I was walking back from the gym on Friday afternoon, when I received a call from a friend in the UK to tell me of the death of an old journalist friend, Lester Middlehurst.
I had known Lester for over 25 years, both at our time on Today newspaper and, later, the Daily Mail. He was always great fun to be around and a brilliant show business journalist; his interviews were second to none.
On Tuesday, Lester took an overdose and was found the next day. He died two days later.
The circumstances surrounding what led him to kill himself will doubtless emerge, but I remember Lester as someone who brought a great deal of colour to the world of journalism.
He was gay at a time when it was less easy to be openly so, and he was terrified when, in the week he started work on the Mail, Private Eye published a story about him. He had nothing to worry about, as his talent was far too great to tarnish, and he remained on the paper for many years.
It’s been a sad week, because on Wednesday I received a call from another friend to say that the producer of Emmerdale, Gavin Blyth, was very ill. His partner, Suzy, had posted on Facebook asking if anyone knew of a registrar who could get to Leeds infirmary within the hour to marry her and Gavin.
On Thursday, she announced that she was Mrs Blyth; on Friday, she was a widow and single mother.
Gavin, too, was an extremely talented man, who had risen through the ranks of press PR to running a hugely successful soap. Ratings went up with him at the helm after January 2009, and the brilliant storyline of young Aaron Livesy, struggling with his sexuality, was one of the highlights of the past year and recognised with awards.
Being 3000 miles away from home, it was again Facebook that made it possible for me to make contact with others grieving for these two men, dead at a relatively young age (Gavin was only 41, a father of three, the youngest being just one year old).
Suzy wrote beautifully on the site about her love for her husband, and the responses from friends and colleagues bore tribute to what was clearly an extraordinary and hugely liked man.
It’s again made me question the wisdom of spending time away from family and friends back in the UK, because, cliché though it is, we really don’t know what is around the next corner. But then again, to live one’s life in fear as to what might be, is no way to exist – or, rather, it is only existing; it is not living.
Better to die living than to live dying.
Hearing of suffering and death back home nevertheless reinforces feelings of helplessness. When my good friend Angharad committed suicide in January this year, I stood on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills, sobbing on the phone to one of her sisters, who assured me that nothing was to be gained by my leaping on a plane and going home. This week, it was Santa Monica Boulevard that bore witness to my tears when I heard about Lester, and the instinct to rush to the airport was as strong.
Through Facebook, however, I have reconnected with many friends whom I have not heard from in some time, all of them recalling this vibrant journalist who, I suspect, never really believed in just how good he was, nor how much he was loved.
Tributes have also been flooding in for Gavin on Facebook, friends and colleagues have been Tweeting about their loss, and the social network again embraces our respective grieving with a remarkable sense of sharing in the experience of what it is like simply to be human, irrespective of what life throws at us, good or bad.
Some people gain comfort from believing that there is a world after this, in which our departed loved ones are looking down on us, smiling, just like us, at better times that have gone before; others take refuge in memory, holding on in thoughts to their personal stories; Facebook is a democracy in which either viewpoint, or, indeed, any other, in relation to death, can be heard.
Who knows what is right or wrong; what unites us all, however, is how damned hard it is to lose the people we love, and, in that connection, we must find comfort.
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect…
~E.M. Forster, Howards End
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Friday, November 19, 2010
Pier Pressure in Santa Monica 11/19/10
Life in Santa Monica could not be more different from my life in Beverly Hills.
One day, a couple of months back, I was looking in shop windows, fantasising about what I might be able to afford if ever I won three lotteries in a row; the next, I was on Santa Monica pier, wondering whether to waste my money having my name engraved on a grain of rice.
The carbohydrate name engraving is one of the highlights of the pier, although I have never seen anyone queuing up to have it done. As my name is Jacqueline Margaret Stephen, I want to put the promise of the billboard to the test, just for the hell of it, but 25 letters on one grain? Even if it’s an extra length grain of Basmati, I’m just not optimistic.
Watching the sun go down at the end of the pier, however, is one of the joys of living closer to the beach; in Beverly Hills, the only thing that makes your jaw drop at close of day is your bar bill after just two glasses of wine. But every day in SM, there is breathtaking beauty.
The Pacific boasts one of the most moving, exquisite sunsets in the world, and while there is always sadness when the orange disc quickly disappears at the sea’s horizon (as quickly as my cash used to do in Beverly Hills), there is pleasure in the knowledge that it will rise again, equally wonderfully, in just a few hours.
It’s a metaphor I need at the moment.
I’ve always loved seaside towns, and fairgrounds in particular. There are only a couple of rides on SM pier (and not very spectacular ones, at that), but the place still resurrects the childhood memories I have of going to Barry Island or Porthcawl in South Wales: the excitement of rotating lights on the Big Wheel, the pink crinolines of candy floss, the smell of salt, and the sound of the incoming tide as the excitement of the day turned to a slight chill and the promise of a warm bed to come.
My new best friend on the pier is Zoltar, a very strange character in a turban, who sits in a glass case, beckoning you from afar.
“YOU THERE!” he calls, a little too loudly and personally for my liking. Upon approaching the glass, his cold blue eyes spin a little wildly, and he invites you to find out what the future holds.
I have paid a dollar twice to get Zoltar’s advice, hoping that he would tell me that my current stresses could all be solved without my having to resort to buying dolls and sticking pins in bodily parts that will make mincemeat of my real life enemies.
His first piece of advice was that I needed to get up earlier in the morning. On the day of this revelation, I had been up since 3.30am, working, so the only way I am going to get up any earlier is if I just don’t go to bed at all. Zoltar foresaw “a turn of events that will give you a great deal of happiness”, so maybe that lottery win is in the offing after all.
On my second visit to Zoltar, he declared that I had recently had to balance work and friends. He had this to say: “Better a person of humble standing who works for himself than one who plays the great person but lacks food on the table.”
As I am having trouble paying for any food on the table at all at the moment, yet still working for myself and trying to be humble, I think his philosophy has gone a bit awry. Humility hasn’t put a bean in my mouth. So stuff humility and stuff that McDonald’s down my throat.
There was a lot of other talk about branches and trees, but Zoltar is no Socrates, believe me. So, I’ve been taking solace, instead, from “Creating True Peace” by the Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. He’s rather good, and when you learn to pity people rather than feel anger towards them, his philosophy really works. Then I see another doll and a pin-cushion and I just have to buy it.
I’m also seeing a wider variety of people on the bus to the beach. This week, a creature (I have no idea if it was man, woman or alien) got on the 704 bus from SM, covered head to toe in flowing garments and wearing a headband and dark sunglasses. He/she/it proceeded to put a newspaper on a seat, before deciding that It wanted the Chinese man’s seat opposite; so It usurped the poor man, who willingly gave it up, not wanting to argue with the bizarre spectre.
All very strange. Naturally, as It was carrying a small bag, I was convinced that we were all about to be blown up, but luckily the creature alighted at SM/Wilshire, to wreak whatever hell It was planning on people who could afford to clean up afterwards.
Despite warnings about SM not being as safe as Beverly Hills, I still haven’t been approached once by the kind of weirdos who used to confront me on a regular basis in the supposedly more upmarket area. On Tuesday, shortly after midnight, the publicist Ronni Chasen was also gunned down in her car in Beverly Hills, as she returned from the premiere of Burlesque, so it just goes to show: you never can tell.
But for a dollar’s ride on the Big Blue Bus and a $9 frozen margarita, there are times when you just have to sit and take in the wonder that is nature, and these are moments to realise that the dickwits in your life are no force for the glorious otherness of the sublime.
Who knows how long we’ll have any of it.
That’s something not even Zoltar will be able to predict.
One day, a couple of months back, I was looking in shop windows, fantasising about what I might be able to afford if ever I won three lotteries in a row; the next, I was on Santa Monica pier, wondering whether to waste my money having my name engraved on a grain of rice.
The carbohydrate name engraving is one of the highlights of the pier, although I have never seen anyone queuing up to have it done. As my name is Jacqueline Margaret Stephen, I want to put the promise of the billboard to the test, just for the hell of it, but 25 letters on one grain? Even if it’s an extra length grain of Basmati, I’m just not optimistic.
Watching the sun go down at the end of the pier, however, is one of the joys of living closer to the beach; in Beverly Hills, the only thing that makes your jaw drop at close of day is your bar bill after just two glasses of wine. But every day in SM, there is breathtaking beauty.
The Pacific boasts one of the most moving, exquisite sunsets in the world, and while there is always sadness when the orange disc quickly disappears at the sea’s horizon (as quickly as my cash used to do in Beverly Hills), there is pleasure in the knowledge that it will rise again, equally wonderfully, in just a few hours.
It’s a metaphor I need at the moment.
I’ve always loved seaside towns, and fairgrounds in particular. There are only a couple of rides on SM pier (and not very spectacular ones, at that), but the place still resurrects the childhood memories I have of going to Barry Island or Porthcawl in South Wales: the excitement of rotating lights on the Big Wheel, the pink crinolines of candy floss, the smell of salt, and the sound of the incoming tide as the excitement of the day turned to a slight chill and the promise of a warm bed to come.
My new best friend on the pier is Zoltar, a very strange character in a turban, who sits in a glass case, beckoning you from afar.
“YOU THERE!” he calls, a little too loudly and personally for my liking. Upon approaching the glass, his cold blue eyes spin a little wildly, and he invites you to find out what the future holds.
I have paid a dollar twice to get Zoltar’s advice, hoping that he would tell me that my current stresses could all be solved without my having to resort to buying dolls and sticking pins in bodily parts that will make mincemeat of my real life enemies.
His first piece of advice was that I needed to get up earlier in the morning. On the day of this revelation, I had been up since 3.30am, working, so the only way I am going to get up any earlier is if I just don’t go to bed at all. Zoltar foresaw “a turn of events that will give you a great deal of happiness”, so maybe that lottery win is in the offing after all.
On my second visit to Zoltar, he declared that I had recently had to balance work and friends. He had this to say: “Better a person of humble standing who works for himself than one who plays the great person but lacks food on the table.”
As I am having trouble paying for any food on the table at all at the moment, yet still working for myself and trying to be humble, I think his philosophy has gone a bit awry. Humility hasn’t put a bean in my mouth. So stuff humility and stuff that McDonald’s down my throat.
There was a lot of other talk about branches and trees, but Zoltar is no Socrates, believe me. So, I’ve been taking solace, instead, from “Creating True Peace” by the Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. He’s rather good, and when you learn to pity people rather than feel anger towards them, his philosophy really works. Then I see another doll and a pin-cushion and I just have to buy it.
I’m also seeing a wider variety of people on the bus to the beach. This week, a creature (I have no idea if it was man, woman or alien) got on the 704 bus from SM, covered head to toe in flowing garments and wearing a headband and dark sunglasses. He/she/it proceeded to put a newspaper on a seat, before deciding that It wanted the Chinese man’s seat opposite; so It usurped the poor man, who willingly gave it up, not wanting to argue with the bizarre spectre.
All very strange. Naturally, as It was carrying a small bag, I was convinced that we were all about to be blown up, but luckily the creature alighted at SM/Wilshire, to wreak whatever hell It was planning on people who could afford to clean up afterwards.
Despite warnings about SM not being as safe as Beverly Hills, I still haven’t been approached once by the kind of weirdos who used to confront me on a regular basis in the supposedly more upmarket area. On Tuesday, shortly after midnight, the publicist Ronni Chasen was also gunned down in her car in Beverly Hills, as she returned from the premiere of Burlesque, so it just goes to show: you never can tell.
But for a dollar’s ride on the Big Blue Bus and a $9 frozen margarita, there are times when you just have to sit and take in the wonder that is nature, and these are moments to realise that the dickwits in your life are no force for the glorious otherness of the sublime.
Who knows how long we’ll have any of it.
That’s something not even Zoltar will be able to predict.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Jet-Lagging Behind The Times 10/22/10
This jet-lag is a killer.
As I write, it is 7.30am in Spain, which means it is 10pm in LA. That is my excuse, anyway, for continuing to work my way through a giant pizza that I began about five hours ago, with the intention of consuming one small slice.
It is also my excuse for having watched two episodes of Murder She Wrote, one of Diagnosis Murder, and three episodes of Damages that I have already seen. Oh, yes, and a film called An Unexpected Love, in which a divorced woman falls for her lesbian boss. To be honest, the lesbian boss was a lot more attractive than the convertee, but I still had a cushion over my face when they hit the . . . well, it was the cushions, actually.
I have nothing against anyone being gay, but I’m just not keen on seeing full-on passion between anyone on TV. It’s not moral thing, it’s an artistic objection; I just don’t like the noises people make. It’s bad enough if you hook up with a slurper and grunter in your own life, without having to watch it all again in what should be the sanctity of your living room.
Since my arrival back in Europe, I’ve had a strange sensation of drifting in and out of consciousness. It’s been a very stressful few weeks in the US, which hasn’t helped, but after 11 hours in the sky, I feel like I did after the one and only time I had an anaesthetic: incredible highs, interspersed with mini comas. I fell asleep sitting upright at the computer last night. I wouldn’t have minded, had I awoken to find that my body had been taken over and I had composed the world’s greatest novel in my mental absence, but I didn’t; I came to, only to discover my chilli lodged in every orifice of my QWERTY and spent the next two hours picking it out with tweezers.
I am having trouble adjusting to what I can only call the RFE (Reverse Facebook Effect), too. Being eight hours behind in LA, I am used to making contact with my UK friends either at midnight when they are getting up for work in the morning, or at lunchtime my time, to coincide with their evening. In my mother’s case, that is more complicated, because I have to schedule my contact between her viewings of Home and Away, Neighbours, Emmerdale, Coronation Street and EastEnders during the week, and then X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday and Sunday.
I finally managed to persuade her to get Sky Plus a couple of weeks ago, so that she could more easily record stuff and talk to me, or Facebook me at any time, without fear of missing anything. The problem is, she doesn’t trust it, terrified that every time she pauses a programme, she will miss out on the opportunity of seeing . . . Like I said, it’s just too complicated, and I fear that nothing short of moving back in with her after 35 years is going to solve the problem.
But I keep forgetting that I am now on European time and, because I have yet to adjust and am living my life in a semi-coma, I am contacting people at ridiculous hours. They’re just not very happy when I call at 6pm LA time, full of beans and thinking about my dinner, only to find that they have been asleep for at least two hours and now hate me for waking them up.
I don’t think I’m really helping myself on the readjustment, as my TV viewing remains pretty much as it is in the US; there really is nothing on UK TV, so I am just watching repeats of my favourite US shows on the cable channels – White Collar, Law and Order, CSI, Two and a Half Men etc. etc. – so it’s as if my brain is still telling me that I am in LA, because all the information associated with it is still being processed exactly as it was when I left.
Apart from my momentary coma lapses, I just can’t sleep. I’ve now been awake 24 hours, have written my Daily Mail column, plus an extra feature, and also started a new blog (which you should check out – http://jacinthesoapbox.blogspot.com.), which I am hoping will attract advertising. It’s mainly out of necessity, having been landed in the deep financial shit in the US - which also isn’t helping with the sleeping – but writing has always, and continues to be a great purger.
Barely a day goes by now when I am not reminded of Edward Bulmer Lytton’s 19th century play, Richelieu, in which he asserts that the pen is mightier than the sword. Doubtless there will come a time when people won’t know what a pen is, and plays will be full of lines like “The Facebook is mightier than the Tweet”, but by then I will hopefully be long gone.
It really is strange, though, coming back to the UK news. When I left LA, all talk was about the campaigns in the race to be the next governor of California (from what I understood, the ugly, fat bird doesn’t stand a chance – that’s about the extent of my interest); in the UK, most people have been able to talk of nothing other than whether Wayne Rooney was going to stay at Manchester United, or defect to Manchester City.
Just when it looked as if the ugly, fat guy didn’t stand a chance, he appeared to give up the fight, but now all is apparently well, and the young, thick bloke, who sleeps with prostitutes, is staying on at a vastly increased salary.
There’s maybe hope for Meg Whitman in LA yet.
As I write, it is 7.30am in Spain, which means it is 10pm in LA. That is my excuse, anyway, for continuing to work my way through a giant pizza that I began about five hours ago, with the intention of consuming one small slice.
It is also my excuse for having watched two episodes of Murder She Wrote, one of Diagnosis Murder, and three episodes of Damages that I have already seen. Oh, yes, and a film called An Unexpected Love, in which a divorced woman falls for her lesbian boss. To be honest, the lesbian boss was a lot more attractive than the convertee, but I still had a cushion over my face when they hit the . . . well, it was the cushions, actually.
I have nothing against anyone being gay, but I’m just not keen on seeing full-on passion between anyone on TV. It’s not moral thing, it’s an artistic objection; I just don’t like the noises people make. It’s bad enough if you hook up with a slurper and grunter in your own life, without having to watch it all again in what should be the sanctity of your living room.
Since my arrival back in Europe, I’ve had a strange sensation of drifting in and out of consciousness. It’s been a very stressful few weeks in the US, which hasn’t helped, but after 11 hours in the sky, I feel like I did after the one and only time I had an anaesthetic: incredible highs, interspersed with mini comas. I fell asleep sitting upright at the computer last night. I wouldn’t have minded, had I awoken to find that my body had been taken over and I had composed the world’s greatest novel in my mental absence, but I didn’t; I came to, only to discover my chilli lodged in every orifice of my QWERTY and spent the next two hours picking it out with tweezers.
I am having trouble adjusting to what I can only call the RFE (Reverse Facebook Effect), too. Being eight hours behind in LA, I am used to making contact with my UK friends either at midnight when they are getting up for work in the morning, or at lunchtime my time, to coincide with their evening. In my mother’s case, that is more complicated, because I have to schedule my contact between her viewings of Home and Away, Neighbours, Emmerdale, Coronation Street and EastEnders during the week, and then X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday and Sunday.
I finally managed to persuade her to get Sky Plus a couple of weeks ago, so that she could more easily record stuff and talk to me, or Facebook me at any time, without fear of missing anything. The problem is, she doesn’t trust it, terrified that every time she pauses a programme, she will miss out on the opportunity of seeing . . . Like I said, it’s just too complicated, and I fear that nothing short of moving back in with her after 35 years is going to solve the problem.
But I keep forgetting that I am now on European time and, because I have yet to adjust and am living my life in a semi-coma, I am contacting people at ridiculous hours. They’re just not very happy when I call at 6pm LA time, full of beans and thinking about my dinner, only to find that they have been asleep for at least two hours and now hate me for waking them up.
I don’t think I’m really helping myself on the readjustment, as my TV viewing remains pretty much as it is in the US; there really is nothing on UK TV, so I am just watching repeats of my favourite US shows on the cable channels – White Collar, Law and Order, CSI, Two and a Half Men etc. etc. – so it’s as if my brain is still telling me that I am in LA, because all the information associated with it is still being processed exactly as it was when I left.
Apart from my momentary coma lapses, I just can’t sleep. I’ve now been awake 24 hours, have written my Daily Mail column, plus an extra feature, and also started a new blog (which you should check out – http://jacinthesoapbox.blogspot.com.), which I am hoping will attract advertising. It’s mainly out of necessity, having been landed in the deep financial shit in the US - which also isn’t helping with the sleeping – but writing has always, and continues to be a great purger.
Barely a day goes by now when I am not reminded of Edward Bulmer Lytton’s 19th century play, Richelieu, in which he asserts that the pen is mightier than the sword. Doubtless there will come a time when people won’t know what a pen is, and plays will be full of lines like “The Facebook is mightier than the Tweet”, but by then I will hopefully be long gone.
It really is strange, though, coming back to the UK news. When I left LA, all talk was about the campaigns in the race to be the next governor of California (from what I understood, the ugly, fat bird doesn’t stand a chance – that’s about the extent of my interest); in the UK, most people have been able to talk of nothing other than whether Wayne Rooney was going to stay at Manchester United, or defect to Manchester City.
Just when it looked as if the ugly, fat guy didn’t stand a chance, he appeared to give up the fight, but now all is apparently well, and the young, thick bloke, who sleeps with prostitutes, is staying on at a vastly increased salary.
There’s maybe hope for Meg Whitman in LA yet.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Cultural Light In The Tunnel 10/18/10
The cultural wasteland that is Beverly Hills has been manifesting itself this past week in the launch of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (“Real” and “Beverly Hills” – not words you will often find together in the same sentence).
The TV series manages to bring together some of the worst, most vacuous women in various states across America (New Jersey is so far topping the list in terms of grossness), and this lot, like their predecessors, clearly have no idea about the face they are presenting to the world.
Well, I use the word “face” loosely; somewhere, beneath all the surgery and Botox, there probably lurks the semblance of a real face, but it hasn’t seen daylight for at least a decade.
It’s what Beverly Hills is all about – false features, false people, in a city of money-grabbing, intellectual dereliction. It’s a shallow, toxic environment: scratch the surface of the glamorous façade and the hollowness will swallow you up.
As friends had told me, there really is cultural life in LA beyond BH, and the relief at finally finding it has enriched my life here no end.
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (whose resident home is London's South Bank) is in Santa Monica at the moment, and their production of The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Broadstage Theater is hilarious. My friend Gerard McCarthy, who I gave rave reviews to during his time in Hollyoaks is in it, and is now sporting luscious long blonde hair.
It was something of a talking point among some Americans in the audience. “Is it real?” they asked him at the after-show party. “Can we touch it?”
Clearly, there had been a busload in from Beverly Hills, because another man asked Gerard: “Why have you all got English accents?” Er, because the play is set in Windsor, knobhead.
Gerard is actually from Belfast, but does a very convincing English accent, and it’s great to see him playing a romantic male after his stint as a transsexual in Hollyoaks.
It’s been something of a cultural week, and yesterday I went to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion downtown, to a Dvorak recital (or Der-vorrack, as one American lady pronounced it). My new friend Francois Chouchan, an award-winning concert pianist, delivered a breathtakingly brilliant performance, and I was once again reminded that there really is nothing like great art to transcend the mundane and nastiness in life.
It was rather a special afternoon: a wonderful recital, followed by a champagne tea and “la conversation”. After the less than mediocre performances I am used to in Beverly Hills hostelries, it was, literally, music to my ears.
Friends had also informed me that if I could tear myself away from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, there was a rich cultural life awaiting me in San Francisco.
Well, I finally managed to visit the city I had also been assured was “very European” - an observation that completely passed me by, as no matter which way I walked, I always ended up in Chinatown. And as I was walking over ten miles every day, that was something of an achievement. Or maybe I had just reached Hong Kong.
San Francisco Bay isn’t anywhere near as vibrant as Cardiff Bay back home, to be honest, although a boat trip to Alcatraz was a tad more exciting than Cardiff’s hourly water service to Penarth. Having escaped the Alcatraz that was my Beverly Hills life, however, it felt a little too close for comfort.
It was also a pretty unfriendly city. At the Butterfly restaurant in the Bay, I was about to be given a table, until some couples arrived just behind me. I was then informed that there was room “only at the bar or outside” for one person. Alcatraz was the Ritz compared to Butterfly’s outside, and I would have had to lose two stone to cram myself in at the bar, so I left.
I later left a message on the restaurant’s answer-machine, informing them how appalling it was, being treated like a second class citizen just because I was alone, blah, blah, and I was a journalist writing about the city, more blah, blah, blah.
The manager phoned me the next morning, very apologetic and offering to make it up to me on my next visit. He assured me that this really was not their policy. Yeah, right. Too little, too late.
It’s something I am not used to in Europe, and in particular Paris, where women on their own are treated with respect, even reverence. The Parisians also know that a woman by herself is likely to treat herself to a really nice bottle of wine and stuff her face with three courses, thereby spending a lot more than the family who comes in, orders a mixed salad between four, and a jug of tap water.
The King’s Head in Santa Monica appear to know this, but then it is a traditional English pub, run by the Irish. This week alone, I’ve had their Cornish pasty, their chicken curry and, joy of joys, their bangers, mash and gravy. On Saturday, my French friends went for the pasties, the fish and chips, and the chicken pie. They loved them all.
So, all in all, it’s been something of an adventurous week, which is just as well, because the weather has been diabolical. I’ve been listening to the song Rain, from the brilliant Mika album, The Boy Who Knew Too Much (“When it rai rai rains, when it rai rai rains . . . I hate days like this”), as I look out at the permanently cloudy skies.
But while there’s music and moonlight and love and romance, it’s easy to face the music and dance.
The TV series manages to bring together some of the worst, most vacuous women in various states across America (New Jersey is so far topping the list in terms of grossness), and this lot, like their predecessors, clearly have no idea about the face they are presenting to the world.
Well, I use the word “face” loosely; somewhere, beneath all the surgery and Botox, there probably lurks the semblance of a real face, but it hasn’t seen daylight for at least a decade.
It’s what Beverly Hills is all about – false features, false people, in a city of money-grabbing, intellectual dereliction. It’s a shallow, toxic environment: scratch the surface of the glamorous façade and the hollowness will swallow you up.
As friends had told me, there really is cultural life in LA beyond BH, and the relief at finally finding it has enriched my life here no end.
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (whose resident home is London's South Bank) is in Santa Monica at the moment, and their production of The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Broadstage Theater is hilarious. My friend Gerard McCarthy, who I gave rave reviews to during his time in Hollyoaks is in it, and is now sporting luscious long blonde hair.
It was something of a talking point among some Americans in the audience. “Is it real?” they asked him at the after-show party. “Can we touch it?”
Clearly, there had been a busload in from Beverly Hills, because another man asked Gerard: “Why have you all got English accents?” Er, because the play is set in Windsor, knobhead.
Gerard is actually from Belfast, but does a very convincing English accent, and it’s great to see him playing a romantic male after his stint as a transsexual in Hollyoaks.
It’s been something of a cultural week, and yesterday I went to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion downtown, to a Dvorak recital (or Der-vorrack, as one American lady pronounced it). My new friend Francois Chouchan, an award-winning concert pianist, delivered a breathtakingly brilliant performance, and I was once again reminded that there really is nothing like great art to transcend the mundane and nastiness in life.
It was rather a special afternoon: a wonderful recital, followed by a champagne tea and “la conversation”. After the less than mediocre performances I am used to in Beverly Hills hostelries, it was, literally, music to my ears.
Friends had also informed me that if I could tear myself away from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, there was a rich cultural life awaiting me in San Francisco.
Well, I finally managed to visit the city I had also been assured was “very European” - an observation that completely passed me by, as no matter which way I walked, I always ended up in Chinatown. And as I was walking over ten miles every day, that was something of an achievement. Or maybe I had just reached Hong Kong.
San Francisco Bay isn’t anywhere near as vibrant as Cardiff Bay back home, to be honest, although a boat trip to Alcatraz was a tad more exciting than Cardiff’s hourly water service to Penarth. Having escaped the Alcatraz that was my Beverly Hills life, however, it felt a little too close for comfort.
It was also a pretty unfriendly city. At the Butterfly restaurant in the Bay, I was about to be given a table, until some couples arrived just behind me. I was then informed that there was room “only at the bar or outside” for one person. Alcatraz was the Ritz compared to Butterfly’s outside, and I would have had to lose two stone to cram myself in at the bar, so I left.
I later left a message on the restaurant’s answer-machine, informing them how appalling it was, being treated like a second class citizen just because I was alone, blah, blah, and I was a journalist writing about the city, more blah, blah, blah.
The manager phoned me the next morning, very apologetic and offering to make it up to me on my next visit. He assured me that this really was not their policy. Yeah, right. Too little, too late.
It’s something I am not used to in Europe, and in particular Paris, where women on their own are treated with respect, even reverence. The Parisians also know that a woman by herself is likely to treat herself to a really nice bottle of wine and stuff her face with three courses, thereby spending a lot more than the family who comes in, orders a mixed salad between four, and a jug of tap water.
The King’s Head in Santa Monica appear to know this, but then it is a traditional English pub, run by the Irish. This week alone, I’ve had their Cornish pasty, their chicken curry and, joy of joys, their bangers, mash and gravy. On Saturday, my French friends went for the pasties, the fish and chips, and the chicken pie. They loved them all.
So, all in all, it’s been something of an adventurous week, which is just as well, because the weather has been diabolical. I’ve been listening to the song Rain, from the brilliant Mika album, The Boy Who Knew Too Much (“When it rai rai rains, when it rai rai rains . . . I hate days like this”), as I look out at the permanently cloudy skies.
But while there’s music and moonlight and love and romance, it’s easy to face the music and dance.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
The Underbelly Of Life 10/9/10
The Irish sausages were great.
My mass stocking-up of familiar UK goods from the British Shop next door to the King’s Head, and the Tudor Shop opposite, in Santa Monica, reminded me of all the foodstuffs I missed from home.
I wolfed down the Heinz baked beans like a hog returning from boot camp; the chicken pie flew down my throat like a flying saucer; and the sausages . . . Oh, the sausages.
Until discovering this little corner of a foreign field that is forever England (at least, that’s what I’m hoping), I’ve been living pretty healthily here. The lack of accessible takeaways near my apartment in Beverly Hills ensured that I wasn’t going to bed monosodium glutamated up to the gills three times a week, and I regularly went to the gym and walked pretty much everywhere.
The healthy living looks set to continue in my new life in Santa Monica, with Sports Club LA’s sister gym (which also has a huge pool) in West LA, and the close proximity of several farmers’ markets. I also walk 30 blocks to the beach, a journey that takes only 40 minutes (two days and 40 minutes, if I call into an Irish pub en route).
But now there’s that Brit temptation threatening to put a spanner in my good works when I finally reach the ocean.
I know how to watch what I eat, though, and what I put into my stomach has always been something I have been able to control. But the presence of home food in my cupboards has once more made me aware of just how very differently we eat back in the UK, compared to US folk, who seem to fall into two camps: basically, greedy buggers and nibblers, and it’s not hard to spot the difference.
The greedy buggers flock to chain restaurants such as the Cheesecake Factory or Il Pastaio, and order way too much, but eat it all anyway, for fear of not getting their money’s worth.
The nibblers can be seen hanging out in healthy sandwich/salad hostelries where, upon ordering the Caesar salad, they will add: “ . . . but no cheese, no anchovies, no dressing, and easy on the leaves.”
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t fat nibblers, too; there are. They just don’t like to be seen to be eating. They therefore manage a soupcon of kobe beef and take the rest home in a box to stuff during the Letterman Show.
Thin or fat, they all appear to be obsessed with food, and it plays the most enormous part in their lives, even while on the move - driving, walking, even on the treadmill at the gym. As someone who was brought up to eat two good meals a day and nothing in between, I just cannot get used to the snacking culture. I tell you: their mouths are never empty.
Crisps, nuts, olives, breadsticks . . . Their supermarket trolleys are piled high with junk food, which also turns up on every bar counter and restaurant table, and is consumed by the bucket-load in advance of the main meal.
And when the irritating crunch of their salty orchestra briefly pauses for an intermission, their teeth are chomping on gum, which they eat with mouths wide open, saliva dripping onto their lips. It’s like being on the set of Jaws.
It’s easy to see why 72 million Americans are obese (according to the latest statistics), but nobody seems to be doing anything about it. In the UK, the Food Standards agency has come under criticism for not providing sufficient guidelines regarding healthy eating, but there is still general knowledge, and let’s not forget Jamie Oliver, who heightened awareness among schoolchildren and their parents. But it’s just not as big a deal in the US.
I suspect that the main reason is that fast food is cheap, and with 13% to 17% of Americans living below the federal poverty line at any one time, fast food is going to be high on their limited shopping list.
But what of the percentage that does have money? Why aren’t they eating more healthily? One simple reason: the country’s indulgence of one of the seven deadly sins: Gluttony.
The way they eat in the US is a physical manifestation of the greed in so may other areas of life: the money-grabbing, selfish, mean-spiritedness among the Haves that are the very things that keep so large a percentage - the Have Nots - of the population down; it’s the word of capitalism made flesh, and it is sickening to see.
I have met some really great Americans here, and some absolute monsters; but I find the general greed, both literal and metaphorical, that I witness on a daily basis, increasingly disturbing.
In Britain, we blame the division between the Haves and the Have Nots on our class culture; it’s not called class culture in the US, but it is the same thing.
This week, a report stated that racism under Obama is worse than it was before this first black President came to power. I don’t doubt it, and in Beverly Hills in particular, I was appalled to witness the racism towards anyone who wasn’t white, upper middle strata (“class”, as we know it).
It’s disgusting. It’s inhuman. And in a country in which 92% of the population believes in God, it is utterly hypocritical.
They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Not in the blocked arteries of American gluttony it’s not.
My mass stocking-up of familiar UK goods from the British Shop next door to the King’s Head, and the Tudor Shop opposite, in Santa Monica, reminded me of all the foodstuffs I missed from home.
I wolfed down the Heinz baked beans like a hog returning from boot camp; the chicken pie flew down my throat like a flying saucer; and the sausages . . . Oh, the sausages.
Until discovering this little corner of a foreign field that is forever England (at least, that’s what I’m hoping), I’ve been living pretty healthily here. The lack of accessible takeaways near my apartment in Beverly Hills ensured that I wasn’t going to bed monosodium glutamated up to the gills three times a week, and I regularly went to the gym and walked pretty much everywhere.
The healthy living looks set to continue in my new life in Santa Monica, with Sports Club LA’s sister gym (which also has a huge pool) in West LA, and the close proximity of several farmers’ markets. I also walk 30 blocks to the beach, a journey that takes only 40 minutes (two days and 40 minutes, if I call into an Irish pub en route).
But now there’s that Brit temptation threatening to put a spanner in my good works when I finally reach the ocean.
I know how to watch what I eat, though, and what I put into my stomach has always been something I have been able to control. But the presence of home food in my cupboards has once more made me aware of just how very differently we eat back in the UK, compared to US folk, who seem to fall into two camps: basically, greedy buggers and nibblers, and it’s not hard to spot the difference.
The greedy buggers flock to chain restaurants such as the Cheesecake Factory or Il Pastaio, and order way too much, but eat it all anyway, for fear of not getting their money’s worth.
The nibblers can be seen hanging out in healthy sandwich/salad hostelries where, upon ordering the Caesar salad, they will add: “ . . . but no cheese, no anchovies, no dressing, and easy on the leaves.”
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t fat nibblers, too; there are. They just don’t like to be seen to be eating. They therefore manage a soupcon of kobe beef and take the rest home in a box to stuff during the Letterman Show.
Thin or fat, they all appear to be obsessed with food, and it plays the most enormous part in their lives, even while on the move - driving, walking, even on the treadmill at the gym. As someone who was brought up to eat two good meals a day and nothing in between, I just cannot get used to the snacking culture. I tell you: their mouths are never empty.
Crisps, nuts, olives, breadsticks . . . Their supermarket trolleys are piled high with junk food, which also turns up on every bar counter and restaurant table, and is consumed by the bucket-load in advance of the main meal.
And when the irritating crunch of their salty orchestra briefly pauses for an intermission, their teeth are chomping on gum, which they eat with mouths wide open, saliva dripping onto their lips. It’s like being on the set of Jaws.
It’s easy to see why 72 million Americans are obese (according to the latest statistics), but nobody seems to be doing anything about it. In the UK, the Food Standards agency has come under criticism for not providing sufficient guidelines regarding healthy eating, but there is still general knowledge, and let’s not forget Jamie Oliver, who heightened awareness among schoolchildren and their parents. But it’s just not as big a deal in the US.
I suspect that the main reason is that fast food is cheap, and with 13% to 17% of Americans living below the federal poverty line at any one time, fast food is going to be high on their limited shopping list.
But what of the percentage that does have money? Why aren’t they eating more healthily? One simple reason: the country’s indulgence of one of the seven deadly sins: Gluttony.
The way they eat in the US is a physical manifestation of the greed in so may other areas of life: the money-grabbing, selfish, mean-spiritedness among the Haves that are the very things that keep so large a percentage - the Have Nots - of the population down; it’s the word of capitalism made flesh, and it is sickening to see.
I have met some really great Americans here, and some absolute monsters; but I find the general greed, both literal and metaphorical, that I witness on a daily basis, increasingly disturbing.
In Britain, we blame the division between the Haves and the Have Nots on our class culture; it’s not called class culture in the US, but it is the same thing.
This week, a report stated that racism under Obama is worse than it was before this first black President came to power. I don’t doubt it, and in Beverly Hills in particular, I was appalled to witness the racism towards anyone who wasn’t white, upper middle strata (“class”, as we know it).
It’s disgusting. It’s inhuman. And in a country in which 92% of the population believes in God, it is utterly hypocritical.
They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Not in the blocked arteries of American gluttony it’s not.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Life's A Beach 9/28/10
A month is a long time in Hollywood.
There I was, all set to go home, waxing lyrical on September 6th about my family and friends, while declaring my LA life over, and yet here I am. Still. And, what’s more, in a different apartment, with another signed lease, engaged in an enormous writing project.
I can’t divulge the details just yet, but it is hugely exciting and, as I need regular access to the subjects, whose biography I am writing, have decided to stay on, rather than conduct the whole thing via e-mail and phone from back home.
No, I have not emigrated, and will still be back in the UK on two extended trips before Christmas, for all the reasons I detailed in my last blog. But I am yet again going to be an East/West commuter and sharing nights out with my flight crew chums from Virgin and Air New Zealand.
My mother in particular is being incredibly understanding. She knows what a tough year it has been, and this project could really transform my life. She is used to my changes of fortune and also my changes of address, and I could not wish for better support. My friends, also, while probably thinking I am insane, are excited for me.
But I have moved. After 18 months of living in Beverly Hills, I decided to try a different area. In recent months, I have been going to Santa Monica’s ocean front several times a week on the bus: a journey that took over half an hour. Much as I have enjoyed the exclusivity of Beverly Hills, it can hardly be called real life. The nearest supermarket was over a mile away; buying a pint of milk at night was harder than keeping a cow in the bathroom. Although there was a Whole Foods two miles away, I could no longer afford their prices. My screams at the checkout were beginning to frighten the locals.
Having looked at some dire places near the sea front, I decided upon a very high spec, modern apartment about a five-minute drive away from the coast. My new landlord owns the spectacular kitchen store below, so I now have the appliances I have always dreamed of. My fridge is like a second home. I could take in a couple of lodgers in the oven and never bump into them.
Close by and within walking distance, is the store Smart and Final, which is cheap, cheap, cheap; and, a few doors from that, the Star Market, an Oriental store with hundreds of spices and exotic fruits. The Wine Expo one block away has as good a selection of European wines as I ever saw when living in France; on Saturday, they are opening their very nice wine bar. And, opposite, there is Busby’s Sports Bar.
I’m not sure whether I will be a regular in Busby’s, which is a real All Guys Together sort of place - the kind you see in movies, before reaching for the remote to see if there is a rom com on another channel.
The clientele is very tall, they shout at screens showing games that, to me, have incomprehensible rules; they high five each other when someone scores (which appears to be often); they wear baseball hats and drink beer, while wolfing down plates of chicken wings the size of small poultry farms.
Luckily, I don’t hear any of the noise from Busby’s in my apartment, which, being far set back from the road, is unbelievably quiet, and I already feel very settled. I had everything unpacked and in its place within 48 hours, including my alphabetically ordered books – and spices. And I have already been to a cheese and wine evening at an apartment, where my new neighbour was introducing a line of beauty products.
I have also been to the fabulous Wine Lounge at the top of the new Santa Monica shopping mall, and again to my regular haunt the King’s Head, the British pub close to the front.
And who should I see in the King’s Head, but David Beckham. Sitting at the opposite table, in his baseball cap and vest, having lunch with his three kids. I could barely swallow my fries.
It was all rather sweet. David cut up the younger boy’s food and was openly affectionate with them, like any normal doting dad. And what well behaved children. Polite, friendly to the staff, they were adorable and stood patiently by as other diners, clocking the star, moved in for photos and autographs as the party stood up to leave.
Okay, yes, I was one of them. Having seen David in my gym, where Victoria regularly works out, too, I was playing it cool. And then couldn’t. So there he is, on my Blackberry, in a very blurred photo (the female fan taking it was so excited, she was shaking uncontrollably), with me looking like a Lilliputian tucked under David’s well muscled arm.
They were all going next door to the Tudor shop where, joy of joys this week, I was able to buy Heinz baked beans. And proper Irish sausages. And a chicken and mushroom pie. Real British food. You can take the girl out of Wales, but . . .
It is still easy to get around on the bus, which goes from right outside my apartment block, and yesterday I went to West Hollywood, where I saw yet another sports superstar - Mike Tyson, sitting right across from me in a hostelry. I decided not to venture forth in quite the same manner as I had with David. I value my ears. Not to mention my . . . Well, we all know the boxer’s history. He was laughing uproariously with some friends, with his mouth wide open and baring his teeth. All he was missing was a lion tamer.
So, another chapter begins, and the roller-coaster at the end of Santa Monica pier beckons. It’s an appropriate metaphor for the fortunes of my strangely ever-changing life.
There I was, all set to go home, waxing lyrical on September 6th about my family and friends, while declaring my LA life over, and yet here I am. Still. And, what’s more, in a different apartment, with another signed lease, engaged in an enormous writing project.
I can’t divulge the details just yet, but it is hugely exciting and, as I need regular access to the subjects, whose biography I am writing, have decided to stay on, rather than conduct the whole thing via e-mail and phone from back home.
No, I have not emigrated, and will still be back in the UK on two extended trips before Christmas, for all the reasons I detailed in my last blog. But I am yet again going to be an East/West commuter and sharing nights out with my flight crew chums from Virgin and Air New Zealand.
My mother in particular is being incredibly understanding. She knows what a tough year it has been, and this project could really transform my life. She is used to my changes of fortune and also my changes of address, and I could not wish for better support. My friends, also, while probably thinking I am insane, are excited for me.
But I have moved. After 18 months of living in Beverly Hills, I decided to try a different area. In recent months, I have been going to Santa Monica’s ocean front several times a week on the bus: a journey that took over half an hour. Much as I have enjoyed the exclusivity of Beverly Hills, it can hardly be called real life. The nearest supermarket was over a mile away; buying a pint of milk at night was harder than keeping a cow in the bathroom. Although there was a Whole Foods two miles away, I could no longer afford their prices. My screams at the checkout were beginning to frighten the locals.
Having looked at some dire places near the sea front, I decided upon a very high spec, modern apartment about a five-minute drive away from the coast. My new landlord owns the spectacular kitchen store below, so I now have the appliances I have always dreamed of. My fridge is like a second home. I could take in a couple of lodgers in the oven and never bump into them.
Close by and within walking distance, is the store Smart and Final, which is cheap, cheap, cheap; and, a few doors from that, the Star Market, an Oriental store with hundreds of spices and exotic fruits. The Wine Expo one block away has as good a selection of European wines as I ever saw when living in France; on Saturday, they are opening their very nice wine bar. And, opposite, there is Busby’s Sports Bar.
I’m not sure whether I will be a regular in Busby’s, which is a real All Guys Together sort of place - the kind you see in movies, before reaching for the remote to see if there is a rom com on another channel.
The clientele is very tall, they shout at screens showing games that, to me, have incomprehensible rules; they high five each other when someone scores (which appears to be often); they wear baseball hats and drink beer, while wolfing down plates of chicken wings the size of small poultry farms.
Luckily, I don’t hear any of the noise from Busby’s in my apartment, which, being far set back from the road, is unbelievably quiet, and I already feel very settled. I had everything unpacked and in its place within 48 hours, including my alphabetically ordered books – and spices. And I have already been to a cheese and wine evening at an apartment, where my new neighbour was introducing a line of beauty products.
I have also been to the fabulous Wine Lounge at the top of the new Santa Monica shopping mall, and again to my regular haunt the King’s Head, the British pub close to the front.
And who should I see in the King’s Head, but David Beckham. Sitting at the opposite table, in his baseball cap and vest, having lunch with his three kids. I could barely swallow my fries.
It was all rather sweet. David cut up the younger boy’s food and was openly affectionate with them, like any normal doting dad. And what well behaved children. Polite, friendly to the staff, they were adorable and stood patiently by as other diners, clocking the star, moved in for photos and autographs as the party stood up to leave.
Okay, yes, I was one of them. Having seen David in my gym, where Victoria regularly works out, too, I was playing it cool. And then couldn’t. So there he is, on my Blackberry, in a very blurred photo (the female fan taking it was so excited, she was shaking uncontrollably), with me looking like a Lilliputian tucked under David’s well muscled arm.
They were all going next door to the Tudor shop where, joy of joys this week, I was able to buy Heinz baked beans. And proper Irish sausages. And a chicken and mushroom pie. Real British food. You can take the girl out of Wales, but . . .
It is still easy to get around on the bus, which goes from right outside my apartment block, and yesterday I went to West Hollywood, where I saw yet another sports superstar - Mike Tyson, sitting right across from me in a hostelry. I decided not to venture forth in quite the same manner as I had with David. I value my ears. Not to mention my . . . Well, we all know the boxer’s history. He was laughing uproariously with some friends, with his mouth wide open and baring his teeth. All he was missing was a lion tamer.
So, another chapter begins, and the roller-coaster at the end of Santa Monica pier beckons. It’s an appropriate metaphor for the fortunes of my strangely ever-changing life.
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