2 days ago
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Monday, June 01, 2009
It is pronounced "PENNIS-TON"
No Snickering: That Road Sign Means Something Else
CRAPSTONE, England — When ordering things by telephone, Stewart Pearce tends to take a proactive approach to the inevitable question “What is your address?”
He lays it out straight, so there is no room for unpleasant confusion. “I say, ‘It’s spelled “crap,” as in crap,’ ” said Mr. Pearce, 61, who has lived in Crapstone, a one-shop country village in Devon, for decades.
Disappointingly, Mr. Pearce has so far been unable to parlay such delicate encounters into material gain, as a neighbor once did.
“Crapstone,” the neighbor said forthrightly, Mr. Pearce related, whereupon the person on the other end of the telephone repeated it to his co-workers and burst out laughing. “They said, ‘Oh, we thought it didn’t really exist,’ ” Mr. Pearce said, “and then they gave him a free something.”
In the scale of embarrassing place names, Crapstone ranks pretty high. But Britain is full of them. Some are mostly amusing, like Ugley, Essex; East Breast, in western Scotland; North Piddle, in Worcestershire; and Spanker Lane, in Derbyshire.
Others evoke images that may conflict with residents’ efforts to appear dignified when, for example, applying for jobs.
These include Crotch Crescent, Oxford; Titty Ho, Northamptonshire; Wetwang, East Yorkshire; Slutshole Lane, Norfolk; and Thong, Kent. And, in a country that delights in lavatory humor, particularly if the word “bottom” is involved, there is Pratts Bottom, in Kent, doubly cursed because “prat” is slang for buffoon.
As for Penistone, a thriving South Yorkshire town, just stop that sophomoric snickering.
“It’s pronounced ‘PENNIS-tun,’ ” Fiona Moran, manager of the Old Vicarage Hotel in Penistone, said over the telephone, rather sharply. When forced to spell her address for outsiders, she uses misdirection, separating the tricky section into two blameless parts: “p-e-n” — pause — “i-s-t-o-n-e.”
Several months ago, Lewes District Council in East Sussex tried to address the problem of inadvertent place-name titillation by saying that “street names which could give offense” would no longer be allowed on new roads.
“Avoid aesthetically unsuitable names,” like Gaswork Road, the council decreed. Also, avoid “names capable of deliberate misinterpretation,” like Hoare Road, Typple Avenue, Quare Street and Corfe Close.
(What is wrong with Corfe Close, you might ask? The guidelines mention the hypothetical residents of No. 4, with their unfortunate hypothetical address, “4 Corfe Close.” To find the naughty meaning, you have to repeat the first two words rapidly many times, preferably in the presence of your fifth-grade classmates.)
The council explained that it was only following national guidelines and that it did not intend to change any existing lewd names.
Still, news of the revised policy raised an outcry.
“Sniggering at double entendres is a loved and time-honored tradition in this country,” Carol Midgley wrote in The Times of London. Ed Hurst, a co-author, with Rob Bailey, of “Rude Britain” and “Rude UK,” which list arguably offensive place names — some so arguably offensive that, unfortunately, they cannot be printed here — said that many such communities were established hundreds of years ago and that their names were not rude at the time.
“Place names and street names are full of history and culture, and it’s only because language has evolved over the centuries that they’ve wound up sounding rude,” Mr. Hurst said in an interview.
Mr. Bailey, who grew up on Tumbledown Dick Road in Oxfordshire, and Mr. Hurst got the idea for the books when they read about a couple who bought a house on Butt Hole Road, in South Yorkshire.
The name most likely has to do with the spot’s historic function as a source of water, a water butt being a container for collecting water. But it proved to be prohibitively hilarious.
“If they ordered a pizza, the pizza company wouldn’t deliver it, because they thought it was a made-up name,” Mr. Hurst said. “People would stand in front of the sign, pull down their trousers and take pictures of each other’s naked buttocks.”
The couple moved away.
The people in Crapstone have not had similar problems, although their sign is periodically stolen by word-loving merrymakers. And their village became a stock joke a few years ago, when a television ad featuring a prone-to-swearing soccer player named Vinnie Jones showed Mr. Jones’s car breaking down just under the Crapstone sign.
In the commercial, Mr. Jones tries to alert the towing company to his location while covering the sign and trying not to say “crap” in front of his young daughter.
The consensus in the village is that there is a perfectly innocent reason for the name “Crapstone,” though it is unclear what that is. Theories put forth by various residents the other day included “place of the rocks,” “a kind of twisting of the original word,” “something to do with the soil” and “something to do with Sir Francis Drake,” who lived nearby.
Jacqui Anderson, a doctor in Crapstone who used to live in a village called Horrabridge, which has its own issues, said that she no longer thought about the “crap” in “Crapstone.”
Still, when strangers ask where she’s from, she admitted, “I just say I live near Plymouth.”Sunday, May 31, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
My 5,000th Flickr Photo
I realized today that I have crossed over the 5,000 photo mark on my Flickr account. This may not sound exciting to most, who have thousands of pictures, but in the last few years I have amassed quite a collection of photos. Once I realized the number, I quickly counted back to picture 5,000. Here it is. My nephew, Dylan, on a ride at Busch Gardens recently. Well, Dylan, here's to 5,000 more pictures! You weren't even born when I started this project 6 years ago.
Really Good Job Search Information
I am not looking for a job, but I received this email recently and it has some really good advice on leaving voicemail messages for prospective employers. Check it out!
Good Monday morning Mark, If you'd really like to make sure that the
recruiters and hiring managers you are pursuing don't return your phone calls,
here's an example of the voicemail you could leave:
"Hey Susan, it's Stan. I think you'll agree that I'm perfect for the
Director job we discussed three weeks ago. When I spoke with your CEO at our
Alumni Conference last week, he mentioned what a great background I had for the
role. Please call me back – I'm ready to get started on Monday!"
Susan isn't going to call back. Why?
No last name! No phone number!
"I think you'll agree that I'm perfect for the Director job." This is
presumptuous. And the purpose of this voicemail is not to "seal the deal" – that
will be a live conversation. The purpose should be to provide a pleasant
reminder of your candidacy.
" ... three weeks ago." And just getting around to following up now?
How serious is this guy Stan?
"When I spoke with your CEO at our Alumni
Conference ..." – the recipient is thinking: great, you went to school with my
boss. But this appeal to a higher authority is really very annoying. Are you
vaguely threatening me? Implying you're going over my head?The recruiter or
hiring manager is well aware of whether their boss is a meddling sort or not. If
not, your bluff is called. If so, they'll wait to hear directly from the boss
about you – your application is going to the "hold" pile for now.
"Please call me back – I'm ready to get started on Monday!" Being
available is good, sounding desperate is not. OK, so maybe this is a little bit
over the top and none of our Readers would ever leave such a pathetic voicemail
(though the evidence over the years here at TheLadders suggests the
possibility); what type of message *should* you leave?
"Hi Susan, it's Jim Ablebody. Just calling to let you know how excited I am
about the opportunity there at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. As I
mentioned last week, I've spent 15 years in nuclear safety, so I feel there
could be a great fit. You can reach me back at 867-5309, and, again, it's ...
Jim. Ablebody.
"What's right here?
Jim gave his phone number and repeated his full name
(slowly) twice. No need to replay the message to get his information.
Jim is
upbeat – "how excited I am," 'I feel there could be a great fit" – without being
needy or pushy.
"As I mentioned last week" – my advice on phone follow-up is: call one
time per week for five weeks. That lets them know that you're consistently
interested, without appearing desperate. And if you don't hear back after five
weeks, it is time to move on.
"I've spent 15 years" – just a simple reminder, not an argument, for
why you make sense for the job.
It is a short, simple, polite message that brings Jim to the top of
Susan's mind. That's good.
Jim doesn't try to close the deal or get the job
during this voicemail. He realizes that you can't do that. What Jim does
accomplish here is to increase the odds that the next time the job is discussed,
his name will come up. And the next time his name comes up, it will be in a
positive light. And that's the most you should hope for from a voicemail. Trying
for a bigger result is ultimately just going to set you back. OK, folks, it's
been fun looking at how to leave an annoying voicemail, or a far more effective
one, this week. Good luck on your success! I am rooting for you!
Warmest regards,Marc CenedellaFounder & CEOTheLadders.com, Inc.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Friday, May 01, 2009
Thursday, April 30, 2009
The Square Grouper
If you're traveling down to the Keys, be sure to check out The Square Grouper. This amazing little restaurant could be at home in Manhattan or Key West. The food is delicious, the atmosphere very urban and even the name itself, Square Grouper, is a reference for a floating bale of marijuana. Clever!
The Square Grouper
The Square Grouper
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Grey Gardens
Wow, what an interesting strory. Grey Gardens discusses the lives of "Big" Edie and "Little" Edie Beale who lived as recluses in their Long Island mansion. Check it out!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Forever Fabulous!
If you liked the video of zany Royce and Marilyn, check out this LA Times article about their lives, very interesting!
Forever Fabulous
Happy hours with Royce and Marilyn
Steven Mikulan
published: June 10, 1999Photo by Kevin AckermanDUSK, LOS ANGELES. A THOUSAND CARS ARE JOINING THE rush-hour conga lines of traffic fleeing downtown's office center. Soon the streets will be deserted of men with briefcases, and the sky emptied of corporate helicopters -- to be replaced by the occasional urban hawk searching, in the darkening curfew, for a careless pigeon. Inside a neighborhood bar that is neither dive nor tourist lounge, a few old-timers fortified with drinks and paper plates of happy-hour food watch a movie wind down on television. Except for the TV and a popcorn maker it's pretty quiet here, and pretty blue-collar, too, which is why the two women dressed like grandmotherly Holly Golightlys, their wide-brimmed hats smartly raked and enormous rings cincturing manicured fingers, stick out like a pair of Christmas trees planted on a 50-yard line. Royce Reed and Marilyn Hoggatt, you see, are emissaries from a more refined time, women who do not end their sentences with prepositions, nor with the declarative question mark that is the California style. They are ladies who appreciate the snug fit of custom-made gloves, who know the difference between a cocktail ring and a solitaire -- and wince whenever their club sandwiches arrive with crusts untrimmed.
Their anachronistic mannerisms and codes of dress are part of an unfaltering faith in style, a faith that has been rewarded with a kind of unified field theory of life. Yet even a consoling world-view cannot shield an elderly woman from the rough realities of living downtown on a fixed income. For that, Royce and Marilyn must rely on one another, and a friendship that is a constant adjustment of needs and wants that are seldom completely in sync.
"I'm used to elegance, elegance," Royce says of downtown. "This is not my home, this is hell on earth! The noise of the helicopters and sirens day and night -- oh, my gawd, you'd lose your mind!" There's more than a trace of Norma Desmond in the voice and the eyeliner, and listening to her makes an interviewer feel more than a little like Joe Gillis. "I'm a clothes person, a fashion person," Royce will tell you as she sips a sauvignon blanc. "I was raised by rich, rich, elegant people who bought only the finest, everything made to order. You cannot handle anything else, as a woman -- it is your life."
"I've always liked clothes," Marilyn concurs. "My mother made mine -- as an infant, child and teenager. Even when I went to college, she made complete sets for me."
When Marilyn graduated from high school in 1941, a teenage girl's look was composed of "bobby sox, blouse with collar turned out, a sweater, string of pearls and always a pleated skirt." Today, Marilyn is swathed in a faux-leopard-skin shawl that is echoed by leopard-skin accents on her hat. Royce's own black fur chapeau matches the rest of her raven-hue ensemble. The two women live in an adjoining hotel that is a clean, well-lighted place by downtown standards, though a planet or two removed from, say, the Biltmore up on Olive Street. Wilshire, which Marilyn reverently refers to as "the big boulevard" and which has figured so many times in both their lives, dead-ends a few blocks away.
Marilyn is 5 feet 9 inches tall, large-boned and easygoing, while her Maroc-scented, wire-waisted friend stands 5 feet 4 and bristles with the steely self-confidence one acquires from working nearly half a century in fashion merchandising. "I know everyone in the rag business," Royce pronounces in the elongated, gravely accented vowels associated with breeding. "I went to work as a gift counselor and then bridal consultant in 1949 at J.W. Robinson's, which was on Seventh Street and owned by Mrs. Harry Robinson and the Schneiders, Carlos and Walter." When she speaks, her hands often flutter through the air in dramatic gestures. "Mrs. Robinson was exquisite -- a Beverly Hills socialite who would come in with her chauffeur, mink coats and her poodle, Happy."
Marilyn is a former schoolteacher and "executive housekeeper" whose good-time Ohio twang occasionally horns into her conversation -- which she says is a bit embarrassing, as her father was chairman of Wittenberg University's public-speaking department. Their stay at the hotel began some 11 years ago and has lasted far longer than either expected -- or wanted. Marilyn looks on the bright side, pointing out the proximity of Macy's and the exercise she gets from walking to nearby stores and her manicurist. Royce isn't so sanguine. "I'm 16th-generation back East," she is fond of saying. "I only exist here, it's not my territory."
The pair's exile is not just a matter of geography, though, it is one of time -- a time whose fashions and manners have been pulled out from beneath them by a nightmarish undertow called progress. "A man did not get into a restaurant without a suit and a tie," Royce laments of this vanished era, "nor a woman without a cocktail dress."
"Celebrities just don't dress up anymore," concedes the more accepting Marilyn.
MARILYN HOGGATT CAME TO LOS ANGELES IN 1958 AS AN elementary school teacher, having been lured from Colorado by the high salaries California was offering during the post-Sputnik education splurge. She taught fifth grade down in sleepy San Pedro but felt an urban excitement she had never experienced back in Ohio or Colorado. "California held such glamour for me," she says. "I was a professor's daughter who majored in speech and theater arts, but I had also been crazy about movies and was just besotted by the magnificent films of my youth. I wanted to see these places and some of the celebrities I'd read about all my life -- particularly the women, like Lana Turner and Ann Miller."
Life in Los Angeles offered her a close-up of those places and celebrities, along with memberships in the club culture of Palos Verdes, whose art association and swim and country clubs Marilyn gladly joined. It was a time, after all, when a divorcée could, as she did, raise two boys in an ocean-view apartment on a teacher's salary. Even the L.A. Teachers Association breakfasts, held at the Biltmore Bowl, seemed exciting: "I liked it -- I felt like I was a big-city girl!"
Her father's death brought Marilyn back to Ohio in 1962, but when her mother also passed away, seven years later, she returned to teaching in L.A., moving into the Wilshire Towers. "I was one block from the Brown Derby and the Ambassador Hotel -- all you could think of was how they were so famous." The center of her life became the Round Table West literary club's monthly gatherings at the Ambassador's Cocoanut Grove, whose former glory, like an incandescence traveling from some distant, dying star, still dazzled Marilyn. One afternoon she sat at a table while Sammy Davis Jr. rehearsed a show, and got his autograph on a soggy napkin. "This is gonna be a wet one!" Sammy quipped.
In 1971, after two years of teaching on several city campuses, Marilyn called it quits when she saw that L.A.'s schools were becoming more dangerous places. She then made what seems like an off-the-chart career change for an educated woman, though it put her in a position to glimpse show-biz glamour from the inside. She remembers her first interview as a housekeeper for the wealthy. â
"Raquel Welch lived in a house in back of the Beverly Hills Hotel," Marilyn says, "and just had on a little pair of jeans, a T-shirt, with her hair pulled back with a rubber band -- and no makeup. She said she felt uncomfortable with hiring someone older than herself, and so I didn't get the job."
Before long, though, Marilyn was putting her belongings in storage and moving out to cowboy actor Dale Robertson's Chatsworth ranch, where she landed a job working for the Oklahoman and his wife, Lou. "They were both Southern and very lovely," Marilyn recalls. "They had quite a few dinner parties with rich horse people. He became friends with a family who gave him a brand-new, custom-made Cadillac Eldorado. They were a foreign family -- by that, I mean they had foreign blood. So he had this gorgeous new Cadillac that he drove as a personal car, and then of course Mrs. Robertson had a Lincoln."
Life seemed idyllic, on and off the spread. Marilyn remembers the Beverly Hills Halloween party at the Jimmy Durantes' to which she escorted Dale's daughter Rebel, and how Mrs. Durante had to yell because Jimmy was hard of hearing. But the Robertsons' rustic acreage was Marilyn's true world, a home whose nearby neighbors included actor Chad Everett and the Gelsons, who owned the tony markets. "There was the regular ranch house, and then there was another house down by the stables, where they had James, their houseman. Now, when I say 'man,' I mean he was the colored man who had worked for Mr. Robertson for 25 years. He had his own house, took care of the cars and supervised the horses. He was lovely to me -- I was always 'Miss Marilyn.'"
But the Robertsons' marriage eventually hit the rocks, and Marilyn was out of a job. Next came work with singer Helen O'Connell in Brentwood, and afterward a stint with comedian Norm Crosby. Marilyn spent a particularly grand time at the West Hollywood home of R&B composer-arranger Gene Page, who worked with such superstars as Aretha Franklin and Barry White. "They were a black family," Marilyn recalls, "but there was no tension with the Pages, because they had friends of all races over at the house and took me along with them to the Shubert to see Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra." She also remembers Page as a very private man who kept four pianos in the house. "He was touted as a performer, but he didn't like performing, because he didn't want girls clawing at his clothes, tearing them off. Not at all."
IT WAS WHILE AT THE PAGES' THAT MARILYN WROTE A 536-page murder mystery titled The Copper Triangle, set in a private men's club in the mountains of Colorado. As she describes the book: "It's the story of the beautiful hostess Claire Breese. Her club's members are sophisticated singles, couples and out-of-towners who drive in, helicopter in or come by limousine. They have all these wonderful parties, and of course there's a lot of sex, and camaraderie."
Those 536 immaculately typed pages celebrate comfort, luxury and, yes, sex. The setting's Copperwood Estate, whose corporate color scheme is cream and lavender, is a swinging world of cinnamon suede suits, white llama-wool upholstery and royal-blue satin sheets; with each turn of the page one meets characters who are more beautiful, handsome, talented and rich than those already introduced, and everyone gobbles down enormous breakfasts of steak, eggs, potatoes, toast and marmalade. Brand-name perfumes exist side by side with push-button technology and rocket packs. The reader enters a fantasy whose characters, as beautiful, sensuous and wealthy as they are, voyeuristically gaze upon yet another fantasy world -- that of the softcore porn films they view. One of these royal-blue movies' stars may well be a role Marilyn envied: "She was the darling of musical comedy and feted on all continents. She owned one of the magnificent houses in Paris. She had a weekly salon where choice men were invited for dinner at 9, and dallying later. She surrounded herself with other pretty actresses. Her guest list was full of beautiful people." So far, the manuscript, penned over a mere nine-month period, remains unpublished.
Housekeeping, even at celebrity homes, is a tiring line of work, and especially for a woman approaching 60. And so in 1983, after moving to and from 10 employers, and to the motels she stayed at in between, Marilyn quit the business altogether. She set up house on the 19th floor of the Mark Wilshire apartment building, which sported a pool on its roof. "I loved it," she says, "because I'm a swimmer and because that was my idea of glamour! Wilshire Boulevard was just lovely then. My favorite thing to do was go shopping, what else? And going to the elegant places where the celebrities went -- the Beverly Hilton, Beverly Wilshire and Beverly Hills Hotel. Oh, I loved the ritzy places, and belonged to the Century City Health Club. The ritzier the better for me."
(One day, however, she got a glimpse of that starry world's mortality. On a Beverly Hills street, a man caught her attention, not just because the man happened to be black, but because he looked so ill. It was Sammy Davis, who had autographed her napkin years before.)
In the summer of that year, Marilyn met Royce, an encounter she remembers as if it had happened half an hour ago. "I was having lunch at the Tea Room in Bullocks Wilshire when I saw this woman who stood out from everyone else -- I just couldn't take my eyes off her! She looked like Scarlett O'Hara with this magnificent big picture hat on. Then when I went to the ladies' lounge, I found her there, singing an opera aria. So I introduced myself."
"I DIDN'T LIKE IT HERE THAT MUCH -- I'M USED TO GOING out every night of my life," says Royce Reed, the fluttery hands in full motion, as though conducting an invisible orchestra. "I'm used to New York, I'm used to elegant places, elegant food. We had the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, the Luau Room owned by Steve Crane, Scandia. LaRue? We lived in those places day and night. Now we have nothing."
When she speaks of her present living arrangements, her voice tends to roll abruptly from a purr to a rebuking growl. Royce is far less forgiving than Marilyn of the urban decay she sees all around her, as well as the changes in the fashion world she once moved in. She is strictly old-school, for example, on the subject of fur. "They don't torture these animals, they put them to sleep quietly," she insists. "I love animals and I would love to keep them as live pets, but I can't! You don't discuss fur with people who don't understand fur -- you dismiss them or have them taken away."
As a matter of fact, when she met Marilyn in Bullocks Wilshire, Royce had just bought a mink coat for herself and was living at the Chancellor Hotel, near the epicenter of a formerly vibrant Wilshire Boulevard chic. "Dahling," she says, recalling nearby restaurants, "I was one of those who spent fortunes at the Windsor, and at the Cove across the street -- elegant, elegant. If you had to be in Los Angeles, the Windsor and the Cove were the best places, and Perino's -- the original Perino's -- was the only elegant restaurant in Hancock Park. For years I had an apartment next door, in the 3000 block of Wilshire at Norton."
If there is a Los Angeles to Royce's liking, it is the one she arrived in as a 20-year-old from Manhattan with her family in the late 1940s -- a culturally arid landscape that was nevertheless alleviated by oases like Rodeo Drive and the Sunset Strip, civilized greenbelts offering radiant cocktail lounges, nonstop conversation and decent French food.
"She likes beautiful," Marilyn explains.
"I don't understand anything else -- it's living death," Royce says.
"I offered to take Royce's life story down, 'As Told to . . .,'" Marilyn says.
But Royce hasn't taken her friend up on the offer, and for an outsider, interviewing her soon becomes a frustrating search past dropped names and anecdotal windows that briefly open, only to slam shut when she is asked to elaborate about her past. "Why would I want to review it?" she asks rhetorically. "We've had books written about my family -- The Annals of Lancaster County." Royce has considered writing a book herself about her career in the clothing business, but figures no one would buy it, because "you have to write about sex and disgusting things."
"My life history is very elegant," she will allow, "16 generations from Philadelphia and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I have a pedigree, a coat of arms, ye-e-s-s. We go back to Frankfurt, Germany, 400 A.D. My mother was from New Orleans going back to France."
But surrounding these tantalizing specifics are a haze of context and an eagerness to change the subject -- and some frankly bewildering claims. "My father helped build the atom bomb," she'll mention offhandedly, the next moment explaining that he was the chief accountant on the Manhattan Project. Further probing elicits the response that his family "was from Tarrytown on the Hudson, and Manhattan, for about 11 generations. They had an electrical business in New York they owned for 200 years, they had stores, they were billionaires." Eventually there is only this flat admission: "I'm well-established. I've never been in jail, never been arrested. I'm quite reputable. I wasn't born poor."
Royce Reed, ultimately, proves to be an enigma wrapped in a Chanel inside a mink. How is one to evaluate her nonstop recitation of designers, labels and restaurants -- many of which, as she would say, are long gone? Cursory fact checking reveals that her family name, Rosenstein, does appear in Lancaster genealogical histories, but unless one is committed to a research project on a par with the Warren Commission's, an interviewer must take most of her claims at face value. And why not? Even if Royce's "elegant" yet sketchy biography is exaggerated or completely dreamed up, it is breathed to life by a person who passionately believes in it.
"I've been in merchandising 45 years, retailing and wholesale," she says. "I started out training to be an opera star but got sidetracked." That is probably as straightforward a summary of her life as she will grant.
That life, according to Royce, was a gold-spoon existence: Sutton Place, a teenage job at Bonwit Teller, Fifth Avenue and interviews "by all the studios" -- which, she says, did not interest her. When her family moved to Los Angeles, Royce said goodbye to Old World gentility and entered a womanhood of husbands and homes in Beverly Hills and Hancock Park, and a career conducted along an archipelago of Miracle Mile stores: J.J. Haggerty, Bullocks, Brock and Co., Mullen and Bluett, where she was a buyer for women's accessories -- cosmetics, perfume, hosiery, gifts. She recalls an early encounter with her new city, during an interview with the founder of a fashion industry publication: "He was a horrible man who tried to take my clothes off in his office. I was wearing this gorgeous Christian Dior and learned at the age of 19 never to make a 4:45 appointment." Eventually, with the second of her three husbands, Leo Marks, Royce owned an apparel line bearing his name that they sold on the road locally and throughout the South.
And there was that freebooting, cartwheeling nightlife. "I used to have all these fa-a-a-bulous drinking companions," she says. "We drank Bombay gin with cognac chasers -- our driving laws weren't that strict. We went to the Cocoanut Grove when it was elegant -- when Freddy Martin was there and we wore our $10,000 dresses. We had the Chez Voltaire and the Beverly Rodeo, on Rodeo Drive, two blocks north of the Beverly Regent. It was wild but elegant, and known as Hooker's Row. All the men from New York went there, women came and went -- who cared? I was appalled, but Marilyn says I could have made a fortune there!"
ROYCE'S WORLD IMPLODED WHEN HER MOTHER DIED IN Santa Ana in 1983; by then she had parted from her third husband and retired from the rag trade. "I've had elegant friends and husbands, but when she died I was devastated," she says. "I'm an only, fairy-princess child, and we were so close. I would never face the fact that one day she would pass away."
It was shortly after her mother's death that she sang the aria in Bullocks' ladies' lounge that would bring Marilyn to her. This was a fortuitous occasion, for money got tight while Royce was living at the Chancellor, and Marilyn stepped in with an offer to Royce to move in with her at the Mark Wilshire. From then on the two began "palling around," as Marilyn says, spending time at fashion shows, the racetrack and, of course, nightspots.
"We'd only go to the places I was used to," Royce says. "Bel Air, the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, which is now filled with screaming, yelling people."
Marilyn: "We were going to a lot of happy hours . . ."
Royce: "Honey, I'm used to elegance, I'm not used to downtown -- oh my dear."
Marilyn: "We like to go dinner dancing, but you need a male companion for that."
Royce: "There's been no dinner dancing in Beverly Hills or Bel Air -- it's 30 years gone."
Marilyn: "We used to go to L'Escoffier in the Beverly Hilton."
Royce: "Oh, I went there four nights a week for 30 years, it was the only elegant room we had in Beverly Hills! I got a gorgeous South American man a job there as orchestra leader when he was about to commit suicide because he couldn't get work. It's gone now."
Marilyn: "They have put in the Coconut Club on Friday and Saturday nights, where you have to pay $20."
Royce: "Oh, it's a garbage hole, please."
The two women made a flashy, lively pair as they roamed from watering hole to watering hole, often hitting the town on double dates.
"I dated as much as I could," Marilyn says. "I wish I could say I dated someone in particular, but I didn't. I dated some lawyers, a lot of businessmen -- nice men, but no celebrities, no one of note. You'd meet them in, you know, cocktail lounges. But one of the most difficult things about dating, when you're out with a gentleman for the evening, is the fact that he drinks too much."
Royce: "Oh, you're not used to rich, rich men . . ."
Marilyn: "You either don't let them drink or make them take a taxi to the restaurant."
Royce: "People here are too cheap to hire chauffeurs . . ."
Marilyn: "Or, if he insists, you put your life in his hands. I've had a few wild rides. Men don't want to be separated from their cars -- not at all!"
Royce: "Years ago, the police in Beverly Hills would let you go if they knew you. They'd protect you and drive you home."
But life could be scary even on the Sunset Strip, as Marilyn was to learn one night. She and Royce had gone to catch Harold Robbins' wife, Grace, singing at Verita's, a restaurant owned by Humphrey Bogart's former mistress Verita Thompson. (Thompson decorated the bar with the actor's photographs and would one day cause a stir by auctioning off his toupee.) But they got there too early and realized it would be some time before Mrs. Robbins sang. They weren't eating, and Marilyn, feeling dozy, headed for her car, leaving Royce at the bar. Verita's parking lot had been packed, and so Marilyn's Cadillac was on the street. She locked the doors, cracked a window and stretched out on the back seat for a snooze. Soon, however, she awoke to find a stranger looking at her from behind the Caddy's wheel.
"He was black and seemed very nice," Marilyn recalls. "He said, 'Here, why don't you give me the keys and we'll go for a little ride.' I said, 'I don't think so,' but gave him the keys because I was afraid he'd get mad. So he drove me over to the parking garage down under City National Bank, just before Beverly Hills. We sat there for a while. He was smoking something -- probably hashish. He really didn't want me for sex, but to talk and pleasure himself. After that was over, he drove me back and got out. Then I went to Verita's, but Royce was gone, so I went to a common meeting place that we usually arranged before we went out at night, and eventually she came along in a taxi. We were very fortunate. We had some very wild things happen, things that should not have happened, that were not our fault."
IN 1987, MARILYN SOLD HER FURNITURE ("I HAD A BEAUTIFUL U-shaped couch in red velveteen"), and the women put their belongings in storage and decamped from the Mark Wilshire. They had decided to hit the road in Marilyn's 1977 Sedan de Ville -- "We were just doing what we wanted to do," she says of the trip. The idea was to tour the â state, although they never got north of Santa Barbara. The affluent mission town would be the scene of one unintentionally comical visit with friends of Marilyn who lived in ultra-upscale Montecito. The two remember their stay chiefly for their hosts' laser-beam security system, which kept them prisoners in their room at night, and for the absence of a home bar.
Marilyn: "They had a security system that was turned on at night, with those rays . . ."
Royce: "They turned them on at 10 or 11, and then you stayed in your room until 8 in the morning. They were not gracious, they were not charming. You can imagine! I was like a chained tiger. And they wouldn't serve a drink . . ."
Marilyn: "They didn't drink . . ."
Royce: "I've never liked Santa Barbara. I'm used to late-night elegance, sophistication, New York. Elegance."
After that, their road trip was essentially a ricochet drive of the 216 miles between Santa Barbara and San Diego, with stays at the Century Plaza or Bonaventure whenever they were in town. The unceremonious end came when the Caddy's transmission went out in Brentwood. Marilyn spent a lot of money getting it fixed at Lou Ehler's on Wilshire, only to have her cherished sedan broadsided -- twice. When it happened the second time, the guilty party, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, offered Marilyn cash reparations on the spot. She took the money but ditched the car. It was time to settle down.
"AUGUST 2, 1988." MARILYN CAN TELL YOU THE EXACT day she and Royce moved into their present hotel. The two have been there ever since, first sharing a single room, now each with her own, though they are not neighbors. What vexes them most is the fact that downtown holds no social center for them. "There's no place," Marilyn says, "for us -- sophisticated, middle-aged women who need a regular place -- to go." Their prolonged stay has been hardest on Royce, whose tiny room abuts a noisy elevator.
"Los Angeles is the garbage hole of the wo-r-rld," she says, her hands grandly sweeping the air. "I'm used to huge space, I'm used to elegance. I'm used to the Plaza, I don't understand anything else! There's nothing downtown that I'm used to -- it's not my territory -- I'm like the leopard in The Snows of Kilimanjaro."
The hotel had been recommended to them by friends, and at the time the carless women were forced to halt their road trip, downtown had seemed like a reasonable compromise between the unaffordable Wilshire corridor and the colorless suburbs. It has 230 rooms, some of which are advertised at $39 per night, and the adjoining bar boasts a generous happy hour that lasts from 5 to 10 p.m. The lobby's faint cologne of disinfectant never lets one forget that this is downtown, with all its civic homeliness -- and dangers. When the 1992 riots exploded, "I'd go out in front of the building and could see them shooting out the windows of the Lady Footlocker," Marilyn remembers. "I didn't leave the hotel for weeks. My cousin called from Seattle and asked, 'What's going on down there?'"
Marilyn's own small room looks out upon a storage building, although a little neck craning rewards her with a partial view of a parking lot as well. Much of the room's precious space is taken up by a pile of large hats, some stuffed animals and a tottering butte of shoeboxes containing Royce's footwear. A framed poster of Marilyn Monroe in a white mink coat hangs on one wall, and a Princess Diana commemorative plate and framed photographs of Elizabeth Taylor and a Siamese cat are placed on tables.
An avid collector, Marilyn meticulously maintains a scrapbook that includes thank-you letters from novelist Barbara Cartland, the office of painter LeRoy Neiman and from Liz Taylor, to whom she once sent a get-well letter. Other pages are an eclectic archive of neatly clipped items from the newspapers or tabloids about fashion, the O.J. Simpson case and buildings she admires, along with a sketch of Howard Hughes. "This is my life," she says of her scrapbook, the 75th volume she has gathered.
Although the ladies spend much of their time together, their routines often diverge. "I have a tendency to read late and get up late," Marilyn confesses. "I also go to the library often."
Royce: "I have the original library card!"
Marilyn: "I frequently get the L.A. Times."
Royce: "Oh, God, I don't read the L.A. Times -- I read The New York Times, the London Times, Paris Match."
Marilyn: "I subscribe to Town & Country and Architectural Digest -- that's my favorite. And I take two tabloids, the Enquirer and the Star. It's all gossip and I love it! I've taken Playboy for the last 25 years. I admire beautiful people and beautiful bodies. She gets disgusted with me because I take these publications!" Marilyn still maintains a membership in her beloved Round Table West literary club, and is also an ardent follower of the TV soaps and belongs to The Young and the Restless' official fan club, which holds gatherings at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
In contrast to Marilyn, Royce, who abhors television and prefers listening to classical music, is an early riser who frequently leaves the hotel to visit the Calmart building and other old haunts in the garment district. Despite the dodginess of downtown, Royce fears no one.
"I'm very careful," she says. "I'm very alert, I move very quickly. I would murder someone, I'm very strong."
"She wears her rings loaded!" Marilyn laughs. "Royce doesn't take them off, even when she goes out -- she says, 'I am who I am, and I'm going to be myself in every situation.'"
ON ONE COOL, WINDY AFTERNOON, MARILYN AND Royce leave their hotel to have lunch at Windows, a restaurant with panoramic views from the 32nd floor of the Transamerica Building. Gawkers in the tower's atrium and elevators stop and stare at the elegantly attired women in their enormous hats. Lunch begins on an ill omen as Royce's club sandwich arrives avec crusts. But before she can raise the matter with her waiter, she notices that her silverware has been placed on a paper serviette. "Oh, my God!" she says. "These paper napkins are unacceptable." Not only that, but all the restaurant's tables have been covered with paper instead of linen cloths for lunch time. "Paper here, oh! It's totally gross."
As the waiter searches for a cloth napkin, Marilyn and Royce reminisce about their occasional visits to the Santa Anita racetrack, where they are wont to spend an afternoon in the private Turf Club. "The first day I went to Santa Anita, I won the derby!" Marilyn confides.
Money for women on Social Security is understandably tight, and income from any source is welcome. Royce and Marilyn once worked as audience shills for an auctioneering firm, but haven't been on call since a new floor manager brought in her own crew of out-of-work actors. The only new money on the horizon is a possible settlement from the city and a private contractor for a fall Marilyn took near a construction site outside their hotel. As compensation for an injured ankle and arm, she hopes to receive a sum large enough to move away from downtown.
"I'd probably look at places in Beverly Hills that are quiet," she says. "Since Royce has no family, she'll be with me."
Royce: "I don't think so. I'm used to living in my own place."
Marilyn: "Well, maybe not."
Possibly thinking of a new source of revenue, Marilyn is considering trying to market her novel, The Copper Triangle, a work she looks upon as her lasting legacy. Again, one cannot help but discern a bit of the author in the central character, Claire Breese, the sensual, mothering guardian of the story's luxurious mountain club -- a woman who, by the way, shares Marilyn's middle and maiden names. "Oh, Claire," one character tells her, "you lead such a beautiful, exciting life surrounded by handsome men who adore you. Aren't you one of the lucky ones though." Perhaps the novelist has, in her own way, found the story's "wonderful parties and camaraderie" in the company of her glamorous friend, Royce, in whose shadow she has kept warm for 16 years and whom she regards as a celebrity in her own right.
"Royce is one of the most fascinating people in the world," Marilyn says. "I've met a lot of wonderful people through her, and she's at the top of that list. She's been very loyal, entertaining and generous -- she's given me a lot of clothes and jewelry." As evidence, she wears a luxurious blond fox-fur wrap and matching hat given to her by Royce, who calls Marilyn "a marvelous woman and wonderful friend."
As the two women finish their lunch, a hawk suddenly wheels 20 feet beyond a window of the restaurant, a sinister yet beautiful creature whose dusky feathers reflect none of the California sun. There is something hypnotic about the bird of prey, something about its unrepentant darkness that reaches back into primal memory, to a time before elegance and glamour were dreamt into existence.
"That's gorgeous," Royce says. "I want him, I'll feed him. Birds take to me, I love him, I want to adopt -- oh, this terrible paper tablecloth!"
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Forever Fabulous
Happy hours with Royce and Marilyn
Steven Mikulan
published: June 10, 1999Photo by Kevin AckermanDUSK, LOS ANGELES. A THOUSAND CARS ARE JOINING THE rush-hour conga lines of traffic fleeing downtown's office center. Soon the streets will be deserted of men with briefcases, and the sky emptied of corporate helicopters -- to be replaced by the occasional urban hawk searching, in the darkening curfew, for a careless pigeon. Inside a neighborhood bar that is neither dive nor tourist lounge, a few old-timers fortified with drinks and paper plates of happy-hour food watch a movie wind down on television. Except for the TV and a popcorn maker it's pretty quiet here, and pretty blue-collar, too, which is why the two women dressed like grandmotherly Holly Golightlys, their wide-brimmed hats smartly raked and enormous rings cincturing manicured fingers, stick out like a pair of Christmas trees planted on a 50-yard line. Royce Reed and Marilyn Hoggatt, you see, are emissaries from a more refined time, women who do not end their sentences with prepositions, nor with the declarative question mark that is the California style. They are ladies who appreciate the snug fit of custom-made gloves, who know the difference between a cocktail ring and a solitaire -- and wince whenever their club sandwiches arrive with crusts untrimmed.
Their anachronistic mannerisms and codes of dress are part of an unfaltering faith in style, a faith that has been rewarded with a kind of unified field theory of life. Yet even a consoling world-view cannot shield an elderly woman from the rough realities of living downtown on a fixed income. For that, Royce and Marilyn must rely on one another, and a friendship that is a constant adjustment of needs and wants that are seldom completely in sync.
"I'm used to elegance, elegance," Royce says of downtown. "This is not my home, this is hell on earth! The noise of the helicopters and sirens day and night -- oh, my gawd, you'd lose your mind!" There's more than a trace of Norma Desmond in the voice and the eyeliner, and listening to her makes an interviewer feel more than a little like Joe Gillis. "I'm a clothes person, a fashion person," Royce will tell you as she sips a sauvignon blanc. "I was raised by rich, rich, elegant people who bought only the finest, everything made to order. You cannot handle anything else, as a woman -- it is your life."
"I've always liked clothes," Marilyn concurs. "My mother made mine -- as an infant, child and teenager. Even when I went to college, she made complete sets for me."
When Marilyn graduated from high school in 1941, a teenage girl's look was composed of "bobby sox, blouse with collar turned out, a sweater, string of pearls and always a pleated skirt." Today, Marilyn is swathed in a faux-leopard-skin shawl that is echoed by leopard-skin accents on her hat. Royce's own black fur chapeau matches the rest of her raven-hue ensemble. The two women live in an adjoining hotel that is a clean, well-lighted place by downtown standards, though a planet or two removed from, say, the Biltmore up on Olive Street. Wilshire, which Marilyn reverently refers to as "the big boulevard" and which has figured so many times in both their lives, dead-ends a few blocks away.
Marilyn is 5 feet 9 inches tall, large-boned and easygoing, while her Maroc-scented, wire-waisted friend stands 5 feet 4 and bristles with the steely self-confidence one acquires from working nearly half a century in fashion merchandising. "I know everyone in the rag business," Royce pronounces in the elongated, gravely accented vowels associated with breeding. "I went to work as a gift counselor and then bridal consultant in 1949 at J.W. Robinson's, which was on Seventh Street and owned by Mrs. Harry Robinson and the Schneiders, Carlos and Walter." When she speaks, her hands often flutter through the air in dramatic gestures. "Mrs. Robinson was exquisite -- a Beverly Hills socialite who would come in with her chauffeur, mink coats and her poodle, Happy."
Marilyn is a former schoolteacher and "executive housekeeper" whose good-time Ohio twang occasionally horns into her conversation -- which she says is a bit embarrassing, as her father was chairman of Wittenberg University's public-speaking department. Their stay at the hotel began some 11 years ago and has lasted far longer than either expected -- or wanted. Marilyn looks on the bright side, pointing out the proximity of Macy's and the exercise she gets from walking to nearby stores and her manicurist. Royce isn't so sanguine. "I'm 16th-generation back East," she is fond of saying. "I only exist here, it's not my territory."
The pair's exile is not just a matter of geography, though, it is one of time -- a time whose fashions and manners have been pulled out from beneath them by a nightmarish undertow called progress. "A man did not get into a restaurant without a suit and a tie," Royce laments of this vanished era, "nor a woman without a cocktail dress."
"Celebrities just don't dress up anymore," concedes the more accepting Marilyn.
MARILYN HOGGATT CAME TO LOS ANGELES IN 1958 AS AN elementary school teacher, having been lured from Colorado by the high salaries California was offering during the post-Sputnik education splurge. She taught fifth grade down in sleepy San Pedro but felt an urban excitement she had never experienced back in Ohio or Colorado. "California held such glamour for me," she says. "I was a professor's daughter who majored in speech and theater arts, but I had also been crazy about movies and was just besotted by the magnificent films of my youth. I wanted to see these places and some of the celebrities I'd read about all my life -- particularly the women, like Lana Turner and Ann Miller."
Life in Los Angeles offered her a close-up of those places and celebrities, along with memberships in the club culture of Palos Verdes, whose art association and swim and country clubs Marilyn gladly joined. It was a time, after all, when a divorcée could, as she did, raise two boys in an ocean-view apartment on a teacher's salary. Even the L.A. Teachers Association breakfasts, held at the Biltmore Bowl, seemed exciting: "I liked it -- I felt like I was a big-city girl!"
Her father's death brought Marilyn back to Ohio in 1962, but when her mother also passed away, seven years later, she returned to teaching in L.A., moving into the Wilshire Towers. "I was one block from the Brown Derby and the Ambassador Hotel -- all you could think of was how they were so famous." The center of her life became the Round Table West literary club's monthly gatherings at the Ambassador's Cocoanut Grove, whose former glory, like an incandescence traveling from some distant, dying star, still dazzled Marilyn. One afternoon she sat at a table while Sammy Davis Jr. rehearsed a show, and got his autograph on a soggy napkin. "This is gonna be a wet one!" Sammy quipped.
In 1971, after two years of teaching on several city campuses, Marilyn called it quits when she saw that L.A.'s schools were becoming more dangerous places. She then made what seems like an off-the-chart career change for an educated woman, though it put her in a position to glimpse show-biz glamour from the inside. She remembers her first interview as a housekeeper for the wealthy. â
"Raquel Welch lived in a house in back of the Beverly Hills Hotel," Marilyn says, "and just had on a little pair of jeans, a T-shirt, with her hair pulled back with a rubber band -- and no makeup. She said she felt uncomfortable with hiring someone older than herself, and so I didn't get the job."
Before long, though, Marilyn was putting her belongings in storage and moving out to cowboy actor Dale Robertson's Chatsworth ranch, where she landed a job working for the Oklahoman and his wife, Lou. "They were both Southern and very lovely," Marilyn recalls. "They had quite a few dinner parties with rich horse people. He became friends with a family who gave him a brand-new, custom-made Cadillac Eldorado. They were a foreign family -- by that, I mean they had foreign blood. So he had this gorgeous new Cadillac that he drove as a personal car, and then of course Mrs. Robertson had a Lincoln."
Life seemed idyllic, on and off the spread. Marilyn remembers the Beverly Hills Halloween party at the Jimmy Durantes' to which she escorted Dale's daughter Rebel, and how Mrs. Durante had to yell because Jimmy was hard of hearing. But the Robertsons' rustic acreage was Marilyn's true world, a home whose nearby neighbors included actor Chad Everett and the Gelsons, who owned the tony markets. "There was the regular ranch house, and then there was another house down by the stables, where they had James, their houseman. Now, when I say 'man,' I mean he was the colored man who had worked for Mr. Robertson for 25 years. He had his own house, took care of the cars and supervised the horses. He was lovely to me -- I was always 'Miss Marilyn.'"
But the Robertsons' marriage eventually hit the rocks, and Marilyn was out of a job. Next came work with singer Helen O'Connell in Brentwood, and afterward a stint with comedian Norm Crosby. Marilyn spent a particularly grand time at the West Hollywood home of R&B composer-arranger Gene Page, who worked with such superstars as Aretha Franklin and Barry White. "They were a black family," Marilyn recalls, "but there was no tension with the Pages, because they had friends of all races over at the house and took me along with them to the Shubert to see Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra." She also remembers Page as a very private man who kept four pianos in the house. "He was touted as a performer, but he didn't like performing, because he didn't want girls clawing at his clothes, tearing them off. Not at all."
IT WAS WHILE AT THE PAGES' THAT MARILYN WROTE A 536-page murder mystery titled The Copper Triangle, set in a private men's club in the mountains of Colorado. As she describes the book: "It's the story of the beautiful hostess Claire Breese. Her club's members are sophisticated singles, couples and out-of-towners who drive in, helicopter in or come by limousine. They have all these wonderful parties, and of course there's a lot of sex, and camaraderie."
Those 536 immaculately typed pages celebrate comfort, luxury and, yes, sex. The setting's Copperwood Estate, whose corporate color scheme is cream and lavender, is a swinging world of cinnamon suede suits, white llama-wool upholstery and royal-blue satin sheets; with each turn of the page one meets characters who are more beautiful, handsome, talented and rich than those already introduced, and everyone gobbles down enormous breakfasts of steak, eggs, potatoes, toast and marmalade. Brand-name perfumes exist side by side with push-button technology and rocket packs. The reader enters a fantasy whose characters, as beautiful, sensuous and wealthy as they are, voyeuristically gaze upon yet another fantasy world -- that of the softcore porn films they view. One of these royal-blue movies' stars may well be a role Marilyn envied: "She was the darling of musical comedy and feted on all continents. She owned one of the magnificent houses in Paris. She had a weekly salon where choice men were invited for dinner at 9, and dallying later. She surrounded herself with other pretty actresses. Her guest list was full of beautiful people." So far, the manuscript, penned over a mere nine-month period, remains unpublished.
Housekeeping, even at celebrity homes, is a tiring line of work, and especially for a woman approaching 60. And so in 1983, after moving to and from 10 employers, and to the motels she stayed at in between, Marilyn quit the business altogether. She set up house on the 19th floor of the Mark Wilshire apartment building, which sported a pool on its roof. "I loved it," she says, "because I'm a swimmer and because that was my idea of glamour! Wilshire Boulevard was just lovely then. My favorite thing to do was go shopping, what else? And going to the elegant places where the celebrities went -- the Beverly Hilton, Beverly Wilshire and Beverly Hills Hotel. Oh, I loved the ritzy places, and belonged to the Century City Health Club. The ritzier the better for me."
(One day, however, she got a glimpse of that starry world's mortality. On a Beverly Hills street, a man caught her attention, not just because the man happened to be black, but because he looked so ill. It was Sammy Davis, who had autographed her napkin years before.)
In the summer of that year, Marilyn met Royce, an encounter she remembers as if it had happened half an hour ago. "I was having lunch at the Tea Room in Bullocks Wilshire when I saw this woman who stood out from everyone else -- I just couldn't take my eyes off her! She looked like Scarlett O'Hara with this magnificent big picture hat on. Then when I went to the ladies' lounge, I found her there, singing an opera aria. So I introduced myself."
"I DIDN'T LIKE IT HERE THAT MUCH -- I'M USED TO GOING out every night of my life," says Royce Reed, the fluttery hands in full motion, as though conducting an invisible orchestra. "I'm used to New York, I'm used to elegant places, elegant food. We had the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, the Luau Room owned by Steve Crane, Scandia. LaRue? We lived in those places day and night. Now we have nothing."
When she speaks of her present living arrangements, her voice tends to roll abruptly from a purr to a rebuking growl. Royce is far less forgiving than Marilyn of the urban decay she sees all around her, as well as the changes in the fashion world she once moved in. She is strictly old-school, for example, on the subject of fur. "They don't torture these animals, they put them to sleep quietly," she insists. "I love animals and I would love to keep them as live pets, but I can't! You don't discuss fur with people who don't understand fur -- you dismiss them or have them taken away."
As a matter of fact, when she met Marilyn in Bullocks Wilshire, Royce had just bought a mink coat for herself and was living at the Chancellor Hotel, near the epicenter of a formerly vibrant Wilshire Boulevard chic. "Dahling," she says, recalling nearby restaurants, "I was one of those who spent fortunes at the Windsor, and at the Cove across the street -- elegant, elegant. If you had to be in Los Angeles, the Windsor and the Cove were the best places, and Perino's -- the original Perino's -- was the only elegant restaurant in Hancock Park. For years I had an apartment next door, in the 3000 block of Wilshire at Norton."
If there is a Los Angeles to Royce's liking, it is the one she arrived in as a 20-year-old from Manhattan with her family in the late 1940s -- a culturally arid landscape that was nevertheless alleviated by oases like Rodeo Drive and the Sunset Strip, civilized greenbelts offering radiant cocktail lounges, nonstop conversation and decent French food.
"She likes beautiful," Marilyn explains.
"I don't understand anything else -- it's living death," Royce says.
"I offered to take Royce's life story down, 'As Told to . . .,'" Marilyn says.
But Royce hasn't taken her friend up on the offer, and for an outsider, interviewing her soon becomes a frustrating search past dropped names and anecdotal windows that briefly open, only to slam shut when she is asked to elaborate about her past. "Why would I want to review it?" she asks rhetorically. "We've had books written about my family -- The Annals of Lancaster County." Royce has considered writing a book herself about her career in the clothing business, but figures no one would buy it, because "you have to write about sex and disgusting things."
"My life history is very elegant," she will allow, "16 generations from Philadelphia and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I have a pedigree, a coat of arms, ye-e-s-s. We go back to Frankfurt, Germany, 400 A.D. My mother was from New Orleans going back to France."
But surrounding these tantalizing specifics are a haze of context and an eagerness to change the subject -- and some frankly bewildering claims. "My father helped build the atom bomb," she'll mention offhandedly, the next moment explaining that he was the chief accountant on the Manhattan Project. Further probing elicits the response that his family "was from Tarrytown on the Hudson, and Manhattan, for about 11 generations. They had an electrical business in New York they owned for 200 years, they had stores, they were billionaires." Eventually there is only this flat admission: "I'm well-established. I've never been in jail, never been arrested. I'm quite reputable. I wasn't born poor."
Royce Reed, ultimately, proves to be an enigma wrapped in a Chanel inside a mink. How is one to evaluate her nonstop recitation of designers, labels and restaurants -- many of which, as she would say, are long gone? Cursory fact checking reveals that her family name, Rosenstein, does appear in Lancaster genealogical histories, but unless one is committed to a research project on a par with the Warren Commission's, an interviewer must take most of her claims at face value. And why not? Even if Royce's "elegant" yet sketchy biography is exaggerated or completely dreamed up, it is breathed to life by a person who passionately believes in it.
"I've been in merchandising 45 years, retailing and wholesale," she says. "I started out training to be an opera star but got sidetracked." That is probably as straightforward a summary of her life as she will grant.
That life, according to Royce, was a gold-spoon existence: Sutton Place, a teenage job at Bonwit Teller, Fifth Avenue and interviews "by all the studios" -- which, she says, did not interest her. When her family moved to Los Angeles, Royce said goodbye to Old World gentility and entered a womanhood of husbands and homes in Beverly Hills and Hancock Park, and a career conducted along an archipelago of Miracle Mile stores: J.J. Haggerty, Bullocks, Brock and Co., Mullen and Bluett, where she was a buyer for women's accessories -- cosmetics, perfume, hosiery, gifts. She recalls an early encounter with her new city, during an interview with the founder of a fashion industry publication: "He was a horrible man who tried to take my clothes off in his office. I was wearing this gorgeous Christian Dior and learned at the age of 19 never to make a 4:45 appointment." Eventually, with the second of her three husbands, Leo Marks, Royce owned an apparel line bearing his name that they sold on the road locally and throughout the South.
And there was that freebooting, cartwheeling nightlife. "I used to have all these fa-a-a-bulous drinking companions," she says. "We drank Bombay gin with cognac chasers -- our driving laws weren't that strict. We went to the Cocoanut Grove when it was elegant -- when Freddy Martin was there and we wore our $10,000 dresses. We had the Chez Voltaire and the Beverly Rodeo, on Rodeo Drive, two blocks north of the Beverly Regent. It was wild but elegant, and known as Hooker's Row. All the men from New York went there, women came and went -- who cared? I was appalled, but Marilyn says I could have made a fortune there!"
ROYCE'S WORLD IMPLODED WHEN HER MOTHER DIED IN Santa Ana in 1983; by then she had parted from her third husband and retired from the rag trade. "I've had elegant friends and husbands, but when she died I was devastated," she says. "I'm an only, fairy-princess child, and we were so close. I would never face the fact that one day she would pass away."
It was shortly after her mother's death that she sang the aria in Bullocks' ladies' lounge that would bring Marilyn to her. This was a fortuitous occasion, for money got tight while Royce was living at the Chancellor, and Marilyn stepped in with an offer to Royce to move in with her at the Mark Wilshire. From then on the two began "palling around," as Marilyn says, spending time at fashion shows, the racetrack and, of course, nightspots.
"We'd only go to the places I was used to," Royce says. "Bel Air, the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, which is now filled with screaming, yelling people."
Marilyn: "We were going to a lot of happy hours . . ."
Royce: "Honey, I'm used to elegance, I'm not used to downtown -- oh my dear."
Marilyn: "We like to go dinner dancing, but you need a male companion for that."
Royce: "There's been no dinner dancing in Beverly Hills or Bel Air -- it's 30 years gone."
Marilyn: "We used to go to L'Escoffier in the Beverly Hilton."
Royce: "Oh, I went there four nights a week for 30 years, it was the only elegant room we had in Beverly Hills! I got a gorgeous South American man a job there as orchestra leader when he was about to commit suicide because he couldn't get work. It's gone now."
Marilyn: "They have put in the Coconut Club on Friday and Saturday nights, where you have to pay $20."
Royce: "Oh, it's a garbage hole, please."
The two women made a flashy, lively pair as they roamed from watering hole to watering hole, often hitting the town on double dates.
"I dated as much as I could," Marilyn says. "I wish I could say I dated someone in particular, but I didn't. I dated some lawyers, a lot of businessmen -- nice men, but no celebrities, no one of note. You'd meet them in, you know, cocktail lounges. But one of the most difficult things about dating, when you're out with a gentleman for the evening, is the fact that he drinks too much."
Royce: "Oh, you're not used to rich, rich men . . ."
Marilyn: "You either don't let them drink or make them take a taxi to the restaurant."
Royce: "People here are too cheap to hire chauffeurs . . ."
Marilyn: "Or, if he insists, you put your life in his hands. I've had a few wild rides. Men don't want to be separated from their cars -- not at all!"
Royce: "Years ago, the police in Beverly Hills would let you go if they knew you. They'd protect you and drive you home."
But life could be scary even on the Sunset Strip, as Marilyn was to learn one night. She and Royce had gone to catch Harold Robbins' wife, Grace, singing at Verita's, a restaurant owned by Humphrey Bogart's former mistress Verita Thompson. (Thompson decorated the bar with the actor's photographs and would one day cause a stir by auctioning off his toupee.) But they got there too early and realized it would be some time before Mrs. Robbins sang. They weren't eating, and Marilyn, feeling dozy, headed for her car, leaving Royce at the bar. Verita's parking lot had been packed, and so Marilyn's Cadillac was on the street. She locked the doors, cracked a window and stretched out on the back seat for a snooze. Soon, however, she awoke to find a stranger looking at her from behind the Caddy's wheel.
"He was black and seemed very nice," Marilyn recalls. "He said, 'Here, why don't you give me the keys and we'll go for a little ride.' I said, 'I don't think so,' but gave him the keys because I was afraid he'd get mad. So he drove me over to the parking garage down under City National Bank, just before Beverly Hills. We sat there for a while. He was smoking something -- probably hashish. He really didn't want me for sex, but to talk and pleasure himself. After that was over, he drove me back and got out. Then I went to Verita's, but Royce was gone, so I went to a common meeting place that we usually arranged before we went out at night, and eventually she came along in a taxi. We were very fortunate. We had some very wild things happen, things that should not have happened, that were not our fault."
IN 1987, MARILYN SOLD HER FURNITURE ("I HAD A BEAUTIFUL U-shaped couch in red velveteen"), and the women put their belongings in storage and decamped from the Mark Wilshire. They had decided to hit the road in Marilyn's 1977 Sedan de Ville -- "We were just doing what we wanted to do," she says of the trip. The idea was to tour the â state, although they never got north of Santa Barbara. The affluent mission town would be the scene of one unintentionally comical visit with friends of Marilyn who lived in ultra-upscale Montecito. The two remember their stay chiefly for their hosts' laser-beam security system, which kept them prisoners in their room at night, and for the absence of a home bar.
Marilyn: "They had a security system that was turned on at night, with those rays . . ."
Royce: "They turned them on at 10 or 11, and then you stayed in your room until 8 in the morning. They were not gracious, they were not charming. You can imagine! I was like a chained tiger. And they wouldn't serve a drink . . ."
Marilyn: "They didn't drink . . ."
Royce: "I've never liked Santa Barbara. I'm used to late-night elegance, sophistication, New York. Elegance."
After that, their road trip was essentially a ricochet drive of the 216 miles between Santa Barbara and San Diego, with stays at the Century Plaza or Bonaventure whenever they were in town. The unceremonious end came when the Caddy's transmission went out in Brentwood. Marilyn spent a lot of money getting it fixed at Lou Ehler's on Wilshire, only to have her cherished sedan broadsided -- twice. When it happened the second time, the guilty party, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, offered Marilyn cash reparations on the spot. She took the money but ditched the car. It was time to settle down.
"AUGUST 2, 1988." MARILYN CAN TELL YOU THE EXACT day she and Royce moved into their present hotel. The two have been there ever since, first sharing a single room, now each with her own, though they are not neighbors. What vexes them most is the fact that downtown holds no social center for them. "There's no place," Marilyn says, "for us -- sophisticated, middle-aged women who need a regular place -- to go." Their prolonged stay has been hardest on Royce, whose tiny room abuts a noisy elevator.
"Los Angeles is the garbage hole of the wo-r-rld," she says, her hands grandly sweeping the air. "I'm used to huge space, I'm used to elegance. I'm used to the Plaza, I don't understand anything else! There's nothing downtown that I'm used to -- it's not my territory -- I'm like the leopard in The Snows of Kilimanjaro."
The hotel had been recommended to them by friends, and at the time the carless women were forced to halt their road trip, downtown had seemed like a reasonable compromise between the unaffordable Wilshire corridor and the colorless suburbs. It has 230 rooms, some of which are advertised at $39 per night, and the adjoining bar boasts a generous happy hour that lasts from 5 to 10 p.m. The lobby's faint cologne of disinfectant never lets one forget that this is downtown, with all its civic homeliness -- and dangers. When the 1992 riots exploded, "I'd go out in front of the building and could see them shooting out the windows of the Lady Footlocker," Marilyn remembers. "I didn't leave the hotel for weeks. My cousin called from Seattle and asked, 'What's going on down there?'"
Marilyn's own small room looks out upon a storage building, although a little neck craning rewards her with a partial view of a parking lot as well. Much of the room's precious space is taken up by a pile of large hats, some stuffed animals and a tottering butte of shoeboxes containing Royce's footwear. A framed poster of Marilyn Monroe in a white mink coat hangs on one wall, and a Princess Diana commemorative plate and framed photographs of Elizabeth Taylor and a Siamese cat are placed on tables.
An avid collector, Marilyn meticulously maintains a scrapbook that includes thank-you letters from novelist Barbara Cartland, the office of painter LeRoy Neiman and from Liz Taylor, to whom she once sent a get-well letter. Other pages are an eclectic archive of neatly clipped items from the newspapers or tabloids about fashion, the O.J. Simpson case and buildings she admires, along with a sketch of Howard Hughes. "This is my life," she says of her scrapbook, the 75th volume she has gathered.
Although the ladies spend much of their time together, their routines often diverge. "I have a tendency to read late and get up late," Marilyn confesses. "I also go to the library often."
Royce: "I have the original library card!"
Marilyn: "I frequently get the L.A. Times."
Royce: "Oh, God, I don't read the L.A. Times -- I read The New York Times, the London Times, Paris Match."
Marilyn: "I subscribe to Town & Country and Architectural Digest -- that's my favorite. And I take two tabloids, the Enquirer and the Star. It's all gossip and I love it! I've taken Playboy for the last 25 years. I admire beautiful people and beautiful bodies. She gets disgusted with me because I take these publications!" Marilyn still maintains a membership in her beloved Round Table West literary club, and is also an ardent follower of the TV soaps and belongs to The Young and the Restless' official fan club, which holds gatherings at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
In contrast to Marilyn, Royce, who abhors television and prefers listening to classical music, is an early riser who frequently leaves the hotel to visit the Calmart building and other old haunts in the garment district. Despite the dodginess of downtown, Royce fears no one.
"I'm very careful," she says. "I'm very alert, I move very quickly. I would murder someone, I'm very strong."
"She wears her rings loaded!" Marilyn laughs. "Royce doesn't take them off, even when she goes out -- she says, 'I am who I am, and I'm going to be myself in every situation.'"
ON ONE COOL, WINDY AFTERNOON, MARILYN AND Royce leave their hotel to have lunch at Windows, a restaurant with panoramic views from the 32nd floor of the Transamerica Building. Gawkers in the tower's atrium and elevators stop and stare at the elegantly attired women in their enormous hats. Lunch begins on an ill omen as Royce's club sandwich arrives avec crusts. But before she can raise the matter with her waiter, she notices that her silverware has been placed on a paper serviette. "Oh, my God!" she says. "These paper napkins are unacceptable." Not only that, but all the restaurant's tables have been covered with paper instead of linen cloths for lunch time. "Paper here, oh! It's totally gross."
As the waiter searches for a cloth napkin, Marilyn and Royce reminisce about their occasional visits to the Santa Anita racetrack, where they are wont to spend an afternoon in the private Turf Club. "The first day I went to Santa Anita, I won the derby!" Marilyn confides.
Money for women on Social Security is understandably tight, and income from any source is welcome. Royce and Marilyn once worked as audience shills for an auctioneering firm, but haven't been on call since a new floor manager brought in her own crew of out-of-work actors. The only new money on the horizon is a possible settlement from the city and a private contractor for a fall Marilyn took near a construction site outside their hotel. As compensation for an injured ankle and arm, she hopes to receive a sum large enough to move away from downtown.
"I'd probably look at places in Beverly Hills that are quiet," she says. "Since Royce has no family, she'll be with me."
Royce: "I don't think so. I'm used to living in my own place."
Marilyn: "Well, maybe not."
Possibly thinking of a new source of revenue, Marilyn is considering trying to market her novel, The Copper Triangle, a work she looks upon as her lasting legacy. Again, one cannot help but discern a bit of the author in the central character, Claire Breese, the sensual, mothering guardian of the story's luxurious mountain club -- a woman who, by the way, shares Marilyn's middle and maiden names. "Oh, Claire," one character tells her, "you lead such a beautiful, exciting life surrounded by handsome men who adore you. Aren't you one of the lucky ones though." Perhaps the novelist has, in her own way, found the story's "wonderful parties and camaraderie" in the company of her glamorous friend, Royce, in whose shadow she has kept warm for 16 years and whom she regards as a celebrity in her own right.
"Royce is one of the most fascinating people in the world," Marilyn says. "I've met a lot of wonderful people through her, and she's at the top of that list. She's been very loyal, entertaining and generous -- she's given me a lot of clothes and jewelry." As evidence, she wears a luxurious blond fox-fur wrap and matching hat given to her by Royce, who calls Marilyn "a marvelous woman and wonderful friend."
As the two women finish their lunch, a hawk suddenly wheels 20 feet beyond a window of the restaurant, a sinister yet beautiful creature whose dusky feathers reflect none of the California sun. There is something hypnotic about the bird of prey, something about its unrepentant darkness that reaches back into primal memory, to a time before elegance and glamour were dreamt into existence.
"That's gorgeous," Royce says. "I want him, I'll feed him. Birds take to me, I love him, I want to adopt -- oh, this terrible paper tablecloth!"
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Monday, April 27, 2009
You Know Nothing!
This was an endless source of entertainment for us during our recent Keys vacation!
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Signs of Recovery?
This article in Business Week the other day makes me happy. In my opinion once people start seeing things like this, we will start to see a turnaround. This is all emotional, and companies will begin to spend again, but no one wants to be the first to start...
Last year the Cape Coral area of Florida had the highest foreclosure rate in the country. Banks moved to seize more than 1 in 10 residential properties in the Gulf Coast community of 165,000. The reverberations are still being felt. Newly built McMansions sit vacant, dusty monuments to the great real estate boom. Smaller homes have been ransacked. Apartment buildings have been boarded up. Former owners are stripping whatever items they can from their homes before the locks get changed, says Kirsten Prizzi, a local real estate agent at AC Global Realty. "Knobs, appliances. Someone was selling windows."
But a curious thing is happening in this blighted former boomtown: Buyers are swooping in. First-time home-owners are suddenly entering bidding wars with real estate speculators from as far away as Spain and Germany. Sales in February outpaced those at the peak of the boom, with some houses getting more than 50 offers and selling above their asking price. "I look for markets that are downtrodden," says Rich Lehrer, a retiree and self-proclaimed "emerging-market investor" from Wilmington, N.C., who wants to buy several properties in the area. "I'm expecting to get better yields than I would get on my cash."
Cape Coral isn't the only bright spot in housing land. Some of the very regions that led the U.S. housing market into the abyss are beginning to show signs of life. Sales on the Gulf Coast of Florida, California's Inland Empire near Los Angeles, and the Las Vegas metropolitan area surged by more than 80% in February vs. the same month last year.
So what's going on? In all of these markets, banks are dumping foreclosed properties, attracting cash-rich speculators looking for cut-rate bargains. "Why wait [for a bottom] if it's the right deal?" says Brent McAlee, a 31-year-old Las Vegas resident who recently paid $140,000 for a three-bedroom home that fetched around $350,000 a few years ago. He hopes to rent it out for $1,300 a month.
What's more, first-time buyers are finally rushing in, lured not only by plunging prices but also government incentives like ultralow interest rates and hefty tax breaks. Such sweeteners are just too tasty for some to pass up, at least in markets that have already plunged by 50% or more.
Frenetic buying in a few depressed areas doesn't mean the national bust is over—far from it. But it does herald the start of a new phase in the boom-and-bust recovery cycle. Economists might call it equilibrium: Prices have fallen so much in some areas that shoppers are getting interested again, improving the balance between buyers and sellers. That doesn't mean prices will surge anytime soon. But heavy buying should at least begin to put a floor under prices. "Are we at the bottom?" asks Christopher Thornberg, an economist with Beacon Economics. "We are getting close."
If Thornberg is right, one might expect other markets to begin the bottoming out process in the coming months. Just as California, Florida, and Las Vegas led the nation into the housing bust, those areas could provide the template for a national recovery. "One of the big problems we have across the nation is a lack of confidence," says Adam York, an economist with Wachovia (WFC) in Charlotte, N.C. "As these former bubble markets bounce off the bottom in terms of sales, it could give some hope to [other markets] that the declines are going to end."
Plenty of caveats are in order, because there are peculiar bear-market factors at work. The fact that inventories are falling precipitously in California—to just 6.5 months' supply from 15.3 months a year earlier—would seem to augur well. Historically, "prices respond very dramatically to inventory," says William C. Wheaton, director of research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Real Estate.
But inventories are falling fastest in markets where speculators and first-time buyers are driving the action. Those parties don't have to put their own homes on the market to make a deal.
Continue Reading on BusinessWeek.com
Last year the Cape Coral area of Florida had the highest foreclosure rate in the country. Banks moved to seize more than 1 in 10 residential properties in the Gulf Coast community of 165,000. The reverberations are still being felt. Newly built McMansions sit vacant, dusty monuments to the great real estate boom. Smaller homes have been ransacked. Apartment buildings have been boarded up. Former owners are stripping whatever items they can from their homes before the locks get changed, says Kirsten Prizzi, a local real estate agent at AC Global Realty. "Knobs, appliances. Someone was selling windows."
But a curious thing is happening in this blighted former boomtown: Buyers are swooping in. First-time home-owners are suddenly entering bidding wars with real estate speculators from as far away as Spain and Germany. Sales in February outpaced those at the peak of the boom, with some houses getting more than 50 offers and selling above their asking price. "I look for markets that are downtrodden," says Rich Lehrer, a retiree and self-proclaimed "emerging-market investor" from Wilmington, N.C., who wants to buy several properties in the area. "I'm expecting to get better yields than I would get on my cash."
Cape Coral isn't the only bright spot in housing land. Some of the very regions that led the U.S. housing market into the abyss are beginning to show signs of life. Sales on the Gulf Coast of Florida, California's Inland Empire near Los Angeles, and the Las Vegas metropolitan area surged by more than 80% in February vs. the same month last year.
So what's going on? In all of these markets, banks are dumping foreclosed properties, attracting cash-rich speculators looking for cut-rate bargains. "Why wait [for a bottom] if it's the right deal?" says Brent McAlee, a 31-year-old Las Vegas resident who recently paid $140,000 for a three-bedroom home that fetched around $350,000 a few years ago. He hopes to rent it out for $1,300 a month.
What's more, first-time buyers are finally rushing in, lured not only by plunging prices but also government incentives like ultralow interest rates and hefty tax breaks. Such sweeteners are just too tasty for some to pass up, at least in markets that have already plunged by 50% or more.
Frenetic buying in a few depressed areas doesn't mean the national bust is over—far from it. But it does herald the start of a new phase in the boom-and-bust recovery cycle. Economists might call it equilibrium: Prices have fallen so much in some areas that shoppers are getting interested again, improving the balance between buyers and sellers. That doesn't mean prices will surge anytime soon. But heavy buying should at least begin to put a floor under prices. "Are we at the bottom?" asks Christopher Thornberg, an economist with Beacon Economics. "We are getting close."
If Thornberg is right, one might expect other markets to begin the bottoming out process in the coming months. Just as California, Florida, and Las Vegas led the nation into the housing bust, those areas could provide the template for a national recovery. "One of the big problems we have across the nation is a lack of confidence," says Adam York, an economist with Wachovia (WFC) in Charlotte, N.C. "As these former bubble markets bounce off the bottom in terms of sales, it could give some hope to [other markets] that the declines are going to end."
Plenty of caveats are in order, because there are peculiar bear-market factors at work. The fact that inventories are falling precipitously in California—to just 6.5 months' supply from 15.3 months a year earlier—would seem to augur well. Historically, "prices respond very dramatically to inventory," says William C. Wheaton, director of research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Real Estate.
But inventories are falling fastest in markets where speculators and first-time buyers are driving the action. Those parties don't have to put their own homes on the market to make a deal.
Continue Reading on BusinessWeek.com
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Breedlove poses for Unzipped Magazine
From The Advocate. I love that his last name is Breedlove (and he has it tattooed to his torso)
Beau Breedlove, the former lover of gay Portland, Ore., mayor Sam Adams, has accepted Unzipped magazine's offer to be featured on the magazine's May cover and traveled to Los Angeles this weekend for a nude photo shoot, editors announced on Tuesday.
Breedlove's name was thrust into the spotlight in January, when Adams admitted to having an affair with the former state legislature intern. The affair allegedly took place in 2005, when Adams was a Portland city commissioner and Breedlove was just 18 years old.
Adams had previously maintained their relationship was strictly platonic.
Unzipped's website, Unzipped.net, quickly became the go-to destination for all things Breedlove when editors posted a photo gallery of pictures from Breedlove’s now deleted MySpace page. When interest in the photos took off, the magazine extended an offer for Breedlove to appear on the cover. Breedlove agreed to the offer for an undisclosed amount of money.
"Beau Breedlove was extremely professional at his first erotic photo shoot in Los Angeles this past weekend," Unzipped online editor Sean Carnage told Advocate.com. "He came to L.A. to prove that the Portland scandal does not define his sexuality. The photos portray the real Beau -- a confident and extremely handsome young man who is openly sensual, openly sexual, and has nothing to hide."
The May issue of Unzipped will be on newsstands in mid April [it is available now, my copy just came yesterday]. For photos from Breedlove’s trip to Los Angeles, visit Unzipped.net. <----- [NSFW] (Advocate.com)
Beau Breedlove, the former lover of gay Portland, Ore., mayor Sam Adams, has accepted Unzipped magazine's offer to be featured on the magazine's May cover and traveled to Los Angeles this weekend for a nude photo shoot, editors announced on Tuesday.
Breedlove's name was thrust into the spotlight in January, when Adams admitted to having an affair with the former state legislature intern. The affair allegedly took place in 2005, when Adams was a Portland city commissioner and Breedlove was just 18 years old.
Adams had previously maintained their relationship was strictly platonic.
Unzipped's website, Unzipped.net, quickly became the go-to destination for all things Breedlove when editors posted a photo gallery of pictures from Breedlove’s now deleted MySpace page. When interest in the photos took off, the magazine extended an offer for Breedlove to appear on the cover. Breedlove agreed to the offer for an undisclosed amount of money.
"Beau Breedlove was extremely professional at his first erotic photo shoot in Los Angeles this past weekend," Unzipped online editor Sean Carnage told Advocate.com. "He came to L.A. to prove that the Portland scandal does not define his sexuality. The photos portray the real Beau -- a confident and extremely handsome young man who is openly sensual, openly sexual, and has nothing to hide."
The May issue of Unzipped will be on newsstands in mid April [it is available now, my copy just came yesterday]. For photos from Breedlove’s trip to Los Angeles, visit Unzipped.net. <----- [NSFW] (Advocate.com)
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Rock Band
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Sears Merchandise Pickup
I am sorry that I haven't posted in a while. I have been so busy these days. We are in the process of redoing our bedroom and things have gotten crazy.
We bought a metal bed frame from Sears (you know, the old school ones that the box spring sits on). They didn't have it in stock and told us to come back on Wednesday and pick it up. No problem.
When we arrived at the Sears Merchandise Pickup location they have you scan your receipt and a television monitor times how long it takes them to find your item and bring it to you. Pretty cool. They have a guarantee that if your item isn't delivered within 5 minutes of your arrival, they will give you a $5 coupon good towards a future purchase. Well, we watched the timer (more for something to do while we waited, we really didn't care if it took longer than 5 minutes) as we waited and when it got to 3 minutes it stopped and said that our item had been delivered. But it hadn't. Wait a minute. What's up with that?
It turns out that the employees are measured on their turnaround time. So, our guy stopped the timer to keep his metrics in line, and it took him about 7 minutes to get our stuff to us. Again, not a big deal, but, wow, that totally makes Sears "guarantee" seem flimsy. We didn't say anything to him about the whole thing, but we didn't get a coupon, either.
We bought a metal bed frame from Sears (you know, the old school ones that the box spring sits on). They didn't have it in stock and told us to come back on Wednesday and pick it up. No problem.
When we arrived at the Sears Merchandise Pickup location they have you scan your receipt and a television monitor times how long it takes them to find your item and bring it to you. Pretty cool. They have a guarantee that if your item isn't delivered within 5 minutes of your arrival, they will give you a $5 coupon good towards a future purchase. Well, we watched the timer (more for something to do while we waited, we really didn't care if it took longer than 5 minutes) as we waited and when it got to 3 minutes it stopped and said that our item had been delivered. But it hadn't. Wait a minute. What's up with that?
It turns out that the employees are measured on their turnaround time. So, our guy stopped the timer to keep his metrics in line, and it took him about 7 minutes to get our stuff to us. Again, not a big deal, but, wow, that totally makes Sears "guarantee" seem flimsy. We didn't say anything to him about the whole thing, but we didn't get a coupon, either.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Arroz con Gandules
If you're looking for a yummy and cheap meal that makes enough for leftovers, consider Arroz con Gandules (rice and pigeon peas). The traditional way to make it is without meat, but add some ham or sausage or linguicia or kielbasa or whatever and you have a fabulous, easy-to-cook, meal for a small or large crowd. Woot!
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup sofrito
1/2 cup chopped ham (or cooked pork pieces)
2 cups rice
4 cups water
1 packet sazón
1 15-ounce can Pigeon Peas/Gandules (drained and rinsed)
Preparation:
1. Heat olive oil in a 6-quart pot. Saute the sofrito and chopped ham for 1 minute.
2. Add the rice, water, sazón and gandules.
3. Bring to a boil. Let boil for 2 to 3 minutes.
4. Cover, reduce heat to medium low, and cook for 35 to 40 minutes.
Tip: Do not use a lid with a vent that allows the steam to escape. Never lift the lid while cooking.
5. When finished cooking, stir the rice before serving. It should be light and fluffy.
2. Add the rice, water, sazón and gandules.
3. Bring to a boil. Let boil for 2 to 3 minutes.
4. Cover, reduce heat to medium low, and cook for 35 to 40 minutes.
Tip: Do not use a lid with a vent that allows the steam to escape. Never lift the lid while cooking.
5. When finished cooking, stir the rice before serving. It should be light and fluffy.
Servings: 4 to 6 people.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Big rise in vasectomies
I read an article recently about how in these tough economic times more and more men are choosing to have vasectomies. In the article they discuss how men are concerned about having children after they have lost their jobs. I can't blame them.
This led me to research the specifics of a vasectomy. Ouch. Ice packs and no work for four days. That's a big deal for a procedure that takes fifteen minutes! Wowzers.
This led me to research the specifics of a vasectomy. Ouch. Ice packs and no work for four days. That's a big deal for a procedure that takes fifteen minutes! Wowzers.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Ru Paul's Drag Race
Steven and I watched Ru Paul's Drag race the other day on LogoTV. At first I thought it was a complete train wreck, but then I began to like it. It is a silly show and definitely not something that is going to teach you much, but it is interesting and the queens are cute. They are more sincere than I thought they would be (or perhaps they are really good actors), and I found myself rooting for the one I liked most (I'm not telling, as I haven't seen the finale yet).
So, if you're bored and subscribe to LogoTV (we don't, we were at a bar), check out Ru Paul's Drag Race. It's cute and funny and sassy.
Recycling Day
Tuesday nights our neighborhood puts out its recycling bins. It is interesting to walk Millie on recycling nights for two reasons: first, she wants to stick her snout in everyones bins, and second, what an interesting bunch of people in our neighborhood.
You can tell who are big drinkers, who doesn't drink at all, who reads a million magazines, who has cats. It's all very fascinating to me. Plus, it makes me feel not as bad to compare our bins to everyone else. When we have a party, though, our neighbors must wonder what happened to cause 4 million beer and vodka containers to fill up our bins!
Keep on recycling America!
You can tell who are big drinkers, who doesn't drink at all, who reads a million magazines, who has cats. It's all very fascinating to me. Plus, it makes me feel not as bad to compare our bins to everyone else. When we have a party, though, our neighbors must wonder what happened to cause 4 million beer and vodka containers to fill up our bins!
Keep on recycling America!
Friday, March 20, 2009
The Poop Fan
We have this thing at the end of our street. I'm not exactly sure what it's purpose is, but I think it has something to do with the sewer system. It is on the corner of our street and I frequently walk by it while out walking Millie. What is interesting about this contraption is that it has a fan in it and it blows out a lot of air. Air that smells like poop. It is the strangest thing. There is a house on the corner and they must hate having this poop smell fan in their yard. Sometimes the smell is worse than others and I think the thing is problematic because too often there are city trucks parked around it. In fact, the other night when we had 7 inches of rain there was a generator connected to the poop fan to keep it going.
I heard a rumor that one time the poop fan exploded and there was a river of waste flowing down our street. I hope that is just an urban myth. I need to take a picture of it and post it on here. It's a strange one, that poop fan.
I heard a rumor that one time the poop fan exploded and there was a river of waste flowing down our street. I hope that is just an urban myth. I need to take a picture of it and post it on here. It's a strange one, that poop fan.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
I Eat Cannibals
Does anyone remember this song? I think it is from 1982. I just heard it on the radio and immediately had to look it up. What an interesting song. The band is Total Coelo.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Monday, March 09, 2009
This toilet flushes everything!
I can't remember the last time I poo'ed some chess pieces, but I can sleep easy at night knowing that this toilet will flush 3 and a half pounds of dry dog food.
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Saturday, March 07, 2009
Jamabalaya - a video of sorts
Search my site for the exact measurments. Don't forget the jalapeno muffins!
Friday, March 06, 2009
Thursday, March 05, 2009
99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet
I have seen some, others not YET! Oh, Charlie the Unicorn. I am so happy you are on this list. You are certainly in my top 5.
Greg Rutter's Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You're a Loser or Old or Something
(In No Particular Order)
http://www.youshouldhaveseenthis.com/
Greg Rutter's Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You're a Loser or Old or Something
(In No Particular Order)
http://www.youshouldhaveseenthis.com/
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Cool sign holding guy
I am pretty sure I have seen this guy on the corner of Route 1 in Boca Raton. The only bad part is you have no idea what the sign he is holding is for. I guess it doesn't matter.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Key West!
We had so much fun this weekend in Key West. All the same great places are still there and it was fun to show my mother and stepfather around the island. The only issue we had was our dinner on Saturday night.
The guy at our guest house made us reservations at a nearby restaurant. None of us had been, and our original choice for dinner that night was full and couldn't take us until very late. No problem, Key West is pretty laid back and so our we, so we headed over to the new place to have dinner. We arrived a few minutes early and noticed that the sidewalk outside was jammed with people who were also waiting to be seated. Uh oh. The hostess told us it wouldn't be long before we had a table (we had a reservation, after all). So we waited. And waited. And finally had a glass of wine outside while we wait some more. Finally, after almost 45 minutes of waiting we gave up and went to the restaurant we had eaten at the night before.
Azure, located on the corner of Fleming and Grinnell, is simply wonderful. The first night we had a 7 o'clock reservation and I was a little worried when we arrived because the place was empty. They sat us outside on their lovely terrace and we perused the wine menu. Not long after, the place filled up and was packed by the time we left. We all had delicious meals, including steak, sea bass, grouper, and I had a seafood medley. The wine was wonderful, the food scrumptious and the service was very good. I would definitely recommend it if you are travelling in the Key West area. The average entree price is around $25.
The second night we ate there (!!!) we sat inside (they were again full) and had pretty much the same meals, except that I had gnocchi and we tried a different wine. We even had dessert this time, and port wine (which always gives me a headache, will I ever learn?). My mother heard that the chef at Morton's in Chicago was the chef at Azure. Cool!
The ambiance is great, so go check out Azure! Oh, and it is not far from Duval Street, so you can get your drink and party on before and after dining here!
The guy at our guest house made us reservations at a nearby restaurant. None of us had been, and our original choice for dinner that night was full and couldn't take us until very late. No problem, Key West is pretty laid back and so our we, so we headed over to the new place to have dinner. We arrived a few minutes early and noticed that the sidewalk outside was jammed with people who were also waiting to be seated. Uh oh. The hostess told us it wouldn't be long before we had a table (we had a reservation, after all). So we waited. And waited. And finally had a glass of wine outside while we wait some more. Finally, after almost 45 minutes of waiting we gave up and went to the restaurant we had eaten at the night before.
Azure, located on the corner of Fleming and Grinnell, is simply wonderful. The first night we had a 7 o'clock reservation and I was a little worried when we arrived because the place was empty. They sat us outside on their lovely terrace and we perused the wine menu. Not long after, the place filled up and was packed by the time we left. We all had delicious meals, including steak, sea bass, grouper, and I had a seafood medley. The wine was wonderful, the food scrumptious and the service was very good. I would definitely recommend it if you are travelling in the Key West area. The average entree price is around $25.
The second night we ate there (!!!) we sat inside (they were again full) and had pretty much the same meals, except that I had gnocchi and we tried a different wine. We even had dessert this time, and port wine (which always gives me a headache, will I ever learn?). My mother heard that the chef at Morton's in Chicago was the chef at Azure. Cool!
The ambiance is great, so go check out Azure! Oh, and it is not far from Duval Street, so you can get your drink and party on before and after dining here!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
possibly the best nights sleep EVER
Last night I had the second of two sleep studies performed on me. This time they came armed with a CPAP machine. Based on the results of my last sleep study it was pretty apparent that I suffer from mild sleep apnea. Sleep apnea occurs when your airway relaxes and partially collapses during your sleep. The body forces the sufferer to wake up to begin breathing again. The awaking is subtle and not usually remembered by the person, but it can happen many times during the night, thus disrupting a sound nights sleep. That is what was happening to me (not to mention waking up the entire neighborhood with my snoring).After the technicians got me hooked up to all the wires and gizmos they fitted me with the CPAP mask. I wasn't nervous, per se, but I was concerned about my ability to sleep with a scuba mask on my face. Not to worry, though. I slept. Boy, did I sleep! I slept my brains out until 5 AM when they called and told me the test was over. They could remotely control the CPAP machine and turned it off at this point. I was a little sad because I had quickly got used to the contraption and it seemed harder to breath in bed without it. When they first put it on me the sensation was weird, because although I could breathe, it felt like the air was being forced down my throat. Which is the whole point of the thing. But after a few minutes I was used to it and off to la-la land.
I felt so rested and amazing this morning. I haven't yawned at all today. I can't wait to get one of these machines. Unfortunately I have to see my doctor to get a prescription for one. I can't wait!
P.S. That is not me in the picture. I would never have those sheets.
Monday, February 23, 2009
I heart my friends
I dropped of my niece, Kelly, and my good good friend, Kerry at the airport this morning. It was so great having them here. Our friend Cherry was here last week, as well. We loved having them here. We will miss them. It was great having activity in our house, as it is usually just us. Wow, I sounded just like an old lady just then, didn't I?
Seriously, though, it was a lot of fun. The past few years I have finally started feeling like an adult, which has its good points, but makes me sad that my "childhood" is over. Mortgages, responsibilities, all that heavy stuff has taken over our lives, as it does for everyone as they grow up, but I miss just being a carefree kid sometimes. I mean, it is nice to have some money to do things (which I didn't as a kid), but all the responsibility that goes along with it ca be a drag.
How did I get off on this tangent? Must be because it is Monday and things are "blah". I am looking forward to Key West this weekend. Yahoo! Just a few more days...
Seriously, though, it was a lot of fun. The past few years I have finally started feeling like an adult, which has its good points, but makes me sad that my "childhood" is over. Mortgages, responsibilities, all that heavy stuff has taken over our lives, as it does for everyone as they grow up, but I miss just being a carefree kid sometimes. I mean, it is nice to have some money to do things (which I didn't as a kid), but all the responsibility that goes along with it ca be a drag.
How did I get off on this tangent? Must be because it is Monday and things are "blah". I am looking forward to Key West this weekend. Yahoo! Just a few more days...
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