Wednesday
I drove over to my apartment to get my mail. It is a funny thing about the apartments I have for offices at the Shoreham Towers in West Hollywood. I bought them first to have a quiet place to write that came with a good view, and then to get rid of a noisy neighbor. It never even occurred to me that they might be a good investment.
Yet they have done better than any other real estate investment I have ever made. Now, bear in mind, the sums involved are barely pennies by Manhattan or Brooklyn chic apartment prices. Just nothing. But the point is that luck has a lot to do with it. Or maybe it’s because the Shoreham Towers is one of only two real high-rises in West Hollywood, and young, well-to-do people like views.
Anyway, I went over there to see if I had any interesting mail. As I did, I ran into Miss X, a beautiful woman whom I have seen coming and going at the Shoreham Towers recently. She has almost glowing blonde hair and a lovely smile. She was having car trouble when last I saw her, but today she was thinking of something else.
She had a musical instrument case. I soon learned that it had a valuable violin in it. I asked her if she could play the violin. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Classically trained. The woman who trained my trainer used to perform Wagner for Hitler.”
“High praise indeed,” I agreed. She nodded affably.
“Do you sing also?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said with a killer smile.
“I’ll pay you if you’ll just come up to my apartment and play the violin and sing as I open my mail,” said I.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be right up.”
In about a half hour, she appeared in a black cocktail dress and very high heels with her instrument case, a music stand, and a sheaf of music. “I’ll play Mozart,” she said as she unlimbered her music stand and her instrument.
And, sure enough, within moments, she was playing “A Little Night Music.” She was a bit rusty at first but then she played beautifully. She looked like a radiant angel and I thought, “How fascinating. Just out of the blue there is this woman with glowing blonde hair playing Mozart among my mountains of brokerage statements and insurance bills. I am just sitting here in my filing madness and I am overwhelmed with this woman’s beguiling music and it will cost me virtually nothing but enough to make a big difference to her. What must Buffett be able to buy?”
She played another short musical piece which I forget, and then she sat on my ancient couch while I retrieved e-mail and she sang, “New York, New York.” She even had small arm gestures to go along with her singing.
I was thoroughly charmed but I had work to do and I had to get my car washed so I paid her a modest sum (but excellent on an hourly basis). She agreed to come back and play for me any time I wanted and she walked out with her electrically charged blonde hair.
How many others are there like her? Her goal is to be a successful writer of TV shows, movies, and Broadway plays. A tall order but she is a capable woman. She wants Emmys, a Tony, and an Oscar. Well, that’s why they come to Hollywood. This one actually has some talent, though, which makes her unusual.
Thursday
We drove down to the desert and had a moonlight swim last night and now it’s Thanksgiving. Our club had its usual over-the-top feast. There really was so much food there it was almost nauseating. But we ate it with pleasure anyway.
I kept thinking about the millions of Americans in the military and how they are facing Thanksgiving. Some are still far from home in Afghanistan, subject to enemy cruelty at a moment’s notice or no notice at all. Their families must be worried sick. Then there are the ones in Djibouti and Korea and Yemen, all at risk at any time. Then there are their families and their friends, all worried, all the time.
Can you even believe it? The Pentagon is proposing serious cuts to their housing allowances and medical care, all in the name of keeping taxes low on rich people. This is slashingly offensive. Our military men and women offer up their lives. Their pay and benefits should be sacrosanct. How can we save a few thousand dollars to add to the wealth of the rich by harming the military men and women and their families? It bewilders me.
It bewilders me how we can even for a moment consider letting the rich pay the lowest rate of tax in the Western world and take even a penny out of the military.
“Defense is the ultimate good.” I just made that up and it’s true.
Meanwhile, the world is falling apart—tensions in the South China Sea, the total disintegration of the Middle East, U.S. connivance in making Iran a major power, Russia turning back to imperialism and subjugating Ukraine.
This is the reward of Obama’s utterly feckless foreign policy, of thinking that we can just withdraw into isolationism and military weakness without the usual costs and terrors that causes. I weep for this country having an amateur such as Mr. Obama at the helm. Oh, for Nixon!
Sunday
Uh-oh. this is not good. Alex and I are in our car on the way back from Rancho Mirage to Beverly Hills. We left at about 8 p.m. so I thought traffic would not be a problem. How wrong I was. Instead, the 10 Freeway was a nightmare of jammed cars and horrible congestion. Traffic just crawled along. It took almost two hours to go 30 miles.
It got a lot worse. For an early dinner, Alex and I had eaten Korean beef, Bulgogi beef, I think. It is heavily marinated and tastes good. Tastes great. But I remembered as I ate the last forkful of it that I had gotten sick to my stomach from a much smaller portion served to me about two years ago at the same restaurant. Tonight, I had about 10 times as much.
My stomach was churning like an angry shark (I imagine) and there was no place to pull off. Finally, I came to my favorite gas station on this earth, the Calimesa Shell, and had a peaceful rest stop. It was peaceful in that there was no noise, but my stomach was furious at me over the Bulgogi beef. Wow. Being sick to your stomach on the road is not fun.
But a great mercy, my stomach stayed calm the rest of the way. I also saw the traffic vanish, and I was home in about 90 minutes from Calimesa, which is really fast for me.
I could not sleep at all through the night, though. Something about stomach distress on the freeway horrified me and frightened me and kept me up. Fear is a cruel mistress.
Finally, I fell asleep and Alex appeared next to me, desperately ill with flu. She has been sick now for months and it’s really terrifying. I would basically have no life without her. She walks on water, as far as I can see. So just the sight of her endlessly ill puts me into a hush of dread.
Well, time to pray.
Monday
I guess the world has gone completely crazy. I guess we are all in George Orwell land now. Political correctness has taken center stage and pushed common sense and sense of humor into the orchestra pit.
I hear on the BBC news that my hero, Bob Dylan, greatest of the songwriters and poets of my era, is being sued by some Croatian group in some wacky European court for noting that there was blood antipathy between Serbs and Croats. Everyone knows it’s true and now when Bob says the obvious, he’s getting sued. He was actually served with some kind of insane claim papers when he was in France receiving an award. This is pure nuttiness.
Then I keep reading about how a white professor at UCLA is being harassed by black students because he had the nerve to correct their grammar and usage. The protesting blacks say this kind of correction, such as insisting that the word “indigenous” is not spelled with a capital I, is racism. Their own legitimate and different ways of spelling should be recognized, say the black students.
I am bound to say the whole thing looks like a bad joke to me. Maybe it’s an Internet hoax. I hope so.
Then, once again, we have the story out of San Jose State here in my own beloved California that tells us that the staff of that fine university now considers it a hate crime or a hate offense deserving of punishment to have a Confederate flag in one’s dorm room.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I was demonstrating and marching for civil rights in the 1950s. I am a former fundraiser for the Black Panther Party of New Haven, Yale Law School Chapter. I am as much for equal rights under law as anyone can be. And I think that display of the stars and bars to a large, racially mixed group in a place like San Jose could offend some people.
But to call the display of this symbol of redneck pride, this symbol that was on The Dukes of Hazzard forever, this innocuous symbol of good old boys drinking warm beer and watching stock car races, a hate CRIME is just plan strange.
Curious, yes. Questionable in public places? Yes. But a CRIME?
That is just plain nutso.
But this is America and the world today, and it’s just plain sad. Slavery was unspeakable. Racism, revolting. But calling the display of the Rebel flag a CRIME? Heaven help us. I feel for the people who are offended by the flag, but lots of things offend us and are not crimes. Where did our good nature go? To the Ministry of Truth of Orwell’s 1984.
