I’ve been away from my blog for a bit – as those of you, my silent readers who never comment – must have noticed. It’s been a challenging 10 days. The temperature has been in the triple digits since last weekend, and the humidity is relentless. The skies are brown from smog and a fire that has been burning north of Santa Barbara since July 4th. People get on my nerves – they drive like idiots and remind me of the flies that seem to be everywhere all the time now. I take three showers a day and still feel unwashed. If kitchen trash sits for more than half a day, it takes on a lingering stench usually associated with 3 day old dead bodies – this you will be relieved to know, I understand more from instinct than from any actual experience.
As a result, I and my foul temper stay inside with the air conditioner and two fans going (Al, I’m sorry, but I will buy my wind power card at Whole Foods tomorrow, I promise). The shades are drawn and liquids full of electrolytes are at the ready. Every so often I register a change in the atmosphere as an intensification of the headache I’ve had for the past week. I don’t get allergies in Los Angeles, I get headaches; nasty ones that make me feel like my right eyeball is on fire, to be precise. It’s hard to write about my reluctant love of L.A. in such conditions.
In fact, it’s almost more than I can bear to lift an icy glass of Spanish rose to my lips, and nibble on the few organic lettuces that accompany my store bought pissaladerie for lunch / dinner. I can barely rally the strength to focus my good eye on the Fall
fashion issues of my favorite glossies. Vogue, is so heavy I can’t even lift it, which is probably a good thing, since the thought of anything except for lightly chilled ocean salt water touching my skin makes me ill – let alone all those lovely tailored lightweight wools and leathers worn over tights and this season’s must have booties.
To be honest, I haven’t even made it past the cover of Details with Clive Owen on the cover – he’s not as moody as he looks – but note to the writer: I do not want to know how what he really wants to do is take his wife to a soccer match. I want to know how he’s pinin
g away moodily after the amazing woman he saw when last he was in Los Angeles, the one that he can’t get out of his mind- with the lustrous pewter and platinum hair, the amazing eyes, and the –lets be honest – gorgeous breasts just recently relieved of 6 excess pounds and now floating perkily under the kinds of summer dresses they could only dream of supporting in years past…oh, oh, where is she?- cries Clive. Staring at a picture of you on the cover of Details, mate. I’ll be back as soon as I add just a smidgen of vodka to my strawberry lemonade…
I actually did leave the house twice this past week, once to go to the beach, which was worth the painful sunburn, and once to go on the oddest job interview of my life. Details follow.
This interview was with a media luminary who I actually admire quite a bit. I won’t name her, but her initials are A.H. and she’s written many books – most recently about being a woman and being bold – and she runs an online media empire. She used to represent hateful things; marriage to and rapacious campaigner for a rich, closeted queer neocon creep attempting to take over my beloved California. And then there was her biography of one of my favorite artists, Pablo Picasso, which focused almost exclusively on his dark person
al life – not fair!! Note to all intelligent people: Personal lives of creative geniuses are almost always strange and often sordid –witness this month’s profile of Arthur Miller in Vanity Fair. But she had the courage (and nerve, some would say) to divorce the creep, grab his money and reinvent herself as “a compassionate and progressive populist,” something that appears heartfelt and admirable, or utterly calculated, which just seems like too much work.
Being interested, I arrived ahead of schedule, with sweat dripping down my back from the heat of the drive in an un- air-conditioned car, hoping that maybe this woman would pay enough that I could replace it –maybe with a Prius, like the one she drives. I waited a few minutes to let the Brentwood breezes cool me down a bit, and then I rang at the gate. The door opened, and I was admitted into one of those short front yards peculiar to Los 
Angeles mansions, after which I walked through an open door into a cool foyer to be guided by The Voice into a large airy office with twenty foot ceilings and floor to ceiling windows that framed her large desk. There were books and comfortable furnishing all around and I just wanted to plop down on the sofa, kick off my shoes, pick something up to read and say – hey, what have you been up to? Can you believe the f***in’ weather? But my Mother raised me, and I walked to my designated seat instead, and commented on the room’s handsome appointments. “Yes, isn’t it comfy?” she said in her luscious, honey soaked accent, and then she took a couple of phone calls. In between, she asked me the same question twice – so you are returning to writing?- and seemed to register my responses, but I can’t really be sure. She then sent me upstairs to meet her other assistant.
On the way up, I spotted a Modigliani. “This is real?” I asked reflexively- and she responded – “no, definitely not”- but you have to agree that a print of a Modigliani nude next to the spiral staircase leading up to the “team’s” office is a pretty interesting choice.
The assistant was a pleasant but humorless worker who gave me the task of cleaning out A’s contacts in Outlook for awhile. The air conditioning was broken in this airless atelier, and my hand kept sticking to the page of duplicate contacts I was supposed to weed out. I did that for about 30 minutes, fact-checking famous names as I went, and that was it. The worker told me that AH would be calling me that night or tomorrow, and escorted me to the door.
Of course it’s several days after tomorrow, and no phone call, but I’ve lived here long enough to know that in Hollywood, actually getting a phone call would be an exception to the rule. I guess I just didn’t realize just how Hollywood A is.
I still wish she had called because I sincerely want to know: what exactly was the point of that particular exercise? Was the Outlook task some kind of timed contact management exercise, perhaps? The worker assured me that it wasn’t a test when I asked her, but she also told me she liked her job, and I wasn’t convinced by her answer to that question either.
There are a number of possible scenarios that explain why I didn’t get a call back; you choose the one you like the best (or add one of your own):
- I’m older than she thought I’d be, and she likes young assistants because they are less expensive, and are also less likely to talk back,
- She’s gay and the sight of me and my previously described breasts distracted her to the point where she knew her life and work would be in ruins if she hired me,
- She was worried that the writer in me might do the same sort of hatchet job on her that she did on Picasso,
- She found my blog through my email address and hates it, and couldn’t possibly hire someone who would write such non-erudite mulch,
- She’s been busy covering the Utah Mining Disaster and Karl Rove and Hillary and she honestly thought the worker was going to call me,
- It was at the top of her list to call with a very attractive compensation package and a puff of fresh air into my otherwise stale life, until she read this post…
Whatever…
Now I’m back on my side of town, and noticing just how decidedly asymmetrical Clive Owen’s face is, and how it shouldn’t add to his allure but it does, and how, in Bourne Identity his face looks positively tidy and symmetrical, and how does he do that? Can he make himself look asymmetrical? If so, he’s even more incredible than I thought! Why does he display his wedding ring so much in his Details photos? Is it the equivalent of the sign of the cross against vampires? Why are all the male models in the rest of the magazine so young and so emaciated? They look like Oliver Twist -more soup please! It’s worse than in Vogue, where the girls at least sometimes try to look of age…
Are we now a nation of self obsessed pedophiles?
Vox Pop Sudari 