Having been stuck in the business of opening a restaurant for the last couple of months (another story for another time), my life has become just restaurant and construction work, day in and day out.  But there is one thing a week I make time for, my new guilty pleasure, and that’s a show we have on television called Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.  There are others, like New Jersey, Atlanta, etc., but none as riveting (to me, anyway) as the Beverly Hills one.  Everyone I know watches it (males and females), though most won’t admit it!!  It’s interesting to me ‘cause (1) it’s all about LA stuff and I know about LA, and (2) ‘cause you have never ever seen such decadence, pettiness and plastic surgery all in one place and in one hour.  It’s truly shocking and incredibly entertaining.  I know, I know, I can hear you say “I would never watch something like that”, I said the same thing once.  🙂

So these ultra-rich, lipo-sucked and botox-injected ladies go about their lives in this reality show.

Some of the characters are:

Adrienne Maloof who owns half of Las Vegas and is married to the plastic surgeon in town. 

Kyle Richards and her sister, Kim, Paris Hilton’s aunties.

Taylor Armstrong whom I had never heard of before but who has the biggest lips you’ve ever seen. 

Lisa VanderPump who is the English lady of the bunch, not sure where she comes from but her husband always has a dog or two in his arms (leeetle ones) and they have a permanent houseguest who is quite amusing himself.  She’s actually my favorite of the group.

I probably wouldn’t have thought to write about this except that tonight, on Christmas Day, Shelley and I went to the movies at the Arclight Cinema (previously written about here as the best place to go to movies in LA).  I looked up and there I saw Lisa’s husband sans dogs, mentioned this to Shelley, and right behind him came his Beverly Hills housewife.  I started telling Shelley the story that a couple of days ago, at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Lisa Vanderpump and her husband were having dinner with friends including a reporter from NBC.  Some drunk started taunting them from across the room before moving his nasty comments to their table (where the hell were the staff of the Polo Lounge?) the NBC chap gets up and asks him to leave when the drunk simply sucker-punched him straight in the face, forcing them to run to Adrienne’s plastic surgeon husband, who had to severely stitch this poor chap’s mouth.  I had read this on the gossip sites, and as I was telling Shelley the story there appeared The Lip to join them at the movies.  It was a Hollywood moment of the nth degree!!

Since I have now written about our Hollywood moment today, I feel obliged to share a clip of this show with you.  Oh oh oh, I didn’t mention another wife, Camille Grammer, soon to be ex-wife of the actor Kelsey Grammer. 
She appears to be, hands down,  the nastiest of the bunch, and causes all sorts of trouble every time they get together.  She has THE most inflated ego I have ever witnessed anywhere in the world!!   So here’s a clip of their latest dinner party, viewed last Thursday (sorry about the 15 second commercial first)..  (I looove Thursdays, I’m not ashamed to admit!)

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills

A  friend of mine is opening a restaurant, it’s sure to be around for years and years to come, and he’s invited me to help get it started.  So far we have one owner, one maitre d’, and a chef.  And the office manager, that’s me!  The restaurant will be called Craig’s, the owner is Craig (we had a competition about what the name should be ….. yeah right!!).  Anyone who’s ever been to visit me in Los Angeles has met Craig as he spent the last 23 years at my (and everyone else’s) favorite place, Dan Tana’s.  He’s also been to Africa a couple of times, in fact the only person I know who’s been to Africa twice, and both times to Malawi (he jokes that he thought I said we were going to Maui when we went the first time!!).

So starting a restaurant when you’re leaving the best is a daunting task.  But I know Craig will make this the best place to go in LA, and it is over-exciting being a part of this winning team.  I hope to write about all the goings on in the next couple of months, and then have some insider LA scoop to report once we’re open and people are pouring in the door.  I know this is going to be the funnest place in LA!!

I hadn’t been to the restaurant “The Bazaar”  in LA yet (at the SLS Hotel) , it’s been open for at least a year or two, and I’ve been hearing rave reviews from everyone.  “You have to have the sizzling mojito”, or “the salt air margarita made at your table with dry ice and lots of smoke is the absolute best!”, “it’s amazing, you walk around from room to room for various courses” are just some of the comments I’ve heard.

Walk around from room to room for different courses — what’s this, deconstructed dining?  I’ve been avoiding it for two reasons, (1), “it’s expensive”  (another phrase often heard) and (2) I hate attitude places and this sure sounded like an attitude place.  But last night, with friends in town from South Africa, my friend Jonathan (who lives here, also ex South African) insisted we go there.  “It’s a buzz, Caren, it has a vibe, the boys will love it”, so off we went.  I was determined to hate it.  Talking about attitude, you couldn’t find a bigger or badder one than the one I had on.  The restaurant is designed by Philippe Starcke and the chef is Spanish Jose Andres who, this fall, is lecturing on culinary physics at Harvard in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.  And that’s obviously where this “deconstruction” of food comes into play.  For example, we ordered a thing that is called an olive, looks like an olive, but is a soft gel type thing that explodes in your mouth (delicately). On the same plate

was another type of olive, more solid, stuffed with an anchovy and served in an anchovy tin.  The mozzarella cheese was another deconstruction, looks like, tastes like …… but is nothing like!  Jonathan told me that a lot of the recipes come right out of science labs where they spend forever coming up with ways to deconstruct the food.

After a wide range of beyond delicious tapas we moved to the dessert area where the best we sampled was the nitro coconut floating island — a sumptuous mix of candyfloss and snow cone melted icily into our mouths, just like one would imagine clouds would taste.  I think that was the hands down favorite taste of the evening.

My bad attitude melted away with this (whatever hadn’t already been blown away with the explosion of tastes and textures during our tapas-type meal).  It’s not the kind of restaurant one would visit on a weekly basis, but it’s certainly a fun place to go for a very different experience and a fun change of pace.

But explain to me, how did a few deconstructed tapas turn into an additional three pounds on my scale this morning?

In my last blog I mentioned briefly that GROUPLOVE is about to be huge here in the States, after only a handful of performances under their belt, they have already gone viral on the internet and people are flying in from all over the world to catch their live performances.  Starting November 6 GROUPLOVE will be opening for Florence and the Machine at a few performances and after that …….. well …… after that, we’ll simply sit back and watch my prediction come true.

I thought this would be a good time to chat to Ryan Rabin (son of Trevor), who is the producer and the drummer of this fabulous band.  Ryan has quietly been building up to this moment.  I guess he was born with the music gene as he started singing, drumming and playing piano at a very young age.  I have watched him grow through various bands like The Anthem and The Outline, before heading off to the University of Southern California (USC) to learn the business of music management.  Shortly after graduation last year Ryan went to Europe on holiday with his childhood friend Andrew, and, at an artists commune in Greece, they met the other members of GROUPLOVE, Christian, Hannah and Sean.  And the rest, trust me, will be history.

Their music is uplifting, the kind you can sing along to and makes you want to add a jump into your dance steps.  It has turned me into the oldest living groupie!!  Don’t think I’m gonna find my future ex-husband at any of the concerts, but if I could spend the rest of my life at their concerts I would be in a very happy place …. and not alone.  I’d be with hundreds of other happy people.  🙂

So I asked Ryan a few questions specially for sapeople ‘cause we all know his Dad and it’s time to get to know Ryan.

Caren: Has your father’s music influenced you?

Ryan:  Yes for sure, but more in his work ethic than in any specific genre or area of music. I am always in awe of his abilities, technically and creatively, so he inspires me to apply the same kind of effort and work ethic to whatever I am interested in musically, but that is usually much different to what he’s doing these days.

Caren: Family aside, who’s your favorite musician?

Ryan: I don’t really have a favorite. I love all kinds of music so its hard to say one is better than another, but in terms of a straight up pop/rock artist/musician it would have to be a three way tie between The Beatles, Queen, and Michael Jackson… such a cliche answer but still undeniable.

Caren: What’s the best musical moment in your life so far?

Ryan: Meeting Sir George Martin was pretty cool. I’ve had some great live shows with various bands over the last few years. One highlight was back in high school, by some strange stroke of luck my former band and I played to 10,000 people in Cleveland without any prior fans or released material.

Caren:  What do you love about Los Angeles?

Ryan:  I love the people that I grew up with here. Many of them are still here, and its nice to still be close with some people that I’ve known since I was 2 years old. I think we share an understanding and appreciation for a city that most visitors maybe take for granted.

Caren:  Have you been to SA?  What’s your favorite place there?

Ryan: Yes dozens of times. I love seeing my family in Joburg and Capetown, I think Fishhoek, where my mom’s mother lives, is quaint but beautiful.

Caren:   What do you love about SA?

Ryan:  Everything… the people, the landscape, the smells, the sounds… (especially of the birds when you wake up in the morning.. the ones that you’ll never hear in Los Angeles).  But I’ve had a bit of a skewered and spoiled view of SA, when you don’t live there full time you only have time to make the best of it and expose yourself to its pros and none of its cons.

Caren: Who is your favorite cousin?  🙂

Ryan:  Caren Banks obviously  🙂

Post trip blues have set in enormously. I’m back from my excursion back to the Cook Islands, this time to welcome 200 visitors there who had come to see the total eclipse of the sun on July 11^th.  We spent a few days on the island of Rarotonga and then on the island of Mangaia, which was the first land mass in the path of totality.  Unfortunately for the dedicated umbraphiles our eclipse was clouded over.  To inexperienced me this made it all the more beautiful, going dark, Venus shining, birds going to bed in the trees, then lights shining through the clouds after.

The absolute best part of the trip was the bonding between the islanders and our guests.  Everyone benefitted from our visit and this made both the island hosts and the guests feel special.  Our accommodations were basic dormitory style, beds set up in schools, church halls and guest houses, all our meals prepared by and shared with the locals, after the eclipse we were all shuttled on the back of trucks to various churches for the most magnificent, powerful singing church services I have ever experienced anywhere in the world, including Africa!

Drumming and dancing are very important in the Cook Islands and at the magnificent Highland Paradise on Rarotonga we learned the island history through a drumming, dancing and singing show.  (There’s a couple of videos on the website.)

Now back to the reality of Lala land ….. my old childhood friend Fran and her family were here visiting from Cape Town this week and on Monday we went out for dinner bumping into Heather Locklear and her on-again off-again boyfriend Jack Wagner, ESPN reporter and Dancing with the Stars finalist Erin Andrews as well as Jeff Foxworthy, host of our new television show “So you think you’re smarter than a fifth grader”.  All in one teeny neighborhood restaurant.

Then we dashed off to hear Ryan Rabin’s band Grouplove who were playing at a club downtown (more fantastic drumming, this time by Ryan).  I predict they are going to be seriously huge and you heard it here first!!!  Ryan is Trevor Rabin’s son — here’s one of my favorite songs I bet you’ll love it too!  GROUPLOVE – Colours

Oh well  ……. Bafana’s out, USA is out, Mexico lost today so now it’s time to stand firmly behind Ghana, who played a magnificent game and deserve to move to the finals.  Watching the World Cup has been amazing, the worldwide camaraderie has been magnificent and all the “chatting” on Facebook with friends all over the world before the games, during and after, has only added to the excitement.   Getting up at 6am, taking the dog for a walk and having my first cup of tea and a game at 6:30 has become a ritual, one that I adore!  Whatever will I do without it?

I’m soon to find out as I depart again to the Cook Islands today.  The solar eclipse I am off to see occurs at the exact moment of the kick off for the final game.  🙁  I’ll be on the island of Mangaia (again!) where the ladies who run the island school are furiously trying to find out if there is a way to get tv reception for this game, fingers crossed that they’ll be able to pull it off.

Good luck to SA for a magnificent final two weeks!!

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As I sit here in my home office typing this blog I hear the zzzz zzzzzz zzzzzzz zzzzzzz coming from my bedroom tv … it’s 6:30 am!!  I am sure all my neighbors know when the soccer is on in my house as the unmistakable sounds of the vuvuzela pours from my windows.  Well, they know that I am watching soccer or they think I’m being attacked by a swarm of killer bees and they just don’t care!!  Can’t say I blame them.

While I know this is a really exciting time in SA, thought I would mention how great it is watching from LA.  South Africa looks fantastic, the games have been fabulous, the players all polite, the fans even polite, the sense of pride and a fantastic party emanates everywhere.  In LA, certain British and other local pubs are open at 4 am for games, with special breakfast menus celebrating the playing teams’ favorite foods served.  Of course the biggest excitement thus far has come from the SA/Mexico game, with the Springbok Bar & Grill being THE place to be!  In New York everyone poured into Madiba Restaurant in Brooklyn, with people facebooking from both locations every time a player scratched his nose or other private parts.

At my local LA pub we have a pool, I drew Ivory Coast.  Immediately I looked for who drew South Africa, to discover it was Armando, another regular.  I quickly began a campaign calling all Armando’s friends begging them to subtly drop hints about what a fabulous team Ivory Coast was every time soccer came up in their conversations.  A couple of weeks later I bumped into him and kindly offered to exchange Ivory Coast for Bafana Bafana.  He was delighted and before you could say bobs-your-auntie he had agreed.  🙂  🙂   I am now the happy and proud owner of the South African square in the pool!  Fingers crossed there’s no reneging when we win the entire thing!  Although I am sure that standing on top of the bar and yelling at the top of my lungs “WITNESS, WITNESS, Armando has agreed to swap Ivory coast for South Africa” might stick in everyone’s minds for a while.  (In Armando’s defense, as I was trying to subtly approach him to arrange the switch, it did seem like he knew exactly what I was up to!  Methinks he’s just being a nice guy accepting the switch, but I’ll never let him know that.  wink)

So now it’s 8:30am Monday, Cameroon and Japan have finished playing, I have the entire week ahead of me, and I’m already exhausted.  Keep up the excellent work South Africa!!!!

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In my next life I’d like to come back as a pampered Los Angeles Dog. In a good mood my dog Danny might agree although usually he’s in a bad mood and disagreeable.  I was thinking about this today as we drove home from the Laurel Canyon Dog Park.  I mean, take a look at this..

Sometimes I’m in the mood for a change and off we go to the Hollywood Dog Park, nestled at the foot of the Hollywood sign, take a look at this ….

Now that I’m on this bloody diet Runyon Canyon is calling out to us …. Runyan Canyon is one of the gorgeous canyon hikes between West Los Angeles and the Valley, this one is officially called Runyan Canyon Dog Park.  And is usually a fabulous place to take your dog, but you do have to watch out for rattlesnakes ….. hee hee ….. watch out for rattlers, yeah right, more like “don’t look down and they’re not there”.

All the parks are kept in really good shape and each one has its own unique incentives to pick up the dog poo, long-handled scoopers, plastic bag dispensary thingies placed strategically everywhere.  The hottest days of the year might be the days I would choose to stay away from the dog parks for obvious reasons.

Los Angeles is an amazingly dog friendly city and my neighborhood is filled with animal lovers who rescue, foster and adopt, and who seem to crawl out of the woodworks the moment there’s a whiff of an animal in distress.  I love this about my neighbors.  I know all the dogs’ name but only half of the owners’ names, and I am sure the same is true for them.  No matter what time of day or night we go walking we’re bound to bump into a friend.  Most of the time (if the dog is bigger than my Chihuahua) we have to cross the street so we don’t attack them.  Oh dear.  Not so proud about that.

Vets make house calls in L.A. (for a fee), so do dog groomers. We have a chain of stores (salons) called U-Wash-Doggie where you can take your pooch to wash and blow dry in a dog-friendly environment.  Some professional dog walkers make more than your average attorney or accountant.  Take your dog window shopping down Rodeo Drive to look at the fashions then head east to actually do your shopping (cheaper).  Lots of hotels are dog friendly (even the 5 star ones) and if they aren’t they can usually suggest luxury lodgings nearby for Rover.

Around the corner from my house is the D Pet Hotel where rooms are equipped with single, double or king size mattresses, flat screen tv’s, boutique and a spa!  I know this cause I went to do a site inspection myself for a friend.  I wanted to move in!

A few weeks a go I woke up fat. Yes, yes, I knew I needed to lose some weight, say 10 or 20 lbs,  but I didn’t know I was fat.  Off I went for my annual physical check up and they put me on a scale and ….shock of all shocks …. I was FAT.  Like many more pounds than I ever imagined possible.  Okay, now I have to get serious about this but lucky for me, I live in L.A.  There’s a new diet every day to keep everyone looking rail thin in real life, but good on camera.  This new diet I found matches your blood type with your food type.  Everyone swears by it, the pounds are dropping off all over LA even as I write.  Okay, I want to look like those people on the diet so here I am, on the bloody diet.  For the past two weeks I’ve eaten nothing but a select group of veggies, a select group of fruits, any kind of rice and a select group of fish.  No salmon, for example.  No tomatoes, oranges, blackberries, cucumber, etc., but I can eat a lot of stuff I hadn’t heard of before.  Never mind know how to cook.  Apparently my blood type doesn’t like dairy products either.  Nor sugar.  Nor wheat.

I’m losing weight, it’s dropping off, my belt is two notches tighter, my jeans are falling off …. well, almost …. and I am happily skipping through life knowing the pounds are falling off, I’m practically anorexic!  I don’t have a scale so yesterday I schlepped off to Pasadena to my sister’s house to weigh in.  Yaaaaay, I’ll see the proof that 10 or 20 lbs have gone, happily happily I sang as I drove over there.  Moment of truth …. three pounds!  Three f*%^ing pounds.  Well, almost three pounds, two point eight to be exact.  Bleh.  But I’m not to worry, everyone who’s been on the diet tells me, in my fourth week I’ll just drop 30 lbs.  Okay, I can wait another week to see what happens.  More later.

And then, to make matters worse, Sunday morning (today) is bagels and lox (smoked salmon) brunch at my friend Steve’s house, but first I drove to Koreatown to pick up the best croissants in town at Paris Baguette. Yup, best French croissants are found in Koreatown!

(I had to put the box of pastries in the trunk so that my arms couldn’t reach them as I drove to the brunch where I got to watch everyone enjoy them!)  yuck yuck yuck …. can’t wait to lose 150 million pounds so I can start eating again.

This afternoon I was dismissed from Jury Duty …. again ……… After 35 years or so of faithfully doing my civic duty I have yet to be chosen to sit on an actual Jury.  In fact, today was the closest I have been, actually was called into the courthouse, was one of two remaining jurors left to be questioned (voir dire … I know my stuff) when both the attorneys announced they were happy with their jury, and the last remaining two of us were let go.  Most of the people in the jury box were glaring daggers at us, they already knew they would be there for a week to 10 days, and, after a day and a half, we two were off the hook!  And they were envious that we got to go home.

They have no idea how envious, or just plain jaloers, I was of them being allowed to stay.  Every time I’m called for jury duty, I get so excited.  In anticipation I choose my outfits for the week, have an early the night before, put on make up the day of …… all in anticipation of either being called to be on a jury or to meet my future ex-husband in the Juror room.   Don’t laugh, it could happen …. it just hasn’t.  Surely, in a room full of my peers, there’s bound to be my future intended.  I mean, there’s like 100 of us in the room, a few of these people change daily, how can there not be someone for me??

Perhaps it’s the ambience, or lack thereof, in the Juror room.  That must be it!  While searching for Mr. Future Ex in the room, and I had many hours to search, instead I found some interesting signs in a dull and bland room.  (By the way, when I was doing my on-line instructional, they showed these lovely rooms with tables filled with coffee and muffins …. “oooh”, I thought, “they’ve jazzed up the juror rooms since I was last there”.)  In fact, as I happily trotted off to Jury Duty yesterday morning, casual-yet-trendy-comfortable, mascara and lipstick on, I didn’t even stop by Starbucks on the way, nor did I have any cereal, knowing there was coffee and muffins waiting for me.  I had a lot of expectations for this poor room. 

So back to looking around the room …… the same old (now sunken in) blue cushioned seats in a square, no arms on the chairs, so nothing to lean on or separate me from the guy on my left crunching hot chili cheetos and chocolate, or the snoring guy on the right whose head I cautiously watched anticipating it falling onto my lap at any moment.  No coffee, no muffins, no nothing attractive at all.  I was dying to take a photo of a few of the signs around, but one of the signs said “no photographs” and I certainly didn’t want to be outside the courthouse in the looooong line of alleged criminals (or wanna-get-off alleged criminals.) .  So I wrote them down ….. starting off with my absolute favorite one (bearing in mind we earn $15 day for Jury Service, not including the first day, that one’s unpaid):

• PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING YOUR JURY FEES TO WORTHWHILE PROJECTS.  (a box of brochures underneath suggested donating to a juror room beautification program)   Oh …okay ….. and then what?  Are you going to bring in coffee and muffins, colorful throw pillows or some nice art to look at?  Are you going to throw out that 2008 Vogue magazine and perhaps add a couple of daily newspapers?  How much could all of that cost?  You haven’t been able to save up for these in the two years since I was last here?  Not even a bottle of anti-bacterial cream by the door?  Yes, oh yes, pick me, pick me, I want to give you a donation!!

• JURORS, PICK UP AFTER YOURSELVES! What, no please or thank you???
• NO TALKING ON CELL PHONES. Hahahahaha   (the lady opposite me juggling two phones!!)

• LIST OF RESTAURANTS NEARBY Restaurants, restaurants!!  Puhlease.  Oh McDonalds, Subway, Quiznos, Kentucky Fried Chicken, oh okay, I see, those restaurants.  Of course.  By the way, the other courthouse I could have been sent to is in the trendy Music/Media District with the funky lofts and great restaurants everywhere, and an occasional Britney or Lindsay siting.  And probably my future ex.

And that’s it for artwork.  The tv blasts commercials or the weather, we’re not allowed to watch “court tv” or Judge Judy or Divorce Court.  But we can, and do, watch Oprah.  A great relief after 4 hours of weather in Los Angeles (previously written about here as the most boring job to have in the world, a weatherman in L.A.).

And that was my two days of Jury Duty in the Los Angeles Court System.  No trial, no husband.  Boring as usual, but I shall remain optimistic for the next time I get called on to do my civic duty.  You never know.