Tag: Jasper Morrison

Categories
Dogs Malibu Rant

For Sale

I showed the house for the first time yesterday.  A Persian man who lives not far from here.

He was looking for a cheap house as an investment.  I really don’t care who buys it.

I spent the morning rearranging.

I rearranged the furniture so the dining area is set above the sitting room on the terrazzo plinth.   It looks great.  I used the black leather chairs that I bought for ElCerrito Place.  I tried using the Morrison chairs but they looked too complicated.  Compromised the aesthetic.

I am going to sell my Jasper Morrison dining room chairs.  They are now stacked outside looking really forlorn, they need to go else where..where they can be loved.

Had tea with JA in West H’wood yesterday.  Everybody is in such a funk.  Things have ground to a halt.  Is this just on the West Coast?   Nobody knows how to crawl out of this hole?  Maybe we don’t crawl out of anywhere but learn to live with new parameters.

Popped in on Trevor at the bottom of the canyon to see the young doe that the coyote had savaged in his garden.  It was all gnawed at.  Its tongue sticking out.  Trevor’s wife was a bit pissed that I had made the effort to see the dead deer but not their new baby.  Sorry Jen.

Meg Whitman the ex Ebay CEO is running in the Gubernatorial race here in California against Jerry Brown.  She has spent over $119, 000, 000 of her own money on her campaign.  She becomes the largest self-funded political candidate in history.

Yet all of this might come to naught if her ex-maid and nanny of nine years Nicky Diaz Santillan swings the vote.   Nicky’s story is a familiar one in California.  An illegal immigrant (undocumented) who worked hard for Meg and her husband is cruelly let go when she asks for help to become legal.

“Thown away like trash.” she sobbed on TV.

The latino population in SoCal will take notice.  They know what that feels like.  To be part of a family, whether Witman’s or family USA only to be thrown away when things get tough.

The economy in this part of America has relied heavily on the cheap labour that these illegal immigrants offer.  Making the rich richer, they are hard-working, uncomplaining people.  I have employed Spanish-speaking men at the local labor exchange and they work tirelessly in scorching heat, lugging great hessian bags of garden waste up and down the mountains like donkeys.  I don’t ask any questions.  Nor do my neighbors.

These latino workers have no expectations, except to be treated poorly by white folk like me.  They don’t have much choice.

When they do not get treated poorly they are grateful and go the extra mile.

The truth is, frustrated white people in the USA very begrudgingly gave up their slaves so having illegal Mexican immigrants who do as they are told for very little somehow placates their desire to be slave owners.

White people may say they are pissed off by illegal immigrants yet I don’t know any one of them who would be prepared to do what these people do.  Washing up, gardening, busing, etc.  Menial tasks.  White people wouldn’t know how.  They don’t know how.

We tried to import a bunch of colourful faces into the UK to do the same during the 1950’s but they opened corner shops and restaurants and got richer than the people who imported them.  Anyway, we had colonial apologists who refused to see these people used like American white people use Latinos.

Thank GOD for bouts of socialism.

I could bang on about the racism that exists here but I can’t be bothered.

White people are hurting.  They have lost their jobs and their homes. There is no industry.  They can’t seem to relearn working skills and get humble and wash dishes for other white folk.  The dream is dead.  Arianna Huffington is on TV telling people that America is a Third World Country, that the middle class is over and that the American Dream has been compromised.

Similar circumstances existed in Germany before the second world war.  Crippling debt (war reparations) unemployment, hunger, desperation, hopelessness.  Do not underestimate the gruelling effect of hopelessness..regardless of how comfortable you are if you feel hopeless your view on the world changes.  It gets easy to blame the immigrant, the jew, the gay…the innefectual black President.

I pray that I am wrong but given the current state of the USA, these extreme economic circumstances I am guessing that the people of America will, come the next election, elect a far right, socially conservative Palin type President who will irrevocably damage the entire world.  We are desperate for strong, innovative, modern leadership yet it seems that only the far right have the balls to serve what the people hanker.

We are witnessing the cynical destruction of the USA as we, and millions before us, dreamed it.  It is a crying shame.

By the way.  Rich Sanchez the latino CNN host fired this week for saying that Jon Stewart was pompous and that the media was controlled by the Jews.  Well, that’s how it was reported.  Not quite the way he said it.  Actually he said he felt bullied by Stewart, looked down upon.  That people like Stewart look down on latinos..and he’d be right.  I am sure what he felt about Jon Stewart may very well be right.

I rather like Rick Sanchez.  Isn’t it amazing that Sanchez can get fired for saying two rather obvious things (one an opinion and one true) and that Glenn Beck gets to say terrible shit everyday but nobody lifts a finger?

Willie just took a huge dump on the carpet…nice.  Thankfully I know how to clean a rug without resorting to calling a maid service.

Categories
Dogs Gay Hollywood Malibu

Day of Wonder

Interesting day yesterday-after a good twenty four hours of stinking thinking-God delivered to me an old fashioned day of wonder.   Began in Hollywood drinking Turkish coffee.  My mood dramatically shifted from the day before when I felt so utterly wretched.  I could have climbed Runyon but didn’t.   I could have bought a pack of cigarettes but didn’t.

Peter arrived and took 20 works of art and furniture for sale and you know what?  So crowded with stuff is this apartment that as quickly as he removed things I hung stored paintings in their place.   After he left I felt relieved that so much had gone-all part of my less is more project.  I can now walk all the way around my bed!  My bedroom was crammed with too many things.  As well as a queen sized bed there was a huge Jasper Morrison sofa stuffed in there.  Frankly, I hadn’t really liked most of the sold work.  I bought it for all the wrong reasons.  Things were mostly collected to show off my great knowledge of contemporary art.   Yeah right.

Jenny A not Jennie K (we are still avoiding each other) called me from Solar de Cauenga on the corner of Cauenga and Franklin to drink more coffee.  The little dog and I sauntered down Franklin to see her.  The weather has been spectacular, warm and spring like.  Daffodils sprouting up all over the place, the trees budding, the birds singing, the air is fresh and clean after all the glorious rain.

I hadn’t seen Jenny A for a couple of years-not since I stayed in her beautiful home in Todos Santos.  You can stay there too if you visit her WEB SITE it’s now THE most perfect hotel.  Anyway, we hadn’t spoken since I climbed onto that dusty Mexican bus-but it was only a matter of time before we did.   We are both incredibly fractious and proud so when we spend time with each other have tended toward the dramatic.  Anyway, that was then and this is now:  two calm, evolved human beings having a quiet latte together in a noisy café.    She looks wonderful.

A young filmmaker came visiting after I returned form my time with Jenny.  Josh, a Persian Jew looking for an internship somewhere.   Oh God!  He sat there and I just couldn’t wait for him to leave.  No life, no experience, no opinions, no point of view-no heroes!  How could he ever expect to be a filmmaker?   He told me that he wanted to ‘change film making’ yet, as usual, when you ask who his favorite filmmakers were he was hard pressed to tell me.  Like so many wannabe directors he was just a kid who liked movies, the difference being that this kid was raised in LA yet knew nothing about the city in which he was raised nor the industry that he says he wants to be part of-in fact he had no interests in anything apart from soccer and his girlfriend.  I told him I could not help him and he left.  It was like meeting a 40 something married guy.   Do any of these kids have heroes?  What happened to boys having heroes?  I had all sorts of heroes when I was a boy.

I dashed to my car and headed to Malibu.

When I arrived Patrick the gardener was hanging around doing I don’t know what but it was nice to see him.  I cleaned the house, laid a couple of rugs that had been sitting around in H’wood and then decided to go to Nina Hagen’s listening party at the recording studio next door.

Nina Hagen must have used the word Jesus at least 20 times to describe her new life as a Born Again Christian-she has renounced Buddhism.    She told me that Jesus was guiding her, that Jesus was showing her the way etc etc.  With flowers in her trademark two-ponytail hairstyle this slight mother of two is haggard but vibrant.  She avoids looking directly into ones face.   I ate a delicious cream puff.  However, I didn’t stick around to listen to the album, as I was worried that the constant references to Jesus would make me laugh out loud.

At 3pm I met Stephen Fry at the Peninsular Hotel.  Bumped into Donall McCusker who had worked on AKA but is now one of the producers of The Hurt Locker.  Stephen and I ate scones and silly finger sandwiches and the staff made a terrible fuss about the little dog not being allowed-which we ignored.    Stephen is writing the second part of his autobiography.   Since my therapy I have walked into most situations free of shame and I am glad to report that today was no exception.  I am usually so ashamed of my lack of formal education, my slight career, my meager achievements that sitting before this intellectual giant can shrivel any attempt I may have at a passable attempt at being anything other than a good natured baboon.   Today I just felt like a man with nothing to prove-just enjoying him and his extraordinariness.  In fact, I felt so comfortable I told him my great app idea, which he really liked.

As we left I introduced Stephen to Donall who was sitting with a group of execs-Donall called later to say that as Stephen and I walked away he was excited to have met Stephen Fry but his guests were more excited to know if I was really me (Duncan Roy).  Funny eh?  The power of reality TV.  SF drove away in his mini.

Met John and Jamie at Phyllis Morris for more diet coke and discussed my previous days misery.  They gave me three yards of heavy oyster colored upholstery silk from Osborn and Little to recover the chair JB didn’t buy.

Dinner with Chrissie Isley and Michelle Collins amongst others.   We ate delicious chicken, asparagus and green beans.  Strawberries and real whipped cream-Hungarian chocolate with pear.  Our hosts had vegetables growing in tiny garden.  Nearly fell asleep at the table even though conversation was good, Michelle very funny.  We discussed Lulu, Soho House, Obama and David Cameron-apparently he isn’t going to win the general election.

Brought home fresh bananas, lemons and tangerines from my trees.

No dreams.