I took a fabulous photo of the pool with my new toy, er, iPad. That was the easy part. I was just sitting there at the marble table in the corner, and it occurred to me that I had the perfect view to see how the camera works. It definitely works.
Now, if I can just figure out how to get it into the blog and publish it, the day will be made. If the image Is here, I have succeeded. Hoorah!
The past two weeks have been about as intense at it gets here in my little corner of Hollywood. My very full plate included “shipping” a magazine (a quaint term harking back to the days when we physically shipped the layouts to the printer), giving my annual Oscar party, prepping for the biggest work weekend of the year and fighting whatever crud has been going around L.A. It all culminated in that very big work weekend in Columbus, Ohio, which went pretty darned well if I do say so myself. Now I’m enjoying the big whew and the lingering adrenaline rush. According to NBC news, there were 60 car wrecks in a three-hour period on the roads outside Columbus on Sunday, and we must have seen six on the way to the airport at 7:30 a.m. It was good to get home, where the weather was 65 degrees and threatening to be sunny.
A wild pace, but I confess: I love it when my life goes a little crazy this way. Granted, I could have done without the spasmodic coughing fit at my Bev Hills hair salon last Tuesday, but all the rest was real living.
Many tales to tell from all of the above, but this one is about my trip to Columbus. Covering events as a reporter and grab-shot photographer is the fun part of my job, and having missed out on this particular trip last year for the first time since the early ’90s, I was determined to make the most of it.
My beat is the world of physique competition, principally women’s physique competition—everything from bodybuilders to bikini babes. If they get onstage in bathing suits and have a passing familiarity with a dumbbell, they’ve been featured in my column “Pump & Circumstance” in Iron Man magazine. How I tumbled down that particular rabbit hole is yet another story for another day. How my job description has exploded with the technology is what keeps me chuckling now. Who knew when I chose writing and editing because I had no confidence to be an actor that it would end up being the same thing? Or that I’d be too old to worry about it?
Until a few years ago we wrote contest reports, for the magazine and then for the Web site, the latter requiring one to write faster, which is not my strong suit, but I managed grind it out. Now it’s all video, shot immediately after the show—just me and the microphone standing there, light reflecting off my glasses as I try to read from my notes and talk while looking good. Sometimes I’m alone; more recently, I’ve brought in one or another of my girlfriends in the industry to assist with the commentating. This time I had them both—a bold experiment that could have been a disaster. The point of mentioning it is that, as I was barreling through all that deadline-laden activity, calling the doctor at the last possible minute and rushing to make an 8:15 a.m. plane on Thursday, there was an added pressure: I would be appearing with two gorgeous, fabulously weight-trained younger women who excel in the hair-and-makeup department. Basically, I would have to look even gooder than usual.
As you might imagine, I had no time to shop, which meant two things: 1) I had to hope that the blue print top would look as slimming on camera as it does in real life (it didn’t), and 2) I would have to wear the bejeweled black sweater. The last time I wore that costume in Columbus, I learned the hard way that “arranging” the sweater does not disguise my lack of a smooth V-taper. Clearly, I would have to break down and wear the Flexee waist cincher I had purchased a couple of years before and never had the guts to wear. Literally, as my stomach was just not at its best the night I planned to put it on. So for a couple of years the Flexee has languished in tissue, tags still attached, in its Macy’s bag.
Oh, well, I thought, as I tossed it into the suitcase. At least it’s clean.
My friends, Carolyn and Nancy, did hit it off, and it was a lively weekend. When the time came for me to get into my merry widow, however, I was all alone. Attaching a couple dozen tiny black hooks was a challenge, even with the reading glasses on, but I prevailed. Inch by inch I managed to nail the tiny eyes, and the Flexee slowly did its magic, making me skinnier and skinnier—I felt like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, ordering Mammy to go “Tighter! Tighter!” The result was a revelation—the waist and bosom I never had, not even at 20. What’s more, I now know that if I ever get to walk a really important red carpet (where I will undoubtedly be wearing something sleek by Vera Wang or Armani), I will survive.
Of course I fluffed the line. I was going to start by announcing, “Well, I brought the girls,” very Bette Midler, before I introduced Carolyn and Nancy. Instead I almost forget the introduction and barely slipped it in. Thommy (my late dear friend) would have loved it.
So the big weekend in Columbus is over. We’ll all live with the results. We’ll have to because it’s out there in Internetland forever and ever. I think I held my own in the looking-good department, especially considering the 25-year-age range that I was at the top of. Not that I’m fighting the aging thing (what’s the point?), but being able to look hot at my stage is a huge rush if you were as late a bloomer as I was. I’d also like to point out that I was sporting the least amount of makeup of the three of us, so thank goodness the camera lights blew everything out.
Photo: I brought the girls: Nancy Di Nino (left) and Carolyn Bryant with “Ruthless Ruth.” You can almost see the outline of the waist I didn’t have at 20.
To all who have inquired as to whether I’m wet enough, the answer is, not yet. The torrential rains unleashed on California have stopped, at least for a few days. Driving east into Hollywood between storms yesterday, I felt like Judy Garland when I glimpsed this Technicolor illusion hanging over Sunset and Vine.
I told a friend who lives in that neighborhood, and he went out looking for the pot of gold. I wonder if he found it.
Just to say I’ve done it, I’m tapping this out on my new iPhone. The accompanying photo shows my favorite lunch at McCarran Airport. Leaving Las Vegas has never been so fun My colleagues and I tromp through Terminal C at McCarran a couple of times a year. We discovered Sammy’s Beach Bar & Grill in summer ’09, not long after it opened. Just being waited on made a welcome change from our usual Sbarro and Burger King options, but the food at Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Sammy Hagar’s new place was pretty good–kind of a Caribbean-Mexican-American conglomeration. Plus, you could drink–lots of juice and tequila along with the usual sports bar assortment–and they card everyone, which is charming if you’re my age and are in the right mood.
I ordered the hot dog, something I never do unless I’m in Chicago, at Pink’s or at Tail of the Pup, but I wasn’t that hungry. A work weekend like the one we were winding up leaves you keyed up and welcoming of something made with tequila and fruit juice. So I was almost overwhelmed when the hot dog that emerged from Sammy’s kitchen was a footlong.
Jokes were made. Somebody (possibly me) dubbed it the “Milton Berle of Hot Dogs,” a reference to something not comedic the legendary comic was also legendary for. Similar names were bestowed in honor someone in our industry who is reputed to be talented in that particular way. (People in our industry often wear skimpy bathing suits, so that’s not as voyeuristic as it sounds.)
.
Since that episode we’ve stopped at Sammy’s every time we’ve passed through the Vegas airport. A few weeks ago in one such weekend we were leaving at different times and on different days, and I found myself and my brand-new phone alone at the counter at Sammy’s with Uncle Miltie. The glass contains orange juice and blood-orange juice, along with the tequila, and it was very refreshing.
Yeah, I know the pic isn’t as sharp as it could be-but the composition is delicious.
Thursday I got to do the most fun part of my job—I went to the studio to do videos. Who knew when I was graduating from Northwestern with that degree in speech that I would never use because I was going to be a writer that it would end up being the same thing? Not saying I’m great at it, just that I was really pumped.
Later back at the ranch I got a phone call that made me smile, and I was downstairs in the courtyard, chilling for once—enjoying the night and basking in all of it, thinking that it just doesn’t get any better. And then the moon did this.
It’s an awesome day in paradise. Perfect pool weather but not so hot that I’m melting in front of the computer. While the rest of the country has been sweltering, we’ve had a relatively mild summer in Southern California: mostly too cool to ’que, until recently. And now, today, awesome, a word that is largely overused but that sometimes hits the nail on the head. Just ask my neighbors, who are downstairs frolicking—or playing Dungeons & Dragons, which I perceive is a specialized form of frolicking. These days there are often multiple computing devices being deployed in the courtyard. I would join them, but I am currently without a wireless device—basically laptopless for the first time almost since laptops were invented. Feels like being naked, technologically speaking. A new one is coming but maybe not before I give in to temptation. Those iPads look mighty appealing.
This week as I watched, live, the last brigade of combat troops rolling out of Iraq, I was not prepared for the intensity of my reaction. Tears of disbelieve as much as joy poured down my cheeks—I cried like it was the last scene of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Something that had gone on so long, cost so many lives and so much money and that we so didn’t want was over, if only symbolically, and it sent chills. It felt a lot like the end of the War in Vietnam but anticlimactic. I connected with a couple of friends from the old days and was reassured that people cared, but otherwise, no one seemed to be paying much attention (besides MSNBC and the Los Angeles Times; thanks for that).
Considering that Operation Iraqi Freedom had touched my everyday life very little, my response was puzzling. Perhaps I’d suppressed it so deeply, I didn’t actually know how angry I was regarding the war and how we came to be fighting it. Self-preservation. Otherwise you can choose to walk around pissed all the time and court high blood pressure. Times have certainly changed in that respect. We are busy and practical, and we are ever hopeful that we can make a change at the ballot box. This time it appears we did. Chalk one up for President Obama.
Sure, I know we’re not really out—50,000 personnel remaining for the new (noncombat) mission plus gosh knows how many contractors—but only the most peevish of pessimists could fail to see this week’s troop withdrawal as a Stryker ride in the right direction.
Yesterday I spoke with a friend who’s a photographer working for the Air Force in Delaware. He was headed out to shoot a dignified transfer at Dover AFB, the ceremony that takes place when a serviceperson’s remains come home. My friend, who is retired from the Air Force, has been on many such assignments since President Obama lifted the ban on photography and videos of “D.T.s” at Dover last year. It’s a tough assignment—the ability to focus on the work and not what it all means is key.
Suddenly, I remembered that the war was at least one degree of separation closer than I thought. “Soon you’ll be going to photograph the troops coming home, like they’re doing at Fort Lewis in Washington,” I said.
“I hope so,” he replied.
