Tomorrow I’m getting my hair done and I looove going to visit Patty.  Never used to be that way, but since I found this cool little spot in West Hollywood, my neck of the woods, I have my hair done more often than I should, just for an excuse to visit there.  Although none is needed.  My secret gem started off as a men’s salon in a little yellow house on a little secret street (that everyone who lives here knows).  It’s where men go for massages, manicures, hair, shaves and even to have suits and shirts made by Geoffrey Macon, tailor extraordinaire.  And as we women know, as soon as we get a whiff of a good place it becomes ours, too, and the best hairdressers and tailor brought us sniffing at the doorstep and then inside!  Now it’s my place to go for hair and blouses (well, they call them shirts!).

It’s called The Gendarmerie , and it’s owned by my friend, Topper.  Going there is like visiting friends, everyone’s always happy to see you, and neighborhood gathering at the end of every day.  There’s a couple of outside patios, one with a fireplace, inside living room with fireplace, great food being served, wine  being poured, and you never know who you might bump into.  I’ve seen Billy D. Williams there often, spotted Queen Latifah leaving and seen Olympic swimmer Lenny Krazelberg having shirts fitted (which prompted my nephew to have his aunt take him in for the same).

Sounds like I’m name-dropping and trying to promote this place, both true.  Although it doesn’t need much promotion I am certainly name dropping and sharing one of my happy places to be with you!!  It’s one of our LA secrets and I’m outing it.

So we had an earthquake about an hour ago. I was horizontal on the sofa, as was my dog Danny.  I always hear reports about animals getting up and running around before the earthquake hits, but not my Danny.  He has not one shred of intuitiveness or whatever it is all other dogs seem to have that allows them to save their owners’ lives!!  Useless bloody dog.  🙂

This earthquake measured 7.2 on the Richter scale, and was centered in Mexicali, which must be 200 miles away.  It’s the first time in all the 35 years I’ve lived here where an earthquake we could feel in LA was felt in San Diego, too.  I know this as I was talking to my friend Joan in San Diego just a minute after.  “Did you feel that?”, “did you feel that?”, is the start of conversations as everyone starts calling each other.  “That was a rolling one”, “that was a jolt”, like watching the Olympics, we are all “experts” on earthquakes.  I guess a big tell tale sign that all is okay is that the phones are working.  When we had “the big one” in 1994 no phones worked.  And believe it or not, most of us didn’t have cell phones then, either.  I lived in a complex of 10 units then and only one of us owned a cell phone — the Hollywood director, natch!  In those “old” days part of our earthquake preparedness was to call someone out of state to let them know we’re okay.  Each family had one person designated so we all knew who to call to find out about others.  I wonder if this is starting to sound to our kids like “back in my day I walked 25 miles to school, in the snow, shoeless”?

But back to this earthquake, if it was just a 7.2 over 200 miles away, imagine what it felt like in Haiti or Chile!!!!  I have no idea.  I think our “big one” was a 6.4, if I remember correctly, and it was huge.  Freeways came down, walls parted letting the sunlight in, everything fell out of fridges, bookshelves, etc.  Haiti was a 7.0.  We’re watching the news now waiting to hear what’s happened to poor Mexicali, no news yet.  Hopefully everyone was outside looking for Easter eggs and no one was hurt.

The thing about earthquakes, to me anyway, is they’re quite exciting.  The initial shock, everyone running outside, the camaraderie, the “rush”.  But it’s the aftershocks that become tedious.  You never know if this is another big one, you have to run outside anyway, and after a few days of these, being interrupted how many times a day when you’re trying to work and the “rush” has worn off, is a royal pain.  So I just looked up Haiti earthquake news to see that they’re still suffering from aftershocks, three today, two over 3.0 and one a 4.2!  That’s huge.  I can’t begin to imagine just how bad it is there.

Yaaaaay.  It’s Oscar time.  Round the corner from my house the preparations are beginning today, red carpets have gone down, tarps have gone up (can you believe it’s supposed to rain on Sunday …. again ….. when will this rain stop, ever since I posted  about the rains we’ve had at least one good storm a week, which would be fabulous if it wasn’t following bad fires).

Anyway, back to Oscar, so the tarps are up, the carpets are down, the stars are descending upon LA.  Everyone always ask if we see famous people in LA.  The answer would be yes, if you believe lions roam the streets in Johannesburg.  I suppose they are all around, but without 5 hours of hair and make up you would never recognize them.  But this week, Oscar week …. we see them everywhere.  They are made up, they’re here to be seen and recognized.  Restaurants are full, hotels are full, and I dare you to find a limo on Sunday night.  This week is Hollywood glam at its best.

This morning I see that Robin Givens from Good Morning America is about to choose her dress for the red carpet, she is to choose one of three designed by three lucky students from the Parsons College in New York — fabulous, love to see kids get a break like this!  And the audience helps choose, too.

Then we have the post Oscar parties, all very secret except for the main ones.  This year I’ve been invited to a pre-Oscar party, on Friday night, for the best trailers of the year.  Harumph.  The best trailer party, at 10pm on a Hollywood rooftop, cocktail attire requested!!  First I have to stay up until 10, then I have to find a “cocktail” outfit.  Good news is it’s around the corner, so I can take a nap first.

And then, on Oscar day, as most of us aren’t invited to THE Oscar parties, everyone has mini parties at their homes.  Forms are printed out and best movies chosen by the attendees, strawberries are dressed in chocolate tuxedos, tv’s are turned on and the fun and games begin.  From the comfort of someone’s sofa!  I’m not too up-to-date on my movies this year, but am hoping for Oscars for Up in the Air with George Clooney and The Cove, a fabulous must-see docu-thriller about the slaughter of dolphins. The Cove trailer And of course Invictus!

Perhaps I’ll have time to sneak in a couple of matinees before Sunday?  Then we have the after tv shows, best watched from bed, and Barbara Walters has announced that this year is her last post-Oscar show, so let’s see how many people she can make cry on this final show!

So this last week I spent in the Cook Islands where I went to do a site inspection for an eclipse group who will be visiting there in July.  All went well, except for a little hiccup — we were almost visited by Cyclone Nisha, which, luckily, turned into a tropical depression before it reached us (but not before all the islands had been boarded up, schools and offices closed).  What is it with all this rain everywhere???  Or is it just me being followed by a little cloud?

There’s one flight a week from and to Los Angeles, you really don’t want to miss that flight!  So I was at the airport hours early only to find out our flight would be delayed a few hours (since it was supposed to depart at 11:30pm, this meant it wasn’t going anywhere until at least about 3am).  Yikes, the airport reminded me of Skukuza, circa 1980’s, with an outside holding pen, which is all well and good, unless it’s raining!  When I did find a chair I wrote the following.

Our flight was supposed to depart to Los Angeles at 11:30pm, it’s now about 2:30 am and there is still no sign of our plane, which is supposedly on its way here from New Zealand.  Luckily I got word of this beforehand and went to a friend’s house to watch the tennis, Federer won, yippee, but my happy spirits  are slowly being diminished as we wait for the plane.  And my feeling “in the know” about the plane being late is dissipating, too, I didn’t know it would be this late.  And don’t you just love those people who have stretched over four seats to take a nap.  We’d all like to take a nap, thank you very much, and in the event we can’t get comfortable stretched over 4 metal chairs, we’d sure like to sit down on something that has a back to hold us up (and only take up one seat).   Aaarrgghhh   While people watching at airports is one of my favorite things to do, no one is looking interesting at 2:40 am, in fact everyone’s becoming quite irritating!  Thought I would jot down my feelings of despair and perhaps share some great things that happened in the Cook’s, however, at this moment in time, all those feelings are fast fading.  I’d better sign off now before I start blaming sareunited for our demise (I’ve blamed everyone else).  Oh wait, yippee, the sound of a plane, it’s landing!!  Happy happy again, only have to wait another hour till it’s cleaned and we’re off.  And, by the way, the Cook Islands were great.  I spent my time on Rarotonga and Mangaia, the population of Rarotonga is about 10,000, and on Mangaia it’s about 350 (and shrinking every day).  It was fabulous being the only tourist!  Aha, a name for a book – The Only Tourist – sounds a lot happier than The Lonely Tourist.  Watch this space for more!

Okay, it’s now 3:37 am, and we are still sitting here, a room full of chia pets – everyone’s hair is frizzed out to there.  The ukelele has come out, the man is singing which usually means we are about to take off, and  …………. and then I had to shut down my computer.

Just a note to add to yesterday’s blog.  So this tornado came through Huntington Beach yesterday (MOST unusual for California), a friend took this photo.  Our brilliant weathermen went on and on last night saying they “believed a tornado had come through, but were still verifying this.  Not one of them actually would go out on a limb to say that it had occurred.  I’m telling you, hours and hours I listened to them saying it appeared that perhaps a tornado had come through, it appeared it had a path of destruction, but it still had to be confirmed.  I want their job!!

Oh I love the rain, something we really have too little of in sunny California, they even write songs about it …. “it never rains in Southern California”, a happy little song, although, in reality, it’s quite sad. How many millions of us live here with our green gardens with flowering plants, in what’s supposed to be a desert? And any time it rains here, it doesn’t just rain water, it rains houses, here they come, slip sliding down the hills. And year after year, when we do have a little rain, we always seem to see the same faces on television of people whose houses have been washed down the hill ….. again! What’s that about? If you build a house in a precarious environment on a precarious canyon, an obvious wonderful highway for fires to blaze down, all the shrubs and watered greenery (or dried up greenery) goes, and then it’s going to rain sometime, and that house is going to go down the hill again. Why are we so surprised every time this happens?

And I just love the weather guys …. a few mornings ago I was watching the weatherman who was very excited, he had something to report other than sunshine. (Our weather broadcasters in LA have THE most boring jobs in the world, perhaps that’s why they come up with such interesting names, Dallas Rains, Johnny Mountain or Storm Fields.) And this guy, Mr. Rains, Mr. Mountain or Mr. Fields … can’t remember which one it was …. said it was going to rain later today, probably late afternoon. “Ooops”, I thought, “I better get my dog’s long walk in now”, threw on my sweats, grabbed the leash and poop bags, and off we ran, right into the rain. I mean, really? The broadcast center is down the road from me. Could this guy not have looked outside the window to see it was actually raining, instead of consulting his radar maps, weather satellites, Live Doppler (my best)? Just stick his hand out the window, it’s not so hard. Or have a quick look and see what’s happening.

But the best was just yesterday, I was driving and, for the first time in the 35 years I’ve lived in LA, I experienced a Johannesburg rain. It was a monkey’s wedding, y’all know what that is, and the car in front of me at the stop sign was being poured on, while I sat right behind in sunshine and no wipers moving. It was one of those moments.

So the other night I went to a local blues and jazz club, The Mint , to see my old friend, Josh Sklair, playing with Bobby Murray All-Star review (Josh and Bobby Murray have played for Etta James for the last I-dunno-how-many years, Josh was her musical director, too).  It was the most fabulous night with incredible blues music and a number of artists getting up at different times to sing or play.  I hadn’t been to The Mint in years and years, it’s one of the great clubs in LA that I used to go to 30 years ago and while clubs here come and go quickly, just a few hang around for decades, this is one of those.  And to see Josh Sklair perform there was absolutely wonderful, I hadn’t seen him for years, we lost touch when I moved to New York for a few years in the 80’s, and what a way to catch up again (for me, anyway).  As very young kids 😉  we grew up listening to his Dad, Sam Sklair and his orchestra, as well as other old favorites like the Dan Hill and Bez Martin orchestras.  Anyone else remember the Rosebank Hotel on Saturday nights??

One of the things I love most about living in Los Angeles is the amount of superb talent everywhere.  Up until a couple of years ago there used to be a fabulous karaoke thing every Friday night at Farmer’s Market on Fairfax and Third where you or I couldn’t just get up and sing lousy karaoke, these were the best of the best who practiced all week and brought their own CD’s.  Some of them were actors whom you would recognize, others just regular people or ones who hadn’t made it in showbiz and this was the one time a week they could belt out their best for a few minutes.  I was the biggest groupie there and never missed a Saturday for about 5 years, and then, unfortunately, after a couple of boisterous conga lines through the produce section, the fire department shut us down.  (My friends now tell me that they wouldn’t answer their phones on Saturdays ‘cause they ran out of excuses as to why they couldn’t go with me, but now that it’s over, they’re sorry. )  🙂 Revenge is sweet.

But on Friday and Saturday nights there’s still always great bands playing at Farmer’s Market, and the best thing is it’s free!  You can choose whatever you want to eat from a myriad of stalls, grab a pitcher of beer or a bottle of wine from one of two bars, and in a fairly intimate, very casual setting enjoy great music from big band to country to acoustic.  During the days at Farmer’s Market tourists and locals mix, but come the end of the day, the tour buses leave and you’re left with just locals, it’s magic.

Below is a little video from last year’s Mardi Gras at the Market, I was there but don’t feature in the film.  Mardi Gras at Farmers Market http://www.farmersmarketla.com/newsandevents/events/mardigras/video/mardigrasvideo.html

So it’s back to the worst time of the year (for me), the dreaded Holidays.  I love Thanksgiving, but then comes Christmas, Channukah and New Year’s Eve, followed closely by Valentine’s Day.  I could happily skip over all these holidays, go to sleep the day after Thanksgiving and wake up New Year’s Day in time to see the Rose Parade on tv, in pj’s.  This year is the 121^st Rose Parade, a parade through the streets of Pasadena with the most beautiful floats you can ever imagine.  (Photos of a couple of 2009 winners below.)

I remember we used to think the Wits Rag Parade was spectacular, and until I moved to the States I never knew what spectacular was until I saw my first Rose Parade (or Tournament of Roses).  These are colossal floats and every centimeter has to be covered with flowers, or plant life of some form.  Some of them have computerized animation, others feature live people dancing on turning dancefloors, and so on.  My sister always walks down the road in Pasadena to view the floats on New Year’s Eve, when everyone’s rushing around like mad sticking on the last perishable flowers.  The theme this year is “2010, a Cut Above the Rest”, well, let’s hope that turns out to be true all year long!

This year, 2009, hasn’t really been the best for me nor, it appears, for the rest of the U.S., especially with the amount of awful reality shows appearing on tv (although, I must admit I am addicted to a couple like Say Yes to the Dress, a show about shopping for wedding dresses in a particular New York store, and another was John and Kate Plus Eight, and, oy, look what happened to that show).  Others I watch simply because I can’t believe what I’m watching ….. sex addiction shows, interventions, alcohol/drug rehabilitations, how to be a better “tool”, “I didn’t Know I was Pregnant” and so on.  I thought the whole idea of getting help in these areas was to keep it secret but here, on national television, everyone’s biggest secrets are unveiled.  Can they be real, or are they just made up for tv?

Of course there were some highlights in 2009 and I really shouldn’t be complaining, Obama is President, witnessing an eclipse in Shanghai when the clouds opened up just for those few minutes, Number One Ladies Detective Agency on HBO, six weeks on Saba in the Caribbean doing a very fun job, alas, no trips to Africa in 2009.  First time in a very long time, and perhaps that’s the big hole I’m feeling this year.  Another highlight, I can now see my friends on Skype when I speak to them for free — had a big laugh when I skyped my friend Roni in Johannesburg few days ago, and her husband answered the phone before realizing he was sitting with no shirt on having just got out of the pool (wonder what was below the table??), perhaps he was nekked, he got awfully embarrassed, that was fun.   Small things amuse small minds …….

Here’s hoping 2010 is a Cut Above the Rest for all of us!!!  I plan on watching the parade on New Year’s Day filled with hope.