Thursday
Off I go to do my usual rounds
when I am in DC, as I am now. First, a stint on a TV show. A news
TV show, not McGyver. I love doing those shows. A few people see
me, and I also get to meet all of those cute interns, those cute,
amazingly lively and polite interns. I don’t meet them in LA. I
don’t know why I don’t run into them at the Fox or CNN bureaus in
Los Angeles. Maybe they aren’t there. I love and worship the men
and women I work with at CBS News, but they could hardly be called
“young interns.” They are skilled, experienced news
professionals.
I am not sure exactly why, but I have always greatly enjoyed
being around young people. When I was teaching at American
University, UC Santa Cruz, and Pepperdine, I had a fine time
laughing and joshing with the students. I miss that. I am not
around enthusiastic young people except when I am in DC. There must
be a reason. I guess the young people with idealism and enthusiasm
come to DC. Idealists probably do not come to Los Angeles, by and
large. You come to LA to become famous or rich. Not exactly
idealism. As to the young people in New York… well, I enjoyed them
when I was one of them, but that was 46 years ago. Actually, maybe
more. What are young people in New York like nowadays? I really
have no idea.
The kids in Sandpoint are adorable, but I rarely visit with them
for more than a few seconds at a time as I am riding my bike along
the City Beach, so I cannot make much of a generalization about
them. The ones in Rancho Mirage… well, Rancho Mirage is not a young
person’s town. It is the town of retired people and a few people
who sell us our medicines. So, again, I don’t know about them.
But the ones in DC, at the news bureaus — they are just
peaches.
I made lunch for my wife and me at the Watergate. She is very
tired and staying in, as she often does. We had sandwiches made
with tasty Pepperidge Farm bread, the best bread I know of. Why
can’t I get it in LA?
We did something we truly love to do after lunch: we took a long
nap. That is paradise. Just bliss to lie in the same bed my parents
used to lie in, her reading, me listening to Mozart. Just great
stuff. Relaxing, reassuring, bliss.
Then, out with my pal and driver, Bob, to see Skyfall
for the tenth time. That’s right. The tenth time.
That movie is the most powerful rumination on relations between
mothers and sons I have ever seen. It is only superficially a spy
story/adventure yarn. It is really about the maternal role in both
helping and killing sons. It is also about the astounding devotion
of sons to their mothers even when the mothers have been (as Javier
Bardem so aptly says) “Very, very bad.” It is also a searing
indictment of incompetence at all levels of government.
And it’s witty and the soundtrack is breathtaking.
My favorite movie of the past 32 years: Skyfall. It is
a crime that it’s not up for all of the top Academy Awards. Just a
crime. And the man who directed it? Mr. Mendes? He is spectacular.
He knows how to direct action and dialogue and how to make a scene
look just right. The final twenty minutes, at a deserted manor
house in Scotland, are as beautiful as any scenes I have ever seen
in a movie. Works of art. I guess that’s everyone, including the
cinematographer, Mr. Deakins, and the designer and the lighting
people.
Above all, the writers, Messrs. Purvis, Wade, and Logan, deserve
hosannas. Their script is genius. Clever wordplay. Deep insights,
recurring themes (“sometimes the old ways are the best…” which
sums up what the movie is really about ), spectacular humor. To
think they did not get an Oscar nomination — well, it just means
that the Oscars, like the Nobel Peace Prize, are meaningless.
As I have said over and over, the ultimate kudos goes to Javier
Bardem, who takes acting to a whole new level beyond which I have
never seen it go.
Anyway, Bob and I went to see Skyfall at a theater in
Georgetown. It was in some kind of digital projection format and
worked beautifully. Two very large women sat behind me fiddling
with their immense legs and feet and also playing with their
phones, so I moved seats a few times. Still, a stupendous
movie.
After the movie ended, Bob and I walked past a sushi restaurant
on K Street. I idly looked in the window. At a table by the window
sat a handsome young man with four breathtakingly beautiful young
women. As I looked at them, he (possibly) recognized me and invited
me to join their party by gesturing through the window.
Bob and I walked in and took seats at the table with the man and
the beautiful young women. It turned out that the man is a wildly
successful builder/contractor/scientist named Bill Dean. He is
justly famous for his business acumen and his scientific
achievements, but also a big charitable fixture and a Gatsby-like
party giver. A larger than life character, in a few words. Immense
homes in Georgetown and in Miami Beach. Jet airplane. Super
successful man.
He was friendly and down to earth, no boasting at all, the sign
of real class. The young women were delightful and I marveled at
Mr. Dean’s social skills.
One of the women started out the evening with a bit of sarcasm,
seemingly doubting that I was who I said I was. But she was soon
smiling and pleasant. She turned out to be from Mongolia (although
whether from Inner or Outer, I know not). The blond woman sitting
next to me was over six feet tall, a highly accomplished financial
regulator, and a black belt in karate. The woman across from her
was a stunningly shapely actress model. The Mongolian worked for a
defense contractor. The one next to her had the perfect name,
Alexa, and perfect face.
They were all just dreams come true.
However, after very briefly talking with them (all excellent
conversationalists), I had to make my apologies because — of
course — I had TV early the next morning.
Still, I was entranced by the scene: the handsome, rich
entrepreneur; the magnificent young women, the sushi, the James
Bond movie. The women at the sushi place were far more beautiful
than the women in Skyfall, and that is saying a lot.
Well, this is my life.
I went home and made a roasted chicken dinner for my wife. Then
I watched a documentary about World War II and heavy fighting in
the Marianas.
The world is so wildly unfair and I get the benefits of it
nonstop.
Gratitude. That is my mantra.
Friday
Fox News. Helped to get miked up by a kindly Fox girl named Heather
Leigh Gustafson. Just as helpful as can be, tall and beautiful.
Lynn University grad. I spoke there about ten years ago and had a
great time.
In the makeup room, I fell into an argument with a man from the
entities that make violent video games. I recall (perhaps
incorrectly) that he owned some games himself. He said that
parenting problems were the issue, not violent video games. Well,
duhh? What would he say?
I told him our son spent whole weeks at a time watching violent
video games and playing them and I thought it had hardened his
moral senses. “That’s poor parenting,” said the game owner. “It’s
not the games.” (Paraphrase.)
“It was poor parenting,” said the man, again, just to be sure I
got the point of my own idiocy and weakness.
“Poor parenting letting him play the games,” I said. “That was
the problem.”
James Buchanan, RIP, would have understood. I could hardly have
expected this man who has gotten rich from violence on the video
game scene to criticize video games.
Then yet another trip to the National Gallery to see the
Lichtenstein exhibit. I feel blessed beyond words to have seen it
so many times. It is just unique. His power is haunting.
Then, back to the Watergate to make lunch for wifey (barbecued
beef), and then a long nap. Then a visit to the Social Safeway
where I met more beautiful women, including two from the Russian
Embassy who were extremely secretive. “You are the King of the
Safeway,” said my checkout clerk. Good thing to be, after a
war.
Then to Five Guys on Wisconsin Avenue for hot dogs for Bob and
me, and a large fountain Diet Coke for my wife. Five Guys is my new
favorite place. Hot dogs made to order, Heavenly. Then more soda at
the bar at the Ritz Carlton. Bob and I met two witty middle-aged
women. One of them said she went to Harvard Law School.
“Really?” I asked. “I know a number of teachers there.”
“Not really,” she said. “I went to Syracuse.”
A perfectly good law school, but who knows what was in her mind.
Her companion was beautiful and charming, a recent divorcée, and a
great catch for some lucky man.
However, I think it’s not easy being middle aged and single. She
needs to adopt a dog.
Saturday
We zoomed out to IAD with Bob,
bid him good-bye, then had our greeter, Luis, a handsome man from
South America, take us to the gate. Luis is a humblingly moving
case. His son was murdered by drug dealers in Florida a few months
ago. For something like one hundred and fifty dollars. Really,
horrible. Now, the perps have been caught. They turned on each
other. But they are apparently so hard to deal with that no lawyer
wants to handle their case, not even the public defender. So the
prosecution drags on and on. Just excruciating.
The plane ride was fine except for the man across the aisle from
me. He was the single fattest man I have ever seen on an airplane.
He was rude about stowing his immense suitcase. Worst of all, in
this devastating flu season, he coughed nonstop the entire time.
Typhoid Marvin. Six hours (because of immense headwinds) and he
coughed the whole time.
When we landed, I said to him, “So, how’s your health, pal?”
“Allergies,” he said. What a jerk.
We got home and I rushed over to the Shoreham Towers to get my
mail. Many letters from my pal who is incarcerated. Great letters
about him dawn to dusk work helping rehabilitate his fellow
prisoners by teaching them reading, writing, math, and hope. This
is a great man.
I stopped at a gas station at Sunset and San Vicente in the
midst of all the rock clubs.
Two aging rock and roll women walked by and smiled. “You should
be writing speeches for Obama,” one of them said. I was startled
that she knew that about me, i.e., that I was a former White House
speechwriter.
Two other hipsters walked by. “I need Clear Eyes,” he said. “My
eyes are red every morning.”
“We love you,” I said.
A homeless man, with almost no teeth, started sifting through
the trash can next to my car. He looked at me carefully.
“Is the recovery for real?” he asked me. “You think it can last
with housing so weak?”
THIS WAS A HOMELESS MAN!!!
“I think it can,” I said. “We might hit 800,000 starts and with
strong retail and services, it could work.”
“But can the housing starts be sustained?” he asked in a calm
voice.
“We never know, but these trends upwards rarely end abruptly. At
least not this far from the previous peak,” I said.
“I guess employment is the key,” he said, and then went back to
his sifting. He looked up at me as I was leaving and said, “Did you
ever own a pawn shop? You remind me of a man I know who owns a pawn
shop. Very intelligent man.”
I went home, thought about a swim but it was far too cold. Then
I showered, read the best history book I have read in a long time,
Hitler’s Central European Empire, by the late Jean Sedlar,
about the horrifying cruel regime of the Nazis in central Europe
and about the extreme hatreds of the various ethnic groups towards
each other.
How lucky, how blessed, how glorious of the Lord God to let us
live in America. How blessed I am to have had parents who could do
so much for me, who could advance my life so much beyond what my
father’s father or mother’s mother could do for them. I can trace
almost everything I have back to some connection, some inspiration,
some motivation from Mom and Pop.
When I was a child, my father told me, “Don’t expect to inherit
anything but your brains from me.”
How wrong he was. I inherited connections, education, position,
role modeling, above all, the gift of gratitude, from my old
man.
And my mother did so much for me in the way of connections in
DC. I would not have remotely what I have without them. I have to
be endlessly grateful. How blessed my sister and I have been.
Beyond words. And now I have my wifey, too, world’s best human, and
Julie. It’s all good.
