Malibu
Monday–Presidents’ Day
I awakened here at 4.30 AM
with feelings of dread and painful tingling in my forearms. I have
this several times each year. The solution is simple: get out of
bed. Take a Tylenol 3, broken in half. Eat an English Muffin,
Thomas’s, of course, with lots of butter. Then go check my e-mails.
Then go back to bed with my enormous Body-Med heating pad over my
body and my Julie lying next to me and Mozart piano concertos on my
headphones. Soon, I am back asleep, happy as a clam.
I did it and next woke at about 10. A neighbor’s dog was
barking. I hate that. But that’s the nature of life in the far out
region of Malibu where our wonderful 50’s modern house is. A little
bit of Tobacco Road. I got up, read a fine article in National
Review by Ross Douthat about a movie about a mentally ill
person. Read a great review by Jay Nordlinger of a book by Elliott
Abrams, a smart guy. Mr. Nordlinger made a superb point. The Middle
East is not complicated. The Israelis want to live and the Arabs
want them to die. It is that simple. Grim, but simple.
What amazingly great people the Israelis are to not only survive
but thrive in that atmosphere.
Then I made more English muffins. Then I did some laundry,
brought in some firewood, made a fire, wrote some notes to my pal
in prison, and then shaved and got dressed. I am endlessly tortured
by not having my imprisoned friend to talk to.
I had a deluge of texts from women wanting money. This has to
stop and it will.
Then, I took a picture of the monochromatic sky, then packed my
car and left for Beverly Hills.
On the way in, I had a long talk with John Coyne about fighting
against racism. We are both very committed to that fight. We always
have been. John is a straight up genius.
My part of Malibu, far, far out in Trancas, is always deserted
but Beverly Hills was mobbed. I drove up a famous shopping street
called Rodeo Drive. When I moved to L.A. in 1976, there were three
immense bookstores here — Brentano’s, Hunter’s and Doubleday. Now
there are none except Taschen. It is a fine store but small. Now,
all we have is expensive clothing stores. Obviously a high markup
biz.
Hermes was just crawling with customers buying two hundred
dollar neckties and ten thousand dollar purses. How can it be that
we are about to cut off the pay of civilian military employees and
are doing it to keep taxes on the rich low — and yet my neighbors
do not bat an eye at a $10,000 purse? I know this shows I am
insane, but my idea would be higher taxes on rich people before we
cut one dime of military pay, civilian or in uniform. I would
actually like higher taxes on everyone. Ha!
Yes, I know government will waste a lot of it. Yes, I know
government is a bottomless pit. But so are the greed and vanity of
the rich.
By the way, I am NOT one of the rich and never will be. I live
here largely by accident.
I will explain that story some other day.
I went shopping at the Pavilions on Santa Monica Boulevard. It
was also mobbed. A man came up to me pushing a baby carriage for
two babies with one baby in it. He explained that he had been the
man who caught the illegal hacking in London. O-kay. “If a man
comes up to you and tells you he is a fish, you don’t need to ask
him to show you his gills.” So said someone very smart like Milan
Kundera or some other European guy. I just let the man talk then
got into my car and drove off to a sound studio to record a
soundtrack for a commercial.
Afterwards, I got some rice at a Korean restaurant on Melrose.
As I walked back to my car (five years old), an immense man stopped
me to tell me how much he liked “Expelled” and my pal R.C. Sproul.
I thanked him and asked his name.
“He-Man Thompson,” he said.
I told you I was in L.A.
I went home and took a long nap with wifey and Julie. I got up
and watched on TV Obama talking about how urgent it was that “we
protect the most innocent and vulnerable among us… the children.”
He wants to do that by gun control, as if the Newtown massacre were
not in the state with the strictest gun control laws in the
country. You lying creep, I thought to myself. If you really
believed that about protecting the most innocent among us, you
would not be the most pro-abortion President in history. Well, he’s
hopeless on the subject of human life. And that is a BIG
subject.
Why can’t people see that issue for what it is? It is as clear
as day. Do we kill those who are inconvenient or do we revere life?
It isn’t more complex than that.
Out to dinner at Nonna with Big Wifey, talking about old age. It
is a scary subject. “Old age is not for sissies,” says the
cliché.
What is for sissies? I guess nothing. Maybe other sissies.
Now, comes bliss: going to sleep with Julie Good Girl. It is
supposed to rain tomorrow. No problem. I will be with Julie in bed.
The summit of man’s desires.
