The Princess and The Racehorse

Purveyors of the ancient art of declaring which animal a person would have been, had they been an animal, had often declared Lilly to be an Arabian race horse, all jittery when it had to wait its turn to race around the track.

But the truth was that Lilly was actually an Arabian princess, left in England by her father as a young child. This was a fact that had been lost on most, due to the fact that Lilly had been raised in England by worker bees, on account of which Lilly told her real family upon meeting them, one recent weekend, that she felt like Mooglie in the Jungle Book, in other words a boy child raised by apes. But as the guru always said, the truth shall be revealed. And so it was that one recent weekend, Lilly took a plane to meet her real family who had become acquainted to her through the Internet on Facebook and through a miracle. It turned out that her real family, also all princes and princesses, were textile merchants from the Holy Land who had lived everywhere from Tokyo to Mumbai. They had lived exotic lives but not as exotic as Lilly’s, she thought. Lilly had met them all at a wedding of one of her cousins where aunts and uncles bustled around making cups of tea, as long lost relatives were introduced to the fact that Lilly did really exist. She had long been nothing more than a rumor to many of these folks, a figment of their imagination. But now, dear reader, Lilly was for real. So Lilly met them all and then she went back home and met some more of her real family. In-between the emails flying back and forth around the planet, confirming her existence to upper class Arabs everywhere, Lilly had a duel with a cat named Jeep. Jeep slept above Lilly’s bed in the laundry room of the main house where she would meow each night and where her neighbors would stomp around feeding the cat at dawn. It got Lilly thinking that she should go hiking at sunrise and sleep with the sunset. But she just wasn’t yet an early bird. So late one afternoon, Lilly wrote a story about her new family who came from places like Nazareth, and included also a nun in Bethlehem, to submit to The New York Rhymes in the hope that she could become a famous writer and live in her own palace and not be disturbed. She thought, also, that this way she could become a writer for real, and not just for newspapers, and no longer have to water the guru’s plants or be nice to Jeep. Her new family invited her to lots of exciting places from Chile to Amman and she had also been invited to Tokyo by a filmmaker, so she figured she should also learn some Japanese while she waited for her new story to be published and her new life to begin.

The return of Lilly to LaLaLand

Lilly had decided to come back by sea from the Festival de Cannes – dear reader, this may be a metaphor for the fact that she had been out at sea, since then – so it had taken an awfully long time to get home. Before she left, she had interviewed all sorts of nice people, including the Hungarian actor Stellan Skarsgard, who smelled like a daisy, and an Indian actress Aishwarya Rai. When Lilly said to Mrs. Rai that it must be awfully tiring to do so many interviews, she said, “Yes, it is. But that’s quite alright.” And then she left. What Lilly remembered most from the interview was that Mrs. Rai had such lovely skin. Lilly vowed to use cleanser every day until the next Cannes, in honor of Ash, as she was known. She also got to interview Ash’s husband whose name she couldn’t pronounce. Abhishek Bachchan wore a bright red jacket as bright as his star was in India. Ash and her husband behaved so impeccably that they put the journalists to shame. Two had engaged in a cat fight even almost in their presence. The guru came and went to a premiere in Cannes where everyone thought he was Wong Kar Wai in his shades. And then he accompanied her back across the pond.

When they got back, she found her daddy waiting for her wearing a striped jacket from an English horse race event and a cowboy hat. And so she showed him all around California and then he went home. It was time to get back down to business. She wrote to her Arab newspaper to see if they would like a follow up piece to find out what had happened to the long lost Arab film director last seen at Samuel Goldwyn, Jr.’s house. And then she phoned Mr. Goldwyn, Jr. who invited her to lunch. He asked her to bring her friend who was an important editor. They talked shop for a very long time and Lilly thought it an honor that she got to listen. They talked about a looming strike and who would buy Miramax and what had become of MGM. And then they talked about the Dover Sole and a script writing competition that Mr. Goldwyn, Jr. and his daddy had been organizing for an awfully long time. And then they talked about rights and libraries and their favorite showbiz execs, and it was all as if nothing had ever changed for a million years. MGM was always for sale and someone or other in Tinseltown was always about to strike. And then when her editor friend left, Mr. Goldwyn, Jr. gave Lilly some sound advice: “If you can’t access the stars here then just make it up,” he said. Sit at the beach and piece things together. Lilly told him a big secret. “That is what all foreign reporters do here,” she said. Then she drove back to the guru’s who had left a vacuum cleaner for her to clean with, as she had brought in sand from the beach. It lay all over the floor. And there was a towel to wipe down the outside table where her flowers stood. She wasn’t sure it was quite the welcome she had expected after being wined and dined in Hollywood by very important people but she figured it was all part of the training. As she didn’t know if there would still be newspapers a year from now, she figured she had better do as she was told. Being naughty could wait another day.

Lilly In Hiding

Having never stayed in one city before for longer than ten weeks, Lilly had decided that the best plan was to go into hiding. For several weeks at the crack of dawn, which happened to be around 10 a.m. each morning she would drive to her new office, which happened to be the guru's garden in the Palisades. Here she would sit amid the pretty pink flowers as the Mexian builders played Mariachi music and yelled at each other whilst constructing the guru's new mansion at the back of his garden and then she would pee in the corner near the mint leaf plants, like a cat who was sick and wanted to go to sleep. All along Lilly asked herself if she had gone mad as the routine continued and each day she went to hide in her new Jardin.
Working in the morning meant sitting on the paving stones and the doormat leading into the guru's treatment room. Then when the sun moved, she would move to the terrace table and then when the builders left, she would swim. She would get home at 10 p.m. like a real person with an office and she would light her candles and stare at the ocean and then go to sleep.
The routine continued for several weeks until the Volcano errupted in Iceland and she wondered if she might be trapped in LaLaLand for several weeks more. But the pilot wasn't having it and so she and another 200 passengers were allowed to escape the madness and fly to the Riviera where she instantly felt more at home. It was the annual Cannes Film Festival and the prospect of spending ten days asking film stars banal question and hot-footing it from one party to the other felt much more real than life in the suburbs a la the Pacific Palisades. And so it was that after two nights in a 2 Star Hotel, her sanity was restored. The lady at the new Farmer's Market yelled at her the next morning for wanting too small a slice of pate and so she knew too that she was safely back home in Europe.
And then the next night, she put on her best dress, which as avid readers will know, is her Diane von Furstenburg Wonder Woman dress, which she wore this time without her gold sequined Converse boots, as she knew fine well that the mean men at the bottom of the red carpet in Cannes would not let her up the stairs wearing sneakers. At the top of the stairs in her Prada shoes, she met Cate Blanchett who admired her gold sequined bag from the thrist store on Main Street and gave her a great big smile.
And then she went to dinner at the pizza place with some film agents and talked to a man who was making a film about the life of Budhha and some book agents who had taken the train from London. She told them about her novel Sergeant Pepper. And then she went to a party for Robin Hood with a man dressed as Robin Hood. And then she went home to sleep.

I'm Alice In Wonderland

Ever since that day when I had gotten to wander around the red carpet before the Oscars, watching golden statues being unveiled from large plastic wrappers and heaps of rolled-up carpet being laid out for the stars, I had come to think of my life as being just like Alice in Wonderland. This particular epiphany had come to me courtesy of Walt Disney. Tim Burton’s 3-D version of the film was playing at Disney's El Capitain Theater, which overlooked the Oscar ceremony walk-up on Hollywood Boulevard. A poster for the film, showing some weird-looking characters with green hair, looked down as the statues stood there naked. It was with this Alice theme in mind one recent Sunday morning, that I left my beach house, which stood next to the Santa Monica Pier, and wandered down to the shoreline in search of some wisdom of the Alice in Wonderland kind. I found it on Venice Board Walk, which I had also been thinking about and declared to be a place where the chaos of life is manifested in the most colorful of forms. Think one-legged hoola-hop dancers, pot-smoking doctors and artists of the tres bizarre kind. There was even a store selling Native American paraphernalia, which I walked inside. Instead of the scruffy-looking student wearing Hiawatha T-shirts, I imagined Indians dancing through the store to the sounds of the powerful pipe music, which came from a CD called nothing other than Drum Sex! Back outside on the walkway, I sought the wisdom of a tarot card reader who spent half of the session figuring out how to get her son from London to Liverpool by train once she heard my British accent. Still, she did tell me that I had managed successfully to slay some dragons in recent weeks. I did hope she was right as the guru had been after some very dragon-like women recently, and I didn’t much like having them around. (I had struck them off all of his class lists.) That afternoon I wandered to the pool, and seeings as it was Spring Break there were lots of children swimming. There was also a man who had asked me out on several dates. When I said at the top of my voice, so that he could hear me over the squeals, that I was sorry that I hadn’t been able to screw him, he said, “hush.” And then he said, “Do meet my wife.” From there I thought that it was best to go to dance class at the Brazilian studio in Ocean Park. Then I went up to the guru’s who had gone to Tokyo, and watered his plants. I practiced my new samba moves in his evergreen garden under a full moon, which loomed large in the sky, and then I laid down under the stars and breathed into the cosmos, just like he had told me. Then I went home to slay more dragons. These particular dragons happened to be my landlords who had said that they wanted to move back into my little studio home. I looked out the window at the most blissful view I knew, which was of the distant waves washing into shore, beyond the tall palm trees, standing under the stars shining all silver in the deep blue sky. The waves were lit up in a luminous turquoise and then green for a moment, by the reflection of the big wheel, which was hidden from view on the Santa Monica Pier. And I imagined for a moment that I was in South Pacific.

Back To Work: Oscars, Mansions and Filmmakers

It was on account of the fact that I had read something about there being the greatest recession since the great recession, that I decided it was time to go back to work. I didn’t want to admit it to myself but I thought that probably the fact that I had been doing water aerobics with the old ladies at 9.15 each morning, instead of being a worker bee, had something to do with it. And so I decided to give class a miss and get down to it. I got to the pool the next morning at 7 a.m. upon which I had to mingle with all of those morning people who were all bright and cheery and couldn’t wait to engage in conversation. I pretended that I was a shire horse with blinkers on and that I couldn’t see them. Pool men were diving in their underwear to look for Cynthia’s long lost earings which she would wear to the pool and lose almost everyday. Beach boys were laying out striped towels and a man was pretending to trim the palm tree, except that I knew it was a fake. As I passed the old ladies on the way out, I got to tell them the temperature of the pool, which was always the biggest news about these parts (once a journalist always a journalist), and then I set off to work. I walked right along the shoreline carrying my laptop under one hand as the surfers wandered by carrying their boards under the other. I passed a sound man who walked across the vast stretch of sand, carrying a large microphone in one hand and a recorder in the other. When I got to Venice Beach, I headed up Rose Avenue to look for Marisco’s Mexican food van, which had been recommended to me by none other than the chef from the Four Seasons. I ate a taco and sat down at the Rose café to do some work. I already had one assignment to track down a long lost Arab filmmaker known to be hiding somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. His name was Flamingo Ryan and he was thought to be hiding in the Goldwyn Mansion, which Sam Goldwyn, Jr. insisted wasn’t true. Just to be on the safe side, I headed back along the beach jumped in my car and drove around the hills asking everyone I saw if they had seen Mr. Ryan. As I approached the Goldwyn Mansion, I saw a man in a long dress and seven women in belly dancing gear sneaking around the side entrance. Supersleuth Lilly had done it again. I approached Ryan with my voice recorder and he broke down in tears and said he hadn’t been seen in public since his last film had made only $300 at the U.S. box office four years ago. I assured him that it was quite alright and gave him and his entourage a lift to the airport. He said he was going back to Palestine to be part of the new Palestinian film movement. That evening I headed to the Four Seasons Hotel where I met a composer called Maury Yeston who had written the musical Nine. $100 worth of champagne later, we were riding the elevator up and down, opening his Vanity Fair invite multiple times just to make those who didn’t have one jealous. The next day it was the Oscars and so I climbed in my car once again and got to the red carpet at 10 a.m. to watch the set up. Men in jeans were still rolling out piles of carpets and placing flower pots around the edges of the entrance, as presenters in long dresses gave Oscar pep talks to distant audience. I took a photo of a giant Oscar statue being unwrapped from its wrappers and interviewed some of the audience and left to pick up a Pink’s Hotdog to take to the guru. As the presenters were hanging around for hours on the carpet, we went hiking and did Chigong in the middle of the park and then pretended we were in the film Jules et Jim and rolled around on the grass. Then we did what any sensible person does and watch the ceremony on television whilst eating Indian for dinner.

ER Tokyo Style

You know how on all of those medical television series, there is that scene where the patient looks up to find herself surrounded by a group of surgeons wearing those frilly paper knickers over their mouths and on their heads? Well, I had one of those moments on Saturday night - Tokyo style.

I found myself lying face up on a massage table in the neon-lit back room of an acupuncture school on the Westside. A group of Japanese acupuncturists peered over me, twittering away, as they stuck needles into any part of my body they deemed necessary. I am proud to say that they gasped louder than I did on account of the fact that I didn’t make any gasping sounds at all, despite the fact that those needles went into places I can’t even mention in print. “She trust me,” I heard the guru say before one of them pricked that point that makes you faint and I passed out.

When I woke up, a young acupuncturist was waving white flower oil under my nose, to bring me back to my senses. “You perfect model,” she said to me, which was on account of the fact that I had lost 35 pounds in three weeks through the guru’s new needle technique - because of which he was dully parading me around town as a fine specimen of his work. When I came to my senses, the resident English teacher thought it was the perfect moment to approach me with a print out of a love scene from The Reader. He proceeded to tell me how the Japanese cannot differentiate their “l”s from their “r”s and asked if I wouldn’t mind reading out a passage about an erection.

I read it out to the group and tried to demonstrate what I meant, and began to wonder if the Japanese were not so polite after all, like they always made out to be. A young girl wearing fluffy boots and three-quarter length green trousers and a flower on her head, translated for an elderly gentleman who was almost bent over double. He didn’t seem to flinch an inch. Then another acupuncturist approached me to tell me how much the Japanese country-folk loved Caucasians. So I hinted to the guru that he might like to take me on a trip to Japan. Instead he took me to the local hiking trail at the top of Temescal Canyon the next morning at noon and made me practice some sort of karate moves and tiger breathing to celebrate the Chinese New Year of The Tiger, which we had already celebrated belly dancing. As we practiced, standing right in the middle of the path, a rapper wearing a tight black T-shirt and a long, gold chain and his girlfriend wandered by in a daze and said hi. And then two LaLaLand dog walkers with Ugg boots joined in. They were wearing wooly hats in the ninety degree heat and continued their loud conversation undeterred as they breathed for the Tigers who had already gone to heaven. Even the dog tried to give it a go. Thus I was reminded of why it was that I loved to live in LaLaLand. “In olden days a glimpse of stocking was thought of as something shocking, now heaven knows, anything goes,” I sang at the top of my voice as I wandered back down the hill with the guru trailing behind in his black Stetson hat. Cole Porter rapped the rapper from up above.

Ladylike

It was on account of the fact that Cynthia and Harriet had snored all night, that I became a lady. At 7 a.m., without having had a wink of sleep, I walked out from my bedroom, stepped into my bikini, with the stars and stripes pattern done in orange and green, and sauntered next door to go for a swim at the hotel pool. The gardeners were making a terrible racket for that time of the morning, re-planting the fake palm trees that had been placed around the pool after that Titanic-like storm the other week had blown the originals out to sea.

I minced around in my little outfit so that they could check me out big time and then I did my laps, all graceful. In the locker room, I found Daffodil the belly-dance teacher who was decked out in some lacy tights and stockings and a bra with red satin around it. Maybe that is what I need to impress the guru, I thought. And so at 8.30 in the morning, I waited patiently for George’s Secret to open, gazing at all of the mannequins in wonder. When the store opened, a pretty lady lured me to the changing rooms, and, after measuring me, declared that I was a 34 A. As soon as she turned her back I threw the little card she had written that on in the trash can and marched out to the 36 B section. 34 A? She must be blind. I gathered some leopard print stockings and matching bras, bikinis and knee-high socks and asked if they had any giraffe prints for Cynthia, my pet giraffe. They didn’t. So I got her some goldfish-patterned boxers instead. Then I headed for lunch, just like all ladies do, with my girlfriend Barbara, and I showed off my new finds in the middle of the Chinese restaurant which went down a treat. Then it was time to go to Daffodil’s belly-dance class to learn how to be a goddess, which she taught every week. First we put these shiny things around our waist and then we began to shimmy. She named me Shimmy Charlotte, which was my new belly-dance name. We cavorted around the room for an hour singing I'm a goddess and then I went to show the guru my new clothing. He liked the gold-fish boxer shorts the best and I wondered if Cynthia would fit into the leopard print thongs instead. Giraffe’s surely have narrow bottoms? The next day, I decided I wouldn’t just be a lady but a lady of leisure. And so at 9.30 a.m., I headed to water aerobics, which was reserved for the over 80s at the club. I found Incie, Mincie and Pinkie in riot mode, singing at the top of their voices to drown out the same soundtrack that had been playing at the pool since last summer. We got through all of the Beatles songs and then they told me that the Olympic ceremony had started the night before when I had taken Jim belly-dancing to celebrate my new grown-up self. Once again, I was proven right that there was no need to read a newspaper. And then in the Jacuzzi a girl told me she was writing a book about Whacko Jackson and I told her it was a great idea as I thought maybe that way I could work as an editor now I was no longer a reporter. That night I went to watch Up In The Air, which was about George Clooney playing a man that, like me, had been grounded. It wasn’t ‘cos he was a journalist and there were budget cuts but because he fell in love. And then it was the weekend so I headed to my wake-up dance class with the over 70s. (For that one, I put on my grey wig from the fancy dress store and drew brown lines down my face to look like wrinkles.) We ended each class by dancing in a circle, looking into each other’s eyes and singing All You Need Is Love. I had Cynthia and Harriet to love so I couldn’t agree more.

A Giraffe Landing

When Cynthia, the runaway giraffe, and I got back to LaLaLand - she had been allowed to fly coach with me and took up all of three seats usually used by the air hostesses - I took her home and put her out to graze in the garden. She spent her first night in America sleeping in my sleeping bag with Harriet, a soft-toy version of that Babe Pig in the City character who I usually slept with. They got along swimmingly. The next morning, I gave her breakfast and put her back on the lawn and headed over to the Jacuzzi to catch up on the latest news.

I had been thinking lots about newspapers recently and figured they were only for people without a local hot tub. After all, that was where I now got all of my information. When I got there, Ethel was still sitting in the corner reading The New Yorker through some brown-shaded specs which looked like something a workman would wear to drill a hole. Maybe they were diving goggles from back when, I thought. I daren’t ask her what she was reading about in case she read me all twelve pages of a New Yorker article. Some mothers do have them, I thought. Who on earth reads the New Yorker in LaLaLand? She must be one of those Big Apples that refuse to like Los Angeles, just like half the dancers at dance class who sit there musing about their days on Broadway. Thankfully Jimmy the handy man arrived and filled me in on the coolest performer from San Francisco. (I don’t go there any more ‘cos I don’t like cloud-dwelling intellectuals.). It was a singer by the name of James Green. And then came Sandra who told me about all the best places to buy Italian cashmere. Why on earth would I read a paper, I thought, as I was still in a huff with newspapers. When I got back home, there were two men in orange outfits standing in front of my door. Aside from eating my neighbor’s surfboard, as it had a green stripe down the middle of it, Cynthia had been nibbling on the palm trees which lined the beach in front of my garden. The palm tree cutters wanted to know if they could borrow her for an afternoon? So off she went, a full-time employee within 24 hours of landing. That’s my girl, I thought. Then I called Jim to ask how his surf watch was going and to see if he could look after my giraffe on the weekends. He said he could gladly take her and tie her to the pier so she could swim a little.

Everything was working out all rosie. That night, I decided Cynthia should probably sleep in the garden so she had her own space. I was glad that I had found a good use for my tent. Her neck and head fitted perfectly inside and I laid her legs on some cushions and covered them in a blanket, and went in to sleep. I had a big day ahead of me tomorrow. I had to learn to chant like the guru had told me, and I was still determined to seduce him. I was also expecting my letter to arrive any day from Mrs. Clinton, and wanted to be ready and waiting to go to Africa to liberate the women of the third world. Before I went to sleep, I went online to order the closest thing to broccoli that I could find on Alexi’s websites, as he had insisted in a text message that I await his return before going to the Farmer’s Market again. I found green and black stripped shoes and ordered them instead. Then I looked up a few sites of my own. I was going to be an online shopper too, and so was Cynthia. I would show her the ropes tomorrow.

Point Cynthia

Upon arriving in Timbuktu, I was determined to be more badly behaved than ever. And so when I saw a nice little bicycle standing unlocked at the airport, I decided to swipe it. That would teach Alexi to call me a gofer, I thought. I attached my suitcase to the back with a white scarf, got out my giraffe-o-meter which I had learnt to make at boy scouts - I didn’t like girl scouts one bit - and started peddling in the direction of my giraffe. (For those who haven’t been keeping up lately someone had actually sent me on assignment to find a runaway giraffe.)

I thought it might be an idea to get out my press badge and stick it to my fluffy bonnet so that I could go through the red lights without anyone stopping me.

It worked quite nicely for a while, until a policeman wearing a pink outfit said he needed to see my bicycle license. Bicycle license, I asked? Yes, he said. It had just been introduced to increase fines to beat the recession. Golly, I thought. I have come all this way and life is really no different than it is in LaLaLand with those traffic wardens in those little speedy cars hiding on every corner.

Knowing every trick in the book, I offered to buy the warden a drink to discuss the matter and two hours later we had put the bike on top of his red and white striped patrol car and were speeding merrily in the direction of the giraffe. Cynthia, as she was known, had escaped two weeks ago from the home of an eccentric Mexican artist, and no one had been able to catch her since. Cats had been swiped from trees, dogs gone missing and there was almost no grass left in the southern part of the island.

At Point Cynthia, where her hide-out had come be known, we found some so-called experts making strange squeaking noises in an attempt to lure out Cynthia from a giant forest. But I knew better. I walked into the forest saying, “Come Kitty, Kitty, Kitty. Come Kitty, Kitty Kitty,” and two hours later I had my giraffe. I knew that every giraffe really dreamed of being a small kitty that could curl up on its master’s lap. I led Cynthia out of the forest and tied her to the back of my bike, alongside my suitcase, and started peddling towards the artist’s home. After two bottles of tequila, it turned out the giraffe had not run away but been sent away for not being a kitty. Who would have thought? So Cynthia was bequeathed to me by her master along with a couple of paintings, and I headed to the airport determined to fly Cynthia back and give her a loving home.

Born to be Badly Behaved

Alexi may have declared that we were both supposed to be gofers (see last blog). But I knew better. I was born to be naughty. This I had realized on a recent retreat the guru had sent me on when I was supposed to do mindfulness walks at 6 a.m. through the desert. I was also meant to sleep in a tent in the women’s camp but had refused outright and marched up the hill wrapped in my sleeping bag, and spent the week sleeping in the meditation hall with a monk in a long frock. Each morning at 5 a.m., he would ding a bell over my head, asking if everything was okay? He gave up after day three and I slept until noon. Still, that week, I had two of those epiphany thingies. The first was that I was not born to sleep in a tent. (I was in fact a diva!) And the second was that I had been born to be badly behaved.

And so it was upon boarding the plane to Timbuktu (see The Guru and The Runaway Giraffe) that I first waited for the stewardess to turn her back and then scuttled quickly along the floor to the first-class toilet. I stuck an “Out of Order” sign on the door and strapped myself onto the seat with some tissue paper for take-off. I was a frequent flyer, and had read the safety instructions many times! I had a plan. One of the girls at dance class had shown me how to practice those twirls using a bathroom mirror, after I had told her that I had done them turning all along the shoreline, starting at the Venice Boardwalk. I had decided to practice all the way to Timbuktu. But about half way, I began to feel a little dizzy. So I crawled into one of those large chairs in the first class part and had a little nap. After dinner, I wrote a letter to Alexi and then one to Hillary Clinton. I addressed the first to, “Alexi The Ukrainian Surfer, Australia, and handed it to the stewardess. I was sure that he would get it just fine, “I am no gofer!” I said. Signed, Lilly. And then I wrote one to Hillary, which was all thanks to the yoga teacher who had filled us in on the week’s news between teaching belly dance moves, as she was bored of downward dog. I had resolutely refused to read the newspaper since the New York Rhymes had cancelled that section I had written for three months ago, so I was rather glad to hear about something other than the temperature of the pool. Hillary was going to liberate the women of the Third World and have them all skip into the future, she informed us. To make the point, she had us skip around the room one by one. So I wrote Hillary a letter asking if she might need some help. I was a little worried in case I couldn’t find the giraffe. And what if the guru found out about me sharing a hall with a monk? I addressed the letter to President Obama, The White House, and asked him to kindly pass it on.

CrossDressing for CowsHands

The week had begun with what was supposed to be a short trip to the hairdressers, which had been renamed Tweezers after another shop called Scissors had threatened action. It was run by a bunch of queens (and kings) from Paris. Then just as my new bangs were about to be perfected, my hairdresser Larry felt so provoked by his colleague Misty, who claimed his abs were sagging, that he ripped of his shirt and started doing press-ups in his undies. Then he got so excited that he snipped out a huge portion of my fringe. And I ended up looking just like I did when my mother cut my hair when I was five.

Still, the guru said that he liked it very much and so did Alexi, a surfer and skateboarder from the neighborhood. Each week, Alexi would come and collect me at 9 a.m. sharp on Wednesdays on his fold-up bike and escort me past the tourists along the boardwalk to go to the farmer’s market. It was like promenading in the olden days, except instead of wearing a suit and tie, Alexi would be wearing his surf shoes, long shorts and different T-shirts which he liked to refer to as being “rad.” I thought that he probably meant red and was likely color blind, as the shirts were usually more like pink.

On this particular week, Alexi had an announcement. He was going to Australia for a month. In his absence I was to shop online, instead of at the farmer’s market, so that I wasn’t attacked by any wayward tourists. He proceeded to reel off a list of names of his favourite online stores. Alexi was a surfer in the biggest sense of the word. If he wasn’t out at sea, he was on his I-pod. Boundless New York was his favorite, and then there was something about Moose Shirts and then another one called EastWest. Alexi was an insider and only brought online from Brooklyn, he said. I went to see what the price of broccoli was but could only find cool-looking shoes. Still, I thought If I shopped here for a month then it might be good for the waistline. Then he asked me if he thought his surf wear would work in Paris on his next trip? I said sure and explained my theory about cross-dressing, or wearing what one wears in one’s home city everywhere and not just to the farmer’s market. (I had a grand plan to wear my sweat pants to Paris Fashion Week next month.)

That night in the Jacuzzi, Alexi worried if he should pack five pairs of surfer shoes or six and whether or not he would be able to fit in three kites as well as his surf board into his suitcase. Such, dear reader, are the concerns of folks in L.A. I sat listening to him in my favorite red polka dot underwear, as I had forgotten my swim suit. I practiced a belly-button massage thing that the guru had taught me. Then inspired by a yoga class from our Swiss teacher Agha who had declared earlier that evening this was the month to figure out what we were good at and what we should do with our lives, Alexi suddenly declared that what we were good at was being gofers, going to get things for people. Like information for newspapers. He explained that massage and dance were not gofer activities. Hmmm, I thought about it. I was a gofer and good at finding things. He was right.

Then I told Alexi how earlier in the week, the guru had introduced me as his assistant to the new class. “Who is that?” they had asked, starring at my new hair-do with the funny bangs. “I gave a big smile and showed how all of my teeth had grown perfectly, to prove that I was far from being five, despite the look. Still, I didn’t really mind as I wasn’t going to see them for a while. My ticket had arrived, and I was off to Timbuktu to chase that Giraffe. (See The Guru-ette and The Runaway Giraffe.)

Wonder Woman and the Gold-Sequined Sneakers

The guru had invited me to his house to celebrate our new collaboration. (See the Guru-ette and The Runaway Giraffe). I needed to dress right. I went through the clothing laying beneath my tent in the closet and came across my Diane von Furstenburg Wonder Woman dress. It was a long silk gown which swished around the body with swirls of muted colors, printed on a bed of mauve.

I slipped into my gold-sequined Converse-style ankle boots and put on my black pirate’s eye patch that I had gotten from a Christmas cracker at Little Red Riding Hood’s. Then I looked in the mirror and threw a fit. Thankfully, the man from the Japanese store had packed as a present the concubine dress with a good-luck note along with my karate trousers. (See The Guru-ette and The Runaway Giraffe). So I tried it on for size. Five outfits later, I was back to my Wonder Woman dress and drove down the Pacific Coast Highway humming the TV series theme all the way. It turned out I had chosen wisely. “My litte concubine,” mused the guru, before sitting me down to read some books on becoming a Sense-I. After eating dinner, I did my best to get him drunk on Saki. Instead, I succeeded in getting him to make me a pet dog from a long white balloon, a new party trick he had learned the week before. I practiced twirls for him with my dress flying much higher than it did on the show. But he wasn’t to be moved. “My dear you must respect my discipline,” he said. ”What’s that?” I asked, the child of two flower children who had disappeared five years ago to Europe in a caravan. “It is my culture and you will learn all about it soon,” he said. And so he gave me a pat on the head, handed me my new pet dog, and escorted me outside where the neighbors had gathered around to inspect my purple electric car, which Beyonce had once used in a music video. It belonged to Little Red Riding Hood who had lent it to me for the week to drive around town with a big “For Sale” sign on it. And so I rode home a happy bunny and practiced driving through the puddles with my eye patch covering one eye. I tried to phone what I thought was Jim’s number. And this, dear reader, is where the weekend kicked into high gear. I had called an ex-boyfriend by mistake! “Oh, no,” I thought. “Oh yes,” thought he. And so at 9.37 p.m. the next night, a six foot six version of James Dean walked through my front porch, hair slicked back, a leather jacket hugging his muscled chest, and said, “Hello stranger.” “Hello,” I said sheepishly, as he admired my red angora sweater with gold stars on the chest and matching silver shoes. My hair was still standing on end from my dance class. Over a bottle of organic wine from Trader Joe’s he began sobbing, as he recalled how tragic his last five years had been selling stickers to place on snowboards. Before he left, he declared that I needed to find a real man, an everyday person who would love and appreciate my eccentricities. “What eccentricities?” I asked. A trip to the local lumbar yard was in store.

The Guru-ette and The Runaway Giraffe: Or The Frustrations of a Former Reporter

After 700 practice dance turns along the shoreline (see previous column about becoming a dancer), I was about to get pneumonia when all of a sudden the guru called. The energy generated from twirling 700 times between the Venice Boardwalk and the Santa Monica Pier had triggered some sort of energy release, he explained. And he had had a brainwave: I was to become his assistant or a guru-ette! I was to report for duty the next morning. I called Jim instantly and could hear the screech of his car leaving the driveway. He wanted to become a guru-ette too. “No more Nickeloden scripts for me,” he yelled down the phone as he sped towards the beach. When he arrived, I showed him how to do a dance turn, just like I had learnt in my class the day before in preparation for my planned career as a dancer. Remember! Anyhow, that was now my old career, cos things happen fast in LaLaLand. And so I left Jim, a gangling figure with his knees and arms flying in the wrong direction, turning awkwardly along the beach. He was determined to be a Guru-ette too. I headed to Little Tokyo to get myself one of those Sensei kits. In the Japanese store, the man spent an hour trying to dress me as a concubine or something like that. But I wasn’t having it. I left wearing one of those cool-looking Karate kid jackets and practiced Kung-fu moves in my car all the way home. I had been saved. I got to the gym shortly before closing and so, as usual, had Bianca, an old-school dumpling of a fashionista who sported a Liza Minelli hair-cut, and bright red lips, which slopped down to one side and perfectly complemented her Addidas hoodie, which she would wear with nothing underneath! Between calling the security guard a “Fasceest,” for telling her the club was closing, she spotted me before it was too late to escape. I was cornered and her beady eyes and questions had me reveal my entire life story to her in the blink of an eye. Hmmm, I thought. She would have made the perfect journalism teacher. In order to annoy the security guard further, she then reeled off fact after fact about current affairs that made it obvious she must read the newspapers like a hawk. I was filled with a sense of hope. Maybe I wouldn’t have to be a guru-ette forever. (I was in fact beginning to miss journalism.) When I got home, it seems that the cosmic energy generated by my dance moves had generated a response to one of my far-flung pitch letters from the day before. If I could get from LAX to Timbuktu for $28.50 return, there was a story to be done on a runaway giraffe. I thought for a second and remembered a flight attendant on Egypt Air, who had let me stand in the cockpit with my laptop plugged into the kettle socket one time so I could file a story upon landing. He had just the ticket. But how would I tell the guru? I phoned Jim to see what he thought. But he was too excited to think straight. Upon completion of his 700 twirls, it seems that he had been approached by one of the Beach Lifeguards and offered a job doing a special twirling watch in which he would keep a 360 degree check on what was going on at the beach. We had survived another day.

The Titanic and The Twirling Swimsuit: Or Life After Journalism

My mid-life crisis had extended to a second day. Massage, as an alternative to writing, was out I decided after Jim and I had been boxed up in a small room with real-life human beans demanding to be prodded through their bathing suits for an afternoon. And so it was back to plan A, which I had hatched out aged 5. I was to become a dancer! At the crack of dawn, I jumped in my car to go to a “professional” class. I told the resident jazz guru upon arrival that I was going to become a pro. aged 37 ½. Very good, she said. That will be $200 per week. I handed over the money and walked happily into the studio.

Having a flat chest finally made perfect sense, I thought. My theory was proven right when the house wives gathered all stared at my boyish figure in admiration. I was onto something. And so I twirled happily in the wrong direction for an hour before heading back to my local pool to marvel at my newfound plan. When I got there, the pool area had been barricaded off. Gale force winds had come to shore.

I managed to pass as a walking lettuce leaf by wearing my silver swim cap and green goggles, as I walked outside through the kitchen door and swam happily amid the giant armchairs and a deck table, which had sunk to the bottom in the wind. I imagined that I was deep at sea, salvaging booty from the Titanic. My job completed, I went to the farmer’s market, the annual highlight of the week in this retirement resort come holiday haunt. At the cabbage stand, I ran into Little Red Riding Hood, the doyenne of Hollywood reporters who had spent her week painting her guest house. The assignments, she said, had dried up. It was Gloria Swanson Act Two, I thought sadly, my silent movie star of the newspaper biz. I tried to convince her to become a dancer like me. But she wasn’t having it. She liked her G & Ts too much after yoga at 10 a.m. on the terrace. And so I went back to the beach to practice twirls along the shoreline all alone, hoping that I wouldn’t be blown out to sea.

The Guru and The Great Escape

Jim, a tall, handsome Irish-American scriptwriter from Boston, and myself had been plotting our escape from the film business for several weeks. For the last three months we had trotted down to the local Shiatsu school to learn the art of pressing one’s thumbs into people’s backs for a living. Anything has to be better than writing we had decided. And so giving our index fingers, the only one either of us could type with, a rest we practiced poking around on innocent bodies, taking breaks only to venture to Reena’s Raw Food Café next door, which was filled with hippie-types that may not have moved from the spot since 1962. We found sustenance in the form of the odd spinach leaf served up on a silver plate.

“I just blew off a major party in Hollywood to be sitting here with you tonight on this deserted street outside one of the most bizarre cafes I have ever been to,” I confessed last night. “Do you think I have gone mad?” “No,” said Jim. “You have finally got your priorities straight.”

Dear Reader, this is the plight facing journalists today: “To Write or Not To Write?” Or maybe both suggested our guru, a diminutive and wise man from Tokyo who perched like a delicate flower on the edge of a stool in his Sense –I get-up, consisting of one of those suave black warrior-jackets and cute white trousers, looking somehow more seductive than Prince could ever hope to writhing around on stage. So I spent the morning planning my reinvention as a writer of anything other than Hollywood stories, sending out wild pitches to far-flung corners of the globe. In-between I tried to convince the gardener, who had spotted us practicing on the terrace, that really I was not qualified to mess around with his back. Yikes. Give a massage, I thought? I was in a clear mid-life crisis mode. I headed next door to sit in the Jacuzzi of my neighborhood hotel where a buggy had flown into the water. Real weather, wind, rain, fog, had finally made it to Los Angeles. And its inhabitants were in a panic. The buggy had almost bopped a bald-headed man on the head. He hadn’t noticed. But I thought Tibetan Yoga in the studio sounded more promising. After pumping our hearts like soldiers with our fists, and making strange cycling movements with our arms, in a sequence that would have made Indiana Jones seem far scarier than his riffle, I realized that this effort to conjure forth some all-powerful Tibetan deity was in vain, when the teacher declared that she had to leave early to get home in case it rained.

Anyone Chasing The Newspaper Business Is Making Silent Movies

“Anyone chasing the newspaper business is making silent movies,” said the Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn, Jr. in a recent conversation in which he encouraged the launch of this blog.

And he and his family should known. Goldwyn, Jr., the son of Samuel Goldwyn, is just about the best person to talk to in such a crisis as the one that newspapers are facing today, as he is able to look back at the old days and forward to the Internet-savvy future, “which is something that we are trying to figure out ourselves,” he says. “People have very short attention spans today.”

After a frustrating morning planning my escape from the business altogether, Goldwyn, Jr.’s line seemed to sum up the situation in one: Journalists, the silent movie stars of today, must move into the Talkies’ equivalent of the Blogosphere, or else…

The bureaucracy involved in getting an interview from a studio hadn’t helped. “Hollywood has become too corporate,” I declared, run by “yes men in suits.” (A request to interview Helen Mirren had turned into a series of robotic emails, involving hurdles and referrals that would have topped getting the okay to get into East Berlin.)

“In the old days the studio wouldn’t speak to you without permission” says Goldwyn, Jr. “No one just picked up the phone to Louella Parsons,” he adds, referring to one of Hollywood’s fabled gossip columnists. “In the old days you couldn’t get a story. You had to deal with the publicity office. Things are much freer today.”

We got onto the very nature of the press today when indeed multiple sources abound for information which can often appear on little-known websites in nano-seconds. “Communication is so fast now,” he says. “Information is out there instantly and there is no time to correct it. People are just protecting themselves. Companies are often public and stock can go up and down on a story.”

Indeed. Goldwyn, Jr. reminded me what a tough business this is by referring to his past. “When people interview me they always ask me to tell them anecdotes about the stars of old,” he says. “I always tell them that my father was an independent producer and what I remember is the celebration in our house when he was able to pay back the money he had borrowed to make a film to the bank.”

Goldwyn, Jr.’s words reminded me of another truth uttered by Filippo Timi (Vincere), last year’s best actor winner at the Venice Film Festival, in a recent interview confirming that no one ever escapesthe film business.

“It is like the Coliseum when you wanted to be a slave just to be part of it,” says Timi. “Maybe we can think of the industry like that. All of the people who work in the industry are like slaves to the industry. We all say that we are going to leave but we like it too much.”

For the full Timi interview see: http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100107/ART/701069970

About the Author:

Liza Foreman is a former staff reporter for Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and now writes freelance from Los Angeles and Europe for the NYTimes.com, The International Herald Tribune, The Times, The National and Hollywoodwiretap.com

The Wonders of a $10 Kodak Camera at the Oscars

I mentioned in my last blog some images taken at one year's Oscar ceremony with a $10 Kodak camera. Here they are...

The Golden Globes or Raining Stars

And so we come to the day of the Golden Globes of which I have attended quite a few and of which I have fond memories. There was the year where I managed to sneak into the photographers’ pit and partake in the ritual of guessing who the star standing in front of you is. Think a form of Chinese whispers or desperate enquiries going ever further down the line asking if anyone had any idea of which B-list star it was preening on the carpet. This all took place as Cate Blanchett quivered like an exhausted race horse who couldn’t take another flash bulb and Minnie Driver found a few steps on the far side of the entrance over which she draped herself like some silent movie star. Then there was the 2007 version where, thanks to strike threats, the Golden Globes were paired down to a bare bones event and the atmosphere inside the Beverly Hilton Hotel was like being inside a war bunker where Renee Zellweger entertained the troops with her bright red lips and laughs. I have also attended the Oscars, I will have you know. I remember the time where we were told no cameras in the journalists’ pit at the side of the red carpet. Realizing that everyone else had one, myself and a Spanish reporter went into the attached Highland Hotel’s gift shop and bought two disposable cameras with the words Kodak plastered across them in bright yellow letters and stood taking pro photos of the stars in close up, until one Uma Thurman could be seen glaring at me through the other side of the lens in horror. (The shots turned out fabulously.) There was the year when I was sent, rather embarrassingly, to track down Martin Scorsese for The Hollywood Reporter upstairs at the Governers’ Ball and ask him how he felt about not winning again. And that was probably the year when I realized that being backstage, after sitting on the carpet for hours on end, was akin to sitting on a long-haul flight packed with 400 journalists sitting elbow to elbow with their laptops, all eating airline-style food. That may have been the year that I realized that awards ceremonies were best watched at home and left to see the end of it from my sofa. And so it was that I spent my Golden Globes this year letting everyone else get caught up in all of the fun and games and practicing dance twirls on the deserted beach in the pouring rain, not giving two hoots that stars were being rained on only twenty minutes away.

A Star for a Day

And so the week continued with a trip the next day to a so-called awards-season gift suite and an opportunity to live the life of a star vicariously. Inside the Peninsula Hotel, the scene was all abuzz with press and camera crews heading down to visit Nathalie Dubois’ DPA gift suite, which was filled with booty galore just waiting to be taken home by celebs.

Making sure that this wasn’t dished out to the press by mistake, we were given giant necklaces to were with the word PRESS written in luminous green. In previous years, even journalists would have had these companies throwing things at them to take home but here too the effects of the recession could be felt. This year, it seems we were to be satisfied instead by, in one case, a label from a cool Army-style shopping bag, which I gazed at longingly before the rep ripped off the packing and said here you can have this instead! Even the sweet Danish girl from goodluckhorseshoes.com, the latest thing in Bling – think an original Danish horseshow smothered in 24 carat gold, which is hung on a chain- like necklace fit for any rapper – held on tightly to her gear.

Still, the good luck clearly wore off on me. After discovering the vegetable-infused cocktails on the terrace at circa 11.30 a.m. and taking a few sips of the Cabana Cachacha rum mixed with St Germain liquor, I figured the best way forward was to ditch the pass.

And so I entered the pampering suite sans detection, wearing my finest black suit, and got to play at being a movie star for a rather enjoyable hour. I had my nails done and learnt all about the Minx organic nail polish from the manicurist Nettie Davis. Then it was on to the celebrity make-up artists Anastasia’s stand where someone just waiting to dish love on to a passer by kindly did my brows. The girl from MD Lash Factor handed over a black velvet pouch with a potion one could apply everyday to raise the length of one’s eyelashes and then the ever-so-sweet rep from the skincare label Kerstin Florian went to far as to hand me some Kaviar to smear under my eyes! was on a roll. Outside, the beautiful tea blends from Bird Pick were presented by another friendly face and I was even invited to their grand opening this Saturday in their Culver City mall store. Then I fell gratefully into the arms of two young masseurs from the innovative company Massage Express, which will come to your home, office, or set with their table and chair, and had all of my worries smoothed out through my suit. Back inside, the girl from Brazilian Blowout spotted my pass and declared that she had already spoken to me, then handed over a tube of their signature hair smoothing cream before declaring wistfully that she too needed a massage. Back on the terrace, the reporters from Turner Television glared at my seven bulging bags of “research items” (they only had one), and I wolfed down a tuna sandwich and sauntered out. When I got home, I realized that I had risked my reputation as a stand-up reporter for less than $150 worth of gear and consoled myself with the thought that it was all done, as I am telling you now, strictly in the name of the story.

+ Please note that all items were dropped off at a charity store on the way home.

Plastic Surgeons and the Hall of Mirrors

A Los Angeles blog can only rightfully begin from inside a plastic surgeon’s office in Beverly Hills. And so it was one recent Thursday that I trotted up to that part of town to take advantage of a gift certificate, which came courtesy of the Hollywood Reporter’s Power 100 Women In Entertainment Breakfast, for a so-called Shiatsu facial at the office of one well-known Beverly Hills doctor who had thought to offer his bloody-nosed patients a soothing facial service on site.

Nose to nose with the beautician, I posed the million-dollar questions: “Have you ever seen a nose job where you couldn’t tell it was one?” I enquired “Can you tell mine is?” she asked, pressing her Miss Piggy-like snout within inches of mine, as I lay helpless on the table. “The only problem is that I can’t breathe,” she sighed. Indeed. She couldn’t, it seems, breath long enough to complete the offer of a one-hour facial, valued at a whopping $400, and I remembered that there was no such thing as a free lunch in this town.

And so sooner than expected I was back in the waiting room, a pristine white space filled with large princess chairs, and in a haze handed over a tip, which I later regretted. I spotted a plastic surgeon in a green outfit heading towards me and sped out on to the street determined to be the last person in town with a large nose.

On my way out, I saw lifts and corridors full of perfectly plastic faces, reflected in the building’s large mirrors, as if from a scene from a surreal horror film. Finally I appreciated the wisdom of a fellow yoga student who years ago had asked a teacher what I thought then to be a ridiculous question: “Why oh why was the energy in Beverly Hills so different to Santa Monica?” he asked that day. Finally I understood his question and couldn’t wait to get back home.