Categories
Travel

Desert Flower Day Two

I have not written this diary properly for a few days.  A great deal is going on.   Traveling East.

It seemed like I said yes to far too many dinner invitations and ended up cancelling all of them.

I am talking to sales reps about The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Finally.  It is time.  David Gallagher is the breakout star in Super 8 so we may very well sell it.  With David looking so amazingly fit and grown up and Aleksa in Boardwalk Empire…perhaps we can sell it for what it is worth.  Anyway, I’m talking again to sales agents so let’s see.  I just want what it is worth.  Not selling it for anything less.

I am still not happy with the edit.

The desert.  We drive into the night.  The Freeway.  Homogenous America.  The same 6 restaurant chains, the same names…again and again.  Nothing to differentiate state by state.   The desert is beautiful.  Desolate, hot, 110 degrees yesterday.

I am now in Willcox Arizona, sitting in the Safeway Starbucks where coffee is twenty cents more than The Palisades.  To prove that people must be BORED beyond reason living out here I have been recognized more in the past ten minutes than the past ten months.

They are playing Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues.

So, we left LA yesterday morning.  The previous day we spent dozing on the beach then had dinner at the rancid Taverna Tony’s.  Flayed shrimp.  The Beautiful Dane’s Swedish friend arrived and we all stayed in Malibu that night leaving early the following morning with Robby.

The Swedish friend (whose name I refuse to remember) is a clumsy idiot and I don’t expect revising my opinion any time soon.  They call each other Bagel.   Within ten minutes of meeting me he had knocked my phone out of my hand.

Robby and Miles returned from their wedding weekend, apparently the bride and groom washed each other’s feet in the Christian ceremony.  Robby looked great.  They are such sweet boys.

Very clean feet.

The Dane sings Riders in The Storm in Danish which is funny.

Picked up a huge SUV at The Dane’s insistence.  Expensive, gas consuming behemoth.

We drove to Glendale Station where we picked up another Dane, a girl called Lucie who used to work in the fashion and textile department at the Met in NYC.  We had a great deal to talk about.

It seemed like a good idea to fill the car with friends but as it turns out the idiot friend and the Dane have a very specific sort of relationship and Lucie is his ex gf who he took two years to get over.

I began to reassess.   My farts stink.

We drove from LA to Phoenix.  Dinner at The Royal Palm Resort which is incredibly beautiful.  Taco Tuesday.  Luxury on a budget.  The Swede nipped off with his good-looking friend and bought two dresses from H and M for him and the Dane which they changed into in the parking lot.

We stopped in a gas station and a man told his friend very loudly that the dress wearing men should be arrested.  As we drove deeper into Arizona the dresses caused me some panic as I really did not want either of them to get shot.

As you can tell from my voice.  I am trying a little too hard.

Stayed in a small motel with wi-fi and a big black dog.  The room cost us $60.

We are on our way to Marfa, Texas to the Donald Judd hangers.

If you want to see all of the videos from this trip…go to my YouTube channel.

We are off soon.  Long journey ahead.  They are playing Joe Jackson’s Stepping Out.  The Starbucks girl is blending caramel frapaccino and I will never see Willcox Arizona ever again.

Categories
Malibu

Robby!

Robby, the twin that hung around in the womb a full twenty minutes longer than Miles is urging me to go to breakfast at the bottom of the hill.  It is 9am and it is already very hot here in Malibu.

The dog is sprawled on his bed in the sun.

Miles is on set somewhere nearby.

Last night Armand popped in and we took Robby’s car and had dinner at Dukes.  Dukes, the restaurant of little culinary interest at the bottom of the hill.  Why?  Mainly because I found one of the waiters attractive.  I met him in Starbucks last week and he told me that he would ‘hook us up’.  I didn’t eat anything because the food looked so rancid.  They had burgers and Caesar Salad and calamari and beer.

We were not hooked up.

Yesterday afternoon, after my long walk with Miles down Rambla Pacifico, my Australian friend Daniel turned up with a bottle of white wine.  I poured him a glass and looked at it longingly.  Crisp white wine on a warm Californian afternoon.

We have many friends in common in Sydney and it was so nice to hear all the news.  I am sure if I just looked on Facebook I could have found out for myself but it was lovely listening to him tell me all about everything and everybody…the weather and the burgeoning Australian economy.   The drought has ended, the reservoirs are full.

We headed into Malibu where we ate lunch at the Deli.  The once very fat man who runs the Deli has lost 130lbs just by NOT eating white bread.  He looks so much happier.

After lunch, as we were wandering around the absurdly priced shopping Mall, a beautiful man with a bleeding dog begged me to tell him where the vet was.  His beautiful labrador had been bitten in her face by a Rattle Snake. My worst nightmare.

I pointed him in the right direction.

He had been sucking the poison out of her face.  I hope she survived.

Armand stayed long after I went to bed.  Teaching Robby how to use his synthesiser.

This morning I squeezed fresh grapefruit from my tree.  Ruby red.  Delicious.