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Seems
like the time flies; nowhere just somewhere. Woke
to a beautiful warm sunny day. The weather man says there
is humidity and the locals call it humidity. We should have
such humidity in New York.
The breakneck pace. 11 a.m.: drove down to Book Soup on Sunset
and Holloway to pick up the NY Times. And just to stand
around there for a minute. Book Soup was a little place that still
looks like a little place but yet grew and grew like a vine, filled
with stuff to read and things to look at between covers. L.A. newstands
(Book Soup has a big one on the side of its building) are a magazine
lovers’ dream. Just everything, including lots of the beautiful
and the off-beat, the other worldly, the glossy tributes to terminal
ennui. These outdoor emporiums of creative pop are also one of
the few places besides restaurants and bars where you’re likely
to see people and even likeminded people.
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Looking
east on Sunset Blvd at Sunset Plaza
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Then
we drove over to Sunset Plaza – a quarter mile
or so around the curve to the coffee house for the cappucino
and coffee cake. Outside, under the umbrella, in the sun,
with the shiny cars whizzing by. The clientele at 11:30 was
a tanned and sometimes sleek, sometimes gritty crew of mainly
males of all ages. All shapes and sizes and lots in shorts
and many with long term tans that look almost beaten in by
the weather, and hair where the mousse has moved in to stay.
At least until the next shampoo. A few girls, women, usually
together, maybe secetaries from a nearby office. Lightly
dressed as the climate encourages. Young-ish, probably mainly
twenties.
It’s hard to identify people in L.A., the way one does walking
up Madison Avenue at any time of the day or year. In L.A.
the casualness turns identity into a blur. Except when it’s
exceptional, and the person is remarkable to look at. Otherwise
they often look like they live nearby, and perhaps just emerged
from a messy restless morning. I assume everyone’s in show
business. That may be way off the mark, but it explains these individuals
sitting there seemingly doing nothing but waiting for something.
A phone call, a development deal, a contract, a go-head, a pay
or play; just anything to pay for that leased Lexus SUV sitting
at the curb.
From the coffee shop we drove over to Los Feliz to see
an old friend of mine from New York. This part of town is entirely
new to JH who kept marveling on how he could live there – in
the old hills east of the Hollywood sign, where Madonna lived
a few years ago in a huge circa 1920s Mediterranean villa which
she had painted a hideous burnt tomato red color. In Los Feliz,
Lily Tomlin lives in big house which was where W.C. Fields lived.
And right next door was where Deanna Durbin lived, if you’re
old enough to know Deanna Durbin. And across the street was none
other than Cecil B. DeMille who had two houses, one of which
he bought from Charlie Chaplin (who was moving west to Beverly
Hills) and put them together.
It occurred to me when I finished that paragraph that a great many
readers will not have a clue as to whom I’m referring. Except
for Madonna, of course, and Lily Tomlin. Madonna and Tomlin know,
however, of that we can be sure. The greats often know about the
greats.
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A
hillside facing east in Los Feliz
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After
Los Feliz it was back over to Beverly Hills and Nikki Haskell who
was helping us with the pictures for a Diary of a party she
had last week at her apartment. We got there before she did
and waited in the lobby. Big, tall, wide, black marble, mirrors,
walls of glass, chandeliers, ice-cold air-conditioning and
big big big wide chairs and sofas; so Beverly Hills. Rich
and formal and glitzy with the residents passing through
to or from the elevator, dressed as casual as a late hot
August afternoon, back home out in the backyard.
One couple, not old, not young, strolled across the marble floor
toward the elevator, she most definitely in the lead, he padding
quickly behind her. He looked like someone I used to know. I looked
closer; he was. And she, I never saw before. The wife, I’ve
seen a million times, but this one, no. Younger than the wife,
however, by I’d say twenty years. He didn’t happen to
see me; just didn’t. I had to laugh. They actually looked
like an old married couple; just the body language. I could imagine
him going upstairs and having a snooze and her maybe schmoozing
with a friend on the phone. About him; schnoozer in the other room.
But no, I happen to know he doesn’t live there. He lives in
another part of this far-flung town. With the wife. In holey matrimony.
L.A. is a metropolis disguised as a small town,
the desert Naked City, with ten million stories. You
want to compare it to your experience of another
city, your city, New York, for example. But it’s
impossible. It is still Nathaniel West-land.
You can sense a different kind of isolation and solitariness
as you drive through the streets and boulevards lined
with palms, and up into the hills overflowing with
bouganvillea and oleandar, and all kinds of flora
and fauna. It has a light, someone once observed, “which
eventually fades everything.” But it is a great
city of a thousand thousand dreams come true.
And all this from a ride down Sunset Boulevard and back in the
course of a not so long Monday afternoon in August.
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