Pretty Dapper

WHOOSH. What was that?! Oh, that was summer is zooming past-- it's almost fall. Then again, I feel my life is kind of a meandering vacation and summer felt like it started in March, so there's not much to complain of. Plus, autumn is my favorite time of year, so as much as I'd like to run around in shorts and sandals outside in beautiful weather..... oh, yeah, I live in LA, so I get to do that year round anyway. In fact, I am going to be questing for chilly weather soon. While this summer's been rather cooler than expected, September might be hot. Fortunately, adventure always takes me far afield and I'm planning to sail to Catalina, head out to Joshua Tree some more, make a run up to Tahoe, and many more...

I have tried to update this page in the past couple weeks, but due to some mysterious glitch in the cosmos it wasn't working. Thankfully, it seems to be in accord with my desires now. So, I give you a couple images of my summer so far:

Shoes are Best Friends, too. Big Sur, CA.

Apple Pie Fourth of July party, atop a mountain (sea on the horizon). Big Sur.

Levitating at Andrew Molera State Park, land of squirrels.

Falling back into the Big Sur River, Andrew Molera State Park.

Lars Muhl & Family with Al Jardine of the Beach Boys for a magical afternoon at the Henry Miller Library.

Trying to hold the sun in Summerland, CA.

Communing with the sea. Summerland, CA.

View from the deck, in the harbor. Marina Del Rey, CA.

From July 1, 2013:

I went to a party the other night, that, as I stood in the living room by the grand piano listening to the impromptu cabaret performance that had organically manifested from the eccentrics present, reminded me of something. While the pianist rocked back and forth with hands like jumping beans, and the singer crooned with the facial expressions of a silent film actor, it occurred to me what: The Great Gatsby. It was an enormous rambling house, with a yard that was more a patchwork of yards from Sunset magazine all stringed together to surround one house. The property was alone, socked into a pocket of the Hollywood Hills, just a bit above a canyon but hidden away at the base of a half-circle of cliffs five hundred feet straight up. There were two houses on the edge of those cliffs, looming over the property like coyotes on the edge of a wall watching a rabbit trapped beneath. It was surreal, secluded, and full of the type of people that either should have been at Woodstock or probably were extras on Entourage. The theme of the party was “Gods and Goddesses.” Not everyone brought a costume, but they did bring theme-appropriate levels of excess and ego. The hostess was a gorgeous woman, young, but perhaps ageless, with an accent that was impossible to place and a source of income that was even more mysterious.

As the party progressed, ugly Italian models talking to old Italian producers, people high from who knows how many things jumping into the pool in their underwear from the high diving board, the mean little dog barking for someone, anyone, to pay attention to her, people listening to records and smoking weed in ornate wood-paneled basement, rock musicians on the patio making fun of Valley Girls in the kitchen, a guy who’d just directed a Madonna video flirting with a woman covered in blue paint, men in suits and leather jackets, and women in saris and nylon miniskirts, my friends and I went to find another of our friends, wherever he might be.

We wandered the tiers of the winding grounds, and multiple levels of the labyrinthine house. It was like a living advent calendar, every direction you looked and every room you entered was like a tableau of any of myriad separate parties, but it was all one living, breathing tumult. Finally we found the dining room. At the far end of the long table, strewn as it was with bunches of firm green grapes like the glorious refuse of some forgotten Bacchanalia, sat our friend. He was quietly watching the hubbub of party-goers filtering from the kitchen behind him into the rest of the house, the dark patio opening from a wall of glass to his right.

He was not the only man sitting quietly at the table. Closer to us as we entered, sitting to the side of the table at the end by the entryway, snug against the wall, was a man so still to look at him was chilling. He was slumped sitting back, his legs splayed straight out in front of him at a angle down from the chair. His hair was wild, dark as ebony, curly and thick like a maelstrom. He had a beard, not long, but very full. He looked like a pirate captain, a wild man. He was clothed in a suit of gold brocade, head to toe. His shoes were made of the same fabric. It looked like a uniform for a rock star or a Rococo demon. He looked unreal.

As he sat there he clutched a giant bottle of Jack Daniels. It was one of those massive bottles they seem to only sell at Costco. It was half empty, in every way. He held it like a life preserver, clutching it as though to loosen his grip would mean certain forfeiture to the waiting hordes hoping to snatch it from him.

The man was so still that to look upon him was to enter the eye of a storm, as he sat there in the midst of the buoyant melee all around. The stillness did not come merely from his lack of movement, which was absolute, but from his eyes. He was staring straight ahead. It might have been five minutes since he last blinked, or five centuries, the effect was the same. He had a look in his eyes like he’d just remembered his heart was broken, and was thinking about that. It was something beyond misery or contemplation, he was gone to a different place. It didn’t look like a happy place, but it did look like a place beyond judgment and emotion, where things simply were, and if they were bad, one must objectively accept and analyze the pain. It was just there, and he was looking at it so deeply that he had left his earthly shell behind for a time, clutching the whiskey so that it would still be there when he came back.

...

It is nearly summer. I already made a playlist and brought out my extensive collection of shorts; so it is having a bit of a soft opening, but the official shebang is nearly upon us.

Irrelevantly, here are some more pictures of stuff I've done around places and things.

Natural History Museum, First Fridays.

What I am calling "conceptual art" on my favorite beach in Summerland.

Royal Hawaiian, Waikiki.

A Hawaiian local.

The strongest margarita I have ever had, in Silverlake.

El Conquistador, Silverlake.

Franz Ferdinand at Pappy & Harriet's. Nothing goes so well together as British rock and Western saloons.

The Gloaming Hour (time, not a band) at Desert Daze in Mecca (CA).

Sorry, mom, your little girl is dancing on tables. At 11AM. Beside the Salton Sea.

My computer and I are having some communication problems. I don't know who started it, but I can say we might need counseling. Maybe. I don't know if our current insurance covers that.

However, as I peruse my files and protect my data (you just never know when technology will pull the "it's over" card), I realize there are things I'd like to commemorate.

This is one of those things.

I have had the pleasure of meeting and knowing a lot of people with fantastic stories-- most people have interesting stories, but some really knock your socks off. When I met the woman pictured above I think my socks landed on the other side of the country.

Her name is Sethma and she's got to be around 98 years old right now, if she's still alive. This image is from January 22, 2011. I am center (hopefully you picked up on that), with Sethma on one side and my best friend on the other. It's a long story how we ended up on that sofa, but through friends of friends (through my friend Ian there, in fact) it was determined that I must meet Sethma. And quick (at that age you never know, even more than you never know anyway).

Sethma had been a dancer and performer in her youth. Eventually, she married well-- very well (her house was on the sand by the sea, nestled between John McCain's house and Kevin Costner's, if you really need to know). But that's not really what interests me. Her joie de vivre, and the opportunities it had manifested for her, especially in her youth, were of the utmost fascination to me.

A family friend of Sethma's wrote down her story, because it is one of those stories that needs to be written down. It was published in a small batch by some local publisher. Sethma promised to send me a signed copy-- it still hasn't arrived, but as her memory came and went lots of things fell through the cracks. That said, in flashes of luminous articulation, she shared some truly amazing stories.

I was writing a paper at the time on Josephine Baker, a famous dancer and performer in the interwar period in France (look her up, she's great). Josephine Baker, from the dust-ridden tomes and online newspaper archives I shuffled through for hours and hours, seemed as far away as we generally think Lincoln or Thoreau would be. However, on a whim, I mentioned Ms. Baker to Sethma-- they had both danced in Europe during the same period in the early 1930's. Sethma's face lit up-- "Josephine Baker! Of course, yes, I danced on the same bill with her. She was the headliner."

The world is small, I know, but it is always smaller than I think no matter how far down I shrink it. I was elated, as a historian and otherwise. Sethma also spoke to us of a covert operation she and her dancing partner had been offered to take part in-- a plot to assassinate Hitler, if I remember correctly. That (obviously) did not transpire, but Sethma did dance for Benito Mussolini and (as I learned from her book) King Farouk of Egypt.

She also had a romance with Howard Hughes, which led to a series of stories I especially enjoyed. "He was an odd one," she told us. I nodded knowingly, as I had seen The Aviator and knew all about this (of course). Actually, I was reading Harold Robbins' The Carpetbaggers at the time, which was vaguely based on Howard Hughes. I was an expert.

"We were close, friends. He would come over, to dinner, with my family," Sethma explained. "He loved my mother's chicken casserole. She would make it just for him."

Sethma's memory came and went. "Whatever happened to him?" she asked, turning to me. This felt a bit like a senile Ronald Reagan asking me how the Cold War panned out, but I smiled. "I think he ended up in Vegas and passed away years ago. He dated Katharine Hepburn for a while."

Sethma nodded knowingly. "Ah, that makes sense. She was his type."

Katharine Hepburn is one of my favorite actresses, no, my very favorite actress, of all time. I do not get star struck (ever), but there was something nonetheless magical about having a personal connection to a period, and to people, who seem to far removed from today they are legends in our own time. This woman, like Forrest Gump, but real, had been there and known them, and she was sitting there with us looking out at the sea. I love history, and all things with stories-- people are the best, and she was a piece of living history (not to objectify her!) in the very best way one may dream of.

We took her out to dinner, to a family steakhouse where you pick out and cook your own steak, then eat it with the fixings provided at your table. We sat down, and the waiter asked us what we wanted to drink. Sethma responded, quick as a flash, "Vodka martini. Strong."

It took them a while to get it to our table (honestly I think someone might have requested a non-alcoholic placebo for her, though it didn't matter either way, really), and Sethma drummed her wrinkled fingers on the table and loudly bemoaned their sloth. She had been a customer at this establishment for half a century-- and she wanted that vodka martini promptly. She ordered two.

There was something precious about that afternoon. I felt grateful for the opportunity, and of all things cognizant of the fleetingness and magic of life. Sethma was feisty-- maybe that's what carried her so far. She was a fighter. She was also an eccentric-- a quality I prize more highly than most others. She had an enourmous fish tank against one wall in the living room. There was one fish in it. I walked closer. It looked like a piranha-- but that seemed improbable. Yet it did look like one...

"Sethma," I asked, "What kind of fish do you have in here?"

She turned. "Oh," she smiled vacantly, "I don't know. Little guy. I used to have more fish in there, all kinds..." she paused, "but he ate them all." She had a piranha. Like Marchesa Luisa Casati, one of my favorite people in history, who'd entered parties with a cheetah tied to each wrist with a diamond-studded leash, Sethma was unconventional in just the death-and-status-quo-defying way that appeals most to my very core. I was enamoured.

As we sat chatting, she saw I had a bolero tie necklace on, a bronze horse's head carved into the round face. It had belonged to my grandmother, a talented equestrienne, and it reminded me of her. "Do you like horses?" Sethma asked.

"Yes, I do. I ride them sometimes, but not often enough lately."

"Oh, I see..." Sethma stared at me critically. "I am getting old and I have too many things. I am trying to get rid of my things. Would you like my horse?"

I paused. Was she offering to give me a horse? How would I get that to my parents house, the only place I would possibly have room? Could I convince them to take it? Would he get along with the other horses? But how could I say no? She was a bit senile, but this couldn't be right.... "Yes, I would."

Sethma rose from the sofa, "Follow me." We followed her down the hall and into her bedroom, a little cluttered with all manner of timeless treasures and the dated trappings of the elderly, and a huge bed from which you could hear the sound of the sea just a few feet away. She stopped in front of her desk, and pointed to the floor beneath it. "There's my horse. I want you to have him."

I looked down, and there it was. A buckskin, about 18 inches high, with real mane and tail. Made of plastic, her horse was a large child's toy. She wanted me to have it. "His name is Seth," she told me. "Because my that's my grandson's name, and my name is Sethma," she explained, delighted at her own cleverness.

Before we left she asked me Seth's name a few more times, and each time when I reminded her, "I think I'll call him Seth," she smiled wide and nodded, "That's an excellent name." Seth now sits in my bedroom back home, an oddity in a space otherwise overrun by antiques, art, music, and literary curios. All my other toys are long stashed elsewhere-- but this is not a toy from my childhood, this awkward plastic quadruped is a reminder of a magical and rare connection with a person and an era that all too soon will entirely lost to the world, the active connection sundered by the heartless plodding of time. I have met (bear with me) all manner of celebrities, movie stars, rock stars, Oscar winners, world record holders, some of the most powerful moguls in the world, and a broad variety of less famous but ridiculously fascinating and accomplished individuals, but meeting a woman of grace and fierce vitality who had traversed the planet for nearly a century and managed to have a series of truly world-class adventures, enjoying every moment up to the last-- that's the kind of person that truly inspires awe, if any human does, and that horse is a reminder of a great life and, in turn (it's about to get tacky), just how great life truly is.

A rest stop somewhere east of nowhere.

The past month has been damned magical.

I drank a margarita at Disneyland, saw one of my favorite bands surrounded by stuffed bison, wandered the gardens of Hearst Castle (more) and swam in a red-neck podunk hot springs in Paso Robles. I drank a ton of wine by the beach and drunkenly used a swing set for the first time in years, on the sand, as the sun set in celestial striations of fuchsia, indigo, and tangerine. I basked in the sun on the beach in Summerland and about an hour later danced under the stars in the forest to country rock music beside a flowing stream. Then I ate some rabbit smothered in gravy and slept on the ground by the sea. I drank pink champagne in an over-priced Motel 6 watching terrible television while the wife-beater wearing neighbors across the wall were audibly in flagrante delicto. I saw a hilarious movie that unfortunately won't come out until August and saw another movie that made me cry so hard I had to pretend I was having a spontaneous hiccup fit to save what little of my pride cares. I went to Hawaii for a weekend and dressed to kill and drank Mai Tais alone at the bar on the sand in one of the grandest hotels. I also went to Ross. I lounged on the North Shore watching crystalline turquoise waves twice my height crash at my feet as the palm fronds blew in the rain-laden breeze. I had mediocre Mexican food at a place that didn't serve water and played with a dog that weighed approximately less than the average burrito. I wrote at least one 10 page legal document in 3 hours the morning it was due in bed in a hotel (and, it pains me to brag, but lest you judge me a fool, I did very well on it). I attended a cheesy "prom" throwback of sorts at an automotive museum but had a better time drinking margaritas at the dive-y restaurant on the seedy block where I had dinner earlier that afternoon. I toured a high level fashion manufacturing facility with the CEO as a guide. I bought nothing at their sample sale, coincidentally going on that day. I went to Santa Barbara, again, and danced with a large rope of seaweed as the ocean frothed around my ankles in the golden afternoon light. I went to a Joseph Campbell book club meeting where I learned more and had to think harder in one hour than I have to in law school every six months. On a weeknight I left at seven for a concert in Santa Barbara in a warehouse by the pier, got three hours of sleep, and at eight the next morning completed a client interview exam (with flying colors-- I'm sorry to self-aggrandize, but the point is it's all wild and so far successful-- I'm setting up terribly dangerous precedents for myself of preciously irresponsible behavior, and enjoying every moment of it). I walked two miles along the Grand Canyon into the plum and cobalt sunset as the primordial silence and jagged expanse of the vast red maw gaped below. I spent an entire day lying on the dirt beside a campfire in a dusty pine forest reading Navajo legends and listening to the ravens dance in the trees. In the gloaming hour of softest evening, I wandered a graveyard filled with young people who drowned in the Colorado river ninety years ago, and one Mason whose epitaph quoted Kipling and said "After me cometh a builder... Tell him I too have known." I stumbled across a herd of elk in the frigid night, in the midst of all the hotels, though I am one of the few wandering by that even looked up and saw them there. I did not expose their secret. I walked in the blackness of a night so dark I could not see a thing before me, but I kept walking with the faith that I would eventually see by starlight-- and that I would not walk off a precipice before that happened. I was in a parking lot, so it panned out. I breakfasted underneath the rust-colored spires of Sedona and bathed the jewelry I made that morning in the river that carves beneath them. I drank whiskey and danced in a century old saloon in one of the most haunted towns in America, perched a mile high on the sheer side of a desert mountain, to Grateful Dead covers, surrounded by bikers three times my age who danced twice as well as you'd expect. I drove through a valley filled with nothing but running horses and blowing grasses at the hour the sunlight is its most slanted and most golden, feeling like it couldn't be more than a dream. It was. I sang as loud as I could to Hotel California as the sun set just like a Tequila Sunrise and all I could see were the silhouettes of the rocks and Saguaro cacti suspended in the warm desert night. I saw a hell of a lot of live music shows and saw a heck of a bunch of movies and played guitar and keyboard and bagpipes and flute and painted and read and wrote and laughed and cried and did all those things and enjoyed each one more than the last. It's not cliche if it's true, and if you really love it, whether it's cliche doesn't matter. This is only some of it, but I'm tired and have talked about myself enough for one month. Bananas, friends. I had a hell of a March. Good luck, April.