Hey Look at what I won!

Not going to scoop this ultra cool contest, visit Mary Forney's blog. She was my best The Pamplemousse bud last season and is a favorite of mine!

Released!

I saw this leaf yesterday morning and wondered what it was telling me.

Day 5 of jury selection and I knew: I was released from this dreadful trial and wouldn't have to spend any more days looking at the back side of skull tattoos or the sleeping attorney. Four accused of extortion and homicide. Four defense attorneys, one d.a. About 80 prospective jurors for all five days of jury selection and started with more than 100. Very unusual to have such a big jury pool but they knew people were going to resist this case.

Early on I'd expressed my general revulsion for skull tattoos, but Jon was sure they'd keep me on the jury for who knows what reason. The trial is expected to run three weeks at least.

Then yesterday the goofball sleepy attorney mentioned that the crime happened in Canoga Park and zingo I remembered reading about the crime and OOH got to go in the back corridor and talk to the judge and all the attorneys about what I remembered. And I was in Colorado at the time but I remembered right, yes sir. (checked the facts today after I was released.)

The judge who sits up so high on his throne in the court room and was quite personable turned out to be a teenser fellow in person.

Today I dressed in the weirdest combo I could put together and horrified Jon as I walked out the door, but it wasn't the clothes that got me excused, I was already on the big list. YAY HOORAY! Everyone who got excused looked incredibly happy while waiting for their get out of jail passes.

Actually I think a criminal trial like this could be really interesting, but the obvious local gang angle scared me.

Nice Day!

Molly and I had a surprise walk with our best German Shepherd friend and her dog Tilden at dawn, then we went to the Farmers Market and my bud tasted her first cherimoya, which is a wondrous fruit if you've never tried it.

Without doing my usual frantic handicapping, Jon and I headed to Santa Anita because I wanted to try to find the statue in Mary Forney's contest. A season pass to the Clubhouse is an exceptional prize, and I was sure I knew where the little horse statue would be hiding. The hint was that it was amidst some potato chip displays. Do you know how many kiosks and cafes at a giant racetrack sell potato chips?

Between races I scurried here and there looking for the statue. The food stand person would say to me, "May I help you?" "No, thanks, I'm just looking." How pathetic, just looking at the potato chips.

I thought we'd found every possible display of chips but then we went into the paddock room, where I'd never been before, a basement area filled with people, and there in the corner was one more potato chip display. And what was that? The little statue. I was so excited that most of the pictures I took with my phone were impossibly blurry. I emailed one to Mary. I won the contest, I'm going to get my season pass! For someone like me, this is worth hundreds!

Every bet I placed was wrong until the 5th race when I bet on the horse Chantal Sutherland was riding to win, and in an exacta. She won. I won. The exacta too.

If you haven't seen Chantal Sutherland she is incredibly pretty and has a goofy website. I believe she used to be a flight attendant. She's Canadian and has a bit of Princess Diana about her. (be sure you see the first image on the site). She's a really great rider and has just returned to Santa Anita.

The woman next to me said, "Oh yeah Chantal beats the snot out of the guys every time." euw.
Not exactly Chantal's intended image. The same lady told me my jacket was worth at least $800. Jon's been trying to get me to throw it away. It does have a few stains. euw.

Down at the actual paddock we stood next to a friendly young woman who was about to start photographing the horses coming into the circle. We made some jokes and she said she was practicing taking pictures because she wanted to go to Kentucky to take pictures of horses breeding. Um, do you mean like, -breeding? Oh yes, she said, and you have to be very fast with your camera.

Jon said, "Maybe you can sell those pictures as a calendar, with Chantal photoshopped in the background."

We left after I had my wins. Great day. It is such fun to search for something in a contest and find it.

Feeling Lucky?

This afternoon I go for jury selection, which should be interesting. I just added a feature to my blog on the left side. It's something I've wanted for a while, a random replay from posts in the past.

It can be daunting when you visit a blog for the first time, to decide whether it's worth your time to read more, and this little feature can give you a nice (or not) random sampling. I got it here and it was just a click through to install.

Jury Duty?

This legs table was in a bail bonds window near the courthouse.

Wacky weekend around here but now we're grounded because the biggest rain of the season is supposed to slam Los Angeles all week. We'll see if that's true. It's raining now and still dark out. Glad I'm in the middle of "Gone with the Wind" which I'm enjoying.

All last week I dutifully called in to see if I had to report next day for jury duty. Thursday night I thought I'd gotten off the hook for at least a year, but no, had to show up at 8:30 the next morning. Spent the whole day reading "Gone with the Wind" in a big room with several hundred unhappy people. Around 3:15, when the room was nearly cleared out, they called the last group of potential jurors and we shuffled across the courtyard and upstairs to room F in the criminal court building.

The judge asked for a juror pool of more than 100 people for one case. That's unusual. If I get chosen I can't say more about it, but they aren't doing the selection until next Thursday.

We (last jury pool group) sat in the courtroom behind the FOUR defendants accused of extortion and murder. Two had big shaved heads and skull tattoos, and two were Russian looking in leather coats. Central casting!

Do you suppose their appearance might affect the outcome of the case? It's like with Phil Spector- why didn't his lawyer tell him not to wear the Bozo Clown fright wig to trial? That wasn't his hair. When he checked into jail he just had a little flat hairstyle and looked like an old retired raisin.

Then to add to weekend fun we took a quick trip out to Santa Anita and watched some horses run, came home and went to the Golden Globe party given by Paramount. I was on the guest list- insane, we don't know why.

I thought I'd post my twitter tweets. Many people are bewildered by twitter but I enjoy it and it doesn't track you the same way Facebook does. The 140 maximum letters per post make it challenging but more fun. A weird thing on twitter if a person is trying to tell a story is the sequence is backwards since you read the last post first.

These are my tweets (corrected in order) when we got home:

we only stayed for four races cause we're going to Paramount's Golden Globe party tonite woowoo. Told hub to bet Rummysecretwar - good..

At party tonight: Marty Scorsese, Ray Liotta, Len .DiCaprio & Don Rickles plus about 750 peeps for the food & drinks at Chateau Marmont

also me & hub & Robert deNiro who looked very confused. We stood at side door & watched the stars get wrangled in. Actors smoke a lot.

Party Food: macn cheese, paella, eggplant dish, filet mignon wrapped in bacon, sliders, mystery puffs and a tower of mini cupcakes. I ate 3.

(next day)
Just realized the weird guy with the icky face tattoo we stood next to last night at the Golden Globes Paramount party was Mike Tyson.

Somehow I only managed to identify the guy celebs, but there were many gorgeous women there too. The oddest dress was an absolute lampshade style. Strapless white bouffant with a ruffle on the bottom, which barely covered the bottom. The slightest move and you saw her black underpants. No lightbulb underneath.
There was a pretty strict no photos policy at the party, even outside with the line of valet parkers. With cel phones they can easily pop a shot just like a papparazi.

Here's a link to a gossip report on the party.

Marvelous Marti McGinnis!

Marti McGinnis painted this exquisite lyrical magical picture for my niece Allyx, who's enduring the toxic treatment required to defeat Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Marti writes about it here. There's so much depth to this joyful picture- I adore it. Thanks, Marti! You are a wondrous talent!

On the S.S. Dementia

Spoke to my mother this morning: she was up on deck and had been fishing all morning but no interesting fish had been caught. She said, "How are the horses running for you?" Wow, she remembers that my latest obsession is horse racing. I said, "I've been making lots of money."

"Oh, honey that's wonderful. I don't know how you do it. But don't forget, the worm turns."

I said, "I hear Cricket and Cousin John are both on the ship." She said, "I don't think so. I haven't seen hide nor hair of them."

It was time for her to go below deck, so we hung up for today. It does seem like she's having a pretty good time on this cruise of hers, and she maintains the reality of it every day which is quite an accomplishment.

taking a break

I'm taking a break from the blog, not sure how long. Nothing to worry about. Just feeling a little overwhelmed.

Quasi's Big Day

This morning when I got up my friend Michael had emailed me that my film "Quasi at the Quackadero" had been included in 2009 National Film Registry.

"The National Film Preservation Board members enthusiastically supported this addition to the more than 500 U.S. films now recognized as "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" and worthy of preservation."

I want to toast E.E. Gregg Snazelle. Right after college I rented an editing room at Snazelle Films in San Francisco so I could finish my third film, "Chow Fun." Gregg saw the film and offered me a job at his film company. The job was to experiment with animation, and do commercials for him when the jobs came in. He also hoped I'd figure out how to solve 3-d without glasses.

Needless to say I didn't solve 3-d. I didn't even do very many commercials over ten years, but I showed up at 8:30, took an hour off for lunch and worked till 5:30. I was paid $350 a month, and I could live on that then.

He encouraged me generously without ever paying much attention to me. These days if an opportunity like that even existed, you'd be forced to sign all kinds of rights statements for characters and content created, but this was before "Star Wars" and he just seemed to be happy to have me around. We were never particularly close. It spoiled me for any job after that.

I made all my "Quasi" films while I was working at Snazelle. Unfortunately he's no longer alive, but here's to you, Gregg, with a big heart and much thanks.

hostess dilemna

I saw this cute lady at Santa Anita the day after Christmas. Her hat was covered with sequins but I don't know how to get a sequin effect. Hope she was luckier than I was in her horse picks. We got to see Zenyatta one more time, and Brian and Dinah came too.

For Christmas we had invited nine guests. We had cooked about 20 dishes to accomodate various diets. Three of the guests were traveling together and they were picking up a fourth guest in Hollywood who can't drive. This had been arranged over a week's worth of emails.

When the carload of four arrived, guess what? There were only three. They had forgotten to pick up the fourth guest, and they were late. The food was all cooked. They'd totally forgotten.

Dinah got an A+ for volunteering to drive over to Hollywood and retrieve our guest who was patiently waiting. (But couldn't she have called to ask what's up?) Our cooked food also patiently waited for more than an hour. By the time we ate the food had patiently waited for more than two hours. We managed not to get mad and had a jolly time but it was a dilemna (that's the old fashioned spelling).



Here we are with Dinah's chickens. Remind me to wear makeup next time I get my picture taken with spring chickens.

yeah

Well I just spoke to my mother and she's sitting on a bench in Princeton. She said she hopes it'll be a lot more fun when I graduate- it's really supposed to be fun, but they're bringing all the mothers in in wheelbarrows and the sons aren't happy about it. Anyway, I'm supposed to meet her at the yacht house gate tonight between 5 and 7.

Merry Christmas!

Dinah got home this morning, with her friend Brian,



her three chickens, and two guinea pigs.



A good friend who grew up in Puerto Rico brought us these incredible Cuban pastries. He said the line went around the block.

Hope you all have a great day whatever you celebrate, whatever you're doing.

A letter from Jan. 18, 1981

My mother, my sister and I wrote each other many letters, and some of them I've saved. I was going through a box the other day and I thought this letter my mother had written me in 1981 really gives you a sense of her vivid imagination, and where mine comes from.

The first part of the letter, which I left out, was about whether my sister should come with me on a lecture tour. (My mother was against it.) The rest of the letter is below:

I just read your "Dome of Peace ". It' s a beautiful story Sally and once again I can't get over the gift you have for writing. I knew you had done some interesting things at Smith but didn't realize the extent of your creative abilities.

I like this story particularly because it is positive. The world needs to hear and read of victorious characters. The character in your story is confronted with destructive forces and manages to be victorious over them. So many writers like to leave their characters in hopeless defeat or hopeless anxiety.

Of course that is the true meaning of Christianity--victory. I never told Daddy but I had the deepest respect for Martin Luther King--"I have a dream" and "We can overcome", just think
what he accomplished in his short life . Writers can have tremendous influence on people without ever knowing it. I am so moved by what I read that I have to make vigilant choices.

I actually gave up novels because I couldn't read them like regular people. I was "them" in the novel and couldn't do anything else till I was finished with "them". That's why I like biographies and autobiographies. I know the people turned out O.K. so I can read at my leisure, like regular
people. Even here I find myself wanting to copy down all the wise conclusions they come to so my children can have the benefit of them! With Schweitzer I was in steaming Africa, with Zelda Fitzgerald in the nut house, with Baruch on Wall Street, and so it goes... There are many people, not in the public eye who live victoriously and it is these people who deserve plaudits, like Enether and Jean Wallace.

Must close this, I am taking Bee Burnett to church and because she wants to/will sit thru a lecture on Islamic religion set up by the education dept at St. Pauls. Talk about negative! Who ever said I was prejudiced! If he isn't too darling about it I may find it interesting. He is a
professor, not a missionary.

My afternoon is going to be wonderful. First the football game and then the tennis!

Lots of love

Mom

(The letter was typewritten and I was able to scan it and then use a program that recognized the text to paste it here. )

All Over the Globe

When I spoke to my mother today the ship she thinks she's on had passed through the Panama Canal. Now they were in Japan, and people talked too fast and she had never liked the place or the people. She said she missed America.

I tried to pull her back to reality by talking about my brother. "Cricket's in Africa," I said. (It's true- he's visiting his daughter in Mozambique.) She knew this. She remembered that his daughter had been ill in Africa earlier this year.

At the end she said "Lovely of you to call." Ta ta!



What I've been thinking is that with baby boomers approaching the falling down age, researchers had better get on the stick with studies of anesthesia and its effect on the elderly, or "The Magical Mystery Tour" will have a total new meaning.

These images from a wonderful site, Cruising the Past.

On the S.S. Xmas

Today when I called my mother she said "I'm back on the ocean."

We talked about that a while, and I tried to steer the boat elsewhere by saying we were decorating our tree. She said, "Oh we had a big Xmas party on the ship yesterday but the staff was running around snatching people's presents. Then they gave us castor oil."

Not sure this is the ship we want to be on.

Aloha

My mother was moved to long term nursing care yesterday. I called today and the very jolly nurse said they were about to make peanut butter cookies together and it was a good time for me to call.

I said "Hi Mom" and she told me:

• She'd been in China but now she was in Hawaii.
• She was in a work camp run by the Episcopal Church.
• She was in a recreation hall and the people running things weren't very bright. I said, "Well you've always gotten along with people like that," and she said "That's true."
• She was amazed I was able to reach her on the telephone.
• She was worried about my father because he walks so much slower than most of the people where she was. (He died in 1969 and I remember he was a slow walker.)

She's always had a good imagination and it's certainly rolling along now. Her voice had a hint of the old time educated/elegant Baltimore accent I can remember from when I was little. She sounded quite breezy.

Sketchbook Pro

I have a trial version of Sketchbook Pro starting today. This is the first picture I've drawn with it. Definitely captures my not quite with the season mood.

The program seems quite nice actually. I figured it out enough in five minutes to get started, and the colors are more fun to play with than what I'm used to. I believe it's rather expensive but I haven't checked the price yet. It wasn't much more complicated than graffiti, at least to start out with.

Add to that Dinah just called and probably won't get home for Christmas because her horse developed an abcess in her hoof, which requires daily attention. It used to be you had to put your horse's hoof in a bucket twice a day, now you wrap a diaper soaked in cayenne mixture. The cayenne is so the goats won't eat the diaper.

Another tough dog from long ago

As I was looking through the giant pile of cd-roms to find replacement software for my old computer, I came upon a cd of this photograph.

I sold this on ebay about six years ago. A bidding war ensued and it sold for more than $700. It wasn't much bigger than a postcard. Two women who both loved pitbulls were battling. You may not be able to tell, but the girl's holding a pistol and the pitbull has his, uh, lipstick showing.

While trying to revive my laptop I've come upon all sorts of weird solutions that people say work, like "Turn it on, put it in a plastic bag, then cover it with several towels. Wait 45 minutes, turn it off, then turn it on again and hold down the j-k-l keys." Not the h-e-l-p keys?

It didn't work. People are trying to put together a class action suit for this particular hp tablet laptop.

Been a while

Yeah, holiday spirit. I've been trying to put my computer back together again and I came upon this picture Dinah created about 8 years ago. That's our old dog Lulu on the front porch in Colorado.

Cold Case Carnival

Hey, what's in that tent?



I'm back on the track of taking my German Shepherd Molly to Lake Balboa every morning at dawn. I thought the big news this morning was that the pelicans were back-- I saw 10 landing-- but then turning down a side road I came upon this amazing carnival set for Cold Case. They're filming tomorrow and Monday so they have to keep the sets up and I guarantee they'll have a rough time this weekend convincing people that it's not a circus and it's not a carnival.

The pleasant(ly plump) security guy told me I couldn't have a walk around even though it wasn't filming till next day. I understood. Just wish he didn't have that tattoo of his name crawling up the side of his neck. Freaks to the left of me, freaks to the right of me.