Category: Rant

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Hollywood Rant

London Hotel West Hollywood

Really!  What has happened to the London Hotel West Hollywood?

My friends Michael and Yaniv who are visiting from New York very sweetly invited me to lunch there yesterday.

I loved their room which has a nice, easterly view over the Hollywood Hills and a huge bathroom.

Lunch was less charming.

According to the verbose London Hotel website:

“Gordon Ramsay has recreated the Hollywood culinary scene, with dining inspired by the sunny, savvy and social setting of L.A. From his Michelin-starred signature restaurant and casual bistro, to private, poolside and in-suite dining, cuisine is truly superb, highlighting California’s fresh abundance of produce.”

The luxurious appointment that was The London when it first opened is no more.  The faux suede walls, the marble foyer, the topiary…has dated incredibly quickly.

The poolside dining was a disgrace.

The astro turfed roof looks a mess.  It looks unkempt.  The tables strewn rather than arranged.  The staff uniform one step away from Macdonald’s, with the ubiquitous polo shirt and a hideous recent (?) addition…a huge corporate name tag stamped in shiny silver and black plastic pinned haphazardly onto the waitresses grubby white outfit.

We ordered from the polite and attentive young waitress, two salads and one burger.

Gordon must agree that the Devil/God is in the detail.  So, whenever I am in any of his restaurants my expectations are high.   Surely his personal standards should be greater than those he insists of his hapless TV show victims.

Am I being unreasonable?

Like going to the theatre or a movie, when I sit down in any restaurant I don’t go looking for trouble.  I want to be delighted.  Especially when my lunch is being paid for.

Unlike a movie or the theatre, however, when I sit down to eat it doesn’t take much to please me.  I have never walked out of a restaurant half way through a meal whereas I often leave the theatre/cinema huffing and puffing with disgust.

Authenticity delights me.  Generosity too.  Appropriateness thrills.  Detail is everything.

It was an uncomfortable experience.

The table and chairs were crammed behind an immovable planter.  Three big men at a very small table.  We were all a little surprised that the condiments were served in ugly plastic sachet.

We ordered drinks.

My Arnold Palmer was far too tart.   Too much lemon and not enough iced tea.

We had loads to talk about so waiting a little bit longer for our lunch didn’t seem to matter.

When Yaniv’s burger finally arrived the bun was crushed.  It looked cheap.  It looked unloved.  The miserable burger sat forlornly on the plate.  Instead of fries it was served with a tiny cup of chips (crisps).

My skirt steak salad was pathetic.  The undressed salad of various leaves including raddiccio dwarfing the tiny amount of steak.  No ‘abundance of Californian product‘ here.

We thought better of desert.

We ordered coffee.  Yaniv was amused to note that every sugar sachet bar one was empty.

It served as a fitting metaphor.

The experience of being at The London West Hollywood looks like it might be full of surprises but ends up an empty promise.

BTW the London Hotel website ‘poolside lunch’ menu is inaccurate as of 21st July 2011.

We drove to Santa Monica where we met the gorgeous Jeff.  Ate a late dessert on Third Street.  Wandered around the new Santa Monica Place.  Walked to the beach where we watched my friend Armand, as nimble as a monkey, work the rings.

Went home to dogs who were delighted to see me and bounced around crying with pleasure.

Must make coffee.  I have desk work to do today.  Need to write to Jake’s lawyer re iPod incident.

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Rant

Casey Anthony v Nancy Grace

Casey Anthony was acquitted.

Why? Because there wasn’t enough evidence to convict her.

Even though Nancy Grace seems to have witnessed the murder with her very own eyes she was loathed to take the stand and tell the jury what she saw.

Even if Casey Anthony was partying (according to an amazed Drew Pinsky) after her child went missing we can’t send someone to the electric chair for being insensitive.

Justice was served in the case that was presented to Casey’s peers.

If Nancy Grace and Drew Pinsky are outraged by the jury’s decision perhaps they should talk with the police or the prosecutors who failed to find any evidence that linked Caylee’s death to her mother.

Nancy Grace was outraged that Casey referred to herself as a celebrity even though Nancy Grace caused Casey Anthony to become one.

It is notoriously difficult for celebrities to be convicted.

If they had just left this trial alone, this morbid story, the jury might have convicted.

If they had left this woman to her own fate rather than trying to shape it for us all like so many bad soap operas and by doing so creating a celebrity who can now demand a million dollars per interview…justice may have been served.

There is no hope of a fair trial in the USA whilst uninformed, bigoted people like Nancy Grace are allowed to say what ever they want to say…creating a celebrity firestorm in their wake.

A baby girl was murdered.  It is very sad.  It is sadder still that due to an unregulated media justice may never be done.

 

Categories
art Rant

Hell is: Other People

Forgive me for rambling….

Rather lovely day yesterday.

Had lunch with Daniel Darling and his adorable girlfriend (?) in Cross Creek.

We were joined by Toby Mott and his friend Elizabeth.  Daniel went surfing and we drove to Malibou Lake where we sailed and then had a wonderful dinner at The Old Place on Mulholland.

Excellent food and service.  Charming!

A bird just hopped into the house and is now flying around.  We have just been for a five-mile walk so the dogs are strangely disinterested.

Willie is here visiting and we are all getting on like a house on fire.

I am going back to NYC next week.  I have people to see.  I think my Navy Seal may visit soon.

It has been fun having Toby visiting.  I sort of fall in love with my house all over again when he is here.  I am proud of the mountains, the house and the garden.

I see that my nemesis Amanda Eliasch and her truly talented friend Lyall Watson (whoring himself out to artifice) have written and performed in a ‘play’ called As I Like It.

Apparently it is rather ‘whiney’.  Apparently Amanda’s son Charles serves the actress who plays his mother as a weird, incestuous acolyte.  He has a huge head.  Apparently there is an opera singer with real talent who barely gets to sing.  Apparently the writer refers to ‘hairy legged lesbians’.  As we know, at her core, she is a homophobe.

Apparently this ‘play’ is crap.

It really isn’t any wonder, Amanda can scarcely string a sentence together.   It’s worth quoting the theatre programme notes:

This is a play what I wrote for my Father several years ago which he asked me to do after he had died. I turned it into a play with the help of Lyall Watson who had taught me at RADA in 1989. There are only a few plays for women and I wanted to contribute and increase the material available. It is a modern restoration comedy.

Yes.  You are going to do wonders for women with this pile of  tripe.  Wonders.

I once played Mr Puff at The Edinburgh Festival in Sheridan’s The Critic.   Have you seen that play?  A comedy of manners.  A real one.

Like Mrs Eliasch Mr Puff, the author of a terrible play, invites critics Sneer and Dangle to a dress rehearsal.

Puff explains to Sneer that he is ‘‘a Professor of the Art of Puffing’’: an author who has taught newspaper men and advertisers how to inflate their diction so they may ‘‘enlay their phraseology with variegated chips of exotic metaphor’’ and ‘‘crowd their advertisements with panegyrical superlatives.’’

Break a leg Amanda.  Read the review here.

By the way.  I was a terrible actor.  Terrible.

OK.  Next!!

What’s going on?  What’s really going on in the UK?

This ousting of the Murdoch family is well over due, applauded by the regime, the chattering classes, the aristocracy.

The public are baying for blood, hollering at the beastly Murdochs, “Get back on the boat like your criminal Australian ancestors.  Good riddance to bad rubbish.  Take your newspaper with you”

Hold on.

The British relish tittle-tattle.  We love it!  We love gossip!  The steamier the better.  Surely we didn’t lose our appetite for rooting through other people’s dirty washing?

Now The New of The World has gone…and the other news media get more cautious…

What, in heaven’s name, will replace it?

Are we witnessing the changing of the guard?  Has the internet (Google, Facebook etc.) and on-line news outlets like the Huffington Post trumped traditional media?

Apparently people don’t read The Huffington Post for the news..they read it for the gossip.

Was Murdoch simply too old, too complacent, too rich to have a grasp on our changing world?

Is this coup de grace being played out in the British press a pantomime we will see in the not too distant future in the USA?

One of the most telling quotes of the entire debacle:

The BBC’s business editor Robert Peston points out, the News of The World phone hacking scandal has hurt the entire UK newspaper industry, making News International less attractive to potential buyers if, as is now being posited, the British arm of News Corp is amputated and sold.

Does real, forward thinking money sees a future for print media?

Controlling the British has always been a huge problem for any invader and Murdoch will end up like all the rest.  Chucked out on his ear.  Romans, Saxons (initially invited), Norsemen, Murdoch.

The British public don’t a give a fuck about Jude Law having his phone hacked, that was just par for the course.  He deserved it.  They only started giving a damn when they realised that the police (who they loathe) were benefiting financially.

They only started caring when ordinary people just like them were proved to be abused, their ordinary stories sold, their phone messages ransacked.

Until Milly Dowler they didn’t give a flying fuck.  Then, rather amazingly, for an usually inert general public…they did.  And when the public speaks (remember Diana’s death) the establishment listens.

Remember the Queen of England reading/performing that excruciating statement televised by the palace at the behest of Tony Blair before Diana’s funeral?

The British let their leaders get away with much until they take too much.  A prudent leader will know when to stop.  Murdoch, his son and cohorts became too..how shall I say this without provoking your ire…they became too American.

It is obvious that American politicians are bought and sold by The Corporation.   They live huge lives with fantastic wealth and are applauded for doing so.

What baffles me is why a regular British MP with nothing much to gain should ideologically side with those who seek to do us, their constituents, harm?

During this entire scandal as heads began to roll I wondered again and again how British politicians benefitted financially from New Corp.  Unlike the paid for politician here in the USA it is unlikely that anyone in Parliament could benefit financially from anything…ever.

There are simply too many prying eyes.  Unless I am being absurdly naive.  Am I?

Is it simply the acquisition of power that our MP’s crave?

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Rant

John and Hank Green

How likely is that someone you know will kill themselves?  How come I know so many people who have?  How is it that I think suicide is a perfectly honorable death option?  Killing oneself not out of self-pity but because it’s just the right thing to do?  Because it’s time.

I am only 16 years younger than my mother.  I watch old age creep over her and do not want that.

I never again want to feel the pain I felt last year.

Until the startlingly handsome decorator arrived yesterday that’s really all I could think about.  In between tinkering with my book.   Hence the odd video posted.

Blue grey eyes, perfectly formed.  Beach, bleach blond hair.

You might think that I have been bored with all this death thinking but actually I have not.  I have been doing stuff.  Enough stuff.  Dinner at Nobu last night.  On Wednesday I went to the premiere of a TV show, yes…that’s LA for you.  They premiere TV shows.

I met a Navy Seal.  Dangerous.

I took Robby to the event at Gauchos in Glendale (such glamour!) where we were served about ten pounds of meat.  My poor tummy.

I am still mightily pissed off at the Twins.  Daily revealing themselves to be self-serving, manipulating and utterly self obsessed.  I am creating MONSTERS.  For example: when Robby drives, the rear view mirror is positioned so he can look at himself and not the road behind him.

Constantly checking his hat hair.

It never occurs to either of them that the adventures and people who I have introduced them to might be reciprocated in any way.  They are off with my friends of friends who patently want to fuck them, thinking that their scintillating wit attracts them to others.

We sat in Joan’s on Third on Wednesday, Robby was overly concerned that other people might think that I was fucking him.  What he doesn’t realize is that if a young man of dubious sexuality is out with any man…people will assume that they are fucking.  I think everyone is fucking everyone in LA.

Yet, they are both so friendly.

Their friendliness is often misconstrued.  It seems flirty.  They touch you but woe betide if you touch them.   I think Robby understands, he’s grateful…but not enough.

As for Miles…I can scarcely look at him.

They both take but rarely give.  Where’s the humility Christian boys?  Or are you just hung up on…what the fuck are you hung up on?

I am overdosing on the twins.  I can’t wait for then end of the month.  Not a day too soon.

I have been watching the Vlog Brothers YouTube videos.  I watch them at least twice/three times a week.  John and Hank Green.  Hank is a bit of an idiot with a huge brain.  A real nerd, well that’s what I thought…until…I’ll explain later.  And John, I rather liked author John Green until yesterday.

He said something that made me despise him.

He said that he didn’t like meeting strangers.

He said that he couldn’t give random hugs.

His excuse was pathetic.

I don’t think John Green is a nerd, I think he became one to keep his brother company.  I think John Green is erudite, sophisticated, intelligent and  handsome.  I think I would be scared by his intellect if I met him.  I would be scared if I met him.

You should check these guys out.

On their own, performing for their cameras they become the men they always wanted to be..yet, because they are now famous…internet famous…and successful, this strange act is obviously just that.

The pressure to perform must be HUGE.  It is apparent when they are together in the same room…who is more authentic.  Hank is softer, more at ease.  Gentle.  Off stage Hank might be the one.  Off stage John looks surly, miserable, dark.

John has a great deal to prove.  He has the bigger career. He has the wife with a big life in the art world.  The adorable kid.  The conflicted Christian pre history.

He wanted to be ordained.

I’ve always thought that it takes a huge amount of ego to be a priest where as most people think that it requires the absence of ego.  To stand up and channel the word of God wearing fancy hats and garb.  You need balls.  John Green has balls.

The decorator returns today.

I am going to VidCon at the end of the month.

I want to fuck a hooker.

The twins will all at once irritate, frustrate and delight me.  Miles has this notion that he wants to direct.  Am I expected to help him?  He needs to make something.  If he wants to direct…he needs to make a film so that he can show people what he’s made of.

If he has any art, has an understanding of detail.

Shoot something!

As for Robby this is maybe his moment.  He wants to be an actor.  He is not a great beauty.  Not really, he has crude features yet there is something mesmerizing about him.  He has something.  I don’t know if he can act.  If he has the strength.  If he can overcome the fear that often walks hand in hand with self obsession.

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Rant

Les Hinton

At the risk of having my site hacked I am going to write about Les Hinton, his wife Kath, their friend Sharon Marshall and my relationship with The News of The World.

After I made The Method with Elizabeth Hurley I was a boiling bag of resentment…not unlike I was after I received Jake’s vile email last August.   I had been bullied, mistreated and maligned by Elizabeth and my only revenge was to sell my story to the highest bidder.

I had been on the front cover of the NOTW myself after I was found guilty of spending too much on my credit card and not paying the bill.  I rather enjoyed the attention.

It is quite easy to sell ones story if the celebrity you are pissing on is famous enough.

My agent contacted all of the relevant tabloid British newspapers and we negotiated the best price with News Corp.  I was offered The Daily Mail for the same price.  I was assured that The Daily Mail was a more ‘classy’ decision but I was not interested in ‘classy’.  I was interested in, as I said, revenge.

I was on vacation in Sydney at the time, Sharon Marshal was assigned to interview me.  We met in a smart hotel in Wooloomooloo.  Sharon is an attractive brunette who became, after the event, a great friend.  The NOTW flew me to London from Sydney for the weekend.  I told my story, they paid me the money.

Justice was served.

Elizabeth wrote to me.  She said, “I hope you enjoyed your thirty pieces of silver.”  I replied, “Actually, I really enjoyed my sixty thousand pieces of silver.”

When I returned from Australia Sharon invited me to stay at her home.

Sharon lived in Vauxhall at the time with Kath Raymond who was dating Les Hinton and would later marry him.  The entire cast of this current controversy were at their wedding reception:  Rebekah Wade and Andy Coulson.

Kath worked for Gordon Brown as a ‘special advisor’ whilst dating Les Hinton.  One didn’t need underworld contacts to get information with Kath working so closely with Gordon.  Also, however outraged Gordon and Sarah are now their links to News Corp are just as suspect as anyone elses.

Sharon now works with and for soap operas which is ironic given what she used to do.

I texted Sharon after the Milly Dowler scandal hit offering condolences, she texted back, ‘terrible times.’   Her loyalty obviously and quite rightly remains with her friend Kath and she must be torn between her old life and her new.

Sharon long ago turned her back on the NOTW, she ended up disgruntled enough to write a book called Tabloid Girl which was her way of stuffing her ex bosses.  Read it, it’s fun and insightful.

The NOTW is no more…until risen again as The Sunday Sun.

The establishment is dancing the streets.  They are free of the tyrannical Murdoch, the ocker scoundrel.   The dirty old man.  Prince William cheered, threw his hands in the air, when he heard the news I am told by very good sources.

It amuses me to see Jarvis Cocker wipe his ass on the freshly murdered newspaper.  Our relationship (the British) with this widely sold and read ‘newspaper’ is confused.  I am sure that, like most other celebrities, Jarvis has benefited from the newspaper as well as suffered.  I don’t believe that he hasn’t ever bought a copy or read a copy when salacious details of people he doesn’t know were made public.

Les Hinton may very well cop some jail time for his erstwhile ex-boss.  Kath may lose their upper east side apartment.  Wade et el are being hounded as they hounded, their drawn faces peering incredulously from chauffeur driven cars.

Karmageddon has arrived at News Corp.

Hinton’s profile is about to get a lot higher over his role in the scandal that brought down Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World. As a Murdoch staffer for more than half a century, Hinton spent a dozen years running News International, the British unit of Murdoch’s global company, including while the phone hacking was taking place at News of the World. And it was Hinton who told a parliamentary committee in 2007 that he was “absolutely convinced” that the illegal accessing of phones was limited to a single rogue reporter.

Categories
Rant Travel

El Paso to Austin

Austin is as beautiful as El Paso is not.

The people in downtown Austin look like they just walked out of the East Village.

The last time I was here Joe and I stayed at The Driskill Hotel. This time around I am spending the day writing before I move on.

I would like to have stayed a little longer but fate well and truly intervened.

I am exhausted.

Yesterday, after I was released by the ICE guys with my passport re stamped I spent an hour by myself. It was blissful.

The Dane and his ex picked me up from the small Sierra Blanca cafe at the edge of Interstate 10 where I had eaten unexpectedly delicious Huevos Rancheros with the cops.

Reunited with my fellow travelers, back in our luxurious transportation. The Dane, Lucie and I headed back to El Paso where we parked ourselves in a coffee shop…like I am doing now…and The Dane anxiously attempted to help Thomas by calling his friends, family and officials.

As we drove into El Paso I noticed something strange and scary.

All the palm trees were dead.

Trees that formerly decorated the forecourts of the huge car dealers on Montana are now just sad, brown stumps.

The same is true of commercial and domestic palms. Palms of all varieties…dead. Their bark ruptured, waiting for the woodsman to take them down.

What killed the palm trees?

Global warming? Climate change? El Paso just had the worst winter…ever. It killed palms, mesquite and cactus.  If I had doubted climate change before…this was indeed the smoking gun.

I am persuaded.  Climate change exists.

We would spend all day and most of the evening in El Paso at either the coffee shop or at the alien detention center where, at 7pm, we were allowed to see Thomas.

He looked miserable and cried a bit but anyone who has been to boarding school can attest this is just first day nerves.

Unlike boarding school they wouldn’t let us sit in the same room as the ‘detainee’ so we spoke on telephones peering at Thomas through bullet proof glass.

He held his hand up to the window like Billy Hayes in Midnight Express but unlike the film Lucie didn’t rub her tits over the glass and Thomas did not jerk off looking at them.

Nor did we hand him a book stuffed with dollars.

For me it was a total waste of time.

This idiotic boy had deliberately over stayed his visa, not renewed his passport and had the attitude of any entitled prick who thinks he should be allowed to stay anywhere he pleases.

I was even more pissed at The Dane for getting me involved with his half-baked friend. His ex Lucie was really sweet and had a great attitude. I have no complaints about her.

I just knew the moment I met Thomas that he was going to cause trouble.

An immature, exhibitionist thirty-one year old man who cater/waiters for a career is not someone I necessarily want to know. No, I am not being a snob. I am just angry. You will be pleased to hear that I did not lose my temper and remained remarkably calm.

Whilst they were fruitlessly contacting embassies I wandered around El Paso in the searing 110 degree heat checking out Kinsineta couture…see above.

I bumped into Nicholas, the manager of the El Paso hipster coffee shop who offered to not only help us out by visiting Thomas in detention but also offered to show me around. I leapt at the chance. If only to hang out with a relatively normal human being.

As they were moping over poor incarcerated Thomas, Nicholas took me to the very authentic Chico’s Tacos which was amazingly tasty and cheap.

We were both well fed for less that $5. Check the wiki link above. He then drove me to a mountain that over looks not only the city of El Paso but into the violent border town of Juarez, Mexico where there are (apparently) several drug related cartel murders every day.

“It is a miracle when there are no murders in Juarez.” Nicholas said sadly. “I love my country but we are not very good to each other.”

He told me about gunmen bursting into schools and shooting students. Weddings and funerals where the same happens. Endless, brutal Cartel related murders. He told me that the children of the Cartel roam El Paso boasting who their parents are and scaring the locals.

From the mountain we could very clearly see the controversial border fence that separates the USA from Mexico.

“Everybody in this town is involved with smuggling.” He said, looking over the vast, hot landscape. “People and drugs.”

I dropped Nicholas at his car then returned to The Dane and Lucie who had now finished with Thomas.

Inspired, I took them to Chico’s which they loved. I fed the dog and for the next four hours I drove through the night toward Austin from El Paso.

Lucie took the helm at 1am and I slept fitfully in the back of the SUV.

When I woke at 7am we were in Fredericksburg. A charming Teutonic historical town, tastefully planned and well manicured. We sat in the German Bakery and ate buns and drank hot, dark coffee. It was such a fucking relief to be out of El Paso and experiencing a different, altogether more understandable world.

Frankly I couldn’t wait to leave The Dane. It was not his fault per se but he and his friend took a risk with our vacation/trip to NYC that is not easily forgiven.

Thomas will go home to Sweden where he will hopefully grow the fuck up.  Even in the detention center he was imagining that he could marry his girl friend at the facility and they would let him go back to his studio life in Brooklyn.

Yeah right!

Categories
Rant Rehab

Anthony Weiner Sex Addict?

Ugly Sisters

My name is Duncan and I am a sex addict.

The first time I qualified as a sex addict…I felt like shit.  Attended by my ugly sisters:  Shame and Fear, I sat miserably in my first SAA meeting waiting for the 60 minute nightmare to end.

Imagine what it must feel like to announce to the whole world that your sex conduct has gotten the better of you.

Today Anthony Weiner is shamefully headed for Lord knows where to get ‘treatment’.  Will that ‘treatment’ be for depression, intriguing, internet pornography or compulsive/chronic masturbation?

Is Anthony Weiner a sex addict?

My fellow sex addict friends think he is.  I am not so sure.  Not sure until he is sure.

It is not up to me or anyone else to diagnose his problem, it is up to him.   We live in prescriptive times.  It is certainly not up to my sex rehab therapist Drew Pinsky and ‘experts’ like him who will no doubt castigate poor Weiner dog for his unmanageable sexting/twittering if he hasn’t done so already.

If I were Anthony Weiner I would be feverishly trying to plug the broken sewer that is currently flushing away his political credibility, his relationship with his heavily pregnant wife and his healthy 61% majority.   I too would be heading for a spell in a ‘therapeutic facility’.  Treatment might just mean a little time away from the media incubus that presently seeks to impregnate Weiner with all the evil of the modern world.

What the fuck do we expect of our elected representatives?  That they are no longer entitled to the shortcomings we all share?

Why should congressmen have such unrealistic expectations heaped upon them?

Anthony Weiner has not broken any law.  Not yet.  He allegedly chatted innocently with a 17 year old girl.  What ever improper thoughts he may have had he did not act upon them.   This isn’t, as the media are describing, a ‘SEX SCANDAL!’ because there isn’t any sex.

This might be a Jerk-Off Scandal!  Ostensibly an Intrigue Scandal!  Allegedly a Bare Chest Scandal!  At the very worst a Picture of a Hard Penis on a Cell Phone Scandal!

Monday update: President Obama describes the Weiner sex scandal as a ‘distraction’.  Frankly, I am more distracted by the dodgy shenanigans of the laconic Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas.  The lies, ethical violations and conflicts of interest that, ironically, Weiner was hoping to expose.  

Weiner, unlike Thomas, is no crook.

Nancy Pelosi is demanding Weiner’s resignation when others in Congress have done far worse with real people rather than fantasy folk on the internet.

Internet addiction in all its very many forms is a world-wide epidemic, it affects millions upon millions of men.

Ordinary men, who at this very moment, are ensconced in private places away from their friends and family compulsively exploring the darker side of the internet: in ‘the zone’ as we say in Sex Addicts Anonymous.

There may be minor consequences for those who get caught…unless, of course, their internet use is deemed illegal or so sustained that they have scabs on their penises or they get violent if  taken away from the intensity of the screen.  Most relevantly…if their careers are compromised…jeapodised…lost.

Men take risks that seem entirely manageable until they bust their nut…then they can slink away from their screen to clean themselves up and rejoin humanity.  Real people versus the fantasy that takes them away from the stresses of an ordinary world.

A toxic, ritualized compulsion driving the hapless clicker further from wife and children to unimagined places that only the internet can reveal.

Let us not forget Voltaire’s observation that ‘Illusion is the first of all pleasures’.

I have a huge amount of compassion for Weiner.  He has been caught sending lewd pictures of himself to strangers.  His ‘perversion’ is undoubtedly a product of the modern age.  An age where I too, posting this very blog, live in a world of imaginary readers, little consequence and sexual hopelessness.

Sometime in the near future a contrite Weiner will stand before the press like Tiger Woods before him and admit his powerlessness.  He will, unwittingly, confess for us all.  For the shared sins of viral infidelity, cheating on his wife with the faceless, nameless internet that seems so benign just before ejaculation.

Categories
Rant

Waiting To Be Dead

LIly

The day passed slowly and uneventfully.

I watered the garden. “Why don’t you have an automated system for that?” I hear you say. Well, I do. But…a bit like our mad bad Prince of Wales I like watering the plants individually and chatting with each of them. The citrus trees especially respond to gentle coaxing.

There is something charming and rather annoying about the ‘we’ pathology of twins. We are with each other a little too much. Consequently, when we left for Lake Malibou, I wasn’t in the best of moods.

We all helped Jennifer with her Out of The Box Wednesday pack then Miles set off with the delivery.

Robby and I drove into Hollywood. I wanted to stop in at Fresh and Easy where I buy English staples. Tea, bacon, marmalade etc. I can’t do with out them. We, me and the Little Dog, sat in the ugly court-yard outside the supermarket drinking coffee waiting for Robby watching lithe men heading for 24 hour fitness.

A woman from Chicago, who had arrived in Hollywood two nights previously, looked down at the dog and said, “There’s a little person trapped in there.” She fed him chicken breast. “This has got to last me two days.” She told the Little Dog. She was plump, dyed black hair and red lips. She told me that she was here in Hollywood to pitch reality TV ideas to…God know who. She was going to pay to pitch her ‘concepts’.

I was overcome with pity for her. She told me a couple of ‘ideas’ she had thought of pitching.

It occurred to me that for forty years not one original thought had been formed in that sappy brain.

I went for a walk.

Hollywood is grimy. There is nothing of any beauty to look at…to be inspired by. I yearn for my garden.

Robby picked me up after an hour in the gym. We had planned on going to an art/film/glamour party in Beverly Hills but I was tired and irritable so we drove home.

Well, we drove back to Malibou Lake and I helped Jason cook dinner for the children. After dinner, as the children were going to bed, I sat at their Steinway and tried playing the piano. I had not played for thirty years. I was shocked by how clumsy my fingers were. No longer able to slide effortlessly over the keys. I began to sweat. Evidence of my old age. Evidence of my own mortality. It was so frustrating! My left hand refused to even practice the scales in unison with the right.

I lay in bed last night thinking too much. Waiting to be dead.

Not so fast Batman!

Next week I set off on my ‘great adventure’ culminating in the birthday hootenanny. There are people flying from all sorts of wonderful places to help me celebrate my 50th Birthday…before I am not. I am stunned that so many old friends even exist for me let alone want to jump on a plane and be with me. You know, this is what I should have done last year…but last year I was with him in the back parlor of Wheelers.

Last year there was no room for anyone else. WTF?

Categories
Rant

$5 Walking Fee

Gabe Paradise Cove
“Don’t pester old film makers about your film making.   I don’t care about your process, your poverty or your inertia.   All I care about is that you make a film.   Just do it and make it good.”           Duncan Roy  June 2011

So,  here I am again.  Good morning hipsters!  I spent an hour in the garden at 7am weeding and watering.  It looks just dandy.  Then I came in and within two minutes I had broken a sugar bowl, a cafetière and jammed my fingers into a draw.

I AM ONE CLUMSY QUEEN.

Yesterday Gabe and I went to Paradise Cove Beach Cafe on the PCH for lunch.  We were charged $5 each for walking from the PCH where we parked into the restaurant rather than paying $3 to use their car park.  I thought they were kidding.  A $5 ‘walking fee’?  Rip Off USA.  It made me so mad.  Gabe just looked bemused as I let the manager have two barrels of shit.  In turn the manager just looked at the crazy man and  rolled over like a puppy.

He offered us a beach side table, a waitress with psychiatric training and a refund.

A $5 walking fee?  How can they get away with that shit?

We ate their mediocre ribs, drank their weak tea, sat on their grubby beach.  Thankfully we sat next to an attractive married couple from Hollywood who really were worth meeting.  He sells sex toys on-line.  They were like a gay couple.  Hot tub parties and three ways.  I really liked them.  She said that when they have a baby they might calm down a bit.

Gabe sat on my lap and held my hand, massaged my fingers.  It was so sweet.  We were the only gays on the beach.  The out of towners looked at us suspiciously.  Yet again I felt uncomfortable.  Fuck!  When I was with the Penguin/Matt/Jamie I didn’t care.  Because, I suppose, when I was with them I didn’t care what other people thought.  It was just us…and as I have said before:  I would have defended my love with my life.

After lunch we investigated the pier, the peace paddle (some hippy event) we talked for ages to a lady who had worked in India on an ashram who now sells South Indian food from a food truck.  She told us dolefully how the city of LA is targeting the food truck community (there are 500 of them) with all sorts of horrible rules.  What ever happened to American innovation being encouraged and celebrated?

(Even the sex toy guy is despondent about how small businesses are treated.  He is moving his cash to Brazil.)

Food trucks are a recessionary necessity.  A perfect response.

The previous day Anna and I had been on Abbot Kinney.  The first Friday of every month the streets has a kind of street party.  The galleries open late and every thirty feet there is a food truck.  It was so much fun.  We bumped into Meg Ryan and her friend Laura Dern.

Anyway, we ate all sorts.  We struggled through the crowds.  Some man who thought he knew me.  Said, “Hey!  How are you?”  I let him think he knew me.  At the end of the conversation he realised who I was and the meeting came to an abrupt ending.  This happened in Ojai too.  It seems to happen more and more.

Last night I was talking to a young film maker and gave him the advice quoted at the top of the page.  Very Ayn Rand of me.

Today I am hiking with Tom.  Gabe is coming over to relax.  Miles has recovered from his binge.  Cooking dinner for us all tonight.

I feel rather wonderful.  Having fun.  At peace.

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Rant Uncategorized

Sometimes…

I look at my blog site stats.  A bunch of fluctuating numbers posted throughout the day behind the scenes of this blog.   I used to be mesmerised by these stats.  Especially when thousands of people read the blog every day.  Now, those numbers have dwindled.

I could do more to boost my numbers but choose not to.

Each morning I get up and write everything that is on my mind.  It isn’t particularly interesting to most people what happens to a man living on both coasts of the USA.  Living on a small stipend delivered monthly from various investments made many years ago.  Living with a small dog and a pair of beautiful twins.  Living with bi-polarity.  Living in his dreams.

Yet, every morning I feel compelled to write my life for you to read.  I try not to boast, I try not to be too self piteous.  I try to tell it as it is.  Sometimes I am just talking to myself, sometimes I am talking to my Mother.  Mostly I am just talking.  Last year I seemed to be engaged in a one way conversation with him.

As the days pass between who I was and who I am, the years pass between what I thought I wanted and what I actually achieved, the decades between an impetuous youth and a contemplative old age.  I become less frightened, more at peace.

I know that my writing about him has chased many of my regular readers away.  I worked out that terrible obsession here on this blog.  Do I regret writing it?  What sort of diary would this be if I hadn’t written it?  What sort of man would I have been if I sat here suffering and just candy coated what was the most bitter of all pills?

Of course I am capable of telling you lies but for the most part I get up and tell you whatever truth is presently haunting me.  I have not written things and regretted it.  When I was with him I often excluded him from the narrative and as a consequence the most beautiful moments we shared have been lost.  Making love in the wood.  I didn’t write about that when it happened and now it is as if it never happened.  Writing retrospectively about those moments somehow devalues them.

I know that you hate me writing about him but he has been on my mind.   When I stop feeling angry, foolish, sad…I still find myself wanting the best for him.  Wishing him well.  Hoping that he resolved his stuff with her.  Praying that he now has the gay life he wanted so badly.

After all is said and done…I loved him.  For good or for bad.

I wish that I did not now have to see him in September.

At this moment I have climbed fully out of the straight jacket I designed for myself.  Life has become simple and manageable once again.  My head no longer in two time zones.  No more longing, fantasy, false hope.

I listened to the singer Adele talking about how her first album was crafted after a nasty break up.  How she punched her ex bf in the face then wrote her album.  This is what artists do.  Copper’s Bottom, the play I showed at Sadler’s Wells in my mid twenties was all about a love affair I had with a policeman.  The deep scars it left in me.  This is what artists do.  We craft something from our own experiences, we do not disguise our vulnerabilities, our history.  I cannot deliberately disfigure the past.

When I was nominated for the BAFTA I finally had proof of sorts that being true to oneself and the stories we tell can reach much further than those of us who hide away.   I have hidden away for most of this year.  Licking my wounds behind my site stats, my failed love affair.

If I am to remain credible I must do what I do best: create.   Wasting the rest of my life hankering after what could have been is just plain stupid.  Whilst many of the folk I grew up with are considering retirement I must do what thousands of artists before me have done and just get on with it.  Do the work.

Regardless of how many people are watching.

This morning I have watered the garden.  Listened to the birds.  Made strong coffee.

Miles is vomiting in the bathroom.  He drank too much last night at the Whale Wars premiere.  He is missing his girlfriend who has moved to the mid-west.   Watching him struggle somehow helps me.  I have no idea why.

“I’ve never been this hung over.” He moans.

I don’t have ANY sympathy for people who drink too much.

Now, what next?  Apparently the niche publisher is not so niche and the nice woman there has already read my book and wants to talk further.  I wonder what that means?

I put my film on ice but am ready to warm it up.  I am meeting producers this Sunday.   Whilst I was in New York I met another producer.

I seem to be getting back into that grove.

PS  I got a 4k reduction on my property tax..which is now only 13k a year.  Hurrah!

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