meets. But how can you judge anything, if you don’t place the bar somewhere, I squealed across my salad, desperately trying to goad him into non-niceness.

His answer was that he doesn’t think we make the best judges, and he has no desire to acquire scepticism.

You see what I mean? Nice, nice, nice. God, I could have tipped his fish in Bechamel sauce over his head.

When I heard my car-park man in the suit ranting his rather feeble insults, it awoke in me a very strange desire: I suddenly wanted to hear someone say “You f*****g c**t” – just briefly; anything to remind me of who I once was and where I came from. So I phoned a British friend, who duly obliged.

The truth is, though: all this niceness is rubbing off on me. I realise how little time we Europeans spend in saying thank you to people for past and present kindnesses. We operate as individuals, often struggling against the tide, angry, and wondering why things are so against us. We are permanently suspicious, and not just sceptical, but often cynical to the point of nihilistic-induced depression.

Is it so bad to try to see goodness where you can? There’s more of it around than I realised. I may be suspicious of it, and probably, to an extent, always will be; I am, after all, a European at heart.

But no heart needs to be set in stone: the notion of its having the capacity to melt is not an utterly meaningless one. And I am finding that my suspicions are, to a large extent, unfounded.

So next time they ask me in Whole Foods whether I was able to find everything I wanted, I will acknowledge the truth, if only to myself.

For the reality is, that slowly, I am finding everything I wanted. I just hadn’t realised how long I’d been looking in the wrong aisles.