Itinerantdaughter's Blog

Wish I could be at last call at this little joint.

Le Happy, where are you!?

… but the way you know you’re truly old is when you watch Intervention and don’t recognize the drug nicknames the kids have these days.  “Roxy rolls?  Like… Tootsie Rolls?  Well, they have a lot of sugar in them, but that can’t be THAT harmful!”

My boyfriend sent me a nice article on the newly renovated Jean Arps house.  Here’s a sneak peek, but you can read the whole thing here:

“Arp (1886-1966) was a pioneer of Surrealism and a member of the Dada movement, the branch of Surrealism that called for a return to childhood spirit and the destruction of all established rules. After working in Zurich and then in Paris in Montmartre, he and Taueber, another free thinker (they eventually married), bought a piece of land in Clamart and built a house at the edge of a forest. Influenced by the Bauhaus, Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand, Taueber designed it.

More than 80 years later, the three-story “maison-atelier” still stands, and a decade-long renovation has just been completed.”

So I’m looking at it and all of a sudden I see that the writer is one Saskia de Rothschild, who owns a famous last name, sure, but also went to the same summer camp I did growing up!  She was a few years younger than I was but I remember her as delightfully skinny and French in her little tomboyish outfits. Maybe she has a Google Alert on herself.  If so, what up, Saskia?!

I learned from Going Clear (where else?) that Paul Haggis and some friends –– including a peace activist?! –– have a monthly boys’ night during which they make fancy cocktails and talk about any number of topics.  A writer for the Times wrote about this tradition of theirs back in 2005.  Here’s a snippet:

“Until 2000 Mr. Haggis had toiled for almost 25 years as an Emmy-winning but frustrated television writer. He made a lot of money, but he worried that his co-creation of the hokey television series Walker, Texas Ranger would constitute his legacy.

Then, early this year, came the success of Million Dollar Baby. Now he has made his directorial debut with Crash, a searing look at racial and ethnic strife in Los Angeles that he wrote with Bobby Moresco.

The movie, which was produced for $7.5 million, has earned nearly three times as much in the first 10 days after its release on May 6. ‘I thought it could fall flat; who wants to go out on a Friday night to see a movie about race relations?’ said Mr. Haggis, whose film opens with a brutal car accident, which he claims is the only way in which Angelenos interact with strangers.

The maker of Crash wasn’t taking any chances on this evening. After a round of the shudder-inducing cocktails, he suggested to his pals – the actor Josh Brolin, the television writer Stephen Nathan, the film producer Rudy Langlais and the peace activist Blase Bonpane – that they walk to Locanda Portofino, an Italian restaurant nearby.

On the way, the men, who meet every three months or so, talked about earthquakes, Egyptian cotton linens and the preponderance of strip malls.”

You can read the whole thing here.

In Going Clear, Lawrence Wright says that the men decided, after being trailed around by this female reporter, that one lady added nicely to the mix, so they started inviting one lucky woman to every Boys’ Night.  One such invitee was Madeline Stowe, who said it was the funniest night of her life but that she wisely brought her husband.  Possibility of being made the subject of shady misogyny (is there a different kind?) aside, I still want to be invited.

“I walked into the wedding and was shocked to see a parade of couture.  The women were dressed gorgeously, their hair and makeup done to perfection.  I recognized designer gowns: Versace, Gucci, Vera Wang.  As they danced, holding hands and kicking up their feet in one large turning circle, I saw the red soles of a dozen Louboutins.  Half the noses in the room were identical ski slopes, with a straight bridge and small round nostrils –– certainly not the noses they were born with.  I was shocked!  I was mortified.  I looked down at my ridiculous homeless hipster outfit and felt the urge to run away.

“Before I could, the impeccably dressed women at the wedding grabbed my hands and pulled me into a large circle dancing around the bride.  I danced next to Danya, a student from Berkeley and, of all the students at Yeshivacation, the one closest to my age and disposition.  She wore jeans and some sort of knee-length hippie apron.  Chana, the bride, was dressed head to toe in white lace.  A high white fence separated her from Yitzhak, her new husband, and also kept the enormous men’s and women’s gatherings distinct.  The marriage had taken place at 770 earlier in the day, and the party was in a giant event space across the street, which hosted around five Hasidic weddings a week.  As the Yeshivacation girls fled past the men’s area, I peeked through the door and, for as long as they let me, watched the dense mass of formally dressed Hasids, wearing black top hats and black suits, dancing in a circle, hoisting the groom and his father and uncles up in chairs.  A Hasidic band played onstage.  A long cord traced along the back of the room and connected to one large speaker in the women’s section, which blasted the same music to a much different scene.

“As the night wen on, and we just kept spinning in circles, I began to forget how inappropriately I was dressed, forget even what weird old biddy I was to everyone there.  I locked arms with Danya and a middle-aged married Hasidic woman next to me, wearing a lavender dress and a smooth brown wig.  We kicked our legs and twisted side to side while the band on the men’s section pumped out chorus after chorus of Jewish wedding music.  Chana, the young bride, red-faced and beaming, stood in the middle, turning in small circles of her own.  Her hair –– it looked like it was still her own, not yet shorn or covered by a scarf –– fell in long brown ringlets, which bounced as she danced.  Her makeup was perfect, and her eyes were full of happy tears.  Periodically, on some prompting –– I couldn’t tell what –– all the women, arms linked, rushed in on her, closing ranks, cinching tight, and she waved her hands like a beauty queen.

“Hasidic Jews believe a woman is closer to God on her wedding day.  She has special prayers she get to say and these get more traction with the Divince.  At one point, Chana reached out and grabbed me from the circle.  I had no idea what was happening and dug in my heels, shaking my head, urging her to find someone else, but she insisted.  She held my hands in hers and we twirled around, just the two of us, while she spoke a prayer in Hebrew.  I looked in her eyes and searched my body for any feeling of holiness, for anything at all.  My thoughts immediately skipped forward a few hours, to the room where Chana and her betrothed would spend their first night together –– almost certainly the first time either would touch the bare flesh of a member of the opposite sex.  As she whispered in Hebrew, I looked at her closed eyes.  She opened her eyes and let go of my hands as the circle of women closed around her.

“Could this possibly be happiness?”

~Rebecca Dana, Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde

(You thought it must be me, no?)

… to get an STD (save the date) like this:

YES I will attend.

In lieu of making anything original, I think I’ll link to my friend Every-day Prospects’ blog, where I’m featured talking about how hard it is to be charming.  Find me here.

An excerpt from her post, which is, as usual, measured and intelligent:

“It’s not that I don’t think writing and being good with people are valuable skills.  I am convinced that they are very valuable indeed.  You don’t decide to become a writer/social worker if you think that those ‘soft’ skills are too soft to shape real things.  I believe deeply in the practical worth of kindness and good communication skills—deeply enough to try and make them into a career that’s good for the world and good for me.  It’s just that those skills…you can’t catalogue them.  You can’t quantify them and you can’t show them off at a party.”

Text from LB, Friday at 8:10 PM: I’m at a suicide prevention fundraiser.  I can’t even write out my thoughts.

ID: Why?

ID: Meaning, why are you there?  (The inability to write being immediately understandable.)

LB: My cousin’s friend’s family has started a foundation for their daughter that committed suicide.

ID: Oh.  Is it… fun?

LB: No.

LB: The food is good though.

ID: Hahaha!

LB: Actually really good.

A wee Kafka story that can almost (ALMOST) be read as Tao-ish self help.

The Trees

For we are as tree-trunks in the snow.  Apparently they are merely resting on the surface of the snow, and a little push would be enough to knock them over.  No, that’s not the case, for they are firmly attached to the ground.  But see, even that is only seemingly the case.