Seven months after joining the Beverly Hills branch of Sports Club LA, I am no nearer to finding a group sport that I enjoy.
My daily workouts are undoubtedly enhanced and encouraged by seeing the exquisite form of Victoria Beckham on a nearby treadmill, and even more so last week when Mr Beckham also turned up in the gym, a sight that induced in me so severe a case of Beckhamitis, I swear I had two birthdays in the time it took the paramedics to bring me round.
Exercising by myself enables me to go at my own pace, and I have discovered that if I exercise to music rather than watching marathons of Law and Order or NCIS, I go a lot faster on the treadmill.
Musicals are particularly effective, and this week alone I have exercised my way out of prison (Les Miserables), shot my twin brother (Blood Brothers), and had plastic surgery to enable me to sing Tits and Ass with sufficient verve (A Chorus Line).
I gave Phantom of the Opera a miss because Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber was very offhand with me at Simon Cowell’s 50th birthday party. I can be mean like that.
But put me in a class, and all my concentration and good intentions go to pieces.
First, I tried boxing, because I have always been a huge fan of the sport. As a child, my brother and I were allowed to watch Mohammed Ali’s fights, which always began at 8pm – but only if we first went to bed at six and slept for two hours. Punching somebody’s lights out took on metaphorical as well as real significance in our household, and to this day I love watching boxing.
Before LA, I had tried it just once before, in the St David’s gym in Cardiff, where, in a class of young men, I felt I had to compete - despite being a 40-something woman.
I managed to push the enormous punch-bag on its stand more quickly to the other end of the room than they did (I am, and have always been, extremely competitive), but did in my knee in the process and couldn’t exercise again for six weeks.
My first and only boxing class in LA ended in similar disaster. When I entered the empty gym, I just wasn’t prepared for the rotating mechanical punch-bags zipping their way round as I waited in line for the class to start. Zap! The first one arrived and smacked me square on the gob.
After that, I found the class a little stressful. “I give you ten seconds, I give you nine seconds, I give you eight seconds . . . “ On and on and on. The teacher counted every damned second of the hour-long class to every single movement we made – all accompanied by ear-splitting disco music.
Having enquired at reception as to what might be a quieter, less dangerous class, I decided to try Anusara Yoga. It was very, very calming.
At the start, the teacher said she had been “talking” to a 16 month old child, with whom she had been sharing the youngster’s enthusiasm of the new world the little girl was experiencing.
Enthusiasm. That was the “intention” she asked us to focus upon over the next 75 minutes; or, failing that, any other intention (mine was ensuring that I record the last episode of Sunday’s My Antonio, a show for which I have immense enthusiasm, so I felt I was killing two – actually, I don’t think killing is a Yogic term, so let’s say I was anaesthetising two – birds/intentions with one stone).
It was all going well up until the Cobra position, lying on our stomachs with our chests stretched upwards and our backs in an arc. Then we had to move into an arch, passing a child/cat/dog/antelope position (I was losing concentration, if I’m being honest), with our backs in the air.
It was an exercise I had done in the past, when I taught myself a bit of yoga and needed to release trapped gas. I tell you: the class was the entire wind section of the LA Philharmonic.
If the point of yoga was to co-ordinate breathing with movement, I couldn’t see that having to hold my breath for the next five minutes to avoid the smell was going to do me any good at all.
I tried Power Yoga instead, in the hope that the speed of the thing might at least circulate any bad odours that might manage to permeate the room. This time I lasted just half an hour, when the teacher encouraged the class to make noises while they inhaled and exhaled – “like sea-shells”.
Somehow I found myself among the tidal wave contingent and just wanted to tell them all to shut the hell up.
My concentration also wasn’t helped by the teacher again telling us to focus on any “intention” we liked – world hunger, if we so wanted: something that, he added, was always on his mind . . . starving people the world over . . . and yet nothing was ever done about it . . .
Look, mate: I know, but you’ve just said that this is MY time, MY space, and MY body to do with what I like with MY intention. Now you’ve gone and blown My Antonio right out of my psyche. I rolled up my mat and skulked out.
I have decided that I am just not a group exercise sort of person and am therefore returning to the treadmill and the stepper with just my ear-phones and the TV on the machine for company. And Dave and Vic, of course. Now there’s a couple you won’t hear breaking wind in public.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
How To Kill A Pumpkin In 3000 Easy Moves 10/17/09
Before I moved to LA, I could think of no circumstances in which it would be necessary for me to purchase a Pumpkin Carving Kit.
But then before I moved to LA, I could think of no situation in adulthood (given that I don’t have kids) that would ever require me to go out and buy a pumpkin.
Pumpkins, like dolls, are something you grow out of. Every Halloween during my childhood, days would be spent hollowing out pumpkins with . . . Well, what did they use before Pumpkin Carving Kits came into being? Chisels, I suspect . . . and shopping for apples in readiness to stand around in the cold, choking to death in a bucket of water for an apple that you could just as easily have taken from the fruit bowl.
The work didn’t stop once you had removed the innards, either. Next, you had to make a mouth and two triangles for eyes (by which time you had usually made such a mess of it, you had to go out and buy another pumpkin).
On the one occasion my mother decided not to waste the insides of the beast and make pumpkin soup (not great – and she was an amazing cook; seriously bad product), I think we all decided that enough was enough. Too much work. Too old.
If, as Shirley Conran said, life was too short to stuff a mushroom, it was certainly too short to hollow out a pumpkin.
But this week, I found myself at a local store, Crate and Barrel, ardently trying to work out which tool did what in the Pumpkin Carving Kit (as I see it, you can prepare the thing in just marginally less time than it would take you to build a house) and contemplating Halloween.
It’s difficult to escape it here. My neighbour has a 20-foot shroud in her garden, complete with an iron chain of Alcatraz proportions, and topped with an all too realistic skull.
On the 1st of October, everyone put pumpkins out – on their lawns, in their windows, on their steps. They are there for any closet pumpkin kleptomaniac to steal at any time, yet nobody touches them; they have an air of the Holy relic about them, and people pass the best displays with reverent awe, almost bowing at the altar of pumpkin-ness they see before them.
For me, it is just an excuse to buy another appliance that I will use once and then put in a drawer and forget about.
Crate and Barrel is my second favourite kitchen/furniture store in Beverly Hills, surpassed only by Pottery Barn (I want to roll up in one of their bath towels and hibernate) and, for kitchen equipment alone, Williams Sonoma.
So regular are my appearances in Williams Sonoma, I dreamt that I had created a successful TV detective series, the hero of which was called William Sonoma. I think it’s not a bad idea: he could solve a series of murders that had been committed with kitchen implements alone . . . But I digress.
I love Williams Sonoma. I love the French, country-style pasta dishes with paintings of vegetables; I love the rows of shiny toasters as big as baking ovens; I love the $2000 dollar collections of saucepan craters that I pine for, as I contemplate the three egg-cup sized ones I bought from IKEA.
I specially love the e-mails they send me that have such an air of exotic mystery, I am back at the store within the hour to conduct further investigations on the latest pointless invention they have written to me about.
Take the ”mandolin chipper”. Was it a mandolin-shaped contraption that chipped potatoes, or a machine that cut potatoes into the shape of baby mandolins? Or was it a machine for those odd occasions in life when you find yourself with an excess of mandolins in your closet and you say: “Oh, if only I had a mandolin chipper to reduce these down to trashable size”?
Whatever it was, I wanted that mandolin chipper. No: I had to have that mandolin chipper. Unfortunately, I never made it to the store to see it, as I had to take back the pressure cooker I had bought from World Market because it didn’t work, and the mandolin chippers went like hot . . . er, chipped potatoes.
Why I suddenly thought I needed a pressure cooker when I haven’t had one since I was a student in the late seventies, I don’t quite know, but they didn’t work then and they don’t work now.
By the time I made it back to base, my detective was no longer featuring mandolin chippers as the definitive buy of the week. That will teach me to be nostalgic.
Williams Sonoma hasn’t been too hot in the pumpkin assassination department, though, hence my going to Crate and Barrel – although I have to confess to being slightly tempted by WS’s No-Bake Halloween Haunted House: an edible house, complete with icing “glue” and candy decorations of bats and ghosts. Maybe I’ve already been living here too long.
I am not going quite so far as to organise my own Halloween party, although I might just knock on the door of the Addams Family with the skeleton garden shroud on the actual night.
Or I might just buy a pastry case, open a can of ready pureed, ready-cooked pumpkin, bake a pie and watch Halloween on the telly. Who needs a Pumpkin Carving Kit when you have a tin-opener.
But then before I moved to LA, I could think of no situation in adulthood (given that I don’t have kids) that would ever require me to go out and buy a pumpkin.
Pumpkins, like dolls, are something you grow out of. Every Halloween during my childhood, days would be spent hollowing out pumpkins with . . . Well, what did they use before Pumpkin Carving Kits came into being? Chisels, I suspect . . . and shopping for apples in readiness to stand around in the cold, choking to death in a bucket of water for an apple that you could just as easily have taken from the fruit bowl.
The work didn’t stop once you had removed the innards, either. Next, you had to make a mouth and two triangles for eyes (by which time you had usually made such a mess of it, you had to go out and buy another pumpkin).
On the one occasion my mother decided not to waste the insides of the beast and make pumpkin soup (not great – and she was an amazing cook; seriously bad product), I think we all decided that enough was enough. Too much work. Too old.
If, as Shirley Conran said, life was too short to stuff a mushroom, it was certainly too short to hollow out a pumpkin.
But this week, I found myself at a local store, Crate and Barrel, ardently trying to work out which tool did what in the Pumpkin Carving Kit (as I see it, you can prepare the thing in just marginally less time than it would take you to build a house) and contemplating Halloween.
It’s difficult to escape it here. My neighbour has a 20-foot shroud in her garden, complete with an iron chain of Alcatraz proportions, and topped with an all too realistic skull.
On the 1st of October, everyone put pumpkins out – on their lawns, in their windows, on their steps. They are there for any closet pumpkin kleptomaniac to steal at any time, yet nobody touches them; they have an air of the Holy relic about them, and people pass the best displays with reverent awe, almost bowing at the altar of pumpkin-ness they see before them.
For me, it is just an excuse to buy another appliance that I will use once and then put in a drawer and forget about.
Crate and Barrel is my second favourite kitchen/furniture store in Beverly Hills, surpassed only by Pottery Barn (I want to roll up in one of their bath towels and hibernate) and, for kitchen equipment alone, Williams Sonoma.
So regular are my appearances in Williams Sonoma, I dreamt that I had created a successful TV detective series, the hero of which was called William Sonoma. I think it’s not a bad idea: he could solve a series of murders that had been committed with kitchen implements alone . . . But I digress.
I love Williams Sonoma. I love the French, country-style pasta dishes with paintings of vegetables; I love the rows of shiny toasters as big as baking ovens; I love the $2000 dollar collections of saucepan craters that I pine for, as I contemplate the three egg-cup sized ones I bought from IKEA.
I specially love the e-mails they send me that have such an air of exotic mystery, I am back at the store within the hour to conduct further investigations on the latest pointless invention they have written to me about.
Take the ”mandolin chipper”. Was it a mandolin-shaped contraption that chipped potatoes, or a machine that cut potatoes into the shape of baby mandolins? Or was it a machine for those odd occasions in life when you find yourself with an excess of mandolins in your closet and you say: “Oh, if only I had a mandolin chipper to reduce these down to trashable size”?
Whatever it was, I wanted that mandolin chipper. No: I had to have that mandolin chipper. Unfortunately, I never made it to the store to see it, as I had to take back the pressure cooker I had bought from World Market because it didn’t work, and the mandolin chippers went like hot . . . er, chipped potatoes.
Why I suddenly thought I needed a pressure cooker when I haven’t had one since I was a student in the late seventies, I don’t quite know, but they didn’t work then and they don’t work now.
By the time I made it back to base, my detective was no longer featuring mandolin chippers as the definitive buy of the week. That will teach me to be nostalgic.
Williams Sonoma hasn’t been too hot in the pumpkin assassination department, though, hence my going to Crate and Barrel – although I have to confess to being slightly tempted by WS’s No-Bake Halloween Haunted House: an edible house, complete with icing “glue” and candy decorations of bats and ghosts. Maybe I’ve already been living here too long.
I am not going quite so far as to organise my own Halloween party, although I might just knock on the door of the Addams Family with the skeleton garden shroud on the actual night.
Or I might just buy a pastry case, open a can of ready pureed, ready-cooked pumpkin, bake a pie and watch Halloween on the telly. Who needs a Pumpkin Carving Kit when you have a tin-opener.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
My Role In The Jackson Five K 10/11/09
For ten minutes this week, I had more in common with La Toya Jackson than any other human being on the planet.
Waiting to board an Air New Zealand flight to Los Angeles, I was sitting in the Star Alliance lounge (more of that horror later), when an announcement came over the speaker: “Would passenger Stephen please come to the reception desk.”
Given the dreadful year I have so far had in every respect, I was expecting another bereavement, or at the very least a doctor standing by advising me not to travel, as I had less time to live than the flight took.
I was therefore shaking when I went up to the desk, where I was greeted by a lady speaking in hushed tones. “Miss Stephen?” “Yeeeeeees.” “We wondered whether you would be willing to change your seat on the airline.”
Now, whenever I travel, I am extremely particular about my seating arrangements. Eurostar: have to be travelling backwards, odd number in the aisle and near a toilet (73, 77, 11, 13), but not right next to the staff kitchen where they uproariously get the meals together (usually carriage 8).
Flying: next to the window, provided there is no one seated next to me, near an emergency exit, no upper levels, near a toilet (I have a very small bladder and drink at least three litres of water a day, hence the toilet obsession).
On Virgin Atlantic, I am less fussy, as I love their Upper Class lounge so much, I am so relaxed by boarding time, they could strap me to a wing and I wouldn’t care.
I have no idea about BA because I refuse to fly with them at the moment. I am still chasing a claim from 16 months ago, when they lost my luggage on a flight to Toulouse, and I had to re-schedule meetings, cancel the flight back, and take the Eurostar to Paris.
This week, they wrote to say they had credited me with £3.60 and thanked me profusely for choosing my "preferred airline". I will strap myself to a pigeon before I fly with them again.
But on Air New Zealand, I am quite particular about my seat. Their LA service (where they break before travelling on to Australia and New Zealand) is second to none. Terrific food, wonderful staff onboard, and although they don’t have a great lounge, they know how to look after people.
At the LA end, I have the amazing Lounge Concierge, Thierry. He sees me on and off the aircraft, gets me through Customs, and looks after me so well I think he now even beats the Virgin lounge in terms of my priorities.
The problem for ANZ is the Star Alliance lounge in the UK, which they share with what seems to be 100 other airlines. Awful food, screaming kids, bad lighting and, this week, no internet.
And then the request: would you give up your seat, because . . . even more hushed tones: “We have a celebrity on board who would like it.”
Oh, for God’s sake: who is it? La Toya Jackson.
United, at last: she wants 7K; I have it. But I melted. I have a soft spot for her, after her appearance on I’m a Celebrity last year, and it is clear what terrible pain she has been going through since her brother’s death.
So I said, okay: suddenly, 7K was gone. My seat. My special, special seat, quiet, away from the throng. I had surrendered it in a rare act of martyrdom to someone not who I thought deserved it more than I, but who I thought really needed the privacy more.
“Okay,” I said, “as it’s her.”
“If it was a Royal, I’d have TOLD you to,” I was informed.
Then I saw red. Quite frankly, if it had been a Royal, I would have told them where to go. And it’s a darn sight further down under than even New Zealand is.
My friends are mystified as to why I did it, but I was quick to point out that I expect an upgrade next time I travel, as reward for my sacrifice.
I had also requested that La Toya thank me in person – which she did. I suspect that if the poor lamb had realised she was going to have to show grateful thanks for the entire 11 hour journey, she would have stayed in 5K.
Anyway, at least it got me talking to her wonderful business manager Jeffre (lost the card, J – please get in touch!), and in La Toya I found a person of such extraordinary gentleness, sweetness and charm, I was even more won over by her than ever.
Mind you, if I’d had the chance to spend 11 hours in 7K, I’d have been Miss Sweetness and Light when I landed, too. Thierry, poor man, ended up seeing what 5K can do to a girl.
Waiting to board an Air New Zealand flight to Los Angeles, I was sitting in the Star Alliance lounge (more of that horror later), when an announcement came over the speaker: “Would passenger Stephen please come to the reception desk.”
Given the dreadful year I have so far had in every respect, I was expecting another bereavement, or at the very least a doctor standing by advising me not to travel, as I had less time to live than the flight took.
I was therefore shaking when I went up to the desk, where I was greeted by a lady speaking in hushed tones. “Miss Stephen?” “Yeeeeeees.” “We wondered whether you would be willing to change your seat on the airline.”
Now, whenever I travel, I am extremely particular about my seating arrangements. Eurostar: have to be travelling backwards, odd number in the aisle and near a toilet (73, 77, 11, 13), but not right next to the staff kitchen where they uproariously get the meals together (usually carriage 8).
Flying: next to the window, provided there is no one seated next to me, near an emergency exit, no upper levels, near a toilet (I have a very small bladder and drink at least three litres of water a day, hence the toilet obsession).
On Virgin Atlantic, I am less fussy, as I love their Upper Class lounge so much, I am so relaxed by boarding time, they could strap me to a wing and I wouldn’t care.
I have no idea about BA because I refuse to fly with them at the moment. I am still chasing a claim from 16 months ago, when they lost my luggage on a flight to Toulouse, and I had to re-schedule meetings, cancel the flight back, and take the Eurostar to Paris.
This week, they wrote to say they had credited me with £3.60 and thanked me profusely for choosing my "preferred airline". I will strap myself to a pigeon before I fly with them again.
But on Air New Zealand, I am quite particular about my seat. Their LA service (where they break before travelling on to Australia and New Zealand) is second to none. Terrific food, wonderful staff onboard, and although they don’t have a great lounge, they know how to look after people.
At the LA end, I have the amazing Lounge Concierge, Thierry. He sees me on and off the aircraft, gets me through Customs, and looks after me so well I think he now even beats the Virgin lounge in terms of my priorities.
The problem for ANZ is the Star Alliance lounge in the UK, which they share with what seems to be 100 other airlines. Awful food, screaming kids, bad lighting and, this week, no internet.
And then the request: would you give up your seat, because . . . even more hushed tones: “We have a celebrity on board who would like it.”
Oh, for God’s sake: who is it? La Toya Jackson.
United, at last: she wants 7K; I have it. But I melted. I have a soft spot for her, after her appearance on I’m a Celebrity last year, and it is clear what terrible pain she has been going through since her brother’s death.
So I said, okay: suddenly, 7K was gone. My seat. My special, special seat, quiet, away from the throng. I had surrendered it in a rare act of martyrdom to someone not who I thought deserved it more than I, but who I thought really needed the privacy more.
“Okay,” I said, “as it’s her.”
“If it was a Royal, I’d have TOLD you to,” I was informed.
Then I saw red. Quite frankly, if it had been a Royal, I would have told them where to go. And it’s a darn sight further down under than even New Zealand is.
My friends are mystified as to why I did it, but I was quick to point out that I expect an upgrade next time I travel, as reward for my sacrifice.
I had also requested that La Toya thank me in person – which she did. I suspect that if the poor lamb had realised she was going to have to show grateful thanks for the entire 11 hour journey, she would have stayed in 5K.
Anyway, at least it got me talking to her wonderful business manager Jeffre (lost the card, J – please get in touch!), and in La Toya I found a person of such extraordinary gentleness, sweetness and charm, I was even more won over by her than ever.
Mind you, if I’d had the chance to spend 11 hours in 7K, I’d have been Miss Sweetness and Light when I landed, too. Thierry, poor man, ended up seeing what 5K can do to a girl.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Remembering Blake 9/30/09
Six months ago tomorrow, I was boarding a flight to come to LA, where, following Blake Snyder’s scriptwriting course in March, I had been sufficiently inspired to pursue my writing career 6000 miles away from home.
Last night, I attended Blake’s memorial. He died suddenly on August 4th, and the outpouring of grief on his website, together with the grateful thanks from those whose lives he had changed, made his death an all-consuming experience.
I heard about his death on Facebook; his longest-standing friend, Tracey, who had known Blake since they were two, heard about it on Twitter. Social networking is the new bearer of both good and bad tidings, and it is also the 21st century means by which the dead live on.
The many tributes to Blake that appeared on an hourly basis on Facebook extended the grieving process; tortuous as it is, I continue to dip into them; it helps me to feel that he is still among us. His words, and the encouragement and support he gave to so many, is, to me, the way he lives on.
Blake’s friends organised a wonderful tribute that, despite the sadness of the occasion, was full of laughter and happy memories. Colleagues and friends shared their thoughts at the Writers Theater in LA, and despite the air of disbelief that still hangs over his death (I still felt that electric shock when Tracey said: “When Blake died . . . "), the evening felt not like an ending but a new beginning.
Blake believed in the power of transformation; it is what informed his own work and his teaching. In his brilliant screenwriting book, Save the Cat, he addresses the Finale of his 15 part structure as the place where “we wrap it up”; the place where “the lessons are applied . . . " The Final Image, he says, “is your proof that change has occurred and that it’s real.”
When I left London six months ago, I was very unhappy. For financial reasons, I had been forced to leave Paris, where I had enjoyed a very happy eight years, and I was miserable being back in the city I have never liked since I first moved there 25 years ago.
I had hit 50, many friends were sick or had already died, and the recession was biting hard in the media industry, as it was (and still is) elsewhere.
Blake’s passion, energy, and support of my writing got me to LA, and in the short time I knew him I felt ensconced in his bubble; that’s the only way I can put it. I drank in every word he said, both professionally and personally, and began to regain much of the confidence I had lost in the UK.
Blake and I talked or e-mailed all the time, and when we met for lunch shortly before he died, we talked about where the “act three” of my story – the autobiographical one that is the subject of the book I am writing – might be heading.
I was expressing fear; Blake, in his eternal optimism, expressed excitement that I didn’t know. Who could have predicted this cruel twist in the narrative that, ironically, has led me into my act three, alone.
Blake spoke often of the mentor figure who, in screenplays, sometimes dies at the end of act two, the point at which the hero decides whether he or she puts the lessons learned into practice, or reverts to the place they were in before.
Over the past six months, I have learned many lessons: about people, writing, and myself. My mentor has gone, but his teachings live on, and fearful (even more so) as I am about where act three might be going, this is undoubtedly the start of it.
I feel that Blake came into my life for a reason: right time, right place. I am blessed to have known him and to have shared in his wisdom.
At the memorial, one of his writing partners, Sheldon Bull, said that we should ask ourselves whether, when we died, people would share in such an evening as we were doing for Blake. If not, he said, we were not living, and we should get out there and make some mistakes.
I don’t know what my act three holds, but of one thing I can be certain: there will be many more mistakes; and they, just like the things I learned from Blake, will be valuable lessons, too.
Nobody’s life is perfect, but despite the sadnesses, there is still enough good to make it worthwhile, and it is by our mistakes that we grow.
April 1st 2009. The day I came to LA. October 1st 2009. A new beginning, Blake. As you say in Chapter two: “The same thing . . . only different!” - thanks to you. Good-night, sweet prince.
Last night, I attended Blake’s memorial. He died suddenly on August 4th, and the outpouring of grief on his website, together with the grateful thanks from those whose lives he had changed, made his death an all-consuming experience.
I heard about his death on Facebook; his longest-standing friend, Tracey, who had known Blake since they were two, heard about it on Twitter. Social networking is the new bearer of both good and bad tidings, and it is also the 21st century means by which the dead live on.
The many tributes to Blake that appeared on an hourly basis on Facebook extended the grieving process; tortuous as it is, I continue to dip into them; it helps me to feel that he is still among us. His words, and the encouragement and support he gave to so many, is, to me, the way he lives on.
Blake’s friends organised a wonderful tribute that, despite the sadness of the occasion, was full of laughter and happy memories. Colleagues and friends shared their thoughts at the Writers Theater in LA, and despite the air of disbelief that still hangs over his death (I still felt that electric shock when Tracey said: “When Blake died . . . "), the evening felt not like an ending but a new beginning.
Blake believed in the power of transformation; it is what informed his own work and his teaching. In his brilliant screenwriting book, Save the Cat, he addresses the Finale of his 15 part structure as the place where “we wrap it up”; the place where “the lessons are applied . . . " The Final Image, he says, “is your proof that change has occurred and that it’s real.”
When I left London six months ago, I was very unhappy. For financial reasons, I had been forced to leave Paris, where I had enjoyed a very happy eight years, and I was miserable being back in the city I have never liked since I first moved there 25 years ago.
I had hit 50, many friends were sick or had already died, and the recession was biting hard in the media industry, as it was (and still is) elsewhere.
Blake’s passion, energy, and support of my writing got me to LA, and in the short time I knew him I felt ensconced in his bubble; that’s the only way I can put it. I drank in every word he said, both professionally and personally, and began to regain much of the confidence I had lost in the UK.
Blake and I talked or e-mailed all the time, and when we met for lunch shortly before he died, we talked about where the “act three” of my story – the autobiographical one that is the subject of the book I am writing – might be heading.
I was expressing fear; Blake, in his eternal optimism, expressed excitement that I didn’t know. Who could have predicted this cruel twist in the narrative that, ironically, has led me into my act three, alone.
Blake spoke often of the mentor figure who, in screenplays, sometimes dies at the end of act two, the point at which the hero decides whether he or she puts the lessons learned into practice, or reverts to the place they were in before.
Over the past six months, I have learned many lessons: about people, writing, and myself. My mentor has gone, but his teachings live on, and fearful (even more so) as I am about where act three might be going, this is undoubtedly the start of it.
I feel that Blake came into my life for a reason: right time, right place. I am blessed to have known him and to have shared in his wisdom.
At the memorial, one of his writing partners, Sheldon Bull, said that we should ask ourselves whether, when we died, people would share in such an evening as we were doing for Blake. If not, he said, we were not living, and we should get out there and make some mistakes.
I don’t know what my act three holds, but of one thing I can be certain: there will be many more mistakes; and they, just like the things I learned from Blake, will be valuable lessons, too.
Nobody’s life is perfect, but despite the sadnesses, there is still enough good to make it worthwhile, and it is by our mistakes that we grow.
April 1st 2009. The day I came to LA. October 1st 2009. A new beginning, Blake. As you say in Chapter two: “The same thing . . . only different!” - thanks to you. Good-night, sweet prince.
Who Wants To Bag A Millionaire? 9/30/09
Who wants to bag a millionaire?
It’s the question that seems to occupy every single woman over 40 on this side of the ocean.
Forget what they say about people in LA not drinking.
From Friday night to Monday morning, every bar is packed with older women who seem to have just one aim in life: to get through the weekend without even touching the ten dollars they came out with after work on Friday, and get rich blokes to provide them with cocktails and copious amount of champagne until they (a) fall over, (b) fall into bed, (c) find themselves unexpectedly in Vegas, having tied a whacking great knot (marital, or literal, around their new spouse’s neck, depending on their luck).
Television has been quick to cash in on women seeking a fast route to snare a man and his fortune.
Megan Wants a Millionaire featured the proverbial blonde with large breasts looking for exactly what it said in the title. At the end of each episode, the unlucky reject/sad sap of the week was handed a card and informed: “I’m sorry, your credit has been declined”.
The show was pulled, when one of the former contestants was found dead, after being sought for the murder of his wife.
My current obsession is My Antonio, which features a group of women in Hawaii, all trying to pull the Hollywood actor Antonio Sabato, and it is hilarious.
This diverse group of women, which includes a NASA researcher, a nurse and a Playmate, really seem to care for nothing in life but getting this undoubtedly handsome man. Antonio’s mother Yvonne, who also stars, clearly hates them all.
Even Antonio’s ex-wife Tully is in the mix, and to me it’s pretty obvious that the pair got it together before the show began and then used this rather spurious means of making some cash out of it.
I thought I might stand a better chance with Millionaire Matchmaker, which is set in LA, and boasts a wider cultural diversity than the shows offering just one man or woman whom everyone else must fight over.
Why did I bother? Having seen the millionaires on offer, I can only assume that presenter Patti Stanger has bagged all the best ones for herself and her mates.
Patti runs an elite matchmaking service in LA, and in series one concentrated on wealthy men looking for women. In series 2, rich women and rich gay men were added to the mix (tough luck if were a lesbian with dosh), so there were more fruits for the picking, but, alas, a lot more fruit pickers.
It certainly appears to be a much-needed service in the city, where women constantly bemoan the lack of available men.
I am quick to reassure them that I have now lived in five different countries, and they may as well stay put, because it’s the same story the world over.
Millionaire Matchmaker was therefore the first place I turned to here for advice in my quest to pull a rich man who was more than just the wad in his pocket (size isn’t everything, after all).
I quickly learned from Patti that you can say goodbye to your inheritance when your rich man pops his clogs, if you slept with him on the first date (you have to hold out until they have opened a veritable MFI warehouse store of doors for you, apparently).
Oh, dear. From the guys on offer, I would sleep with them ONLY on the first date.
Take Hatch. He sounded a possibility, as he liked short women, and, in particular, women of 5 foot. Five foot exactly. Which is what I am.
My chances would have been quickly blown, because at the “Mixer” party he went straight for a woman who needed to duck when she entered the room.
Then there was Jimmy, who wanted to meet a cultured, Polish woman, who could speak Italian. Specific, or what? He blew her out when they went on a tour of LA and she declared: “I don’t know what’s in the Getty.”
That would have been fine, had she not also said that she was a tour guide. Serves your own right for being so fussy, Jimmy boy.
Patti employs date coaches, therapists and personal shoppers to try to match like with like, and claims to have a lot of luck with what she believes is her true vocation in life.
I am now re-grouping and going along with her main suggestion: that a man will get his act together quickly if he “senses another penis around”.
I’ve already started auditions.
It’s the question that seems to occupy every single woman over 40 on this side of the ocean.
Forget what they say about people in LA not drinking.
From Friday night to Monday morning, every bar is packed with older women who seem to have just one aim in life: to get through the weekend without even touching the ten dollars they came out with after work on Friday, and get rich blokes to provide them with cocktails and copious amount of champagne until they (a) fall over, (b) fall into bed, (c) find themselves unexpectedly in Vegas, having tied a whacking great knot (marital, or literal, around their new spouse’s neck, depending on their luck).
Television has been quick to cash in on women seeking a fast route to snare a man and his fortune.
Megan Wants a Millionaire featured the proverbial blonde with large breasts looking for exactly what it said in the title. At the end of each episode, the unlucky reject/sad sap of the week was handed a card and informed: “I’m sorry, your credit has been declined”.
The show was pulled, when one of the former contestants was found dead, after being sought for the murder of his wife.
My current obsession is My Antonio, which features a group of women in Hawaii, all trying to pull the Hollywood actor Antonio Sabato, and it is hilarious.
This diverse group of women, which includes a NASA researcher, a nurse and a Playmate, really seem to care for nothing in life but getting this undoubtedly handsome man. Antonio’s mother Yvonne, who also stars, clearly hates them all.
Even Antonio’s ex-wife Tully is in the mix, and to me it’s pretty obvious that the pair got it together before the show began and then used this rather spurious means of making some cash out of it.
I thought I might stand a better chance with Millionaire Matchmaker, which is set in LA, and boasts a wider cultural diversity than the shows offering just one man or woman whom everyone else must fight over.
Why did I bother? Having seen the millionaires on offer, I can only assume that presenter Patti Stanger has bagged all the best ones for herself and her mates.
Patti runs an elite matchmaking service in LA, and in series one concentrated on wealthy men looking for women. In series 2, rich women and rich gay men were added to the mix (tough luck if were a lesbian with dosh), so there were more fruits for the picking, but, alas, a lot more fruit pickers.
It certainly appears to be a much-needed service in the city, where women constantly bemoan the lack of available men.
I am quick to reassure them that I have now lived in five different countries, and they may as well stay put, because it’s the same story the world over.
Millionaire Matchmaker was therefore the first place I turned to here for advice in my quest to pull a rich man who was more than just the wad in his pocket (size isn’t everything, after all).
I quickly learned from Patti that you can say goodbye to your inheritance when your rich man pops his clogs, if you slept with him on the first date (you have to hold out until they have opened a veritable MFI warehouse store of doors for you, apparently).
Oh, dear. From the guys on offer, I would sleep with them ONLY on the first date.
Take Hatch. He sounded a possibility, as he liked short women, and, in particular, women of 5 foot. Five foot exactly. Which is what I am.
My chances would have been quickly blown, because at the “Mixer” party he went straight for a woman who needed to duck when she entered the room.
Then there was Jimmy, who wanted to meet a cultured, Polish woman, who could speak Italian. Specific, or what? He blew her out when they went on a tour of LA and she declared: “I don’t know what’s in the Getty.”
That would have been fine, had she not also said that she was a tour guide. Serves your own right for being so fussy, Jimmy boy.
Patti employs date coaches, therapists and personal shoppers to try to match like with like, and claims to have a lot of luck with what she believes is her true vocation in life.
I am now re-grouping and going along with her main suggestion: that a man will get his act together quickly if he “senses another penis around”.
I’ve already started auditions.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Strim Low, Street Chariot 9/29/09
The US Strimming Championships taking place outside my front door can be the only explanation for why the sound of revving machinery woke me before 8am Monday morning.
And Sunday. And Saturday.
In fact, had I sent out an invitation to every strimmer enthusiast within a 300 mile radius, they could not have turned up in greater force than they have done in their own front gardens since I moved in last week.
It’s not so much a feeling of living in a flight path, as having relocated onto the runway itself.
When I moved here, I was excited to be living in the famous postcode, Beverly Hills 90210. My apartment was a smart but small, one-bedroom affair in a portered block that served me well enough for the first six months.
Well, ish. A woman on the balcony opposite sat for at least ten hours every day, shouting into her telephone. I became more familiar with the antics of her family than I am with those of my own.
At weekends, residents disappeared to the coast, but left their dogs behind, wailing and crying all day and night.
Then, some new people moved in above me and immediately began chopping up bodies for the freezer (or showing horror movies while acting out the movies’ plots – whichever is the noisier).
I am very, very sensitive to noise. In the UK, I became convinced that there was a theatrical group of scaffolders who followed me wherever I moved, setting up their stuff and beginning their singing/shouting/Radio 1 performance the moment I unpacked my last box.
Finally having shaken them off by coming to the US, I discover that the entire human race is in cahoots with said scaffolders, and the hit squad are just coming up with new and more interesting ways to annoy me.
Hence the strimmers. You don’t get many strimmers in South Wales. In Cardiff, we have well over 200 days of rain a year, so strimming is never really top of anyone’s agenda.
On vaguely warm days that could, were you of a strimming mentality, spur you to don your dungarees and start up your motor, you are usually so excited by glimpsing sunlight that you rush to the pub, all thoughts of strimming set aside for another year.
I bought a gas barbecue two years ago, and it still sits in my shed, untouched.
There have been numerous half hours of sun within that time, during which I could have cooked a dozen sausages; but, alas, never the two hours it would take me to get the contraption out of the shed, try to light the gas, and then track down a neighbour - who would doubtless be at someone else’s barbecue – to do it for me.
Brits leave home in pursuit of the great outdoors. Spain used to be the number one choice, but the pound’s dreadful exchange rate against the euro has scuppered that idea.
It’s a little better against the dollar, and with utilities and petrol/gas so much cheaper than in the UK, more people are looking to the US, either to buy second homes, or to emigrate.
When I first arrived here, I could see the attraction of the outdoor life. I love not having to take an umbrella with me when I go out to dinner (heck: I like not having to take one down to the washing line).
I enjoy going to bed with all the windows open, rather than struggling to find another duvet when I am freezing in bed at 4am.
I like not having to charge the car battery every time I set out for my local Tesco if there's a frost.
But there are stresses to the outdoor Californian lifestyle that nobody tells you about, and the strimmers are just the start of it.
When the strimmers rev down at the end of the day, the crickets start up. Now, the trouble with crickets, is that they have only one topic of conversation; and, to boot, only one topic of conversation set at the same monotonous level.
Think of Morse Code with just two frequencies. Sung by Kate Bush.
Then there are the dog walkers.
Everyone in my new area, 90212 (which is the Beverly Hills Golden Triangle, though it does not feature in the TV series), has a dog that is a cross between a Bichon Frise and a poodle.
And they do not stop barking. I suspect they are the cousins of the dogs at my old apartment block.
Their owners stop on the street to talk – for up to an hour at a time. The dogs bark more loudly because they want their walk.
The owners speak more loudly to get above the dogs. Sometimes, I pray for a strimmer to come along and drown out the lot of them.
I’m going back to the UK this week and am praying for rain. Anything, just to keep people indoors and away from anything that might bark, rev, or spew sausage fat within a half mile radius of my house.
I bet those theatrical scaffolders are tuning up their spanners even as I write.
And Sunday. And Saturday.
In fact, had I sent out an invitation to every strimmer enthusiast within a 300 mile radius, they could not have turned up in greater force than they have done in their own front gardens since I moved in last week.
It’s not so much a feeling of living in a flight path, as having relocated onto the runway itself.
When I moved here, I was excited to be living in the famous postcode, Beverly Hills 90210. My apartment was a smart but small, one-bedroom affair in a portered block that served me well enough for the first six months.
Well, ish. A woman on the balcony opposite sat for at least ten hours every day, shouting into her telephone. I became more familiar with the antics of her family than I am with those of my own.
At weekends, residents disappeared to the coast, but left their dogs behind, wailing and crying all day and night.
Then, some new people moved in above me and immediately began chopping up bodies for the freezer (or showing horror movies while acting out the movies’ plots – whichever is the noisier).
I am very, very sensitive to noise. In the UK, I became convinced that there was a theatrical group of scaffolders who followed me wherever I moved, setting up their stuff and beginning their singing/shouting/Radio 1 performance the moment I unpacked my last box.
Finally having shaken them off by coming to the US, I discover that the entire human race is in cahoots with said scaffolders, and the hit squad are just coming up with new and more interesting ways to annoy me.
Hence the strimmers. You don’t get many strimmers in South Wales. In Cardiff, we have well over 200 days of rain a year, so strimming is never really top of anyone’s agenda.
On vaguely warm days that could, were you of a strimming mentality, spur you to don your dungarees and start up your motor, you are usually so excited by glimpsing sunlight that you rush to the pub, all thoughts of strimming set aside for another year.
I bought a gas barbecue two years ago, and it still sits in my shed, untouched.
There have been numerous half hours of sun within that time, during which I could have cooked a dozen sausages; but, alas, never the two hours it would take me to get the contraption out of the shed, try to light the gas, and then track down a neighbour - who would doubtless be at someone else’s barbecue – to do it for me.
Brits leave home in pursuit of the great outdoors. Spain used to be the number one choice, but the pound’s dreadful exchange rate against the euro has scuppered that idea.
It’s a little better against the dollar, and with utilities and petrol/gas so much cheaper than in the UK, more people are looking to the US, either to buy second homes, or to emigrate.
When I first arrived here, I could see the attraction of the outdoor life. I love not having to take an umbrella with me when I go out to dinner (heck: I like not having to take one down to the washing line).
I enjoy going to bed with all the windows open, rather than struggling to find another duvet when I am freezing in bed at 4am.
I like not having to charge the car battery every time I set out for my local Tesco if there's a frost.
But there are stresses to the outdoor Californian lifestyle that nobody tells you about, and the strimmers are just the start of it.
When the strimmers rev down at the end of the day, the crickets start up. Now, the trouble with crickets, is that they have only one topic of conversation; and, to boot, only one topic of conversation set at the same monotonous level.
Think of Morse Code with just two frequencies. Sung by Kate Bush.
Then there are the dog walkers.
Everyone in my new area, 90212 (which is the Beverly Hills Golden Triangle, though it does not feature in the TV series), has a dog that is a cross between a Bichon Frise and a poodle.
And they do not stop barking. I suspect they are the cousins of the dogs at my old apartment block.
Their owners stop on the street to talk – for up to an hour at a time. The dogs bark more loudly because they want their walk.
The owners speak more loudly to get above the dogs. Sometimes, I pray for a strimmer to come along and drown out the lot of them.
I’m going back to the UK this week and am praying for rain. Anything, just to keep people indoors and away from anything that might bark, rev, or spew sausage fat within a half mile radius of my house.
I bet those theatrical scaffolders are tuning up their spanners even as I write.
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