What a lot of psychics there are in LA. You would think that they would have had the foresight to know that opening up three doors away from a rival isn’t going to be good business; but if you walk to West Hollywood or, as I did today, back from Melrose Avenue to Beverly Hills (think of the longest walk you have ever done and treble it), there are, literally, dozens.
No, I still don’t have a car, because I am trying to save money; hence my decision not to take a taxi, either. The one I took to Melrose cost me over $20, and I had to suffer yet another driver trying to get to grips with the fact that Wales is a country in its own right and not a city in England.
For some reason, this fascinates them; and today’s man also wanted to know which were the “friendly” people in the UK. That bit of the conversation was easy: everyone except the English.
The prospect of running out of money and having to return to the depressing British winter is already depressing me, so I thought I would drop in on a psychic to find out when my bumper pay cheque for the book I am writing was likely to arrive.
The Psychic Centre, on La Brea, promised much from the posters that lined the road on my way there; when I found it, a massive sign outside was promising a special $10 dollar reading which, at half the price of the taxi fare, seemed a good deal.
I went up the steps to find four women tucking into their Subway takeaway lunch around a crystal ball and a pile of Tarot cards with crumbs on them. Through a full mouth, the fattest one asked whether I was looking for a reading, and pretty much splattered me with the contents of said mouth when I said Yes.
They then could not decide who was going to do me, but called a scruffy girl of about 18 from the back, who looked pretty cheesed off at having her lunch break interrupted.
“What d’you want?”
“Well, what is there?”
“Tarot, palm, crystal ball, eye.”
I had had my eyeball read once before, when I was doing a health programme for Channel 4, and I hadn’t been very impressed. Did the eyeball of a junk food fanatic show spinning burgers in their depths?
Would my LA eyes now reveal the gallons of carrot juice I am drinking: and, just like the advert, would I be filled with optimism that my future was both bright and orange?
I wasn't really sure that my eyes were going to be the best predictors, as I was wearing some new mineral make-up that I bought at the weekend, and appeared to be suffering an allergic reaction to it; hence my eyes were very red with all the rubbing I had been doing to wipe away the constant torrent of water pouring from them.
“Have you had any of them before?”
“All of them,” I said.
A Tarot reader had once told me that I would have twins. Never happened. A crystal ball reader told me that I would marry someone whose name began with W. Never happened. The only W in my life was a William I once dated, who told me in a Paris café that I was the most intelligent, funny, fantastic woman he had ever met – he just didn’t fancy me. Stuff Paris as the City of Love.
Last year, passing through Turkey on a cruise, I had my Turkish coffee cup read, in the same way that people read tea-leaves. I was told that I spend money on big things (tell me about it – I spent 12,000 euros on a Chloe dress after one too many white wines a couple of years ago), that I would be very rich within three years (one down, two to go), and that a man whose name began with S was going to help my career big-time.
I tell you, if Simon Cowell doesn’t shift his backside quickly, I’m going to be on Skid Row.
My LA psychic was clearly having an off day and seemed highly irritated that I had even deigned to enter the room, let alone demand anything once inside.
“Is it all right if I tape it?” I asked, producing my Blackberry. That was a definite no-no. “Can I take notes?” “No. We don’t like that. It’s supposed to be private. Why would you want to tape it?”
Honestly, this was like pulling teeth. I could have finished this life, gone to an after one, AND returned as a sub-species in the time it was taking her to predict the next . . . Well, how many years? Heck, I only wanted to know as far as September. At this rate, I would be lucky to know what I was going to have for dinner.
“So what d’you want?”
“Okay, I’ll have the eye.”
“You want me to read your eyeball?”
“Yes, let’s go for that.”
“That’s $45.”
“But your sign outside says that you’re doing a special deal for $10.”
“Yeah, that’s a palm reading.”
“Okay, I’ll have one of those.”
“To be honest, it’s not very accurate.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. I read my friends’ palms all the time and am deadly accurate. I have told them about things in their pasts that they have not even shared with their closest family and friends. I have made grown men cry with the accuracy of my palm-reading.
I can even read my own. I’m going to be very successful, but there is going to be a clean break of some sorts before I achieve that ultimate success (could that 6000 miles across the Atlantic be it, I have wondered?).
I’m going to live a long life and I won’t have any kids (my 50 year old body fills in the gaps that my palm has left out on that one).
Clearly, there was going to be no such insight in LA, so I walked out of the centre without having spent a dollar and muttering something about it all being a bit of a con.
In fact, given my own skills in this area – certainly, compared to the La Brea ghoul - I think I could open up a psychic centre in LA and do very well out of it.
The way the money is going, together with Mr Cowell’s ongoing silence, it looks as if it might be my only option. Dollar for your thoughts, everyone. You know where I am.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Casting Pearls After Swine 6/14/09
Apparently, there are some women on the planet who will do anything to get the men in their life out of it. Given the amount of trouble I have getting them in there in the first place, not to mention acquiring enough chloroform, rope and chains to keep them there, I can’t see that it’s a problem I’m ever going to encounter.
So, I am completely mystified by a website called outofyourlife.com. As most things do these days, this came to my attention while exercising in the gym and watching the machines’ TVs, and I couldn’t wait to get home to find out more.
The TV commercial features a blonde woman handling various pieces of jewellery. They’re shiny, they’re chunky and, for the most part, fairly hideous. At one point, she examines a pair of un-matching ear-rings, as if trying to decide which she prefers, and we learn that each one relates to a man who, in real life, she was unable to decide between.
As she places each piece in jewellery in a special, lined box, the voiceover explains once you’re no longer with some man, the moment comes when: “It’s time to get his jewellery out of your life too.”
And how can you do this? You just let outofyourlife.com buy it all from you – and, yes, they even provide that special little box in which to place it all before you Fedex it off.
My first thought was that I would have dumped any guy who bought me such rotten jewellery to begin with; but then I remembered that apart from one brooch, no man has ever, ever bought me so much as a diamante hair-grip.
When I was 30, the man I was with bought me a china duck: a hideous, lime green and yellow, china duck vase whose only function I could foresee would be as something to smash over his head when the relationship ended (where were those websites supplying bubble wrap for packing up china ducks when I needed them, eh?).
In Wales, we have a custom of giving carved, wooden love spoons to the people we care for, not jewellery; but even in that respect I didn’t fare well. One Valentine’s Day, I opened up a gift that arrived in a love spoon box to find a pig’s trotter inside. Quite how that was supposed to woo me is another of life’s mysteries I have yet to fathom.
My last serious boyfriend gave me the single – not even the album, goddammit – of Mambo Number Five. You know the one – the guy who likes a bit of this woman here, a bit of that one on the side etc. etc. And I had to lend him the money to buy that.
Where on Earth are all these men who give jewellery in such abundance that it can be sent back in return for cash? I don’t have a lavish collection, but what I do have, I bought myself. Last year, for my 50th, I treated myself to a diamond tennis bracelet. It was something I had always wanted and, after a few drinks in Turkey, while covering a cruise for the Daily Mail, I saw a psychic in a hotel.
“You always spend money on big things,” she said. On the way back to the ship, after a few more drinks, I stopped off at a jeweller’s and bought the bracelet. I suspect that the minute I left the hotel, the psychic was on the phone to the shop, telling him: “There’s another one on her way.”
I really love diamonds, but if they are a girl’s best friend, where are all the men who know this and, more to the point, act upon it?
I have my eye on a rather exquisite, long chain of diamonds to match my tennis bracelet at the moment. I saw it while window-shopping on Rodeo Drive and went in to ask the price. “That would be $175,000, ma’am,” said the rather charming salesman. “It’s platinum.”
I kept a straight face. “Do you have it in white gold?”
“That would be $75,000, ma’am.”
Ever since the movie Pretty Woman, in which the assistants on Rodeo Drive treated Julia Roberts’ character Vivien with such contempt, all the stores are careful to behave towards everyone as if they have loads of money – even though, given my current financial circumstances, contempt would have been entirely justifiable.
But I didn’t see any man leaping out from behind a pillar, waving his cheque book, declaring: “No, no. Let me, Miss Stephen.” “Thank you, Mr Gere.”
In Spain and LA, I see women draped in jewels all the time; so what have they got that I haven’t? A lot of space between their ears, I suspect is the answer, and men with money (and the equivalent acreage in nothingness between their ears usually) appear to like that.
So, for all my being unable to fill that little satin box and receive my cheque in the post from outofyourlife.com, I’m grateful that I pretty much live by the intomylife.com premise, and that I don’t dislike anyone enough to hand back anything I’ve ever had from anyone.
And that includes the green and yellow china duck. At least it was given in love. The only exception is the pig’s trotter. I hope the guy who sent it caught swine flu.
So, I am completely mystified by a website called outofyourlife.com. As most things do these days, this came to my attention while exercising in the gym and watching the machines’ TVs, and I couldn’t wait to get home to find out more.
The TV commercial features a blonde woman handling various pieces of jewellery. They’re shiny, they’re chunky and, for the most part, fairly hideous. At one point, she examines a pair of un-matching ear-rings, as if trying to decide which she prefers, and we learn that each one relates to a man who, in real life, she was unable to decide between.
As she places each piece in jewellery in a special, lined box, the voiceover explains once you’re no longer with some man, the moment comes when: “It’s time to get his jewellery out of your life too.”
And how can you do this? You just let outofyourlife.com buy it all from you – and, yes, they even provide that special little box in which to place it all before you Fedex it off.
My first thought was that I would have dumped any guy who bought me such rotten jewellery to begin with; but then I remembered that apart from one brooch, no man has ever, ever bought me so much as a diamante hair-grip.
When I was 30, the man I was with bought me a china duck: a hideous, lime green and yellow, china duck vase whose only function I could foresee would be as something to smash over his head when the relationship ended (where were those websites supplying bubble wrap for packing up china ducks when I needed them, eh?).
In Wales, we have a custom of giving carved, wooden love spoons to the people we care for, not jewellery; but even in that respect I didn’t fare well. One Valentine’s Day, I opened up a gift that arrived in a love spoon box to find a pig’s trotter inside. Quite how that was supposed to woo me is another of life’s mysteries I have yet to fathom.
My last serious boyfriend gave me the single – not even the album, goddammit – of Mambo Number Five. You know the one – the guy who likes a bit of this woman here, a bit of that one on the side etc. etc. And I had to lend him the money to buy that.
Where on Earth are all these men who give jewellery in such abundance that it can be sent back in return for cash? I don’t have a lavish collection, but what I do have, I bought myself. Last year, for my 50th, I treated myself to a diamond tennis bracelet. It was something I had always wanted and, after a few drinks in Turkey, while covering a cruise for the Daily Mail, I saw a psychic in a hotel.
“You always spend money on big things,” she said. On the way back to the ship, after a few more drinks, I stopped off at a jeweller’s and bought the bracelet. I suspect that the minute I left the hotel, the psychic was on the phone to the shop, telling him: “There’s another one on her way.”
I really love diamonds, but if they are a girl’s best friend, where are all the men who know this and, more to the point, act upon it?
I have my eye on a rather exquisite, long chain of diamonds to match my tennis bracelet at the moment. I saw it while window-shopping on Rodeo Drive and went in to ask the price. “That would be $175,000, ma’am,” said the rather charming salesman. “It’s platinum.”
I kept a straight face. “Do you have it in white gold?”
“That would be $75,000, ma’am.”
Ever since the movie Pretty Woman, in which the assistants on Rodeo Drive treated Julia Roberts’ character Vivien with such contempt, all the stores are careful to behave towards everyone as if they have loads of money – even though, given my current financial circumstances, contempt would have been entirely justifiable.
But I didn’t see any man leaping out from behind a pillar, waving his cheque book, declaring: “No, no. Let me, Miss Stephen.” “Thank you, Mr Gere.”
In Spain and LA, I see women draped in jewels all the time; so what have they got that I haven’t? A lot of space between their ears, I suspect is the answer, and men with money (and the equivalent acreage in nothingness between their ears usually) appear to like that.
So, for all my being unable to fill that little satin box and receive my cheque in the post from outofyourlife.com, I’m grateful that I pretty much live by the intomylife.com premise, and that I don’t dislike anyone enough to hand back anything I’ve ever had from anyone.
And that includes the green and yellow china duck. At least it was given in love. The only exception is the pig’s trotter. I hope the guy who sent it caught swine flu.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tarmac Orphan 6/10/09
Twelve inches is a long way in travel. The world may be getting smaller, but when you’re standing at A, desperate to get to B, and only twelve inches separates you from your destination, B might as well be on the moon.
The weird thing is: you wait all your life for a man in uniform with a powerful weapon to turn up, and then three come along together.
The details of my European trip have been eclipsed somewhat by the problems I had getting out of France and the subsequent problems I had getting back into the US. I feel as if I have lived most of the last 48 hours as a sort of Tarmac orphan, passport at the ready but unable to go anywhere.
My crime? A heavy suitcase packed with books and a couple of bags of loose change.
Nothing about me, I am sure, indicated that I was going to be Semtex catch of the week, as I arrived at the Eurostar Customs on Monday morning. I was loaded up because each time I return to the US, I ludicrously feel that I have to bring another section of my enormous library back home; I suppose it’s my comfort blanket.
I’ve been told by Eurostar in the past that women travelling alone are targeted because they tend to be the biggest drug traffickers, but apart from smuggling in a box of Oxo vegetarian stock cubes last time I returned to the US, my activities in this area are rather limited.
Personally, I blame the Alsation. I am quite at ease with small dogs, but when a very large one starts leaping around when your stuff is coming through on the conveyor belt, it can be a bit unnerving.
My terror was that it was going to eat my MacBook Air laptop, without my having had chance to back up the book and screenplay I am writing, so I was not really paying attention to the Customs man when he asked: “What’s in your case?”
As I had, in total, five bags, I couldn’t remember what was in the specific case to which he referred, so I said: “Things”. Wrong answer! “What things?” “Er, books, clothes . . . “ (and can’t you get that damned dog’s nose away from my computer).
Now, in my Linguaphone French language learning course, the Customs man – le douanier – is rather a nice chap. There is a family travelling together and he takes a shine to the daughter, Valerie. “Le douanier,” it says, “Il admire Valerie” (translation: he wouldn’t mind giving her one, there and then, over the conveyor belt).
I’ve always thought it was a bit sexist, but whatever it was that old Valerie had, I wished I now had it; but “Le douanier . . . Il deteste Jaci” was clearer much nearer the mark.
He told me to lift my case and put it on a table that seemed like double my body height. Not only was it too heavy to lift, I have a longstanding shoulder injury that would have made it impossible to do so anyway, and I told him so.
“You don’t lift it, you don’t travel.” I asked for help. “I’m not going to do it,” he said, and would not budge on the matter. I started to cry. “There is no point in crying, you are not going anywhere.” So, we were stuck: me, case, man with gun.
Eventually, a tiny female member of staff, even smaller than me, came over to lift the case, and I was almost on my way. The officer opened it, took out Dr Raj Persaud’s book, The Motivated Mind, threw it back, and told me I could go.
Maybe he thought that I was so motivated, it was not beyond the realms of possibility that I could grab his gun, shoot the lot of them, and still have time to eat the entire supply of croissants in the Frequent Traveller lounge.
I thought that would be an end to my day of Customs hell, but there was more to come when I reached the US some hours later. Although I have an I Visa that allows me to come and go freely, man number two with gun was having none of it.
They always ask you why you are entering the US, and they do so with such an air of “You so much as sniff our air without asking permission” that I am trembling so much, the paramedics almost have to be called in.
I was sent to another line, where man number three with gun awaited me. He wanted to see everything – and I mean everything – in both cases. Why were my cases so heavy? (There’s a dead Alsation in one of them; why do you think?). Why was I carrying so much loose change?
Was I carrying any food? Er, no. There were a couple of boxes of herbal tea for various digestive conditions that I thought best to keep to myself. Not that I would need them, as my bowels were now well and truly working without recourse to outside assistance.
But it was the books that really interested him. He too alighted upon The Motivated Mind, with Dr Raj Persaud’s picture on the cover. Now, Raj is a very handsome man, and someone I used to work with in TV, but suddenly he had the look of an accomplice about him. He is also of a non-white persuasion, which was something that had not even occurred to me before. Clearly, very dodgy indeed.
The official moved on to Save the Cat, Blake Snyder’s screenwriting book that is my Bible and that I carry everywhere while I am writing my movie. There is a very good picture of a cat clinging to a rope on the cover, the premise being that early in a movie, your hero should do something – such as saving a cat – that endears him or her to the audience.
But suddenly the cat didn’t look so clingy. In fact, it looked rather pained, as if someone had been trying to string it up two minutes before and it was in its last dying throes.
“If you want to write a movie it’s the best book,” I ventured. “It really is and most people do want to write one here don’t they and that’s why I came here and . . . “ Breathless, hopeless . . . If you’re in a hole, stop digging, but as if my spade were not doing an efficient enough job, I had brought in a JCB to help dig myself in still deeper.
Now, not only did I have a motivated mind, I tortured small animals. Quite clearly, it was going to be a small step from thereon in before I exercised my newly acquired killing skills on humans.
“Passport,” said my interrogator, and went off to a computer. All I could think of was the Little Britain sketch Computer Says No, as I awaited my fate. Had I done or said anything in the States that might warrant my not being allowed back in? I really didn’t think so. Apart from being born small and Welsh, of course, but it was only the English who ever had a problem with that.
Richard Curtis, the brilliant brain behind Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, had been on my flight, and he sailed through Customs. We had spent a brief time chatting on the plane, when I recalled a course he tutored many years ago, when he told me that all his movies were about the same thing: How do you find the right person to love?
Luckily for him, we had to return to our seats at the point where I had started to tell him that life wasn’t like the movies, that men suck, life sucks, Customs officials suck.
The last words he said to me as he left the plane were: “I’m sure you’ll find love eventually” (though you have to be honest: Love, Eventually as a movie title, as opposed to the movie he made - Love, Actually - doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
So, when I descended from the plane, I was dreaming of happy ever afters and Hugh Grant meeting me at the airport with a bunch of roses. Then the men with guns captured me. Like I said, Richard: life ain’t like the movies.
I am now safely back in the US, and at the moment can remember very little of my trip. I do, however, recall visiting a friend’s house in Paris and walking up the Champs Elysees, where I saw an old man holding a very small penis, urinating beside a tree. I confess to knowing the size because I stopped briefly, just to remind myself what a penis looked like (we’re talking a couple of years here, give or take a magazine or two).
It didn’t do much for me, I’m afraid. Twelve inches may be a long way in travel, but even a man with a gun couldn’t get me to hang around for two.
The weird thing is: you wait all your life for a man in uniform with a powerful weapon to turn up, and then three come along together.
The details of my European trip have been eclipsed somewhat by the problems I had getting out of France and the subsequent problems I had getting back into the US. I feel as if I have lived most of the last 48 hours as a sort of Tarmac orphan, passport at the ready but unable to go anywhere.
My crime? A heavy suitcase packed with books and a couple of bags of loose change.
Nothing about me, I am sure, indicated that I was going to be Semtex catch of the week, as I arrived at the Eurostar Customs on Monday morning. I was loaded up because each time I return to the US, I ludicrously feel that I have to bring another section of my enormous library back home; I suppose it’s my comfort blanket.
I’ve been told by Eurostar in the past that women travelling alone are targeted because they tend to be the biggest drug traffickers, but apart from smuggling in a box of Oxo vegetarian stock cubes last time I returned to the US, my activities in this area are rather limited.
Personally, I blame the Alsation. I am quite at ease with small dogs, but when a very large one starts leaping around when your stuff is coming through on the conveyor belt, it can be a bit unnerving.
My terror was that it was going to eat my MacBook Air laptop, without my having had chance to back up the book and screenplay I am writing, so I was not really paying attention to the Customs man when he asked: “What’s in your case?”
As I had, in total, five bags, I couldn’t remember what was in the specific case to which he referred, so I said: “Things”. Wrong answer! “What things?” “Er, books, clothes . . . “ (and can’t you get that damned dog’s nose away from my computer).
Now, in my Linguaphone French language learning course, the Customs man – le douanier – is rather a nice chap. There is a family travelling together and he takes a shine to the daughter, Valerie. “Le douanier,” it says, “Il admire Valerie” (translation: he wouldn’t mind giving her one, there and then, over the conveyor belt).
I’ve always thought it was a bit sexist, but whatever it was that old Valerie had, I wished I now had it; but “Le douanier . . . Il deteste Jaci” was clearer much nearer the mark.
He told me to lift my case and put it on a table that seemed like double my body height. Not only was it too heavy to lift, I have a longstanding shoulder injury that would have made it impossible to do so anyway, and I told him so.
“You don’t lift it, you don’t travel.” I asked for help. “I’m not going to do it,” he said, and would not budge on the matter. I started to cry. “There is no point in crying, you are not going anywhere.” So, we were stuck: me, case, man with gun.
Eventually, a tiny female member of staff, even smaller than me, came over to lift the case, and I was almost on my way. The officer opened it, took out Dr Raj Persaud’s book, The Motivated Mind, threw it back, and told me I could go.
Maybe he thought that I was so motivated, it was not beyond the realms of possibility that I could grab his gun, shoot the lot of them, and still have time to eat the entire supply of croissants in the Frequent Traveller lounge.
I thought that would be an end to my day of Customs hell, but there was more to come when I reached the US some hours later. Although I have an I Visa that allows me to come and go freely, man number two with gun was having none of it.
They always ask you why you are entering the US, and they do so with such an air of “You so much as sniff our air without asking permission” that I am trembling so much, the paramedics almost have to be called in.
I was sent to another line, where man number three with gun awaited me. He wanted to see everything – and I mean everything – in both cases. Why were my cases so heavy? (There’s a dead Alsation in one of them; why do you think?). Why was I carrying so much loose change?
Was I carrying any food? Er, no. There were a couple of boxes of herbal tea for various digestive conditions that I thought best to keep to myself. Not that I would need them, as my bowels were now well and truly working without recourse to outside assistance.
But it was the books that really interested him. He too alighted upon The Motivated Mind, with Dr Raj Persaud’s picture on the cover. Now, Raj is a very handsome man, and someone I used to work with in TV, but suddenly he had the look of an accomplice about him. He is also of a non-white persuasion, which was something that had not even occurred to me before. Clearly, very dodgy indeed.
The official moved on to Save the Cat, Blake Snyder’s screenwriting book that is my Bible and that I carry everywhere while I am writing my movie. There is a very good picture of a cat clinging to a rope on the cover, the premise being that early in a movie, your hero should do something – such as saving a cat – that endears him or her to the audience.
But suddenly the cat didn’t look so clingy. In fact, it looked rather pained, as if someone had been trying to string it up two minutes before and it was in its last dying throes.
“If you want to write a movie it’s the best book,” I ventured. “It really is and most people do want to write one here don’t they and that’s why I came here and . . . “ Breathless, hopeless . . . If you’re in a hole, stop digging, but as if my spade were not doing an efficient enough job, I had brought in a JCB to help dig myself in still deeper.
Now, not only did I have a motivated mind, I tortured small animals. Quite clearly, it was going to be a small step from thereon in before I exercised my newly acquired killing skills on humans.
“Passport,” said my interrogator, and went off to a computer. All I could think of was the Little Britain sketch Computer Says No, as I awaited my fate. Had I done or said anything in the States that might warrant my not being allowed back in? I really didn’t think so. Apart from being born small and Welsh, of course, but it was only the English who ever had a problem with that.
Richard Curtis, the brilliant brain behind Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, had been on my flight, and he sailed through Customs. We had spent a brief time chatting on the plane, when I recalled a course he tutored many years ago, when he told me that all his movies were about the same thing: How do you find the right person to love?
Luckily for him, we had to return to our seats at the point where I had started to tell him that life wasn’t like the movies, that men suck, life sucks, Customs officials suck.
The last words he said to me as he left the plane were: “I’m sure you’ll find love eventually” (though you have to be honest: Love, Eventually as a movie title, as opposed to the movie he made - Love, Actually - doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
So, when I descended from the plane, I was dreaming of happy ever afters and Hugh Grant meeting me at the airport with a bunch of roses. Then the men with guns captured me. Like I said, Richard: life ain’t like the movies.
I am now safely back in the US, and at the moment can remember very little of my trip. I do, however, recall visiting a friend’s house in Paris and walking up the Champs Elysees, where I saw an old man holding a very small penis, urinating beside a tree. I confess to knowing the size because I stopped briefly, just to remind myself what a penis looked like (we’re talking a couple of years here, give or take a magazine or two).
It didn’t do much for me, I’m afraid. Twelve inches may be a long way in travel, but even a man with a gun couldn’t get me to hang around for two.
Friday, June 5, 2009
California Dreamin' 6/5/09
If I’m honest, there was always that little bit of Californian in me. When I was 14, I spent my pocket money on Here’s Health magazine and books about various kinds of spiritual awakening.
Religious, occult, astrological – I was always interested in the different means by which people found their way in the world and tried to make sense of it all. And I have always loathed smoking with a passion.
At university, I spent the money set aside for food buying all the different kinds of lentils from the only delicatessen in town (heck, I grew up in a village where nobody even knew what a delicatessen was, let alone know how to spell it, so finding a use for lentils was always going to be way left of field for most people).
Now that I am in LA, that little corner of a foreign field that was forever California has been unleashed in me with a vengeance.
Apart from my minimum two hour workout every day, I eat more healthily than I have done since my lentil and sandal university days, and my bookshelves are once more filled with titles beginning with the likes of How to, When to, and Give Up Now, You’re Doomed.
Returning back to the UK briefly, I felt more Californian than British. “When did everyone get so fat?” I screamed, as I squashed myself in between restaurant tables in Cardiff and looked down the menu, declaring that there was absolutely nothing on it that I could eat.
Just as well, really, because I wouldn’t have had the time. I spent the entire evening doing furniture removals around the enormous foursome at the next table, and had to re-arrange my own seating every time I wanted to move an elbow to grab a glass of water.
“Don’t lose any more,” people kept saying to me, noting how much weight I had lost. “Go on, have a real drink,” friends said in Spain.
When I was not being encouraged to eat and drink more, I found myself defending America as if I were the First Lady. It was easy, given the political mess that has been dominating the UK headlines over the past week.
If you had told me even a year ago that I would ever have had anything positive to say about America, let along feel a surge of pride every time I pass the stars and stripes flag (I kid you not: I think perhaps I have been abducted and that the real me is living on planet Zog somewhere), I would have said I was more likely to commit hara-kiri.
Like most Brits, my experience of the country and its citizens was of loud-mouthed travellers being rude to waiters in restaurants; I am sure that those Americans do still exist, but in my little bubble that is Beverly Hills, I am being treated to a different breed, and for the moment I am happy to enjoy it.
I even found myself getting a bit gobby when I didn’t get the service I have so quickly become used to. But really, listen to this.
Yesterday, I went into my local delicatessen (these days, you can’t move for them in Cardiff), where I tried to buy a pot of yoghurt for me and a pot of double cream for my mother (she thinks I should definitely not lose any more weight). When I took them to the counter to pay, I was greeted with: “I got naw change” (Welsh accent, for my new American friends).
Me: Why do you have no change?
Girl: Well, I just come on see an’ I dawn’t knaw why, but there’s no change in the till.
Me: So what are we going to do then?
Girl: Well, we’ll just 'ave to see 'ow much it is an’ you’ll 'ave to pay me the right money.
Me: Please could you ring them up then, and we’ll see.
Girl: (examining yoghurt pot). There’s naw price on this. (Calls to other girl, mesmerised at the cheese counter). Can you see 'ow much this is?
(Girl 2 takes yoghurt, goes to fridge, potters around for about a week, discovers that there is no other like it and disappears into back store-room for another week. Emerges, looking blank. Walks to till).
Girl 2: I dunno the price of it. I can’t find another one.
(Both girls stare: one, at the priceless yoghurt pot, the other at the changeless till).
Me: D’you know? I’ll leave it. Your loss.
(Storms out, amid much huffing and puffing and praising America’s gun licence laws).
Well, those are the words that came out inside the shop; outside, it was something more along the lines of: Bloody Welsh bloody Brits can’t get any service anymore and could you ever it wouldn’t happen in Beverly Hills what does a girl have to do to get a sodding pot of yoghurt around here . . . That kind of thing, with a few more expletives thrown in.
For once, I found myself bemoaning the fact that I was not paying $3.99 for a stock cube in my local Wholefoods in Beverly Hills and declaring that you do, in fact, get what you pay for in life (or are not able to pay for, in the case of the Cardiff delicatessen).
However, the weather has been great (for once, it wasn’t raining in Cardiff), it was good to see family and friends, and weird to watch all the episodes of my favourite TV series that I have already seen in the US.
But heck, I miss the gym and my plates of berries. I miss the gallons of fresh carrot juice I can buy as easily as getting water from the tap. I miss being able to buy anything at all, when faced with the problem of there being no change in the till.
I am returning to LA via Paris, which is my favourite city on Earth. It will be interesting to see whether it still is, on my first visit since decamping to LA.
I already hear myself moaning about the smoking: although it is banned indoors, it is allowed outside on café terraces, which have now been turned into giant ashtrays.
I hear myself whining about not being able to get any vegetarian food. And I specially hear myself giving the French a hard time about their inherent dislike of Americans, which has only intensified in the aftermath of the Iraq war.
On the other hand, I might just think, sod it: order a beef bourguignon, a pint of wine, pick up a Frenchman, have unprotected sex, smoke a Gitane afterwards and curse all Americans for being loud-mouthed, bigoted, war-mongerers.
It could go either way. Two continents await.
Religious, occult, astrological – I was always interested in the different means by which people found their way in the world and tried to make sense of it all. And I have always loathed smoking with a passion.
At university, I spent the money set aside for food buying all the different kinds of lentils from the only delicatessen in town (heck, I grew up in a village where nobody even knew what a delicatessen was, let alone know how to spell it, so finding a use for lentils was always going to be way left of field for most people).
Now that I am in LA, that little corner of a foreign field that was forever California has been unleashed in me with a vengeance.
Apart from my minimum two hour workout every day, I eat more healthily than I have done since my lentil and sandal university days, and my bookshelves are once more filled with titles beginning with the likes of How to, When to, and Give Up Now, You’re Doomed.
Returning back to the UK briefly, I felt more Californian than British. “When did everyone get so fat?” I screamed, as I squashed myself in between restaurant tables in Cardiff and looked down the menu, declaring that there was absolutely nothing on it that I could eat.
Just as well, really, because I wouldn’t have had the time. I spent the entire evening doing furniture removals around the enormous foursome at the next table, and had to re-arrange my own seating every time I wanted to move an elbow to grab a glass of water.
“Don’t lose any more,” people kept saying to me, noting how much weight I had lost. “Go on, have a real drink,” friends said in Spain.
When I was not being encouraged to eat and drink more, I found myself defending America as if I were the First Lady. It was easy, given the political mess that has been dominating the UK headlines over the past week.
If you had told me even a year ago that I would ever have had anything positive to say about America, let along feel a surge of pride every time I pass the stars and stripes flag (I kid you not: I think perhaps I have been abducted and that the real me is living on planet Zog somewhere), I would have said I was more likely to commit hara-kiri.
Like most Brits, my experience of the country and its citizens was of loud-mouthed travellers being rude to waiters in restaurants; I am sure that those Americans do still exist, but in my little bubble that is Beverly Hills, I am being treated to a different breed, and for the moment I am happy to enjoy it.
I even found myself getting a bit gobby when I didn’t get the service I have so quickly become used to. But really, listen to this.
Yesterday, I went into my local delicatessen (these days, you can’t move for them in Cardiff), where I tried to buy a pot of yoghurt for me and a pot of double cream for my mother (she thinks I should definitely not lose any more weight). When I took them to the counter to pay, I was greeted with: “I got naw change” (Welsh accent, for my new American friends).
Me: Why do you have no change?
Girl: Well, I just come on see an’ I dawn’t knaw why, but there’s no change in the till.
Me: So what are we going to do then?
Girl: Well, we’ll just 'ave to see 'ow much it is an’ you’ll 'ave to pay me the right money.
Me: Please could you ring them up then, and we’ll see.
Girl: (examining yoghurt pot). There’s naw price on this. (Calls to other girl, mesmerised at the cheese counter). Can you see 'ow much this is?
(Girl 2 takes yoghurt, goes to fridge, potters around for about a week, discovers that there is no other like it and disappears into back store-room for another week. Emerges, looking blank. Walks to till).
Girl 2: I dunno the price of it. I can’t find another one.
(Both girls stare: one, at the priceless yoghurt pot, the other at the changeless till).
Me: D’you know? I’ll leave it. Your loss.
(Storms out, amid much huffing and puffing and praising America’s gun licence laws).
Well, those are the words that came out inside the shop; outside, it was something more along the lines of: Bloody Welsh bloody Brits can’t get any service anymore and could you ever it wouldn’t happen in Beverly Hills what does a girl have to do to get a sodding pot of yoghurt around here . . . That kind of thing, with a few more expletives thrown in.
For once, I found myself bemoaning the fact that I was not paying $3.99 for a stock cube in my local Wholefoods in Beverly Hills and declaring that you do, in fact, get what you pay for in life (or are not able to pay for, in the case of the Cardiff delicatessen).
However, the weather has been great (for once, it wasn’t raining in Cardiff), it was good to see family and friends, and weird to watch all the episodes of my favourite TV series that I have already seen in the US.
But heck, I miss the gym and my plates of berries. I miss the gallons of fresh carrot juice I can buy as easily as getting water from the tap. I miss being able to buy anything at all, when faced with the problem of there being no change in the till.
I am returning to LA via Paris, which is my favourite city on Earth. It will be interesting to see whether it still is, on my first visit since decamping to LA.
I already hear myself moaning about the smoking: although it is banned indoors, it is allowed outside on café terraces, which have now been turned into giant ashtrays.
I hear myself whining about not being able to get any vegetarian food. And I specially hear myself giving the French a hard time about their inherent dislike of Americans, which has only intensified in the aftermath of the Iraq war.
On the other hand, I might just think, sod it: order a beef bourguignon, a pint of wine, pick up a Frenchman, have unprotected sex, smoke a Gitane afterwards and curse all Americans for being loud-mouthed, bigoted, war-mongerers.
It could go either way. Two continents await.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Buddhism on Trial 5/28/09
It’s a thin line between being a Buddhist and being a serial killer: that’s what I’ve learned this week, in my quest for that LA spiritual enlightenment that everyone is seeking here.
If in doubt, buy the book: that’s always been my motto. I’m not someone who buys the book, puts it on a shelf and forgets about the messages therein. I buy them, devour them, and put them into practice within the hour. Hence, I bought Alan Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Drinking, and stopped drinking. I bought Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat! which is about screenwriting, and came to Hollywood to put the tools into practice.
Okay, so I don’t do things by halves, but please keep me away from that section of the bookstore titled Bonsai for Beginners, as I really don’t want to spend the next 10 years fiddling about with small trees in my kitchen sink.
A mini personal crisis led me to believe that I needed to live a calmer life, so off I went to my local Borders bookstore this week in search of things that might help me. I drank my “Calming” Yogi tea beforehand, which stressed me out a bit, because no sooner had I set out on my walk than I needed a bathroom.
I had also taken my calming herbal Kava Kava pills, which have replaced two bottles of wine as a means of soothing my nerves, and although I could feel them regurgitating in my chest, thought about the good they were doing me and just breathed deeply: calm, calm.
Then I arrived at the store and wanted to knock the head off the small child who was screaming for sweets. Why do parents take small kids shopping when it is clear to anyone with half a brain (not to mention no kids) that they absolutely hate it and are always going to kick up a fuss about something?
But calm, calm, I said, as I headed towards the spiritual/new age religion section and chose about 20 books that were to be the foundation of creating the new me. I stocked up on some more movie books, too, and a few novels and travel books. I was feeling very good in my new skin.
Two hours later, I took them to the cash register, deposited them and told the assistant I was headed for the restroom (you see how American I have become? I no longer “go to the loo”; I am now “headed for the restroom”). He assured me that my books would be fine and that I could pay for them upon my return.
So, ablutions completed, I went back downstairs, only to discover that my two hours’ worth of research had all been put back on the shelves. “Where are my books?” I squealed. No, if I’m honest, I screamed. Louder than the child. “Oh for goodness sake you turn your back for one minute and your life’s ruined and if I wanted this kind of shit I’d have stayed in Britain and whatever happened to customer service and look at the time . . . “ Calm, calm.
Two hours more again, I had pretty much recouped my selection and re-grouped emotionally. I returned to my apartment, sweaty, with, I am sure, high blood pressure, and set about reading Buddhism for Dummies.
The little I knew about Buddhism, I had always liked, although, with my new 7 stone 7 lb frame (yes, more loss – and please stop e-mailing checking on whether I have anorexia; no, I don’t), the weight thing might be an issue. You know: did I have to turn into an overweight, squat person in order to practise Buddhism? I have always suspected that the reason the obese Buddha sat down, cross-legged, to meditate, was because he was too fat to stand, and I’d been down that path enough in life to know that it wasn’t where I wanted to return.
Some years ago, I learned Transcendental Meditation and adhered quite strictly to Ayurvedic principles (an Indian philosophy that really does reap physical, emotional and spiritual benefits in day to day life). I read books by Deepak Chopra, a well known proponent of Ayurveda, and it was through re-reading him that I had become interested in Buddhism again. I also bought Chopra’s novel, Buddha, but thought that Buddhism for Dummies might be an easier way in.
It was. As I made my way through Chapter 1, I instantly took to my new philosophical path. I liked the non-dogmatism and the easily applicable principles: creating the right kind of mental attitude in order to bring about a better quality of life. I was on the floor and crossing my legs before you could sing Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon (I wonder if Boy George got the idea for that song by reading Buddhism for Dummies?).
By lunchtime, I had Buddhism sorted. So much so, that I booked Judaism for Dummies to consume with the next day’s breakfast. Off I went to the bank on Wilshire Boulevard, singing along to Mika, the happiest I had been in some weeks.
Now, despite the efficient service I have found everywhere in LA, the one thing my bank has difficulty with is the transfer of money in and out of Europe. The idea that Europe would be in anyone’s minds in the LA climate is something of an anathema to them here, and this transmutes into the bank staff’s lack of enthusiasm for dealing with another ontinent.
Had I asked my guy to pilot the next space shuttle, he could not have looked more terrified, nor been slower at working out what went where. Already late for an appointment, I wasn’t so much tapping my fingers as putting them through my pockets in search of a handy weapon that might speed things along a bit.
One of the fundamentals of Buddhism is that pain and suffering are caused through our attachment to permanence, which is, in reality, only an illusion; and that when we let go of that pursuit of permanence, we will be happier. Try telling that to a would-be convert when a bank clerk is permanently stuck on the $ to £ conversion key on his computer.
No longer able to stand it, I did what any self-respecting citizen would do and took action. By now, I am sure the LAPD will have got there to untie everyone in time for the weekend. Me, I’ll be reading The Krays' biography.
If in doubt, buy the book: that’s always been my motto. I’m not someone who buys the book, puts it on a shelf and forgets about the messages therein. I buy them, devour them, and put them into practice within the hour. Hence, I bought Alan Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Drinking, and stopped drinking. I bought Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat! which is about screenwriting, and came to Hollywood to put the tools into practice.
Okay, so I don’t do things by halves, but please keep me away from that section of the bookstore titled Bonsai for Beginners, as I really don’t want to spend the next 10 years fiddling about with small trees in my kitchen sink.
A mini personal crisis led me to believe that I needed to live a calmer life, so off I went to my local Borders bookstore this week in search of things that might help me. I drank my “Calming” Yogi tea beforehand, which stressed me out a bit, because no sooner had I set out on my walk than I needed a bathroom.
I had also taken my calming herbal Kava Kava pills, which have replaced two bottles of wine as a means of soothing my nerves, and although I could feel them regurgitating in my chest, thought about the good they were doing me and just breathed deeply: calm, calm.
Then I arrived at the store and wanted to knock the head off the small child who was screaming for sweets. Why do parents take small kids shopping when it is clear to anyone with half a brain (not to mention no kids) that they absolutely hate it and are always going to kick up a fuss about something?
But calm, calm, I said, as I headed towards the spiritual/new age religion section and chose about 20 books that were to be the foundation of creating the new me. I stocked up on some more movie books, too, and a few novels and travel books. I was feeling very good in my new skin.
Two hours later, I took them to the cash register, deposited them and told the assistant I was headed for the restroom (you see how American I have become? I no longer “go to the loo”; I am now “headed for the restroom”). He assured me that my books would be fine and that I could pay for them upon my return.
So, ablutions completed, I went back downstairs, only to discover that my two hours’ worth of research had all been put back on the shelves. “Where are my books?” I squealed. No, if I’m honest, I screamed. Louder than the child. “Oh for goodness sake you turn your back for one minute and your life’s ruined and if I wanted this kind of shit I’d have stayed in Britain and whatever happened to customer service and look at the time . . . “ Calm, calm.
Two hours more again, I had pretty much recouped my selection and re-grouped emotionally. I returned to my apartment, sweaty, with, I am sure, high blood pressure, and set about reading Buddhism for Dummies.
The little I knew about Buddhism, I had always liked, although, with my new 7 stone 7 lb frame (yes, more loss – and please stop e-mailing checking on whether I have anorexia; no, I don’t), the weight thing might be an issue. You know: did I have to turn into an overweight, squat person in order to practise Buddhism? I have always suspected that the reason the obese Buddha sat down, cross-legged, to meditate, was because he was too fat to stand, and I’d been down that path enough in life to know that it wasn’t where I wanted to return.
Some years ago, I learned Transcendental Meditation and adhered quite strictly to Ayurvedic principles (an Indian philosophy that really does reap physical, emotional and spiritual benefits in day to day life). I read books by Deepak Chopra, a well known proponent of Ayurveda, and it was through re-reading him that I had become interested in Buddhism again. I also bought Chopra’s novel, Buddha, but thought that Buddhism for Dummies might be an easier way in.
It was. As I made my way through Chapter 1, I instantly took to my new philosophical path. I liked the non-dogmatism and the easily applicable principles: creating the right kind of mental attitude in order to bring about a better quality of life. I was on the floor and crossing my legs before you could sing Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon (I wonder if Boy George got the idea for that song by reading Buddhism for Dummies?).
By lunchtime, I had Buddhism sorted. So much so, that I booked Judaism for Dummies to consume with the next day’s breakfast. Off I went to the bank on Wilshire Boulevard, singing along to Mika, the happiest I had been in some weeks.
Now, despite the efficient service I have found everywhere in LA, the one thing my bank has difficulty with is the transfer of money in and out of Europe. The idea that Europe would be in anyone’s minds in the LA climate is something of an anathema to them here, and this transmutes into the bank staff’s lack of enthusiasm for dealing with another ontinent.
Had I asked my guy to pilot the next space shuttle, he could not have looked more terrified, nor been slower at working out what went where. Already late for an appointment, I wasn’t so much tapping my fingers as putting them through my pockets in search of a handy weapon that might speed things along a bit.
One of the fundamentals of Buddhism is that pain and suffering are caused through our attachment to permanence, which is, in reality, only an illusion; and that when we let go of that pursuit of permanence, we will be happier. Try telling that to a would-be convert when a bank clerk is permanently stuck on the $ to £ conversion key on his computer.
No longer able to stand it, I did what any self-respecting citizen would do and took action. By now, I am sure the LAPD will have got there to untie everyone in time for the weekend. Me, I’ll be reading The Krays' biography.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Eva Longoria Parker, My Body Double 5/21/09
Would Eva Longoria Parker eat it? That is the question I ask when confronted with every snack or meal in the size zero city that is LA’s Beverly Hills.
When I arrived here on April 1st, I was eight stone eight pounds (or 120 pounds, as they say here), which is not gross, but still too heavy for my five foot frame. Despite my having lost over a stone a year ago, largely by firstly cutting out and then drinking just a little alcohol, the pounds had started to pile back on, and I found my cheekbones once more starting to compete with my second chin.
So, coming to the supremely health-conscious LA seemed a good place to begin again, and, at an exquisite size four (UK size) and the same height as me, the American size zero (or double zero, I suspected) Desperate Housewives star was the woman I looked to for inspiration.
To date, I have lost another 14 pounds by following my plan (no food, no drinks, no leaving the treadmill) – a whole stone! – and now weigh 7 st 8 lbs (106 lbs! Sorry, but it really excites me).
A plate of crisps arrives at my table in the five star Beverly Wilshire Hotel (still my favourite place and where I stayed before I found an apartment) and I look at them longingly before asking: Would Eva Longoria eat them? Well, no. You don’t get to be and maintain a size zero, not to mention acquire a perfect mouth that looks as if it has just had a lipstick manicure, by ramming a plate of deep fried potatoes down your throat.
So, it’s farewell to the crisps. When they bring my English breakfast tea, it arrives with a long dish of Italian sweetmeats and biscuits. Would Eva Longoria eat them? Only if you chloroformed her first and force-fed them.
I apply the same rule to all bars and restaurants. This week, I went for lunch in Il Fornaio: a lovely, friendly Italian establishment on Canon Drive, and looked longingly down their list of pastas. Spaghetti Calamari and Broccoli, Fusilliani alla Trentina, Tarte Con Argosta – all unusual dishes that I had never seen on Italian menus in the UK. And, as I went down the list, I asked over and over: Would Eva Longoria eat it? No, no, no. Just a black espresso for me, please.
Asking the question is a guaranteed way to lose weight, and I believe that I have inadvertently stumbled upon the perfect diet: because the answer to the question “Would Eva Longoria eat it?” is always going to be No.
I suspect that Eva, like every other thin woman in LA, enjoys playing with the occasional leaf – without dressing (are you crazy?) – and, to this end, I am now perfecting the art of steering a leaf around my plate, without ever consuming it, while giving the impression that I am stuffing my face. Over the radish, under the yellow pepper, slalom over the red onion – I can make a leaf’s journey around my plate last longer than a Grand Prix. And, by the end of its course, it really does look half consumed.
Another technique sure to bring about this apparition of greed is to place the weight of a cherry tomato in the middle of, say, a mound of rocket: it flattens the centre of the display to such an extent, your dining companion might be tempted to tell you to slow down, for fear of your developing indigestion through over-eating.
Or, you can achieve the weighing down technique by moving all your rocket to the side of your plate, taking a piece of bread (obviously, without eating a crumb), ripping it in two and squashing it down at each end of your rocket pile, thereby giving the appearance of real over-indulgence – carbs, heaven forbid: the woman’s a pig – yet leaving the restaurant thinner, albeit starving.
Beverly Hills restaurants are very tolerant of the non-eating diner. My lunch in Il Fornaio lasted three hours, during which both my guest and I ate not a morsel and consumed just two bottles of water. One of my British friends, also new to LA but still keen on her food (how quaint – she’ll learn) bemoans this aspect of the culture. She says she gets invited to breakfast meetings where there is no breakfast, and spends the whole time wondering when the bacon and eggs are coming.
Of course, I knew before I came here that drinking in public was pretty much a no-no, but especially so during the day. If the answer to Would Eva Longoria eat it? is No, the answer to Would Eva Longoria drink it? is: You must be insane. Glass of champagne? 150 calories. Dry white wine? 120. You don’t shrink to the kind of shape that gets blown away in an LA earthquake by consuming empty calories.
So, with my new Eva Longoria eating and drinking plan, my weight is once more heading in the right direction, and this week I bought my first (of many, I hope) size zero jeans.
Eva Longoria, eat your heart out.
Oh, I forgot: you can’t. Too many calories.
When I arrived here on April 1st, I was eight stone eight pounds (or 120 pounds, as they say here), which is not gross, but still too heavy for my five foot frame. Despite my having lost over a stone a year ago, largely by firstly cutting out and then drinking just a little alcohol, the pounds had started to pile back on, and I found my cheekbones once more starting to compete with my second chin.
So, coming to the supremely health-conscious LA seemed a good place to begin again, and, at an exquisite size four (UK size) and the same height as me, the American size zero (or double zero, I suspected) Desperate Housewives star was the woman I looked to for inspiration.
To date, I have lost another 14 pounds by following my plan (no food, no drinks, no leaving the treadmill) – a whole stone! – and now weigh 7 st 8 lbs (106 lbs! Sorry, but it really excites me).
A plate of crisps arrives at my table in the five star Beverly Wilshire Hotel (still my favourite place and where I stayed before I found an apartment) and I look at them longingly before asking: Would Eva Longoria eat them? Well, no. You don’t get to be and maintain a size zero, not to mention acquire a perfect mouth that looks as if it has just had a lipstick manicure, by ramming a plate of deep fried potatoes down your throat.
So, it’s farewell to the crisps. When they bring my English breakfast tea, it arrives with a long dish of Italian sweetmeats and biscuits. Would Eva Longoria eat them? Only if you chloroformed her first and force-fed them.
I apply the same rule to all bars and restaurants. This week, I went for lunch in Il Fornaio: a lovely, friendly Italian establishment on Canon Drive, and looked longingly down their list of pastas. Spaghetti Calamari and Broccoli, Fusilliani alla Trentina, Tarte Con Argosta – all unusual dishes that I had never seen on Italian menus in the UK. And, as I went down the list, I asked over and over: Would Eva Longoria eat it? No, no, no. Just a black espresso for me, please.
Asking the question is a guaranteed way to lose weight, and I believe that I have inadvertently stumbled upon the perfect diet: because the answer to the question “Would Eva Longoria eat it?” is always going to be No.
I suspect that Eva, like every other thin woman in LA, enjoys playing with the occasional leaf – without dressing (are you crazy?) – and, to this end, I am now perfecting the art of steering a leaf around my plate, without ever consuming it, while giving the impression that I am stuffing my face. Over the radish, under the yellow pepper, slalom over the red onion – I can make a leaf’s journey around my plate last longer than a Grand Prix. And, by the end of its course, it really does look half consumed.
Another technique sure to bring about this apparition of greed is to place the weight of a cherry tomato in the middle of, say, a mound of rocket: it flattens the centre of the display to such an extent, your dining companion might be tempted to tell you to slow down, for fear of your developing indigestion through over-eating.
Or, you can achieve the weighing down technique by moving all your rocket to the side of your plate, taking a piece of bread (obviously, without eating a crumb), ripping it in two and squashing it down at each end of your rocket pile, thereby giving the appearance of real over-indulgence – carbs, heaven forbid: the woman’s a pig – yet leaving the restaurant thinner, albeit starving.
Beverly Hills restaurants are very tolerant of the non-eating diner. My lunch in Il Fornaio lasted three hours, during which both my guest and I ate not a morsel and consumed just two bottles of water. One of my British friends, also new to LA but still keen on her food (how quaint – she’ll learn) bemoans this aspect of the culture. She says she gets invited to breakfast meetings where there is no breakfast, and spends the whole time wondering when the bacon and eggs are coming.
Of course, I knew before I came here that drinking in public was pretty much a no-no, but especially so during the day. If the answer to Would Eva Longoria eat it? is No, the answer to Would Eva Longoria drink it? is: You must be insane. Glass of champagne? 150 calories. Dry white wine? 120. You don’t shrink to the kind of shape that gets blown away in an LA earthquake by consuming empty calories.
So, with my new Eva Longoria eating and drinking plan, my weight is once more heading in the right direction, and this week I bought my first (of many, I hope) size zero jeans.
Eva Longoria, eat your heart out.
Oh, I forgot: you can’t. Too many calories.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
It's a Bloke Thing 5/17/09
Did I really need to travel 6000 miles across the Atlantic to learn that being a complete dickhead is not confined to men in the UK?
I’ve now had the opportunity to observe the male species operating in England, Wales, France and Spain, and now the US – all places where I have lived and, in the latter’s case, am living – and I now feel the same about men as I do about snow flakes: yes, every one is, as they say, different. But let’s be honest: an awful lot of them are pretty damned alike.
I really like men. I have great male friends, some of whom are exes, some of whom are future exes because I haven’t got my claws into them yet. Others are exes I never want to see again, and others are on hit lists (including mine).
But really: despite the number of men in my life, I am no closer to understanding a damned thing about them. In each of the countries listed above, I have, however, investigated the men who offer themselves up on internet dating sites and been able to draw some generalisations.
In Britain, for example, if you are a woman over the age of 30, it is pointless putting your real age on a site, as most men think that 28 is really pushing it – irrespective of whether they are 20 or 60. Large breasts are much in demand, as is blonde hair and no baggage. The men invariably have more baggage than a Louis Vuitton warehouse, but as a woman you won’t be considered unless you can fit yours into an overhead locker and still have room for a multi-storey car-park.
French men set more store by brains than breasts, and dating sites offer far more esoteric social activities than those on offer by their British counterparts. In Paris, I attended an evening where the subject was “So you think you know about love”, and for three hours everyone joined in the conversation without making a hit on anyone else. When the evening finished, it was not to the most obviously physically attractive women that the men flocked, but to the ones who had made the most intelligent contribution to the debate.
If there is a singles scene in LA, it has so far eluded me, hence my signing up to yet another internet dating site. I thought I would narrow my search to LA and, had I been able, would have narrowed it further to the distance between my apartment and the Jimmy Choo shop on Rodeo Drive, such is my reluctance to purchase the car everyone assures me I will need.
Television commercials informed me that 20,000 people a day join the site I signed up to (whose privacy I will protect, pending any lawsuit I might bring for the “guaranteed” matchmaking part of their pitch that I suspect will not happen); and, after filling in my details and adding some pictures, I waited for the computer to go into meltdown.
Now, what I’ve never understood about internet dating, is that when you specify you want a non-smoking, slim, health-conscious, funny, creative guy over 6 feet tall, every chain-smoking, overweight, alcoholic, humourless construction worker straight out of midget school, thinks that he is just the man for you. Oh, yes, and although you have narrowed your search to LA, they don’t think that their living in Texas will be a problem.
When they are keen, they are very, very keen. One man had recently moved to Washington but was all set to come to LA, if I just gave him the nod. Another contacted me from the UK, saying that he had decided to cast his net further afield (and then targeted the only single, British, LA-based woman on the site – weird, that. Big net. Fear of fish.).
Having also said, in my profile, that I did not want any heavy religion in the life of my soul-mate, I appear to have attracted the attention of every Catholic in America and, suddenly, “saved” men, who all but ask if it’s okay if the Lord comes along on our dates. I already feel a line about there being three people in our relationship.
This being health-conscious LA, there are dozens of men stressing their love of the outdoors. To be honest, I don’t like any place where I can’t see a Marriott sign just by standing on a small box, so I have pretty much ruled out what seems like 90% of the city.
Also on the health front, I foolishly ticked a box, indicating that I lifted the occasional weight. This has somehow become translated into something much more impressive than it actually is, and many men appear in my “Interested” box with the headline “Like you, he enjoys weight-lifting”, which isn’t quite the same thing as taking a couple of baked bean cans off the supermarket shelf a couple of times a week.
Compared to the UK, there is generally less emphasis on female physical attributes on the US site, and also the men seem more open to meeting women who fall within a much wider age bracket. But then some of them can’t be choosers, I imagine. Where, for example, is the man whose profile bangs on about “North Pole region warming” going to find a woman – well, apart from in the North Pole, obviously?
Only one man I contacted, and, afterI directed him to this blog, should he require more information about me, he declared it to be “WAYYYYYYYYY” too much; he also recommended that I “rethink” suggesting the link. I had “almost” had him, he wrote, adding: “Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”
Hilarious! One, that he thought he was so great a catch that he stood a snowball’s chance of getting me that easily (no one else has managed in five decades; I’m no pushover). And two, that he was criticising me even before the first date! Even British men wait a couple of weeks before doing that.
The great thing about the internet, though, is that you can find such things out about people very quickly; now, I won’t even have to go through the bother of dressing up and leaving my apartment to establish that the guy’s a nobhead.
Instead, I can stay in, watch more wall-to-wall House, and keep singing that jolly song that won Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest: I’m in Love with a Fairy Tale.
Unfortunately, it’s true.
I’ve now had the opportunity to observe the male species operating in England, Wales, France and Spain, and now the US – all places where I have lived and, in the latter’s case, am living – and I now feel the same about men as I do about snow flakes: yes, every one is, as they say, different. But let’s be honest: an awful lot of them are pretty damned alike.
I really like men. I have great male friends, some of whom are exes, some of whom are future exes because I haven’t got my claws into them yet. Others are exes I never want to see again, and others are on hit lists (including mine).
But really: despite the number of men in my life, I am no closer to understanding a damned thing about them. In each of the countries listed above, I have, however, investigated the men who offer themselves up on internet dating sites and been able to draw some generalisations.
In Britain, for example, if you are a woman over the age of 30, it is pointless putting your real age on a site, as most men think that 28 is really pushing it – irrespective of whether they are 20 or 60. Large breasts are much in demand, as is blonde hair and no baggage. The men invariably have more baggage than a Louis Vuitton warehouse, but as a woman you won’t be considered unless you can fit yours into an overhead locker and still have room for a multi-storey car-park.
French men set more store by brains than breasts, and dating sites offer far more esoteric social activities than those on offer by their British counterparts. In Paris, I attended an evening where the subject was “So you think you know about love”, and for three hours everyone joined in the conversation without making a hit on anyone else. When the evening finished, it was not to the most obviously physically attractive women that the men flocked, but to the ones who had made the most intelligent contribution to the debate.
If there is a singles scene in LA, it has so far eluded me, hence my signing up to yet another internet dating site. I thought I would narrow my search to LA and, had I been able, would have narrowed it further to the distance between my apartment and the Jimmy Choo shop on Rodeo Drive, such is my reluctance to purchase the car everyone assures me I will need.
Television commercials informed me that 20,000 people a day join the site I signed up to (whose privacy I will protect, pending any lawsuit I might bring for the “guaranteed” matchmaking part of their pitch that I suspect will not happen); and, after filling in my details and adding some pictures, I waited for the computer to go into meltdown.
Now, what I’ve never understood about internet dating, is that when you specify you want a non-smoking, slim, health-conscious, funny, creative guy over 6 feet tall, every chain-smoking, overweight, alcoholic, humourless construction worker straight out of midget school, thinks that he is just the man for you. Oh, yes, and although you have narrowed your search to LA, they don’t think that their living in Texas will be a problem.
When they are keen, they are very, very keen. One man had recently moved to Washington but was all set to come to LA, if I just gave him the nod. Another contacted me from the UK, saying that he had decided to cast his net further afield (and then targeted the only single, British, LA-based woman on the site – weird, that. Big net. Fear of fish.).
Having also said, in my profile, that I did not want any heavy religion in the life of my soul-mate, I appear to have attracted the attention of every Catholic in America and, suddenly, “saved” men, who all but ask if it’s okay if the Lord comes along on our dates. I already feel a line about there being three people in our relationship.
This being health-conscious LA, there are dozens of men stressing their love of the outdoors. To be honest, I don’t like any place where I can’t see a Marriott sign just by standing on a small box, so I have pretty much ruled out what seems like 90% of the city.
Also on the health front, I foolishly ticked a box, indicating that I lifted the occasional weight. This has somehow become translated into something much more impressive than it actually is, and many men appear in my “Interested” box with the headline “Like you, he enjoys weight-lifting”, which isn’t quite the same thing as taking a couple of baked bean cans off the supermarket shelf a couple of times a week.
Compared to the UK, there is generally less emphasis on female physical attributes on the US site, and also the men seem more open to meeting women who fall within a much wider age bracket. But then some of them can’t be choosers, I imagine. Where, for example, is the man whose profile bangs on about “North Pole region warming” going to find a woman – well, apart from in the North Pole, obviously?
Only one man I contacted, and, afterI directed him to this blog, should he require more information about me, he declared it to be “WAYYYYYYYYY” too much; he also recommended that I “rethink” suggesting the link. I had “almost” had him, he wrote, adding: “Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”
Hilarious! One, that he thought he was so great a catch that he stood a snowball’s chance of getting me that easily (no one else has managed in five decades; I’m no pushover). And two, that he was criticising me even before the first date! Even British men wait a couple of weeks before doing that.
The great thing about the internet, though, is that you can find such things out about people very quickly; now, I won’t even have to go through the bother of dressing up and leaving my apartment to establish that the guy’s a nobhead.
Instead, I can stay in, watch more wall-to-wall House, and keep singing that jolly song that won Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest: I’m in Love with a Fairy Tale.
Unfortunately, it’s true.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)