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Happy Sunday from Sunny Santa Barbara: Breathtaking Brunch at Maggie’s at State and A and Victorian Chick’s Anti-Helicopter Parents

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Victoria

Perfect scramble and potato Daphinois at Maggie's.

Surrounded by French tapestries worthy of the Cloisters, with a second glass of red wine I’m sipping after five cups of coffee to recover from an asthma attack last night, I’m basking in the glow of Maggie’s motto: Comfort, Cuisine, Beauty.

Maggie’s opened in September but I just learned about this exquisite restaurant across from the Granada Theater on State and Anapamu last weekend, when I attended what struck me as the least interesting program of the SB Symphony’s post-January subscription.

The SB Symphony ‘s website made it sound like Bernstein’s symphonic dances from Westside Story (my least favorite major musical, along with the impossibly hokey Oklahoma) were the main part of the program, when in fact the Gerswhin and newly commissioned work by the young Jonathan Leshnoff, “Concerto Grosso in the Baroque Style,” formed between two-thirds and three-fourth’s of the evening’s music. (I still can’t say I like the two most famous songs from Westside Story, but without vocals, they’re much less annoying.) As I’m not a classical music scholar or writer, I will leave you to read the after-show writeup SB Symphony website about the “American Masterpieces” show: Leshnoff, Bernstein, Gershwin with Guest Soloist XiaYin Wang. Wang is as staggering as all claim and her encore, “I’ve Got Rhythm” was great fun.

I truly enjoyed the Leshnoff as did a trumpet player in attendance who told me his only objection to the charming, energetic piece was that few trumpet players would be up to performing that solo. I knew nothing about the commissioning of concertos or symphonies but my friend Rodney Punt, who publishes the blog LA Opus and writes regularly on classical music and opera for the Huffington Post, explained that this is quite common (Rodney Punt Bio).

I told Dad I had gone to the Granada last weekend and he said, suspiciously (as he thinks I have no taste in anything but food and literature), “What did you see?” “A pretty and very interesting concerto by a guy a year younger than me which was commissioned for the SB Symphony.” Dismissively: “Pass. Next.” “Gershwin.” “Which one?” “Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra.” “What else?” he asked in a tone which can only be described as underwhelmed. “Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from Westside Story.” “Jesus. Sounds like quite a program. Sorry I missed it.” Dad is fine with Gershwin but he wouldn’t go out of his way to buy tickets (or have Mom buy them) and drive to go see even a prodigy like the beautiful, young Wang play him. (I was unaware that Gershwin died at 39 of a brain tumor until I posted on Facebook and musical friends commented.)

“What else,” he asked in an underwhelmed tone, “An interesting and pretty new concerto by a guy a year younger than me, commissioned for the SB Symphony.” “Jesus, sounds like quite a program. I’m sorry I missed it.” My father is the classical music scholar in the family but he’s old and even when he wasn’t, Dad is suspicious of modern composers. He’s not much for Berg, Ravel or Hindemith, though Hindemith is unobjectionable to him. He’ll sit through Poulenc if the second act is Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, as he did at St. Matthew’s a few years ago when I was his date on an evening Mom had to go downtown for a function.

Dad’s favorite composers are Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Schubert and Brahms. He enjoys Chopin, Schumann, and a range of others he regards as second-tier behind the big five, but has little use for the Russians, particularly Stravinsky. Mahler he thinks is all right but goes on forever, saying that if I had six hours to kill, Mahler’s “Resurrection” was tolerable but that like all Mahler, there’s not much there there. Overall, it’s not offensive to him but all sounds the same and nothing he’d go out of his way to see performed live.

Dad isn’t into 20th-century composers and particularly dislikes Bartok and composers of that ilk. He not infrequently said of his first wife, who was a University of Michigan music major headed for a career as a concert pianist before becoming a mother and marvelous piano teacher, that her one defect in the realm of music was a fondness for Bartok “and other shit like that.” Lois was my piano teacher and in just nine months, I skillfully played C.P.E. Bach’s “Solfeggietto” at a talent show, apparently drawing gasps from St. Augustine parents (industry elementary school with no shortage of artistically talented kids of big actors, producers and directors).

The hush which descended after the first few bars may have had something to do with my following a classmate who butchered “Red River Valley” on the violin. Dad still remembers the trauma of listening to this 4^th grader and cites it reason for not entering the school from 4^th to 6^th grade. (He did drive carpool one morning a month but just dumped us in the alley which functioned as a carpool lane because 4^th Street is a major Santa Monica thoroughfare with a public parking structure across the street and Dad wasn’t a helicopter parent. Parking and walking us across the street would have been far too much of a hassle.)

Dad’s absence from “upper school” (4^th-6^th grade) prompted the story I’ve told many times about my 6^th grade teacher, Lori Rousso, who approached my father at graduation (never having met him before), “Mr Ordin, I always thought that it took two [to make a baby], but Maria has convinced me otherwise.” This is second only to the “thank yous” at graduation to all the parents who had been there (and paying tuition) for seven years.

The Paltrows, like most Hollywood parents (or at least the wives), did all kinds of parent-y stuff . To be fair, Blythe was the breadwinner in Gwyneth’s early years, and before The White Shadow and St. Elsewhere, Bruce wasn’t working all the time. The great thing about working on movies (or TV shows where you go on hiatus), is that when you’re working, you’re working hard, but after the movie or season wraps, you get time off between projects. Prosecutors and judges don’t go on hiatus, nor do they get a year between film projects.

So after Paul Cummings’ “Bruce Paltrow and Blythe Danner, thank you for the drives to the Tree People and the cakes for the bake sale and the Whole Earth Day Lunch” it came to my parents: “Robert and Andrea Ordin, thank you.” This did not go unnoticed in the chapel at St. Augustine-by-the-Sea school and while my brother, father and I thought it was quite funny, Mom found it mildly embarrassing I later learned.

I recently reiterated the story to Dad, who at 88 is beginning to forget some things. His view was essentially this: “We gave them you and the checks didn’t bounce. What the hell else did they expect?” (I was a considerably better behaved as a child and teen before analysis at 19 when I learned that extreme people-pleasing and perfectionism are pathologies so “giving them me” meant delivering a perfectly behaved child and teacher’s pet.)

I confess I’m old school on these matters and agree entirely with my father. While I understand that charter schools depend upon parental assistance to maintain the quality of education absent 25K or more a year per head, (St. Augustine was around 3K when I was there and Westlake 10K in 7^th and 14K by the time I graduated in 1990), I would deeply resent having to tolerate other people’s children four hours a week as a parent aide during designated months. Apparently, you can write a get-out-of-class- free check at Santa Barbara’s excellent Peabody Charter School. I don’t know the magic number which releases you from having to interact at great length with multiple children not your own, but whatever it is, it’s a bargain.

I quit piano at the end of 6^th grade. Because—thank Yahweh—Mom and Dad weren’t nosy parker helicopter parents (quite the reverse: I lived entirely on my own on weekends at the house in the Palisades while they lived on the boat in the Marina from 14.5 to college), no one suggested I practice just an hour or two a week to keep up my skills so that later in life I might be able to pick up a piece of popular sheet music and enjoy playing as an adult, I can’t play anything except the first bars of Bach’s Invention 8 (right hand only).

But I love classical music and this is the first year I have attended the symphony on a regular basis. After the spectacular New Years Eves Pops show at the Granada to which I dragged the reluctant but cheerful J, I bought the cheap mini-subscription–three shows for 95 dollars—and have adored the shows, the Mozart and Mendelssohn in particular. I switched out the Mahler for the Vivaldi and am looking forward to the show in April, when I plan to eat dinner at Maggie’s after dumping the Saab at the valet.

In spite of being a Frugal Fanny, I believe life is too short to save 5 or 10 bucks on parking and the kids who work there are affable, hardworking male college students who deserve good tips they can put into their booze fund. (Something like two-thirds of UCSB students work part-time. Long gone are the days privileged white kids in 325s who didn’t get into UCLA or Cal came to UCSB to surf, party and raise their GPAs in order to transfer to the flagship UC campuses.)

With that by way of typically allusive, tangential and self-reflexive preface, let me urge all locals and visitors to SB to include Maggie’s on their list of culinary destinations. Victorian Chick\’s review of Maggie\’s at State and A

As I note, the restaurant is a revelation visually with French tapestries which evoke the unicorn tapestries at the Cloisters.

Tapestries at Maggie's.

Every inch of Maggie’s betrays an attention to detail one associates more with homes in Architectural Digest than even a fine dining establishment in a food destination like Santa Barbara. The rich green leather chairs–both the high chairs for the tables for two and the lower tables in the center of the main indoor dining area–are comforting yet not dowdy or geriatric. The chandeliers over the bar are elegant and elaborate without being overly ornate or precious. The window ledges by the two tops facing State are a nice touch, where one can put a purse or computer while eating before settling in for a session of reading or writing with an after-meal cocktail or dessert wine.

Terrific bar.

As for the food, I have eaten only at brunch but the price point is identical to Jeannine’s, which has no servers of course (you order at the counter and someone runs the food out to you) and is a charming casual but overpriced cafe. Jeannine’s prices didn’t stop me from eating breakfast there four days a week for years at the Ontare location but I hardly ever go anymore and between Blush SB and Maggie’s, I can’t imagine why I would end up at Jeannine’s (and only in Montecito) more than a few times a month. Before the Granada, I saw (and smelled) numerous entrees at the bar, including the popular oxtail which the owner told me will remain on the revised menu for spring and summer.

My scramble with carmelized onions, red peppers, spinach and hint of goat cheese could not have been more perfect and the sinful potato daphinois wonderful, though I ate most of it for dinner, along with a half-sandwich left over from Brophy’s Brothers last night. I like the Ballard Pinot for 12/glass but think the Kenwood Cabernet is almost as good. Someone I knew from the Coast, the restaurant at the Canary, has come onboard and I had a lovely chat with the one of the owners, whose daughters are both in a trendy area of Brooklyn.

Unfortunately the picture taken by one server after three hours in the dining room I hated to leave was backlit, but since I have my V2, I’ll post it anyway.

A slightly better shot is the one I took before I left J’s condo, still feeling less than stellar after an allergy attack which began at 10 and lasted near two hours with new earrings by my friend Lori Shinder Pearl and her partner Maureen Winter, owners of Winter Pearls (Winter Pearls on Facebook). These pair perfectly with a versatile necklace by my friend in SB, Lisa Duncan Carrillo, which I usually wear doubled as a choker but works well as a long single chain as well either alone or with another of her long necklaces (Lisa Duncan Carrillo Jewelry Designs on Facebook)

P.S. For those who have been following Dad’s recent hospitalization, he’s home from Saint John’s but still coughing and I will know more tomorrow. I had a terrific dance class on Thursday with Risa, which I will repeat tomorrow before heading to the Palisades to be with Dad. Dad’s pneumonia kept me from blogging about St. Patrick’s Day at Corks ‘n Crowns, the first time I’ve ever done anything fun for the holiday. I will go back soon to Corks ‘n Crowns and now that I am not a Funk Zone virgin (even with J I rarely go down there) and have discovered Metropolous Fine Foods (see Yelp), I will be spending more time at the area of town just five minutes from J’s condo but a world away.

Here are a few pictures from the beach after the Sugar Cat Studio/wine and beer tasting event where I met three strangers who invited me to walk on the beach afterward.

With CJ

With CJ. A look frequently to be found on my face that day as it takes some time to know when he's serious and when he's not. An electrical engineer in San Diego, he manages to convince one he hasn't understood you when really he has.

With Shasta and Quston.

Posted in Family, Food & Wine, Lifestyle, St. Augustine, Uncategorized | Tagged American Masterpieces, brunch in SB, classical music, composers, Corks 'n Crowns, George Gershwin, helicopter parents, Jonathan Leshnoff, Leonard Bernstein, Maggie's at State and A, Nir Kabaretti, parenting, SB symphony, st. augustine, St. Patrick's Day, Westside Story, Yelp reviews | Leave a comment

Back from NYC and Back to Blogging: Highlights from Trip with Pictures en Route to LA for Parent Visit and Jay Mohr at Hollywood Improv

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Victoria

After Matisse exhibit at the Met before lunch at Nectar on Madison

Ed. note: I wrote this a week ago but just posted the pictures. Jay Mohr was tremendous and Jerry Seinfeld made a surprise drop-in appearance. Going to comedy, like going to baseball games, is better during the week. I don’t feel this way about theater but with sports and comedy, you meet an entirely different crowd during the week.

***

Happy Tuesday from SB! I started a few blogs but didn’t finish any of them, nor did I publish the blog from the plane about TSA, which was small potatoes next to my genuine altercation with that Nordic fascist on US Airways on the second leg of the flight who nearly tossed me off the plane in the Third World airport that is Phoenix Sky after a long flight with a darling 4-year-old girl with ADD who viewed the airplane as a giant jungle gym to explore at will.

I also started a blog about writer’s block, a phenomenon I do not at all comprehend, as the only piece of writing in my life with which I grappled (ultimately unsuccessfully, hence my perpetual ABD status), was my overly ambitious dissertation: “Ethical Fictions: George Eliot and the Narration of Life.” A lit/philosophy crossover dissertation taking on large aesthetic and ethical questions, it was ambitious both conceptually or theoretically and temporally (looking back to Wordsworth and Kant and looking ahead to Henry James).

And I don’t write fiction, screenplays or poetry so perhaps writer’s block applies more to those genres. But I don’t get–in the sense of understand or experience–writer’s block if one writes nonfiction. I didn’t write in NYC this past three weeks not because I was blocked but because I was busy dancing, going out to dinner or lunch, and walking long distances (to Sarabeth’s three times from 62nd to 92nd). I did, however, Yelp some 30 restaurants and other venues in NYC which you can read here: Victorian Chick Yelp Review\’s from 21 Days in the City (and 6 new CA reviews)

I won’t attempt to cover the three weeks in a single blog but wanted to break radio silence and include some of the better pictures and highlights of the trip before I take Emma to the beach for a walk. Unlike most labs, Emma is not mad for the beach, nor does she care to swim. I have never seen her fully submerge but the last few beach walks, she has gotten her legs underwater, stopping short of the torso and head.

Emma enjoys the beach when we go but she isn’t social with other breeds; she enjoys mingling with other labs but when other breeds come up to play, she ignores them. In the 2.5 years since I met her, Emma has been the perfect weight without a lot of exercise. I think she gained some weight in the last month and I bought my first pair of new tennis shoes at Loehmann’s the third day of my trip, so now I can take her to the beach.

Here I am, blissed out in a series of pictures after dinner at Brophy Brother’s on a stunning Sunday evening after a heavenly swim at SBAC, with J, T and his cool college buddy from Brooklyn and Bergen County (?!) now in Laguna Beach.

Our last time with Emma at the beach in May, my old Nike Airs disappeared from J’s front porch. I think he’s taken her and I know the girls who sat for him when we left town took him daily, but I haven’t been to Montecito beach with her in nearly a year! Now that Daylight Savings and I have a great pair of shoes, I plan to start taking her more both with and without J as we live less than five minutes from one of the most coveted beaches in California (San Ysidro Lane, Butterfly Beach by the Four Seasons/Biltmore). The cold plate is the bargain at dinner, along with the sandwiches, 14.95 for the crab meat, clams, oysters and ceviche.

Dance was of course great and after Joey Doucette left for Vegas, I was back at Luigi quite a bit. I was a bit wistful when I heard from Francis on FB, “You were just getting comfortable in your body again. Too bad you have to go to the West Coast.” I didn’t get to dance (even after the classes at Steps) as much as I generally do because some people I needed to meet for writing reasons could only meet me at lunch and Luigi is at 11AM and 1PM. Francis teaches at 7PM but I usually have dinner or other evening plans.

I saw a phenomenal movie at my favorite NY movie theater, the Sunshine Cinema, on Houston. Though it’s on the Lower East Side, it’s the most convenient theater because I can get the F train from 63rd and Lex and get off on 2nd, which is literally one block from the Sunshine, a Landmark theater. My favorite theater in any American city I’ve visited or lived is the Landmark at the Westside Pavilion. It used to be the Samuel Goldwyn Cinemas, a multiplex with small screens showing art, foreign and indie flicks. Now, it’s ultra-fancy with ushers, business class leather seats, state of the art sound and visual and great food.

The Landmark in NYC isn’t glitzy or fancy but it shows great films I can’t see in SB and while the seats are kind of scratchy with an odd head rest which goes badly with an overcoat or hooded jacket, the employees and customers alike share a deep love of film and I always end up chatting a bit afterward with a complete stranger. This never happens in LA, I mean never. Going to a movie at Sunshine is more like going to the theater, where people absolutely do discuss what they’ve just mutually experienced.

So when I heard this horrific noise at 8PM after a long day out walking around the Reservoir and also to and from Sarabeth’s on 92nd and Madison, I had to get out of the apartment and couldn’t find any cabaret music which appealed to me at 54 Below, the Metropolitan Room or the Duplex.

Biggest crane I've ever seen. Work on the 63rd Street subway station (installation of a/c)

Genius on Hold came out the Friday before last and when I saw it come up on my FB feed (IMDB is a good page to “like”), I bought a ticket to the 9:30 show online and ran to the subway on an objectively cold, wet night with flurries and wind.

A fine documentary which should be nominated next year for best documentary but might be overlooked due to poorly-timed distribution (a week or so post-Oscars)

Narrated by the great Frank Langhella, the film tells the tragic story of Walter Shaw, a brilliant inventor with a few dozen patents, eight of which are absolutely vital to our daily lives. I will write a separate blog about the film which really is the Inside Job of the current year but was released at a terrible time to generate buzz.

Movies released after the Oscars tend to get forgotten or lost in the shuffle. This film, with its helpful summary of the Kingston Commitment and the Kefauver Commission, along with history of deregulation under all post–WWII presidents, should be screened in every high school social studies and US history class in America. I wrote to my liberal friend in Park Slope that one forgets just how evil AT&T was and she wrote, “Oh I don’t forget. I hate corporate America.” But this is not a lefty film: it addresses corporatism and the crony capitalism both sides of the political spectrum claim to deplore.

After WWII, Shaw went to work for Bell as a field worker (climbing the poles, laying wire) before being recognized as special and educated at the Bell training center. The 9th grade graduate turned out to have an aptitude for calculus and became a senior engineer before finally leaving over serious disputes about the right to his own inventions.

Shaw’s son and daughter produced the film and two professors, one from Syracuse and one from St. John’s, provide important historical and technological context for the personal story his son and daughter tell. Walter “Thiel” Shaw turned to organized crime when Shaw became unable to make a living as a result of Bell’s and AT&T’s ruthless monopolies, eventually becoming the most successful jewel thief in history (I will check on the details; I’m just narrating from recollection here and it may be that he was just the biggest jewel thief on the East Coast). Thiel ran the “dinnertime club,” a crew of jewel thieves who worked when wealthy people were out to dinner. Eventually he got caught and served 9 years of a 12 year sentence in Dade County.

I cannot recommend the film highly enough but do bring tissues when you go. The end is desperately sad, as Shaw died penniless after a life of hard work and brilliant inventions which should have made him solvent if not rich. It’s a small consolation that in 2011, Chief Justice Roberts wrote an opinion granting an inventor the rights to his invention, some 62 years after Shaw made the argument to Bell.

It was 12:20AM when I got out of the theater. Gloveless and really cold, I decided I needed sustenance and knew nothing would be open in my hood by the time I got off the subway, so I went into the first place I saw: Pulino’s.

It turns out this is not just a pizza parlor with a red awning but a well-liked, Zagat-rated Italian in the area now known as Nolita. I hadn’t heard of Nolita and neither had my FB friends who lived in the city 20, 30 or more years ago. Current NYC friends explained to me that it was a real estate term intended to drive up prices but that most people still think of Nolita as the Lower East Side.

I had an absolute blast and intend to go back next trip before or after a show to try the pizza. I’m not into pizza and even in New Haven, famous for Sal’s and Pepe’s, I rarely (fewer than 5 times) ate pizza during my entire undergraduate career. This pizza, however, had a razor thin crust and everything I saw coming out of the kitchen looked and smelled scrumptious. Here is my eggplant parmigiana appetizer for 12 and the Primitivo house red for 7, which is unheard of in the city except at Happy Hour.

The crowd was boisterous and fun and the bar is beautiful (Yelp reviews make a note of it). I will absolutely be back in May as it is fun (as much as I consider myself an honorary Baby Boomer with mostly Boomer friends) to hang out with people under 50 and really, the UES is all over 50 for the simple reason that very few under 50 can afford anything more than a studio there.

Another highlight of the trip was the March 6th tribute to Julie Wilson at the Laurie Beechman Theater on 42nd and 9th, attached to the West Bank Cafe. My friend and musician John Phillips, a cousin of Miles Phillips, had tickets and we were both exhausted but both glad we rallied. It was a marvelous evening at which, sadly, I took no pictures and one of the performers, 82 years old, the mother of three grown daughters took me in her arms upon learning I take care of my father, 88, ten or eleven days a month. Her voice is still terrific (even Frank started to slip at 70 or 75) and it was worth venturing to the West Side with winds at 30mph off the Hudson.

I now understand why East Siders (Upper or Lower) feel as they do about living on the West Side. I love the Upper West Side–both Luigi and Steps are there–and I love the Lincoln Center area. But if you plan to live on the UWS, you must know you will freeze your ass off (along with your hands and ears and arms and legs and feet) and you will spend more money on cabs because while it’s fine to walk in 25 degrees if appropriately dressed, it’s not fine to walk in 30 with vicious winds at high speeds off the Hudson. I didn’t believe my friends, as I tend to bring relatively clement weather to NYC during my winter sojourns. I got to experience some real winter this trip and a couple days at the end of the trip, I intended to walk home via 72nd through the Park, and ended up cabbing it, only to find the weather was just fine on the Upper East Side.

Fourteen singers performed that night but the standout, among the younger people (which is to say, those under 55 or 60) was certainly the dazzling Carly Ozard, just 29 years old and new to NYC. She is a sensation in SF and her show, Shift Happens, a big hit among cabaret devotees in the part of California most like the city. You can find her on FB, Twitter (which I don’t do but may have to reconsider, purely for the purpose of reposting Patch, Victorian Chick and other articles), and YouTube. Her “Bewitched, Bothered and Bipolar” is clever and truly, her voice gives you chills. I can’t wait to see her next time I’m in New York. John Andersen did a brilliant rendition of “Downtown,” better than Petula Clark! And the food is excellent and reasonable.

This trip brought with it four memorable firsts: 1) Drinks at the Grand Havana Room, 666 5th on the 39th floor with phenomenal views of the city, and 2) Breakfast at Sarabeth’s (three times!), and 3) Lunch at Fred’s at Barneys, 4) Dance class at Alvin Ailey Extension on 55th and 9th for my dear, multi-talented friend Sharon Zaslaw’s Sharqui Bellydance jazz class. I didn’t take pictures at the private club but it’s a wonderful place and because the men there don’t smoke cheap cigars and they have an advanced ventilation system, I spent two hours there on consecutive days without feeling queasy or suffocated.

I Yelped about all four and won’t rehash here as I have to run to car wash and Lola to try on the fabulous Diane von Furstenberg secondhand dress for 120. It’s an 8 which is too big but if it fits reasonably well, I’m going to get it. I’m very proud of myself: 21 DAYS in Manhattan and not a single clothing purchase. I did buy Saucony and six pairs of athletic socks at Hue for 12 bucks and a bottle of Burberry Touch on sale, but I didn’t so much as try on a sweater, blouse, dress, or pair of slacks. I had shopped at Lola on Valentine’s Day and honestly, I really don’t need anything except for jeans but this will be the perfect Manhattan and Cape Cod summer dress, both with Jack Rogers flats and the Gucci strappy white braided leather sandals I bought at Lola for 88 (and I’m not even into strappy sandals but these are dreamy).

2. Sarabeth’s on Madison.

My new favorite place for breakfast or brunch: 92nd and Madison.

I had been to Sarabeth’s but just for pastries and coffee in 1992-3 when I lived weekends at the Leighton House on 88th between 1st and 2nd at the home of a family friend and ex-colleague of my father’s who worked about 75 hours a week on average (sometimes more) as a Wall Street lawyer.

A ex-FB friend, whose political obsessiveness and borderline hysteria (and tendency to insult and fight with my friends) finally got to be more than I could take, introduced me last summer to a now good friend, with whom I had lunch at Fred’s. Indirectly, he introduced me to a woman I truly adore, a Park Slope mom and writer, who took me to the superlative Venetian restaurant, Al Di La Vino on Carroll between 4th and 5th, for a late birthday where I took my friend’s advice and ordered the rabbit with polenta. This is his third recommendation of dishes in the city and I told Mom, I would from now on tell him where I was dining and let him order for me as he has never failed to steer me to a mind-boggling dish.

One of signature dishes at Al Di La Vino: Rabbit with polenta and olives. I dislike olives and when I told the server so, my friend asked, "Who is an olive hater?" But the olives are not integral to the dish and there were only four, which you can ask to omit from the magnificent dish.

The Rush Limbaugh-worshipper also adores Camille Paglia and sent me the info for her October 15th lecture at the 92nd Y. On that rainy fall night, I met my Park Slope mom friend at the Sfoglia bar, where she was eating because her husband could not attend the talk about Paglia’s then-new book, Glittering Images.

I feel slightly bad about blocking him because he facilitated two female friendships I truly value, but the poor man needs therapy so desperately and life is too short for an acrimonious FB wall. He’ll never get therapy but if I learned he was working with a respectable clinician, I’d unblock him as he is cultured, well-read and hip and very bright. He worked his way through Brooklyn College waiting tables at Sarabeth’s on 92nd and Madison and I confess, I am madly in love with everything about the UES location so I owe him this too.

Charming, cozy Upper East side elegance

The Central Park South location is a touristy zoo and the one near Murray Hill is nice but nondescript, just another nice Manhattan restaurant with a slightly modern decor. The UES location is a bright, yellow, cozy, elegant brownstone restaurant with High Tea at 3:30 and a menu with an extensive array of tempting options.

The lemon ricotta pancakes are not to be missed. My first day, I had a rare pastry for breakfast at the Bread Factory–prune hamentashen for Purim–and didn’t want two sweet, carb-heavy meals in a day so I had a perfect spinach and goat cheese omelet with a Malbec I drank all three times this trip (11/glass is not bad for NYC, in which wines by the glass are astronomical even when the bottles are about the same as LA or SB). It was cold and began to flurry on my gloveless walk up to the park before my walk (and video) at the Reservoir.

Magical, indescribable pancakes and while for weight-conscious people, this will be the main meal of the day if consumed in full, I didn't feel weighed down or overfull afterward.

Here is a video I just uploaded to YouTube with a trip down memory lane about my year spent in NYC on weekends at the Leighton House on 88th between 1st and 2nd when my single dorm in Berkeley College (BK) at Yale was a large closet about the size as the very large bathroom at the Montecito Chevron station: YouTube video about Reservoir in Central Park.

2. Fred’s at Barneys.

This “ladies who lunch” place (though it’s open for dinner) just four blocks from the apartment more than lived up to its reputation and if money were not a consideration, I’d eat there once a week. My friend from Greenwich, who lived on the Upper West Side with her husband and son as an adult, took me there for a late birthday lunch and we had a ball (see Yelp review). The baby department on the 9th floor is enough (almost) to press baby buttons even in the most non-maternal woman (not being maternal–usually–has nothing to do with disliking kids and everything to do with loving one’s freedom and financial security).

With the best stuffed animal--of any species--I've ever seen or snuggled with in my life. At Barneys in the baby department on the 9th floor by Fred's.

What a perfect place to read books bought at Crawford Doyle, a spectacular and beloved small bookstore 17 years old on Madison in the low 80s by the obnoxious E.A.T. I bought David Shields’ How literature saved my life (no capitals) and started it at Fishtail one night late in the trip but soon got drawn into a conversation with three men with three children each.

All are in private schools and all work crazy hours as corporate lawyers, either as general counsel or at firms. One didn’t much like this book but didn’t say why. Usually, if alone, I just go to Fishtail for happy hour (buck oysters and a great 5 buck burger, along with the new Hanging Vine cab for 8/glass at happy hour or a new Pinot Grigio for 7) but I had to try the new rock shrimp butternut squash ravioli in a ginger cream sauce. It exceeded my expectations and looked much prettier than the official picture on the FB page which caught my attention.

The Fishtail bar is on the small side–about 15 or 16 seats at the bar and four booths which can accommodate four but are better for two or three–can get busy on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. But the happy hour starts at 3 and it’s a great place to meet a friend and have a cheap early dinner in an elegant environment. I love the music at Fishtail–classic rock most of the time–and have met many people with whom I remain friends at that bar.

Roger Waters was there Friday night, when I just went in for a glass of wine before a quiet night of packing and rest pre-departure day but left my wallet upstairs. When I returned an hour later to pay for my 8 dollar glass, the manager told me out on the street that Roger Waters was behind me at one of the booths! I don’t listen to Pink Floyd, which is before my time, and unlike some music of the era I did grow up listening to with my (half-)sister and (half-)brother, 18 and 11 years older. I didn’t know till I posted that my FB friends worship the man!

There has been a lot of turnover at Fishtail in the last few years but I think they’ve got a pretty stable group now and I adore one of the new managers. Two out of three hostesses are dancers, which is to say, they are trying to make a career of dance and one, Hanna, is a sweetheart I hope will come to class either at Luigi (she loves classical) or Steps for one of the musical theater classes.

3. First Alvin Ailey Extension class.

After Sharon Zaslaw's Sharqui Bellydance Jazz class. Sharon is a Boston Conservatory-trained actress who sings and dances as well when she's not an endlessly energetic single mom to two busy, great teen boys and working at Akin Gump.

Sharon’s class was a blast and the music not at all Middle Eastern. I can’t stand Middle Eastern music of any kind and in fact, even at restaurants, if the music is obtrusive, I just get takeout because that culture is not one which appeals to me on any level aesthetically. Her playlist was outstanding, from the Shakira to the other musicians she has included in an eclectic mix of up tempo songs and ballads. That was my second class of the day on top of 40 blocks of walking so I didn’t stay for the intermediate musical theater jazz class with 30 or so students and a formidable teacher whose presence fairly sucked the oxygen out of the studio (in a good way).

Fifth floor lounge at the gorgeous new facility on 55th and 9th.

All these magical Manhattan moments mitigated the not insignificant sorrow at having to part with a puppy I met at Petco on the UWS, a 2-month-old husky mix at the Bidawiee shelter on 38th and 1st, where I intend to volunteer as a dog walker for large breeds in upcoming trips.

Cassie, 2 months old. Adopted by a loving family a week later.

All puppies are cute. But you don’t bond with every animal you meet–even I, who am a bit of a dog whisperer–and I spent well over an hour on the floor with this little girl.

First kiss from Cassie.

My sister and other FB friends thought I should bring her home to J’s but he really didn’t want her and I am only IN SB six months a year so it wasn’t fair to impose on him just because what nonexistent baby buttons I possess were all focused on this little girl I couldn’t get out of my mind for a week.

This did not of course stop me from taking–and posting–a picture of me on the floor with a shameless, manipulative pouty face to entice J to change his mind.

It helped that Cassie went to a spectacular home according to one of the shelter volunteers with whom I became FB friends and also that my friend and neighbor went away for four days, letting me sit for Nakita and get plenty of doggie love on the trip. But Cassie was more than beautiful: she was an exceptionally mellow and well-behaved puppy, a fact noted by every single person who popped his or her head in at the adoption fair my first Saturday in the city.

I have a stack of business cards to follow up with emails about freelance writing and other professional matters. I was lucky to get free passes–three–to the Equinox as they’ve fixed the chlorine problem from two years ago and while it’s a rinky dinky pool with somewhat fascist policies (not just the swim cap regulation but the overall vibe of the cramped pool), I love it.

The cold pool is torture, but if you can hack it for a minute between soaks in the jacuzzi, your body feels indescribably wonderful. I wish SBAC would fork out the money for a cold pool by the jacuzzi but I’m sure they won’t. SWELL is the new parent company and while I approve of what they’ve done, the consensus is that SWELL cares about nothing but the bottom line and that whenever they do shell out some cash, it’s because some money guy convinced them of the ROI (return on investment). And I personally know employees screwed over by the corporate powers that be and have very little hope they will install a cold pool, even if I were to frame it thus, “Well, all the elite clubs in NYC have cold pools, including the Equinox and don’t you purport to be as good as the Equinox?”

I think, frankly, Southern Californians, particularly Santa Barbarans, lack the fortitude and capacity for discomfort (much less suffering) the cold pool requires and that the SWELL folks probably know this, either on their own or through some high-priced consultant. I remain convinced that much of the laxness and flakiness of Southern Californians is a matter of weather: if you never have to alter your plans or dress to avoid death by hypothermia, you get soft (if you ever had weather chops) or stay soft (if you never lived in a place with seasons). Still, you can’t beat year-round outdoor swimming and SBAC created an idyllic pool area just seconds from the 101 freeway (which you don’t sense or hear at all).

Sunday at SBAC, my favorite day (and time) to swim, just as the sun has ducked behind the building and you can swim without sunscreen

As for the bizarre color scheme of the new SBAC, I don’t know what decor consultant told them 1980s neon orange was a good idea in the outside ladies’ locker room, but I’ve floated my theory by countless ladies and they agree: some lucky bastard probably got paid 5K to 10K for color consulting and as a result we all have to live with this stupid aqua and orange. At least they’ve resolved the cafe problem in the wake of the fascist SB County Health Department’s threats to close the club if they didn’t shut down the kitchen (due to insufficient numbers of sinks). The salads and sandwiches in the deli case are all great, if a lot more expensive than they were when food was prepared in house. And one thing SB has over NYC–where pools are indoor, tiny, and cramped–is the glorious SBAC pool. The locker rooms are nice but very small and I vastly prefer the UES Equinox except for the pool.

Though I didn’t get up to New Haven or down to Toms River, I had a blessed three weeks in the city I love, with a terrific birthday dinner in Park Slope at Al Di La Vino (pictured above). New York is home to me on so many levels but I am always happy to see J and Emma and Ollie and will be very happy to drive on a beautiful 70 degree day to see Dad who misses his little girl very much and was exceptionally cheerful on the phone just now.

Happy Tuesday from Manhattan! Best (41st) Birthday, Steps on Broadway/Luigi, Fig and Olive Brunch and Thursday Broadway World Cabaret Awards at Metropolitan Room

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Victoria

With Doobie before I left Santa Barbara.

I finished the blog about TSA with a revision of my response to the hostile commenter on my Patch review of “The Gift” and will post that tomorrow, but as usual, my blogging impulses wane in NYC because I’m running around and chatting and dancing so much that I have time only to document on Victorian Chick FB. Also, I feel perpetually inadequate in documenting the wonders of Manhattan and so put off blogging for this reason as well. But I love the iPhone and can’t believe I resisted for so many years!

I decided not to dance today and just organize things, run errands and chill before I go downtown to meet with the NYU teacher who asked me to help with an English composition course he’s teaching this month. I’m a bit sore but not nearly sore as I would have expected after taking my friend Joey Doucette’s class at Steps after the 11AM style class at Luigi and then walking home 15 minutes through the park before trudging up 4 flights of stairs for the fourth time in a day. Steps is quite formal and because it is so large, of necessity organized. This is my “e-pass” which serves both as an ID and payment method.

I was of course flattered that the woman at the desk asked me if I had a union card–without of course having seen me dance as that would reveal quite clearly I’m not a professional–because I seemed to look like an actress or dancer. I’m a sucker for that kind of thing and in a former life (in which I don’t of course believe) or a parallel universe, I was or would have been a musical comedy actress.

Here is my 5 star review of Steps (based on a single experience I hope to repeat many times in the future starting tomorrow): Steps on Broadway Yelp Review. You can read Joey’s bio and learn about the extraordinary range of classes and intensives offered at this historic studio on the Upper West Side on the studio website (Joey Doucette).

Joey subbed for Francis Roach at Luigi once this summer. While there is no way in hell I can do floor work without knee pads or an Ace bandage of some sort or dream of nailing a backbend from a standing pose to the floor out of which a double pirouette comes, it was a fabulous class with diverse and fun music. The combination to “Move” from Broadway version of Dreamgirls was spectacular though I would need two or three passes to get it and just do a single after the floor segment (\”Move\”).

I would love to do a week summer intensive at Steps before or after the Luigi intensive–”musical theater jazz” is current term for the style of jazz ubiquitous in the 1980s when I was serious and assisting for Tracey Durbin, the protege of Hama (himself a protege of Luigi just a few years younger)–but it’s a 3-week intensive with 14 classes a week, some of which are ballet and other styles I don’t do. Steps has no one-week intensive that I can see but perhaps there are some smaller, more concentrated classed ruing the summer.

I didn’t know about Steps both because I’m not a lifelong New Yorker and I don’t dance professionally. I do Luigi and in LA studied with Hama and Tracey Durbin exclusively after elementary school, where Davida Wills-Hurwin taught before going to teach drama (and I think also dance) at Crossroads School for the Arts and Sciences. I went to the elementary version and while Westlake School for Girls had plenty of industry kids and parents, Crossroads is the true industry school, large numbers of whose students go on to make their lives and careers in entertainment. I wrote a memoir blog a couple weeks ago about Crossroads vs. Westlake: sunday-memoir-blog-en-route-to-la-spectacular-night-at-the-marquee-and-the-granada-for-the-state-street-ballets-firebird-suite-and-studio-city-patch-blog-about-hama-dance-center.

Steps is on 74th and Broadway, an easy walk even in 30 degrees sans gloves from 68th between Central Park West and Columbus. It’s really fun with beautiful views of old Upper West Side buildings and pillars in the studios (to which some object but others on Yelp, including me, think lend “character” and “history” to the space). Many lofts in SoHo have similar pillars or in less fancy terms, “poles.” Taking a class at Steps is like being Cassie in Chorus Line for 90 minutes: great fun for a girl who didn’t do anything professionally in any branch of the industry but who grew up immersed in the business and taking dance classes all day during summers in high school.

My 41st birthday brunch at Fig and Olive was nothing short of heavenly and I had to update my review from October of one of the best brunches in the city (LA too): 29 dollars for appetizer, entree, coffee and biscotti. (They’re so sweet at the original location, admittedly more geriatric or middle-aged at least than Meatpacking of or the Melrose Place branches and brought me mousse with a candle for my birthday.)

Usually I have the truffle fontina eggs and fig and olive salad with manchego to start but I tried the poached eggs with salmon marinated in citrus juices and served in a sourdough bread bowl with three slices of perfectly roasted potatoes, a small salad with nice vinaigrette and avocado slices atop a nice portion of goat cheese. To start, I had the zucchini carpaccio though I considered the truffle mushroom soup. I’m glad I chose the zucchini as I could smell the mushroom soup four tables away and think I would have found it too strong.

They were out of my favorite cab/grenache blend so I splurged and tried my server’s favorite red on the wine list: Tempranillo Especial, 2009 for 16/glass. I fell madly in love with this velvety, full-bodied wine and was delighted to learn that it is only 20 to 25 a bottle online. I have to say: it’s insane to order wine by the glass in Manhattan. At hotel bars like Gramercy or the Pen, the cheapest wine by the glass is 14. And of course California wines cost an arm and a leg so it’s much better to buy a bottle if you’re going to have two glasses.

I haven’t taken a lot of pictures this trip but here are a few I liked and wanted to share.

Happy to be at LGA with my V2 after a decent flight (in spite of the prodigious number of babies)!

That’s Bonita, the kitty at Green Gourmet. This is the best local deli close by as Smiley’s is offensively priced even by Upper East Side standards and the GG (which I will Yelp as no one has reviewed this location) has great wraps, sushi, sandwiches, panini and much more.

Here is the to die for new brunch item at Fig and Olive (they had a South of Frence salmon and eggs dish but this is different).

Entree: Prix Fixe Brunch at Fig and Olive (29)

Monday morning I got locked out of the apartment–note the passive voice as we don’t need to get into whose fault it is–and got to dance 15 minutes late. Had I not (for the first time ever) caught a cab outside my front door rather than on Lex or Park, I would have been even later. When I reached the desk with the sign-in sheet, I saw that the 11AM style class was huge–20 plus people–because a group of children had traveled to the city for the holiday to take class both at Luigi and Steps.

Here is Francis after the warm-up with little ones it took serious discipline to refrain from spontaneously hugging them.

Darling munchkins at Luigi for President's Day. Most were ballerinas in the 9 or 10 range but these were the two youngest munchkins. To do for cute. Class was huge and it was fun to see Francis with the little ones!

The crosstown bus–M72–is hopeless. I finally gave up and walked through the park, a brisk but lovely 15 minutes back to the Upper East Side.

View of park from Central Park West, about 4:30 PM on a cold February day.

Thursday night, I have a ticket to the Metropolitan Room’s Broadway World Awards. I voted for Ben Vereen’s show–Stepping Out–which I saw both at 54 Below and the Broad in Santa Monica and he’s performing along with others nominees and winners. My friend from Luigi, Liz McKendry, whose spectacular performance of “Dare to Fail” from Rick Knight’s musical Cruise Line I have posted before, will be performing at 9:30.

The timing of this trip was absolutely perfect with Joey’s guest teaching, the Broadway World awards and the Oscars. I have more options for a fun Oscar night in New york City than in LA, where I’m not at all connected or even socially rooted anymore, or SB, where there is no industry activity whatever and film is only a big deal during the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. (Of course the Oscars is a religious experience in LA, akin to Easter for the secular, with the Emmys and Globes tying for Christmas and not until Yale, did I realize everyone people didn’t drop what they were doing for these awards shows. Dad of my friends had Emmys in their studies so from a young age, I was well aware of those shiny gold statues daddies won once a year. )

People come from all over for the SBIFF but other than those two or three weeks, you don’t find film buffs or people connected to film in SB until the following year’s festival. For a place full of retired actors or actors, directors, writers and producers with a secondary residence, SB is eerily devoid of social activity rooted in the industry.

We have no comedy scene whatever and the best theater and musical theater isn’t even in SB proper but in Solvang during the summer and Santa Maria year-round at the extraordinary near-Broadway caliber PCPA Theaterfest. People like Dennis Miller and Rob Lowe moved to SB years ago precisely to get out of Hollywood. Dennis Franz, whom I’ve seen at Pierre LaFond twice and who goes to Tre Lune (one of my favorite Italian restaurants in SB) with his family quite a bit, hasn’t been working regularly for years.

But these are stars–not to mention married people with families–and they don’t mingle. You don’t have any starving, brilliant actors, dancers, or musicians on the make in SB because there’s obviously no work. This is not, by the way, true merely of industry people: I couldn’t, even as a Yale Phi Beta Kappa with a Ph.D. candidacy from UCSB, get a job as a hostess at the Four Seasons or San Ysidro Ranch because I had no experience and too much education. The only job I got in 2 years of active looking was a fun job working for 15/hour at a now-defunct kids’ book company called Bellerophon Books. Founded in the late 1960s, Bellerophon was America’s premier children’s coloring book company in America with a dazzling array of books about literature, history, art and geography. I can’t even make money as a tutor because what no one outside SB realizes is that all the money is concentrated in people 50 and over, people too old to have kids in private school (secular college prep) of which we have only one–Laguna Blanca–with a graduating class of 45 or so kids.

If I had to work to survive, I could not live in Southern California because there’s nada for a freelance writer like me (short of an office job and even that is scarce). SB is extremely expensive–even for successful doctors in lower-paying specialties–and I’ve known 2%-ers who moved to SB, thinking the husband could get work and left about 5 years later realizing that until it was time to retire, SB was no place to live.

Literary publishing and nonfiction are pretty limited in LA but in SB there is simply nothing. New York is the place for a writer who doesn’t do fiction or screenplays, in part because networking is so easy in the city. I meet people with connections at happy hours on the Upper East Side, CEOs and ex-CEOs who know everyone, even if it’s just a wealthy older woman who needs a little help here or there or someone working in big-time non-profit who might want help organizing a single event. In general, it’s just easier to meet people–for fun or for work–when you must rely on public transportation rather, herded into a subway or commuter train, rather than isolated in your car on a freeway.

Again, the industry presence is nil other than these rich and famous semi-retired or working performers or directors who make SB their secondary but steady residence. In addition, SB has only one chain of theaters (Metropolitan) and many independent, foreign or art house films don’t even make it to this affluent and in some ways culturally rich small city less than 2 hours away from Los Angeles. (The UCSB Arts and Lectures series is a treasure, as is the SB Symphony and State Street Ballet but these cultural gems do not in any way translate to a social scene which revolves around the arts and spills over into bars and restaurants the way they do in other places.)

I was fairly horrified when I moved to SB in 1996: movies open weeks after they do in LA and then they come and go in the blink of an eye. It’s better now–at least we have theaters with stadium seating and chairs that don’t give you rashes or poke you in the ass like the Riviera’s Carter Administration seats–but SB is not a movie town in any sense.

Tomorrow I’ll repeat Monday–best first day of 41 imaginable–with 11 AM style class at Luigi and 1 PM class at Steps with Joey.

Happy Tuesday!

Posted in Film, Food & Wine, Music, Theater, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged Academy Awards, Ben Vereen, birthday, Cruise Line, dennis franz, dennis miller, Elaine Stritch, Fig and Olive, Green Gourmet, jazz, Liz McKendry, luigi jazz dance centre, Metropolitan Room, musical theater, Rick Knight, Rob Lowe, santa barbara, SBIFF, Steps on Broadway, upper east side, V2 | Leave a comment

Quick Happy Friday Blog: Scores from Cottage, Valentine’s Dinner Pictures and Link to Patch Blogs for the Week (5!)

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Victoria

Valentine's Day 2013. Third with J. Relais de Paris (see Yelp review)

I just finished my fifth patch blog in a week–a review of Cafe Vida embedded in observations of the Palisades, Brentwood and Santa Monica (north of Montana area particularly) over and above Beverly Hills. This is a condensed version of an old blog about the “real estate anthropology of West Los Angeles” in which I express my admittedly biased view that of the upscale WLA areas, Beverly Hills is the least socially or interpersonally desirable of those listed.

I won’t say much about last night but wanted to get the pictures from the Cottage uploaded. Quick and dirty summary: for 300, I bought a like-new pair of like-new Vera Cuoio boots, a vintage Neiman Marcus cashmere sweater and a size 4 Alfred Nipon blazer with fox trim collar in a stunning purple.

My stolen suit from New York Look was 300 down from 600 and I found a killer Nanette Lepore pantsuit in a slightly deeper shade of plum for 400 down from 800 but I was 10 pounds too heavy and I refuse to spend 400 dollars on something I can’t wear at my present weight. After 3 weeks in the city–living in a walkup, taking subways, and dancing daily or nearly daily, sometimes 3 hours a day–it’s not inconceivable I will drop about 7 or 8 pounds but I not buy clothes for the “wishful thinking” weight and size. I buy what fits me now and should alterations be necessary, that’s a happy way to spend money!

I’m not sure what the Nipon suit would sell for new today but conservatively–if you figure the boots start at 550 new and the sweater would be sold (if they sold such sweaters at Neiman today) for 300 to 400–I got 1350 dollars worth of clothes (plus a present for my birthday on Sunday) for 300. I just looked at the Neiman website and was overjoyed to find some sale Nipon suits (one pantsuit I love) for 190. They seem to run, new, around 350 which is not bad at all and I’m shocked (because I never go to Neiman, just the outlet and even that’s been two years) that any suit at Neiman retails for just 350.

A friend read my Patch blog and noted that the Cottage was pricey. Well, yes, this is not a thrift store, though my designer resale in Toms River, New Jersey–Deja Vu–has a five-dollar rack where I bought a silk blouse, a silk/rayon lavender Ann Taylor twinset and a few other pieces. You will find a greater range at Deja Vu than the Cottage–my black tie or black tie optional gown was 49 down from the tag of 249 and I have a darling dress for just 20 I wore to see Ben Vereen at the Broad–but when you consider that the average piece at the Cottage would be three to five times more than it is there on consignment, it’s still a hell of a deal.

Here is the blazer which fits like a glove as a custom suit might.

Albert Nipon blazer (skirt didn't fit)

The fur is delicious and I think dyed but not in a Staten Island Mob Wives kind of way! Here it is close up.

Close-up of fur collar

The boots are a dream come true by a fine Italian designer I of course haven’t heard of (whose website is entirely in Italian): Vera Cuoio. They are the finest leather I’ve owned in my life (on anything, including a purse) and suede inside. I love the shape of the front, a bit of a riding boot feel and they’re seriously comfortable with an excellent sole and a sensible 3-inch heel. (The Michael Kors I bought at Deja Vu are hot and a beautiful brown leather but they can’t compare to these and they are sheer agony to walk in even three blocks.)

Vera Cuoio boots.

Here they are on.

In love! And shoes are not my thing but these are pure heaven on earth

I have to run to apartment to pickup three deliveries which should be there, get to mail (Christmas presents, more of them) and get to the bank for my new ATM card so I will leave off with our dinner at Relais de Paris. It is very reasonable for what it is with abnormally cheap wine by the glass, including a champagne for just 6/glass which does not taste like J Rotgut as my dear Michigan friend in the wine business calls J Roget.

Here is J’s steak with the secret, special sauce. Neither J nor I can cook–he grills well but that’s it–so I have no hope of describing it adequately but with their fabulous sourdough bread, it’s a meal in itself. His French onion was also outstanding and he enjoyed his creme brûlée but I didn’t try that.

J's entree

I had the salmon, a very large, thick, tender cut of “sustainable” salmon. We had the same server, a quirky, funny young woman with short hair, whom I now feel comfortable enough to tease, telling her it was excellent but surely the fact that is was sustainable rather than profligate was the key. She said that if it hadn’t been sustainable, there would have been yucky mercury I could have tasted. Honestly, I have no idea what mercury tastes like other than the kind in a glass thermometer. Once I broke one and that did taste yucky but I doubt that the regular, not organic salmon tastes like a broken thermometer.

My entree at Relais de Paris (over leeks with a tomato tapenade, very healthy and light)

And finally, my present, bangles I love with my right-hand Diamond Nexus fashion band in white gold which–with the boots just posted–was the score of the last year. It retailed for 2370 and I got it on an e-steal for 599 likely because it was sent back but made custom and I’m a size 5 which is very small (Diamond Nexus site). The gold alone on this is worth triple what I paid with gold up to 1800/oz or so.

An added bonus of these classy costume bangles is the simply fabulous clinking sound they makes, though Ollie doesn’t like it at all because it frightens him and puts him on high kitty alert. I will take them off for dance class because I can’t stand it when this woman in her 60s with a ton of bangles makes all that no noise during the Luigi warmup.) This is not the best picture and it doesn’t give a sense of the movement and separation of the three matching bangles (one has one dark stone) but you get a sense I think of how wonderful these are.

From the Cottage (costume)

Happy Friday from the left coast! Next blog will be from the right coast!

P.S. Here is a link to my work for the week on the Patch (Palisades, Brentwood, Studio City) : Victorian Chick Patch Blogs: 2/8-2/15/13

Posted in Fashion, Food & Wine, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged Albert Nipon, Brentwood Patch, consignment shopping, Deja Vu Toms River, diamond nexus, jewelry, luigi jazz dance centre, manhattan, michael kors, neiman marcus, Palisades Patch, relais de paris, Studio City Patch, The Cottage Boutique, Valentine's Day, Vera Cuoio | Leave a comment

Happy Valentine’s Day to all Victorian Chick Readers! Dinner at Relais de Paris and a SCORE at the Cottage Boutique!

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Victoria

A year ago at Montecito /San Ysidro Lane with Emma

I just got to SB from LA with a detour to the Cottage Boutique which can be regarded as nothing short of miraculous!

I got an early birthday present from my friends at the Cottage, lovely bangles I could not be more excited about, plus boots by Vera Cuoio to die for! 125 and delicious leather over the knee, three inches and not uncomfortable like the torture Michael Kors, in which I danced in New Haven at the Russian Lady with some kids from Hartford I met at Barcelona: a lark for which I paid with horrific blisters for days! Short of bunions, even a walk to the 59th Street subway to take the 4, 5, 6 and then walk a few blocks to dinner creates indescribable agony. But they were 119 and never worn and they retail for 400 so what’s a girl to do? Answer: take cabs in NYC and valet park in LA.

I also bought a blazer, a size 4, by Alfred Nipon which is part of a suit. The skirt would not fit on me 15 pounds lighter than I am and a straight up 2. I honestly don’t think Ellen Pompeo could wear this skirt so they sold the blazer to me for 100 and it has FUR collar! I love used fur. In case the italics didn’t convey the full force of my love, let me reiterate: I love used fur!

Some pain in the ass, sanctimonious liberal took me to task over Thanksgiving–oh, he markets New Age healing tapes of some sort, so basically Tony Robbins without the money–for buying the overcoat I’m wearing in both my Facebook cover photos (Victoria Ordin and Victorian Chick). Of course, I’m a registered Democrat and while moderate on matters economic, extremely liberal on social issues so if a somewhat likeminded individual can offend me when basically we agree on things, he has to be really dreadful.

That was really fun but the precise origins of the confrontation escape me because stupidity and sanctimony (and poor spelling) are so ubiquitous on FB, it’s like the wall of a frequent poster of status updates, in which one update is soon buried under a flurry of subsequent ones.

For new readers, my take on fur is this:

1) If you live in a Midwestern climate which inflicts ungodly suffering on the poor souls who live in those states during winter, fur is a practical and not ridiculous-looking way to stay warm;

2) Chinchilla and fox seem–though I’m not entirely committed to any argument about the relative cognitive capacities of chinchilla vs. mink–different from these admittedly kind of cute mink which are as I understand it bred to be killed;

3) My not wearing a fur from 1950 which sits in the closet in New York or LA or Scottsdale collecting dust in the bag from the store at which it was purchased (I Magnin in the case of Grandma’s mink from that era) will not bring these creatures back. That ship has sailed so either I wear it and look and feel fabulous beyond description or it just sits there in a Brentwood or Scottsdale or Upper East Side closet.

This individual made a pathetic argument about “influence” which seemed to run like this: “If a person in NYC sees you in a mink coat or an overcoat with fox trim, she might be influenced to purchase one and you thereby perpetuate the fur, aka slaughter, business. Faux fur is better.” How to begin by way of response? First of all, that I am not responsible for the choices and conduct of others (thank you 80,000 dollars of therapy over a lifetime plus 4 years in Al-Anon during college and early grad school). I can’t help what some woman with means does on the basis of my choices.

Furthermore, I can’t be held responsible for the weak-willed in our society. If I based my choices, in a kind of Categorical Imperative way (Formula for Universal Law in Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, the most important text of moral philosophy in the Western tradition since Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as well as the only other major text to take up friendship in any concerted and comprehensive manner) on the unforeseeable ways in which total strangers would construe them and use them as a basis for action, I wouldn’t have a very fun life.

I don’t give a shit if some random stranger is incapable of making her own ethical decisions. As long as she doesn’t pull out a Glock and shoot me or steal all my money, it’s not my affair. Yes, I was trained by the “Al-Anon Nazi” wives in Brentwood and New Haven: awesome, strong women who did more for me than much of my analysis and therapy over a lifetime in realizing what I am and am not responsible for in my relationships. I can’t change anyone but myself and that’s an easy point to utter and much harder concept to live or implement in your real life with people you love who nevertheless make self-destructive and stupid choices.

The faux fur argument is just plain moronic. First off–and my mother has a fake mink from Bullocks Wilshire which Dad and I bought her on Christmas Eve in 1986 I think for 300 dollars, then an exorbitant sum, particularly since my mother is beyond frugal and doesn’t like expensive gifts–even the best fake mink doesn’t feel real. The best looks real and in fact, I tried to check the coat at Balthazar in December, 2009 (that’s SoHo for my non-New York friends), and had to sign something to release the restaurant from liability in the event of theft. They don’t check fur and no one believed it was fake.

The lining is exquisite and it really is a lovely garment which does not, however, resemble Grandma’s black tie fur with the open 3/4 length sleeves. This is not a practical coat because the air rushes in and you freeze. Beyond that, Grandma was 5 feet tall in her youth (shorter in her dotage) and I’m 5/8 with long ballerina arms. So I look like some bizarre munchkin from the Wizard of Oz. We were going to sell it as no one else who could fit into it travels to the cold and my nieces are already too tall to wear it, apart from the fact that they were raised in Moorpark, CA (Ventura County) and Mom doesn’t see them as fur wearers. Dad has recently developed an emotional connection to the fur (whose procurement is a fabulous story I have no time here to recount) and says we aren’t selling it and that he derives comfort from its residence in the coat closet.

So if your faux fur passes for real, the influence argument ends right there. If, on the other hand, you buy shitty fake fur which doesn’t look or feel real to anyone with 20/20 vision or not suffering from macular degeneration, then what the hell is the point? Visibly and obviously fake fur strikes me as beyond bizarre. Is this some Neoplatonic or straight Platonic notion of “fur-ness”? Or perhaps a Hegelian or Schillerian “Idee” of fur?
He of course had nothing useful or interesting to say to these arguments except to note how much he loves his pet chinchillas (uh, okay, gonna leave that one alone). That is generally how these things end. Stupid argument. Coherent, systematic rebuttal. Ad hominen attack. Disappearance of stupid person who can’t argue and often can’t spell or punctuate to save his/her life.

The most recent sanctimonious, annoying liberal desperately in need of more therapy (and I say this as a registered Democrat who is more moderate on the economy but absolutely rabid on choice and gays) is the bald actor on Californication whose work I greatly admire and whose cancer memoirs I read and enjoyed very much, at least parts I finished. I almost never send friend requests: one a month tops. But I did send him one about 9 months ago and this morning, he accepted but only so that he could rage against me on my Timeline! Ha!

I guess when I shared his status from yesterday about New Age thinking–he is right and it’s moronic and I can’t stand that woo woo bullshit–with the prefatory remark that even a broken clock is right twice a day, FB made it public. Evidently, he objected to my characterization of this heroic cancer survivor and Juilliard-trained actor as a “pain in the ass, blabbermouth, sanctimonious liberal” and had to come and tell me what an awful human being I am. Seriously, it was one of the funnier things I’ve experienced since I had trouble opening a can with J’s fancy can opener (you can see it on YouTube at the VictorianChickBlog channel).

I have to jump in the shower and I realized I have no liner–never leave a Sephora dry/wet liner capless by the way–and my mascara is out. J and I have to stop at CVS and I’ll just put on my tinted moisturizer and lipstick on the way to Relais de Paris for our third Valentine’s Day dinner.

No time to post the pictures of my boots, blazer and vintage Neiman cashmere sweater: 300 dollars for what would have been 1500 new (at least, I’m not sure what these boots run and the website is entirely in Italian so I have to do some research later).

2.5 years ago I met J, a man with the biggest heart of any man I’ve ever met. We are very different in our orientation and interests. I’m a trained egghead in literary criticism and he is a land use consultant, an urban planning major at UCSB who didn’t study liberal arts at all. He can build and fix anything and is the equivalent of an IT professional who chooses not to make that his career. He is a fine, professional-caliber photographer and great guitarist who was accepted to UCSB as a music major. J was definitely headed to a life in rock music and decided that perhaps poverty wasn’t as cool as it sounded from his doctor parents’ gorgeous Houston home, meticulously decorated (no yellow mini-blinds like my parents have in their living room and to which Dad is oddly attached). He’s multi-talented in all the ways I’m not and we don’t share pop culture interests.

I grew up around Hollywood, steeped in the TV and film industry. I’m not to IMDB what Billy Crystal is to baseball statistics, but compared to the son of doctors in Texas (though born and raised in Queens and Brooklyn and highly intellectual, cultured people) I’m a walking IMDB. So not only do we not share the same high culture interests, we don’t share the same pop culture interests either. Our one common ground–minus Joni Mitchell and show tunes–is music and I love all the music to which he’s introduced me in the past 2.5 years.

We are as different as it is possible to be and yet blissfully compatible emotionally. I also don’t live in SB full-time and we enjoy the time we have without worrying about the future or anything else. I don’t want or need kids–I mean really don’t want or need kids–and thus at my age have no need to marry.

Thanks to my parents, I don’t need to marry money and with my frugal ways and designer consignment store genius, I don’t need as much money as everyone I grew up with currently has (I’m truly the pauper of the class who owns no home or property as all these kids either went into the industry, became big lawyers or doctors or married well in addition to their own professional pursuits). I love my Diamond Nexus lab created jewelry (white gold) and I don’t have to wear Tacori, Tiffany, Cartier, Harry Winston, Bryant and Sons or the equivalent (DN site). And I am happy to get drunk when I fly in steerage like an animal with cheap tickets bought on Orbitz or Travelocity. I also don’t need what Alfre Woodard called in Lawrence Kasdan’s Grand Canyon “the big house in Brentwood.” I will never have to pay a dime of college or law school tuition, nor shrink bills or rehab.

In short, I am free. Truly, deeply, madly (a movie I love) free.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Posted in Fashion, Food & Wine, Health & Beauty, St. Augustine, Uncategorized | Tagged consignment, happiness, love, relais de paris, shopping, The Cottage, Valentine's Day | Leave a comment

New Blog on “The Gift” on Palisades/Brentwood Patch: Pre-Trip Prep on a Sunny Tuesday and Brief Note on John Dryden’s “True Satire”

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Victoria

Will be needing this soon!

Reading the weather reports from New York and Boston this last week or two, I realized this will be the first time since 1996 that I have experienced bitter cold. As I have promised New York friends–one in particular who daily curses the tundra to which she is currently confined–I generally bring warmer weather to the city in winter (though I’m no good at bringing cooler temps during the summer).

In a few years of traveling regularly to Manhattan, I can remember very few days below 30 degrees. 35 to 40 is actually a treat for me. I’m a bit disappointed when it reaches 50 unless I’ve had a good three days of bundling up when I leave the apartment. But I have no use for anything in the teens or 20s and anything below 10 is simply monstrous. (30 with fierce wind doesn’t suit me either.)

The last time I saw true snow was also in the 1990s. In March of 2011, I went with a friend from Bethel, CT to Mohegan Sun to see the Dropkick Murphys and it was very cold–upper 20s I believe–but it didn’t snow at all that trip and had it not been for a drive through Bethel and Danbury with about an inch on the ground, I would not have seen any snow at all.

Of course, now that I have publicly broadcast the wonders of my “anti-snow” amulet, it may very well continue to be cold and snowy throughout my trip. The winter of 1993 was the worst of my years in New Haven with some dozen blizzards during the term beginning in January. But I remember trudging through light snow in frigid temps to my final exams before Christmas break and Manhattan just isn’t that cold anymore. A friend of mine in Park Slope but born on the Cape, has small children and told me one day she’ll tell them there used to be a lot of snow and they will look at her oddly and ask, “Mommy, what’s snow?” The son is 5 and the daughter is 1 so this winter definitely introduced the boy to parkas and feet of snow.

I’m not a scientist so I don’t weigh in on global warming but a friend in Wisconsin wrote me, “God bless global warming. It used to be so much worse here.” Of course global warming is not so fabulous when–if linked to catastrophes like Sandy–it destroys lives and homes. But when it has the felicitous effect of driving up January and February temps to tolerable levels, it seems like a good thing.

In the five days since I began blogging for the Patch, I’ve been on the front page of the blog or at the top of the blog list for the day and want to thank my loyal readers and friends who have liked and shared the blogs on Nothing to Hide, Hama Dance Center, and The Gift.

The server for this large group of local blogs owned by AOL/Huff Post is fluky and it’s very hard to correct an error, so in the present blog ( \”The Gift\” with link to all Patch blogs ), there is a mistake halfway through in the description of Chloe (Jamie Ray Newman) as “young and beautiful.” It should read “young and beautiful wife.”

I received warm comments from a friend who doesn’t compliment freely (read: almost never says a nice word about my writing) and loved today’s blog with its references to relevant pop cultural sources like Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night which I not only adored but blogged about several times on Victorian Chick, Woody Allen’s To Rome, With Love, which I saw twice in the theater, Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (which I heard her discuss at UCSB after listening to the excellent interview on Michael Medved’s radio show), and one high culture source: Sir Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poetry.

Of course, my review is highly self-reflexive though not autobiographical in any specific way beyond the fact that I don’t have children and am grateful daily for this fact. Children as I’ve written countless times are at best a monumental lifetime commitment which sometimes includes intermittent or constant financial support. At best, with children who have no problems whatsoever with depression, drugs, alcohol, money, food or neurological disorders like autism or Aspergers (i.e. perfect children), they’re a lot of work and energy. Most children, moreover, are not perfect: they have eating disorders or addictions or more severe disorders which require even greater investments of time and money than your run-of-the-mill child who is blessed with a happy, even temperament and pleasant disposition.

But beyond my childless state and literary-critical background, this particular review did not in fact contain large amounts of autobiographical content. It was, however, densely allusive in my traditional stream of consciousness style and a person like the woman who hated both me AND my review clearly, who has reading comprehension problems, is going to find it awfully taxing as she is a “bear of very little brain.”

Seemingly oblivious to the fact–notwithstanding my first sentence–that the review I wrote was a direct response to Charles McNulty’s savage review of the play, the woman recommended the very review which I took as my point of departure without saying something like, “Here is the full text of the much better LA Times review and this terrible writer missed the following arguments or seemed not to grasp their force.” No such remark accompanied her attack and link, which made her seem stupid as well as mean. I’m okay with mean when it’s coupled with brilliance.

One of my Masters fields was Restoration and 18th-century literature so I read a lot of Dryden as well as Swift, Pope, Addison and Steele. (I also TA’d for Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook’s survey on the period in winter of 1998.) Satire was the dominant mode–both in journalism and verse. Novelists also wrote satire: Henry Fielding–author of the famous Joseph Andrews– wrote a hilarious parody of Richardson’s Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded called Shamela. In the Dryden’s 1693, “Discourse on the Original on the Progress of Satire,” (drydendiscourse2.html), he memorably defined “true satire” as a fine “stroke” which “separates the Head from the Body, leaving it standing in its place.”

The passage which precedes Dryden’s classic statement is so delicious that it deserves to be quoted in full:
“YET still the nicest and most delicate touches of Satire consist in fine Raillery. This, my Lord, is your particular Talent, to which even Juvenal could not arrive. ‘Tis not Reading, ’tis not imitation of an Author, which can produce this fineness: it must be inborn; it must proceed from a Genius, and particular way of thinking, which is not to be taught; and therefore not to be imitated by him who has it not from Nature: How easy is it to call Rogue and Villain, and that wittily!

But how hard to make a Man appear a Fool, a Blockhead, or a Knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the Names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full Face, and to make the Nose and Cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of Shadowing. This is the Mystery of that Noble Trade, which yet no Master can teach to his Apprentice: He may give the Rules, but the Scholar is never the nearer in his practice. Neither is it true, that this fineness of Raillery is offensive. A witty Man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a Fool feels it not. The occasion of an Offence may possibly be given, but he cannot take it. If it be granted that in effect this way does more Mischief; that a Man is secretly wounded, and though he be not sensible himself, yet the malicious World will find it for him: yet there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly Butchering of a Man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the Head from the Body, and leaves it standing in its place” (emphasis mine).”

I am no Dryden and I do enjoy calling someone an asshole (which must be genetic as Dad has always been free in his application of this term, among many others). And I’m considered a pussycat, highly tolerant of those many of my FB friends would a) never know in the first place, b) tolerate after having known them. But when a woman attacks me and displays the ignorance, arrogance, meanness just plain stupidity (that is, her reading comprehension is poor), I do not pull punches!

I’m so excited about the Patch! I must go retrieve T and buy him an eclair before his guitar lesson so will leave it at that. Off to LA tonight and back in SB for Valentine’s Day at Relais de Paris before a last prep day in SB and then dawn flight to the city!

Happy Tuesday! I can’t wait to see all my Tri-State are friends!

Posted in Literature, Theater, Uncategorized | Tagged aaron sorkin, Alec Baldwin, blogging, Discourse on the Progres and Original of Satire, Ellen Paige, Geffen Playhouse, Hama Dance Center, Joanna Murray-Smith, John Dryden, new york city, satire, snow, Sports Night, The Gift, to rome, winter, with love, woody allen | Leave a comment

Sunday Memoir Blog en Route to LA: Spectacular Night at the Marquee and the Granada for the State Street Ballet’s Firebird Suite and Studio City Patch Blog about Hama Dance Center

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Victoria

At intermission, post-Debussy and Brahms, pre-Firebird Suite.

Ed. note: Several friends who have little connection to dance (at least not jazz) asked me both to define lyrical jazz dance and to explain a bit of my dance history and lineage. This blog attempts to do just that.

***
After two nice swims in two days, I decided not to swim before my drive to LA for the Geffen Playhouse’s Wine Down Sunday before The Gift. It’s threatening to rain but I think we’ll just have a cloudy day in the low 50s, a typical winter day in Santa Barbara by the beach.

The first joint project of the State Street Ballet and the SB Symphony since the 2010 Stewart Copland Appalachian Suite (my pleasure in which was somewhat diminished by a terrible costume choice which obscured the dancers’ bodies in yards of fabric making it difficult to tell if the dancers weighed 110 or 210 pounds) was truly exquisite.

Olio e Limone could not take me at 6:30 and I forgot to make a reservation so I just went to the Marquee for a bite and a drink. Julia Child’s favorite lamb chops have been on my mind for a week now and I hope I can get in before I leave for the city on Saturday. I’ve never eaten anything except cheese at Marquee and chose the bartender’s favorite appetizer without even consulting her: brie, pear, basil on a thin white bread halfway between pita and focaccia. Even I can manage to buy and melt brie and grill or braise a pear and this is a perfect dinner or lunch with a side salad or some sauteed veggies from the Whole Foods hot bar.

My favorite part of the evening musically was without question the Brahms. While the soloist on the harp is tremendous (and famous), I confess Sacred and Profane Dances left me cold. The second and third movements of Brahms’ Symphony 3, Op. 90 were particularly well-played but “Andante” remains my favorite and I was sorry when it ended though eager to see the Firebird Suite. I heard grumbles during the intermission about audience members who clap between movements and am not sure if the program notes for last night made a point of holding applause the way the January Mozart/Mendelssohn program did.

I want to take a nap–only 5 hours of sleep last night–so will just note the energy, passion and grace of the dancers from start to finish. I thought the second act was a bit short but the applause was deafening and it seems to me Santa Barbara lovers of music and dance would support more frequent collaborations between SSB and the SB Symphony.

This morning I posted a blog to the Studio City Patch (of whose existence I was unaware). I wanted to write a note of praise and support for Hama Dance Center (Hama Dance Center website). Classes are not large (at least not like primetime classes at Santa Monica Dance Center or Katnap on Venice Blvd were in the late 1980s) and I wanted to alert people in the San Fernando Valley to this extraordinary resource in their backyards (unless their backyards are in the West or North Valley).

I did not go to Hollywood for last week’s IDA open house but read the mostly positive Yelp reviews. They seem to have some lyrical jazz but hip hop is clearly among the draws of the studio with poor parking (almost every review noted this and recommended taking the bus if possible).

Hip hop has–at least from a certain perspective–killed traditional, classical or lyrical jazz in much of America. I agree diversity is valuable and believe there is room for many styles of jazz. Michael Kidd, legendary Broadway choreographer and former Joffrey dancer as well as dad of my friend Amy, choreographed a Janet Jackson video pre-Rhythm Nation, after all. And I enjoy many styles of lyrical jazz, including those which incorporate elements of modern and what might loosely be termed funk. But I think it’s quite sad that hip hop has in much of America largely replaced anything remotely related to the tradition of Bob Fosse, Gus Giordano, and Luigi, among others.

At the Luigi Summer Intensive this past July, one talented college student from Fargo who attends school in Minnesota I believe, studied with a married couple trained by Luigi. Here is a picture with all but two of the participants from the second week, both of whom I enjoyed so much. One is a clinical psychologist at Columbia Presbyterian and former dancer with the Ballet of San Juan who hung up her pointe shoes in 1988. The other, a former professional dancer now in IT work near San Francisco whom I very much hope to see back in class over the next few weeks. (In Santa Barbara, there is no jazz class I would consider taking. And I’m sure Zumba is fun and burns a lot of calories but that’s not jazz dance.)

Luigi Summer Intensive class 2012.

Unless a student of Luigi has as it were set up shop somewhere, it is rare to find Luigi or even lyrical jazz outside of major American cities and even in LA, Hama, Risa and Jerry Evans are among the only teachers carrying on this tradition. (If you go to a little girl’s dancer recital, you will se a lot of sexy, pop jazz without a lot of technique or style.) A single Luigi combination might have counts of 8 which shift from tap to ballet to jazz to ballroom. It’s a broad, encompassing style but much hip hop seems sui generis–obviously I’m not a fan and I look like a moron even attempting it yet have no incentive whatever to learn to look less moronic–cut off from the roots into which Luigi taps even in a single combination. This is of course partly a function of the music which for Luigi is a raison d’être for the dance itself.

Jerry’s lineage and background are different and his mentor was Steve Merritt (Steve Merritt Wiki bio). After the serious study of fencing, gymnastics and martial arts, Jerry began to dance at 21 years old. He told me he danced 365 days a year for two years–not even taking Christmas off!–and went on to choreograph over a dozen films including The Mask with Jim Carrey (IMDB Jerry Evans).

Like Michael Kidd, whose choreography was notoriously demanding and athletic, Jerry packs a lot of movement into every count of 8 without in any way compromising its smoothness or lyricism at least for a dancer who is capable of moving at that level. His classes at Van Nuys Performing Arts Center (Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:30) are even more advanced and one day I hope to take those when I’m in town. Jerry’s career in dance spans 28 extraordinary years and he is now working in film in various capacities which draws on his experience as a prolific film choreographer.

Everyone who reads me knows that my brilliant, beautiful, sweet and youthful mother of 73 takes three or four classes per week (since 59) at Westside School of Ballet. Like most little girls, I did take ballet at 5 or 6. My preschool, in fact, was Kinderdance in Pacific Palisades in the building which now houses Seven Arrows, a secular private elementary which last time I checked, cost around 26K. It’s probably inching to 30K now.

I can’t find the certificate but a Russian ballet teacher came to administer an examination at the ballet school where I’d attended preschool and I got one of the highest marks. I remember getting the certificate in the mail and asking Mom what the ranks meant and where I’d placed: a competitive little shit even then, as Dad would say. I had to be the best and if I wasn’t the best, I needed to know how I could go about fixing this.

At 7 or so after the examination at Kinderdance, administered by a Russian ballerina and teacher.

Mom said that even by first grade, teachers told her she needed to get me to relax, to accept my mistakes and relinquish the need for perfection. She said to me a year ago when I reread all my St. Augustine evaluations (we had no letter grades from K to 6 and we all went either to Ivies or top liberal arts or flagship public schools which to me pretty much proves that letter grades in elementary school don’t matter), “And you know, I really did try. But it wasn’t that easy. You almost never got an answer wrong so it wasn’t as though you had a lot of opportunities to practice accepting mistakes. Your big green eyes would well up with tears which then began rolling down your cheeks. It was a pitiful sight!

With his sister, Buddy Ebsen of Beverly Hillbillies fame owned Kinderdance though I think the sister really ran the operation along with a talented, loving dance teacher named Marilyn, who was still teaching up in Malibu as of a few years ago. I attended this preschool with a girl named Ari Vena, whose father–a partner at Latham and Watkins–was on the board of directors at St. Augustine (now Crossroads Elementary).

Ari wanted her little buddy to go with her and David made it happen. I was one of the only children in the class whose parents were neither in the private sector (law or medicine) nor the entertainment industry. I would never have gotten in had it not been for the Vena family on coveted, prestigious Rivas Canyon Road (a much higher rent area of the Palisades two civil servants–even a prosecutor and judge–could not dream of living though just a minute or two away).

I’ve told this story before but for new readers, I didn’t take a test, fill out an application, or have a trial day to make sure I could, figuratively speaking, play well in the sandbox with others. My mother did not–like a friend of mine whose son just began private school in Essex County, New Jersey–write lengthy essays in answer to preposterous questions about her hopes and dreams and fears about me and my eventual role in society.

In December of 2010, I was at Starbucks on 60th and 3rd on a cool but not freezing day. The internet was down in the apartment and I went to use the WiFi. A few minutes after I arrived, I received private messages from the friend with drafts of her replies. She said the whole process was more stressful than applying to law school! Mom and I got a good laugh about the absurdity of our current private school application process. I mean what kind of hopes and fears can you have about a kid who at most can read a low-level chapter book and maybe draw a flower that actually looks like a flower?

When I graduated in 1984, they thanked the parents whose children had started in kindergarten (Shana Goldberg-Meehan started in 1st, Maya Rudolph in 3rd as I recall) for whatever it was that parents who didn’t work did at school. Being a room parent was a real commitment and, from my perspective, a pain in the ass. I’m of the mind that if you’re lucky, you send the school their checks and let them do their job while you do yours, whatever that might be. Short of committing to this form of servitude, there were various other ways to assist the school beyond not sending checks which bounced and it seems that in our class, my parents were the only ones who never schlepped kids to the recycling center or Tree People or whatever liberal cause was popular that year.

Finally, Paul (we called our teachers and administrators by their first names) came to the letter O: ”Robert and Andrea, thank you.” The chapel didn’t erupt into laughter but I don’t think it went unnoticed that my hardworking lawyer parents were the only ones who had never undertaken a single volunteer commitment.

In fact, after the 4th grade talent show in which I played C.P.E. Bach’s Solfeggieto after a mere 9 months of lessons, when Dad had to endure one boy’s butchering of “Red River Valley” on the violin, he never set foot in the school till I graduated three years later. Unless Dad develops Alzheimer’s (very unlikely we have no family history with that disease and Dad’s mind at 88 is extremely sharp), he will never erase the trauma of that painful performance.

My siblings and I love the graduation story. While I understand parents of children with genuine issues or disorders (autism, for instance) or simply no drive or discipline must get more involved in their children’s education and extracurricular activities, I can think of nothing less fun (well, cleaning) than having to monitor every little thing my kid and her classmates are doing. Dad’s view strikes me as reasonable: “We gave them you and our checks didn’t bounce. What’s the problem?”

In kindergarten at my desk near the mats for nap time. Some months after Paul Cummings, the principal, determined after a short interview I was neither too stupid or nor crazy nor irritating to attend the school.

Reading all these parenting bloggers with public pages on FB (like Priscilla Gilman, a woman four or so years ahead of me at Yale for her Ph.D. in English), I often wonder how it is that we–my classmates and I–had parents who didn’t for the most part hover and interfere in every aspect of our lives and yet almost all of us were outrageously successful in all areas. In fact, I’m the “big failure” in the class of 1984 if one measures either in career or financial terms. But almost all the kids in my class (Westlake too) have families and great careers (or husbands with great careers).

I owe a debt of gratitude which I can never repay to Ari Vena who at 5 didn’t want to go to St. Augustine without little Maria (me!), and therefore enabled me to go to a school which if not quite comparable to the School of Performing Arts, pretty impressive in its own right. That school wasn’t breeding doctors though Emily Sikking, the daughter of film and TV actor Jim, became both a writer and a doctor. But St. Augustine wasn’t in the business of turning out research scientists and engineers. It was in the business of teaching talented children of talented parents how to express themselves both in language and in art.

I didn’t study ballet after 7 but the wonderful Davida Wills was our dance teacher from 2nd to 6th grade. She eventually wrote a film about dancers and became the head drama teacher at the continuation high school: Crossroads School for the Arts and Sciences. That was the hardcore industry school though Westlake School for Girls had plenty of kids with industry parents. Still, the focus was academics and it was a rigorous college preparatory school or what on the East Coast is called a “country day.” The summers after 6th and 7th grade, I was one of the only Westlake girls to attend her Production Camp, an intensive summer-long day camp devoted to producing a musical whose book was written by her either alone or in conjunction with a musician friend.

She and her dear friend Lisa Michelson seem to have had something of a falling out after the first year so Jayne Campbell, chorus teacher at St. Augustine and then choral director at Westlake with an impressive CV, oversaw the music for the second summer. Nothing made me happier at the time than being part of a show and it was a source of tension with Dad the first summer because I was having cold feet about Westlake.

I half wanted to go to the school with all the dancers, actors and singers, not the too-stuffy school in Bel Air with the uniforms. Dad was terrified his little academic star would get drawn into Hollywood and become an actor or dancer or writer like her friends with famous Hollywood parents were likely to be. Dad was right. And he wasn’t dumb: he knew that while I had no voice to speak of, I had some talent and he could not imagine a worse fate in life than to go into the industry.

I’m glad I went to the academically intense Westlake as I was destined to be a scholar/professor not an actress or dancer. The professor thing didn’t happen but that had nothing to do with the schools and everything to do with my father and issues he couldn’t find a way to resolve, which ultimately led to a catastrophic depression which killed my last chance for a career in the academy. By this I do not mean a career teaching community college in a state I’ve never been, which is even with a Ph.D. candidacy possible. I’m talking a tenure track (TT) position at a reputable institution in a part of the country I like where one is a player in one’s specialty publishing with major university presses.

I have to get to LA for the play tonight at the Geffen and must hit H and M or Kohl’s or the equivalent for a “headlights” reducer so I can wear my Tadashi dress I couldn’t wear last weekend to Nothing to Hide as a result.

Here is the link to my blog about Hama Dance Center for the Studio City Patch (there is a typo–Luigi is on 68th not 48th–and I dropped a predicate about the mini-duck tacos at Sammy’s which should I think be taken as an endorsement of their fabulousness; they distract me so that I drop a predicate)!

Studio City Patch: Victorian Chick on Hama Dance Center and Lyrical Jazz Dance.

Happy Sunday!

Posted in Family, Fashion, Lifestyle, Music, School, St. Augustine, Theater, Uncategorized, Westlake School For Girls, Yale | Leave a comment

Great Santa Barbara Happy Hours: Why I Don’t Cook/Inaugural Victorian Chick Blog for the Palisades Patch/SB Symphony with State Street Ballet at the Granada and Geffen Wine Down Sunday for “The Gift” on Last CA Weekend pre-NYC

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Victoria

With Foxy and Barrington Rothschild, Studio City doggies by Hama Dance Center

I realize it is perverse, if not downright cruel–when CT is buried under 26 inches of snow and the rest of New England is reeling from Blizzard Nemo–to post this picture of me on a warm, sunny February Monday in LA with the most affectionate, precious small dog I met after dance. Painters arrived unannounced and class did not take place but the schlep to the Valley was worth it to play with this cutie (he has his own FB page–Barrington Rothschild–and J found it slightly disturbing that I was conversing on FB with a dog).

Barrington was a stray picked up and fostered by a nice couple who couldn’t keep him. The woman I met (human mommy to the owner of the 3 pound micro-Pomeranian and mommy to a dog who stole my heart in 30 seconds) nursed Barrington back to health, hiring a behavioralist at great cost to restore him to his original personality prior to life on the streets. I couldn’t get enough of him and hope I can see him when next I’m at Hama Dance Center!

Today began at a chilly 39 degrees but has by now reached the upper 40s and it’s a crisp, glorious day here in Santa Barbara. Poor CT looks ravaged by snow and Boston doesn’t look much better. I fly to the city a week from today and doubt there will be much snow during my trip as I seem to have an anti-snow amulet whereby I not only keep the snow away but warm things up considerably during my winter visits. I have no special powers when it comes to bringing clement temps in summertime, unfortunately, and 2011 July/August was really quite awful.

After spending some time with parents on Sunday and Monday, I arrived in SB in time for the Cadiz Happy Hour. Here is my Yelp review for this unusual happy hour in a town with spectacular happy hours, both casual (Enterprise Fish Company) and elegant (Cadiz, Arch Rock, Le Cafe Stella): 5 Stars for Cadiz on Yelp.

J and I did Valentine’s Day at Cadiz in 2012 and we both thought the diver scallops and the filet were tremendous. Portions tend to be on the small size, particularly the tapas, but the entrees are reasonable. Of course, this is not a Golden Corral experience (thanks to my East Coast friends for the lowdown on this diet-unfriendly chain).

What distinguishes Tuesday Happy Hour at Cadiz from another fine dining Happy Hour (with a more extensive food menu) like Le Cafe Stella, is that you can sit anywhere in the restaurant on Tuesdays. Seating in the bar at Cadiz is limited so I imagine you should arrive by 5 to secure a seat. As I note in the review, the Cadiz dining room is just about my favorite place to eat in SB not at a hotel (Four Seasons, Bacara, San Ysidro Ranch).

The downside is that the servers, though personable, attractive and knowledgeable, may not be used to working happy hour and it does take a bit of time to get each dish. This may have more to do with the kitchen than the servers but if you want a quick bite, I would recommend Marmalade’s excellent happy hour with enormous 6 dollar plates including filet mignon nachos (truly enough for two), chicken quesadilla, and pesto clams in white wine broth with garlic/cheese toast (though I prefer their rosemary rolls). Marmalade serves a top-notch guacamole and pico de gallo so if you just want a snack with your cheap well drinks and wine, that’s a good option. They also have a happy hour burger at a significantly reduced price and it’s very good as well.

(Note on Marmalade at any time other than happy hour: the music at breakfast is a mix tape with the worst 25 songs written in 25 years though I doubt this is the title of the mix. Also, takeout orders are problematic and you must check before you leave that something important–like cheese for French onion soup or a burger–has not been omitted from your order. )

J and I ate at Cadiz on Tuesday (50 pre-tip for two with two drinks and tapas each) and Enterprise on Wednesday (37 for two drinks and plates each as well) and with prices like that for food I couldn’t make in a million years (including the 5.95 heavenly steak satay at Enterprise or the signature lobster bisque), I will never learn to cook.

Steak satay with Asian slaw. Proverbial falling off the bone.

The first of two 7 dollar tapas at Cadiz–the prawns–I’m eager to try again soon while the second–a very good chilled calamari salad–is probably not something I would repeat.

Flavorful, juice, large prawns over white gazpacho.

Chilled calamari salad.

Food is without question the largest part of my monthly budget after rent and I don’t see this changing. I’m grateful that SB has so many happy hours with 5 to 6 dollar plates of which I never tire. Of course, feeding a family even at happy hour on a regular basis adds up. But as a single girl, it makes very little sense to cook (particularly with Whole Foods and the astonishing variety of hot and cold bars now available at 7.99 a pound or so) unless you consider it a form of recreation which I most certainly do not.

After I went to do recon on the Opening Day for Chick-Fil-A (which made front page news the next day with one of the most memorable titles ever in our dismal paper, Santa Barbara News-Press: “Bird on the Brains”), I bought myself a raw kale, mushroom, onion, cabbage salad and some mac and cheese with a bottle of a Sauvignon I liked but would not at 11 buy again.

Perfect dinner: large kale salad with Whole Foods mac and cheese. Food: 8. Wine: 11.

The other highlight of my week was sending an expanded version of my brief remarks on FB about Nothing to Hide into the Palisades Patch. I had talked to the energetic new editor from Providence, Rhode Island this summer about contributing to the Local Voices section of the blog and intended to send in my review of Ben Vereen’s one-man show at the Broad. By the time I finished, it was too late (even for a post-show review of a single performance) and didn’t find a suitable vehicle until now.

Inaugural Palisades Patch blog: Nothing to Hide at the Geffen

This morning I briefly reviewed Beech, where I ate the best vegetarian sandwich of my life: roasted eggplant, zucchini, and goat cheese on plain focaccia with a balsamic dijon spread. The Caesar on the side was unremarkable but fine and at 11 dollars, with a nice Robert Mondavi Pinot Gris at 8 by the glass, it was a reasonable and nice Palisades lunch.

Roasted eggplant, zucchini, goat cheese on focaccia with balsamic dijon spread. Pinot Gris Robert Mondavi 8/glass.

I’m eager to go back for other dishes, including two large salads the men at the next table ordered. The pasta with shrimp/scampi–quite large–looked and smelled wonderful but the gentleman eating alone said it wasn’t very spicy. I imagine they can make it more spicy to taste if you prefer an arrabiata sauce with your seafood as my father does.

Beech is certainly now the best-looking dining room of its kind in the Palisades with a darling front room which combines rustic charm with a clean, modern finish.

Tivoli, with whom Beech is clearly intending to compete, is not nearly as cute inside and Beech has a far more eclectic, sophisticated menu, but Tivoli has many good dishes–including salads–reliably executed year after year. I would never choose Tivoli over Beech, however.

The pizza bar doesn’t much interest me though I happily sit with J at Olio Pizzeria’s bar when we can’t get a table. While my father felt it was too cramped (or “New York,” meaning tables too close together), the back room is a bit quieter and more spacious and I hope Beech Street Cafe will be added to the rotating stable of restaurants my parents eat on weekends (Friday through Sunday).

Our internet is down at J’s so I lost a revised version of my Yelp review for the Cottage Boutique, my favorite LA consignment right next door to Beech: Cottage Boutique rave on Yelp. Anyone who follows Victorian Chick either on FB or here knows that I love this store and I can think of few more pleasant ways to spend an afternoon than shopping at the Cottage and celebrating with wine and a salad or sandwich at Beech.

Tonight, I am going to the Granada to see the State Street Ballet and SB Symphony team up for Brahms, Debussy and Stravinsky and I’m taking myself out for lamb chops which I last had during the Julia Child birthday prix fixe week at her favorite SB Italian, Olio e Limone, this past October. The show was one of the shows in the mini-subscription–3 for 95 dollars-so I will make up some of the difference at Olio. Tomorrow, I will return to the Geffen for The Gift (see the Patch piece) with Kathy Baker, James Van Der Beek, Chris Mulkey and Jamie Ray Newman.

The subscription covered 3 plays with 2 plays comped and I paid 192 for the entire package. I’m blessed to have money to spend on food and entertainment but if nothing else, this blog demonstrates that I get big cultural and culinary bang for the buck. Together, the mid-season subscriptions for the Santa Barbara Symphony and the Geffen–a total of eight performances with top notch actors, musicians, conductors and dancers–at majestic venues like the Granada or storied LA theaters like the Geffen was 300 dollars.

I’ve been very honest always about never wanting kids: I was born at a time when it was acceptable at least in cities among certain secular, moneyed circles, not to want kids. I didn’t grow up in a Catholic or Evangelical or Mormon or even Orthodox Jewish family where kids are the point of life. So I never even had to pretend to want kids like some women of my mind did.

But certainly, my childless state (and lack of traditional work) allows me to shuttle between LA and SB as I please, arranging my dad time around cultural events. Of course, I’m beyond blessed to spend three months a year in Manhattan where I can do whatever I want because my parents have a friend who allows me to crash in the largely vacant studio on the Upper East Side. But even women with real money–those who don’t (have to) structure their lives around happy hour menus, consignment boutiques, Fare Compare plane tickets and own a house or two–have significantly less time to spend their money on the ballet, theater, or symphony. I know parents with a lot of money and kids under ten and even if the money for the sitter isn’t an issue, it’s just too much trouble to arrange dinner and a movie with another married couple with kids.

A very successful screenwriter as well as Duke Law grad at a ridiculously young age who went to Yale but whom I met through a group of Yale Republicans on FB (I know, I know, weird but these POR–Party of the Right–guys stick together long after graduation and it is a proven fact that I have some pheromone which attracts GOP men) told me singles hang with singles, marrieds with marrieds, parents with parents. I think that’s true. He says that a married couple with kids even in the 2% when there is significant help, particularly in LA with the prevailing traffic patterns, just can’t meet at 9PM for dinner around Melrose if they live in Santa Monica or the Palisades. Going to a play in Burbank (Garry Marshall’s wonderful Falcon Theater, for instance) is a major undertaking and commitment.

I realize I’m not normal–in more ways than one!–but for the life of me, I can’t imagine living in ONE place 12 months a year. For one thing, I could never pick a coast. A New York friend wrote to me when we met on FB, “Ah, bicoastal. Every New Yorker’s dream.” Yes, I suppose that it is and I think that it would be had I not lost a decade of friendship, travel, dance, food, wine and life by any definition that matters.

J and I are off to SBAC for a workout! Happy Saturday!

P.S. J had a business trip to San Francisco–leaving at 5AM and returning before midnight–and here is the piteous look on poor Emma’s face as her daddy who never travels without her was getting dressed to go. In this house, NO one gets up at 5AM except me before a flight to NYC so Emma knows no good can come from her mommy or daddy dressing in the dark.

Unhappy Labrador.

P.P.S: After I posted this, I learned I have been added to the Brentwood Patch as a “Local Voice.” Here is the same bio from Palisades Patch (still no picture but we’re working on it): Victoria Ordin on the Brentwood Patch (Local Voices)

Posted in Fashion, Food & Wine, Lifestyle, Music, Relationships, Theater, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged Ben Vereen, bicoastal, Brahms, cadiz, culture on a budget, Debussy, enterprise fish company, Firebird, geffen theater, Granada in SB, happy hour, Kathy Baker, kids, los angeles, Palisades Patch, saving money, SB symphony, state street ballet, Stravinsky, the Broad Stage, The Cottage, The Gift, yelp | Leave a comment

Happy Friday and First Day of February! George Eliot Letters, Shine Blowdry Bar Pedicure and Fun Weekend in LA with Play at the Geffen and Time with Florida Friends

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Victoria

It’s what everyone says but there’s a reason for this: I can’t believe today is the first day of February! Where did January go? For me it went to dance, the symphony, LA, Dad’s bronchitis, the SBAC pool and fun with J and blog. I never knew you could share a single month’s archives. I wrote 6 blogs in January of which I am proud though I still haven’t finished the 2012 blog and did not meet my goal of running quickly through the closing months of the year by today (January blogs).

My last blog was my 225th on Victorian Chick (est. April 2011); this seemed to me something of a milestone so I posted the link to January on Victorian Chick FB and people wrote me nice notes saying they enjoy the blog which of course makes me happy. On Wednesday, I received a compliment from a respected writer I just met a few weeks ago who read my “Reflections.” I will not identify him by name but he will not, I think, object to its unattributed inclusion:

I read Reflections. You write well, even charmingly. Whatever the passing subjects are, the real subject is you and your self-involvement but your frankness and self- deprecating style save you from narcissism and universalize and make easy to digest your experiences for the reader, as if s/he were borrowing your personal for the uninhibited ride (emphasis mine). You have taste and are curious and energetic, appealing qualities, at least to this reader.

Just about the highest compliment a writer of memoir can receive is that one’s necessarily self-reflexive musings are, paradoxically and perhaps improbably, not narcissistic. I had a bit of an irritating week on FB but I’m a female Popeye–I yam what I yam–so a relatively apolitical as I am (politics and religion get you in trouble on FB as in real life)–sometimes a shitstorm as Denis Leary would say, develops.

I have particular attitudes about appearance, money, class, geography, psychology and family. They are not mainstream and I don’t have an orthodox life. Beyond being secular and completely uninterested both in religion and spirituality (though I enjoyed teaching the New Testament and Hebrew Scriptures in the English department and greatly enjoyed a course in Judaic Studies at Yale), I am an unmarried, childless bicoastal woman of almost 41 in a serious relationship with no plans to marry, reproduce or for that matter, pick a coast.

Maddeningly to some, I don’t have to work. Translation: I am on a budget or fixed income/allowance but financially secure and neither in search of a man nor a job to maintain my standard of living. I want to get paid to write and I will soon be paid to teach a small course in New York. But if I don’t work, I can live as I do now and later on there will be more money. Eventually (at 50 or so) I will buy a little place somewhere in the vicinity of West LA or New York City.

I’m brutally honest and transparent. Of course, only girls from well-to-do families have breakdowns at Yale after 12 years of private school followed by four days a week of psychoanalysis with a top LA analyst, first on Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills, and then in his home office in Cheviot Hills by the Westside Pavilion, coupled with weekly acupuncture, massage and chiropractor appointments.

On the other hand, if the rule were that only the poor or middle class could write memoirs, I imagine the memoir section of Amazon, or whatever local bookstore hasn’t yet folded, would be kind of thin. So in what follows, of course I describe experiences and situations which could be described as “First World” or “privileged white girl” problems (Babe Walker\’s White Girl Problems Blog ). I need to develop (at least internally) a bit of Babe Walker’s ‘tude (which in a bizarre way is also a motto of the Marines): Never apologize!

This doesn’t mean, lest some touchy person with too much time on her hands use this as a point of departure for a ridiculous rant, one doesn’t apologize when one is in error or wounds another. (People who dislike me actually stalk me on Yelp! I knew of someone who did track my Yelp reviews months ago but recently learned there are two others with whom I’m not friends on FB but who know who me from the walls of mutual friends and they too track me on Yelp. This prompted my status update: “If your life consists of following people you dislike on Yelp, God bless you because your life must really suck.” I might have said, “It must suck to be you,” but decided the syntax of the first formulation was less harsh.

But apologizing for who you are, provided you aren’t a criminal maniac or interpersonal psychopath, is not a sensible stance to adopt if you wish to remain serene through the storms of life as a blogger or mini-public figure who is as honest as I am. Babe Walker’s blog (and the bestseller which emerged therefrom)–White Girl Problems–is just awful on one level and just hilarious on another. It’s not a serious intellectual endeavor and if my Pago Pago retired lawyer with multiple degrees from Chicago thinks I’m vapid and unserious, I shudder to think what he’d make of her.

Babe is not, shall we say, on a budget and she revels in that. An alternate title might have been “Confessions of NYC socialite.” I was stunned to learn that she has 500,000 Twitter followers and that Tori Spelling and Susan Sarandon both wrote blurb for her book. It’s over the top and sometimes she gives advice as in her most recent post about a woman dating a man who claims to be a “second virgin.” It’s irreverent but very funny.

So of course my life story is that of a woman of privilege. Then again, swallowing a bottle of Valium and Advil for which one needs to drink that detestable charcoal in the Cottage ER instead of enduring the even more detestable stomach pump–I hear that’s a real bummer by the way and definitely a deterrent to offing yourself unsuccessfully with pills–is hardly a trivial matter. It was Valentine’s Day, 2002 but had nothing to do with the holiday. Dad’s check hadn’t gotten to Death Gardens and while in 6 years the rent had never been late, I found a “notice to quit” on my front door on my way to the pool and freaked out. I hadn’t checked my voicemail in days and there was apparently a message or two about the rent from the manager. It’s bizarre that Lois wouldn’t have called Dad, who had by that point paid the rent for some time (I used to write the check with money they sent but eventually the just took over all bill payment).

The charge recently leveled by an odious, sanctimonious “progressive centralist Interfaith Christian” (that’s a mouthful) that I don’t “know” the middle class puzzles me. Why should I be expected to have intimate knowledge of the social and psychological dynamics of middle class Americans, at least from the standpoint what Kant in the Critique of Judgment calls “tracing mental history”?

How am I to write a memoir based on a middle class girl from, I don’t know, Nebraska? Leaving aside that I’m bad at geography–promptly forgetting all things geographic I was unlikely to need later in life after receiving a 5 on the AP US History exam in 11th grade which left me unaware that Kansas borders Colorado (I still can’t believe Kansas is that far west)–I’ve never been to Nebraska. And I was right! I haven’t been to Nebraska or Kansas or Kentucky (which I was also shocked to learn borders Ohio, where I’ve also never been.)

What do I know about Middle America or farmland? I didn’t even know where liver came from. I didn’t actually think there was an animal called liver but I never really focused on what liver was. Hilma, my caregiver and truly the household manager still with my parents 34 years later three or four hours a day, never cooked it and Dad wasn’t into chopped liver or liverwurst when I was little. He likes a liverwurst sandwich now and again at Fromin’s but that’s fairly new. I learned on a 2011 drive to San Francisco that it’s not mere snobbery: I’m allergic to farms. As we drove through the rural counties a few hours south of SF, I had the worst allergy attack of my life not due to a cat. We arrived to J’s sister’s house in the Dogpatch with me blown up as by a bee sting.

So, pathetic a suicide attempt as mine was (no stomach pump after a bottle of Advil and Valium), it’s not exactly trivial or imagined. Nor is gun shopping at Far West Guns on Mission and State, about whose nice owners I cannot say enough good things. If you need a gun and you live in SB, I highly recommend this store, where I believe J bought his Walther .22 PPK. With Newtown still uppermost in people’s minds, I should note that for years I would see that yellow and black sign for the arms and blade show at Earl Warren Showgrounds and contemplate getting one, “just in case.”

Someone who really wants to end his or her life is going to do it even if it takes a few tries. But had I tried to buy a gun at the store (which didn’t occur to me), the 72 hour hold at PHF (the county mental ward they take you when you try to kill yourself on a 5150) likely would have come up on their background check. I doubt that it would have at the show, though this is after all the People’s Republic of SB with the most stringent zoning regulations anywhere and maybe in SB, gun shows play by different rules.

I have told this story before but when I twice went shopping for a gun with which to end my life (2002-2004), they only had the Spanish booklets. My Spanish was once fluent–literary Spanish–but even in high school, I didn’t know technical Spanish so the “how to use a gun” info would have been obscure to me even when I was regularly writing 10 page essays on Unamuno or Lorca or Borges in preparation for the AP Spanish Literature exam in 11th grade. (I took 4 AP exams that year, all 5s, which, along with a 5 on AP Government senior year–when I took 6 upper division or English major courses at UCLA which did not count toward anything but were among my most stimulating intellectual experiences ever- shaved a year off my time at Yale so that I attended college a total of 6 semesters.)

I held and chatted with the owner about a few guns. I come from Hollywood and a family in which it was sometimes necessary to keep up appearances so I know how to put on a good face. I didn’t go in with puffy eyes and tear-stained cheeks and I looked neat rather than disheveled. At the time, I had very little jewelry but I don’t think I looked like a bum or a pauper and I may have been wearing diamond studs. He told me to come back for the English-speaking manual but I never did. This will not come as a shock to my friends and readers who know I still haven’t gotten a replacement for the lost driver’s license six months ago which took me 18 months to get after the last wallet went a-missing.

I do find amusing, in a morbid kind of way only a real depressive (past or present) can relate to, that the reason I never bought a Glock or the equivalent was that I never made it back to get the manual in English. I probably wouldn’t have shot myself as I didn’t really want to die. I didn’t want to live of course because my life sucked. If you had lived the life I lived before 1996 when I moved here–as emotionally brutal and intense as it sometimes was–and you were living my life in that hellhole SB apartment which I called Lebanon, removed from LA and NYC and all civilization as I conceived it in a place with more than 9 freeway exits beyond which you had no life either in SB or at UCSB, odds are you’d think about swallowing a bullet too.

The situation with my parents was untenable and beyond a few efforts at detente in 1998/9 and one decent year in 2000 when I started to see that slow talker, cheap therapist in Montecito (75 a session was very low for a Ph.D), finished a few incompletes and prepared my prospectus while teaching Detective Fiction for Christopher Newfield, the Americanist and Emerson scholar, the relationship was toxic from 1997 to 2009. I was really only suicidal in 2003 and 2004 and since I passed my Ph.D. Orals (which includes approval of the dissertation project) four months before 9/11, I had no connection to the university.

The removal from the university was no net loss, however, as I didn’t like the depatment with the exception of a handful of excellent professors trained at Chicago, Stanford and Harvard. I never made true friends in English and while I had a few nice enough acquaintances, I never developed friendships outside the department of the sort I had in New Haven and before that in LA from K to 12. But when it came down to it, I wasn’t going to pull the trigger.

Today started off sunny but as we past the 5PM hour (not the “it’s 5 PM someplace hour” of which I am so fond but the actual cocktail hour of 5PM Pacific Standard Time), it’s becoming more and more overcast. I see Santa Cruz island from J’s living room in his condo bordering Montecito with grays, blues and lavenders mixing with silver and white clouds beginning to set over an island I sailed with my family quite a few times from Marina Del Rey (LA) as a little girl.

My pedicure at Shine Blowdry Bar exceeded my expectations and while I feel disloyal for ditching the hole in the wall on Milpas with no annoying music or chatter, I can’t pass up 25 dollar gel manicures with CND by an experienced woman in her early 50s at a glam Montecito Salon on Coast Village with terrific 80s and 90s music and a free Mimosa. I wrote a review on Yelp (Shine Blowdry Bar) and am thrilled with my happy, soft feet!

I’m the anti-OCD girl. I’m neither germaphobic nor hypochondriacal so I’m not the type to worry about the sorts of bacterial horrors reported by Dateline some years ago about hotel rooms and public elevators or, I learned this morning, by Anderson Cooper re nail salons. I worry very little and have a lackadaisical attitude toward personal safety of all kinds. (I’m describing, not endorsing, my general stance toward such matters.)

The interior of Shine is a blend of retro and modern with high ceilings.

This is amusing because during my illness I had all kinds of bizarre requirements which induce fits of laughter in J when I recount them. For instance, I detested “holiday bags,” the brown paper bags at Gelson’s which begin before Halloween and continue through New Years. To me holidays were the time of death: no family, no friends, no decent takeout from even the Four Seasons for Thanksgiving (not due to money but due to my inability to go pick it up and the pathetic delivery services of SB, which is without question the worst place for a largely shut-in depressive with funds to live).

The name of my personal assistant from 2004 to 2008 (there were a few over that period) was EP, short for “errand person.” I felt that naming the helper would personalize him or her and thereby create excessive and needless intimacy. My logic was that of Emily Dickinson in “I Can Wade Grief” and “Renunciation is a Piercing Virtue”: if, for whatever reason, you must live a life without people, you can only stand it by renouncing human interaction entirely. If you expose yourself to any but the most limited contact (a cashier at the grocery store once a week, say), the isolation will become unbearable.

In fact, I never wanted to go to the same cashier two weeks in a row. It wasn’t a superstitious thing, precisely, but my Sunday trip to Lazy Acres (our wannabe, overpriced Whole Foods pre-2009 when finally this magical store came to SB) was fraught with conflict and stress so if I had a good experience, I didn’t want it to be tarnished. If I had a bad experience one week (not with the cashier, per se, but with the entire expedition), I did not wish to repeat it, nor be reminded of it as I ate the food which carried with it associations of the hour spent shopping. For this reason, I communicated with EPs only via email and often my mother would engage them in the event of a problem or a special request which could not be conveyed via email.

I’ve mentioned my saga with laundry (even in one of my two 1 Star Yelp reviews of St. Paul’s, an admittedly cathartic experience for the years of hell they put me and my poor parents through: St. Paul\’s ) because the laundry rooms in Death Gardens were haunted by unhappy early graduate school memories. I wasn’t fond of the trash area by the pool for similar reasons, though there was a Section 8 slightly mentally ill man who seemed never to change his unofficial uniform of a yellow polo shirt with Bermuda shorts and from whose hair and skin I could smell cigarette smoke from a first down or so away.

Richard was a sad case and addressed me creepily whenever he passed me as he hung around the giant complex washing or detailing cars on occasion. Such a thing wouldn’t phase me now but at the time, my own life in Santa Barbara was so dismal (particularly during my 4th year on fellowship when I had no reason to leave the apartment in preparation for my doctoral exam as I had the top package and didn’t have to teach that year), his misery seemed an uncomfortable reflection of my own.

102 North Hope Avenue, a 1960s low density sprawling complex with 150 or so apartments was a kind of unofficial convalescent and senior citizen apartment complex conveniently located across from a large cemetery (assuming the recently deceased tenant found that an acceptable resting place and didn’t anticipate minding the intolerable noise of trucks traveling up Hope Avenue to Foothill on the official truck route of whose status as “official” I was unaware when I rented the unit). I used to call it Lebanon to capture the aridity, heat and noise which I associate with war-torn Middle Eastern locales.

I mean I don’t even like Palm Springs (and was shocked given my dislike of the desert and passion for water to love Scottsdale last November): Afghanistan is my definition of hell, even apart from the whole Jihad problem. Since I hated the neighborhood–Upper State is just awful in my view while San Roque just 5 minutes away is lovely–my solution was not to leave during the day. At night, it wasn’t so bad and you couldn’t really soak in the grim nothingness in the years before La Cumbre Plaza became a desirable mall with lots of good food. But for some reason, I called the apartment Lebanon as Afghanistan was not on my radar post-9/11.

I’m not sure why J so loves the holiday bags story but he finds it outrageously funny that we paid my EP (the last of whom became my best friend in real life to whom I spoke multiple times throughout the day and and saw four times a week either to eat, drink or walk on the beach with her chihuahua Pumpkin) and her predecessor to go to Vons or another market without holiday bags and transfer the Gelson’s groceries so I would not have to use holiday bags for the trash under the sink. I suppose a wastepaper basket or trash can (as I have no garbage disposal in my current beautiful boutique two-bedroom in San Roque) would have solved the problem but I was just cooky enough not even to want to see the traces of holidays as I unpacked the food left on the doorstep.

That’s another thing; I did not like to have people in my apartment. If a workman had to come into Lebanon, I’d either take a bath and close the door or go into the bedroom. I did not wish to be addressed and all communications were to occur before or after the visit with my mother or EP. This is why the hostile mailman who hated me for never picking up my mail at Lebanon (Death Gardens) finally chucked a big box at my door and barked as loud as he could: “Mail!”

In the first few months I was dating J, we were on Patterson in Goleta near the post office where mine would go every few months after not going to the mailbox, which suffered the same “haunting” problem as the laundry and the trash. I cringed, truly, if I went to the mail, trash or laundry. The only way I could endure Upper State and Death Gardens was by blocking as much of it out of my mind as possible. Seeing the Goleta post office reminded me of all this so I told J–which he mimics much better than I can–”He threw my mail at the door and I called him an asshole.” I don’t know why–of all the funny things I have recounted to J about this period in my life–he still finds this the funniest. Perhaps it’s the stream of consciousness way I related the exchange, particularly so early in the relationship. I obeyed the rule of leaving all “crazy” out of the first date but in a few months, I’d told him much of my story in all its glory.

As for the trash, I was evicted the week before 9/11 for making too much noise crying, parking too long in the fire lane and leaving trash on the patio. Mom smoothed it over with the old owner who had a soft spot in his heart for me but I had to go apartment hunting the week of 9/11 and I was, like most Americans with a connection to NYC especially, quite shaken up by the tragedy from which on some level America and certainly New York will never recover fully.

I did get evicted again for the crying and screaming in the middle of the night during nightmares as well as the trespassing of my neighbor’s patio by my EPs who stepped up their deliveries considerably and this time the old man had died and Mom could not make his corporate NYC daughter budge. That woman didn’t know me, didn’t live in SB, and didn’t care what was producing my anguish, nor did she care that Dad paid the rent three days early every month. She just wanted me gone and it was the best thing, just about, that ever happened to me in SB as I ended up finding a rare (in this junky rental market) gem of a boutique apartment in the most perfect part of SB to rent.

But after my 9/11 revoked eviction, we had to buy a huge Rubbermaid bin for the back patio into which I would throw my trash bags throughout the week. We hired a man to haul it clear across this enormous complex with only one trash area, dump it, and occasionally rinse it out. We called him TP. TP was also a janitor part-time and he began to come every two weeks after 8PM during my swim which was very nice and he did a better job than any woman I’d ever hired to clean during graduate school. When I was still teaching or taking class, that was easy and she’d do the laundry. But once I passed my orals before 9/11, I didn’t go out during the day so it was hard to get someone in to clean.

I’ve rehearsed some of this history before on the blog but it was long ago when I had far fewer friends on FB, no public fan page, and far fewer followers of Victorian Chick. It’s gotten late so I will leave the George Eliot letters for another day. I will include a picture, however, after dinner of some precious scores on American Book Exchange, B and N.com and Powell’s from my grad school years which formed my constant companions the years I was writing on Eliot.

Happy Friday!

Posted in Family, Health & Beauty, Lifestyle, UCSB, Uncategorized, Yale | Tagged Babe Walker, class, death gardens, depression, grad school, happiness, memoir, nyc, Shine Blowdry Bar | Leave a comment

Reflections on Relationships and the Relinquishment of One’s Own High and Pop Cultural Investments, or The Challenges of Living a Life of Ideas Outside the Academy

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Victoria

Ollie the Slacker sunbathing in the condo as usual.

Usually Ollie prefers the ottoman on which I’ve photographed him numerous times but the sun is so brilliant and warm streaming through the window, he decided to lounge about on the hardwood floor. He often sunbathes on the upper deck but seems unmotivated today. Yesterday must have been a busy day of “important cat business” and he’s taking a breather.

Like me, a new friend of mine in NYC is addicted to Grey’s Anatomy but not until this week did we happen upon this common passion. I just bought the Greg Laswell album with “Comes and Goes in Waves” and started missing the show which I’ve not seen in almost two years (Three Flights From Alto Nido). My friend in NYC John Phillips, who is always so generous in forwarding me pieces from New York Magazine and the New Yorker, kindly put Seasons 6 and 7 on my Mac and I just never watch them.

Facebook does take a lot of time and even when I can discipline myself to read more, I just don’t get around to watching TV shows I love or want to try, including Parenthood or the second seasons of Downton Abbey or Homeland. Friends I respect enjoy Suits, White Collar and Bunheads (not the same friends of course!) but I just don’t watch TV anymore. In part, it’s because J and I have tastes diametrically at odds. He enjoys forensic crime shows and animation for adults (Family Guy and South Park) and while SP is growing on me, it’s nothing I would independently choose to watch.

Last night I had a great weight workout followed by a short swim and jacuzzi. When I got home, I would have loved to watch Grey’s but he hates the show (without having even watched very much of it of course). I would have been up for watching Morning Glory, the quite good romantic comedy from 2010 with Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Patrick Wilson and Rachel MacAdams but he loves his crime docs and cartoons so I just sit with him and chat on Facebook or go through my notifications.

This is not a major life problem of course but when you’re living with a boyfriend or girlfriend at least part of the month with whom you do not share pop culture tastes (though we do like much of the same music) and you’re not a total bossy pants or bitch, you just give up what you enjoy during shared time. Nothing prevents me from watching movies or TV during the day and God knows I used to watch my favorite shows on DVD, VHS or reruns then but I just never do. As for Grey’s, I’m so behind it seems like a large commitment to catch up but I think there is something slightly deeper at work than mere scheduling or priorities.

When I engage with a fictional world–be it narrative or cinematic–I become emotionally invested. In fact, from an early age (by junior high), teachers noted the “felt quality” of my writing, the depths at which concepts became emotionally meaningful to me. I was a German Idealist before I knew what that was in my almost relentless insistence upon bridging the gap between feeling and thinking or in Schillerian terms, form and sense. Papers I worked on in college not only penetrated my dream life but my very body at times and my chronic pain at Yale was a complex manifestation of how my thought life and personal identity intersected with my academic work.

Texts of all kinds fill my thoughts and now at nearly 41, I think I worry about feeling distant and thus uncommunicative in my relationship when I’m invested in worlds of which J is not part. This is true also of serious fiction or philosophy as we read none of the same things and apart from a lack of discipline on my part–particularly for very serious reading–I feel that engaging in other worlds which cannot be shared will create distance I prefer to avoid.

I think these are common dynamics when two people in a relationship are so very different. But I also feel that absolute emotional compatibility overrides these cultural differences and preferences. Of course, when you and your partner read and watch similar things (or you work in similar fields), you’re likely to do more of both separately and together. I’m not in any serious way concerned about a lack of conversation–I mean, anyone who knows me knows I talk a lot–but if my head is in worlds totally remote from J’s, I think subconsciously I feel that distance will develop and in the time we spend together (approximately 17 days a month) I would like to avoid this.

Without question, when I’m engaged in any intellectual work–reading canonical texts say–I feel quite a bit less social. I’m also acutely aware that I no longer live in a world of scholars and professors with whom to discuss a piece I might want to write. This is the only downside of living life outside the academy. I am committed to reading and writing more about literature this year but I have had too much analysis and therapy over a lifetime not to know that apart from mustering the discipline to pursue a serious curriculum of reading, my lifestyle and social life are no longer fundamentally rooted in world of ideas and scholarship. That’s fine and I’m happy, but if for many years you lived in the academy, surrounded by people for whom ideas are the crucial component of life, and then you move to the real world where ideas are secondary, tertiary or even lower down on the scale of priorities, your life must of necessity change.

A friend of mine in his early 70s inspired this line of thought after he hurt my feelings and then apologized sincerely, telling me it was not his intent to dismiss my mind, my life and my writing as entirely worthless (though his often arrogant language–noted by many on FB–clearly pointed in this direction).

This isn’t some random hostile moron on FB whose opinion matters considerably less to me than a rescue dog with whom I might come in contact even briefly, but rather a serious though sometimes humorless ex-lawyer with three degrees from Chicago. I’m told by another good friend and Chicago graduate about my age that Chicago grads are often insufferably pompous and consider anyone who didn’t go to Chicago borderline retarded.

I don’t think any Ivy promotes such a distinctive attitude and way of speaking as Chicago does. Of course, neither of these Chicago people chose to make their life in the academy and my personal and intimate experience of professors trained there in English or philosophy–Carol Rovane, Richard Eldridge and Julie Carlson–does not jive with my experience of these FB Chicago people. (As a side note, I think that wannabe academics who choose instead to make money are often more prickly or ponderous than ones who pursue their intellectual passions and thus have nothing to prove to the eggheads who never made any real money and have credibility within the academy or, if applicable, government agencies which employ policy wonks.)

I know a woman on FB–like my retired sailor friend a University of Chicago J.D., with a lucrative career in literary publishing who lives in NYC but whom I’ll never meet and don’t consider a real friend–who suffers (at least on FB) both from pomposity and humorlessness. Friends say that she’s actually a lot of fun in real life but the page is pedantic even if banking regulations make you hot.

I could not care less about economics–which both these Chicago J.D.s do–and frankly, politics bores me. But this man denigrates all popular culture and considers theater, film, and television worthless objects of inquiry. He has no interest in food or fashion because he lives in Pago Pago on a Westsail 39, where life does not revolve around eating or dressing well. He jokes he hasn’t worn a tie in many years and that he almost never dons shoes with closed toes in his idyllic South Pacific existence. (That it is easy to pooh pooh money and the systems which produce it from a large ketch in the American Samoa is a topic I will not here pursue.)

Still, he was unfair to claim that a woman whose life once did revolve nearly exclusively around ideas–I didn’t date or attend many parties in college and in SB I was celibate nearly 9 years–is devoid of ideas when her life takes a turn toward the frivolous or fluffy, his favorite word for me and my writing. (He isn’t speaking of my two Weekly Standard book reviews, of course: Lithgow and Wharton reviews.) I often joke that Victorian Chick is literate bullshit. I entertain no illusions that I write a lit crit blog though if you go through my 225 Victorian Chick blogs, you’ll find some British lit or German philosophy musings here or there. But I have a trained eye–both by my education and my personal experience of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy–and I believe that wherever I turn my gaze, that analytic background (in all senses) informs my observations.

As for content, I make no bones about my bicoastal lifestyle in which fine dining, fashion, theater, dance, and music figure prominently. Think of it as Town and Country for those on a budget or perhaps, a view of the 1-2% from the periphery. I own nothing (at least not as long as my parents are alive) but make my fixed income go a long way with consignment stores, Groupon, Living Social, diamond simulants from Diamond Nexus (to satisfy my insatiable jewelry longings and tastes vastly in excess of my income, DN site). Mercifully and miraculously, I have the use of a small, largely vacant rental on the Upper East Side three months a year for which I pay no rent. (I buy expensive bottles of whiskey or my parents buy presents to thank their old friend.)

So when I’m in the city at bars, diners, cafes or even on commuter trains or subways, I meet people who tell me their stories and those stories include money lost or money found. Anyone who doesn’t understand the social function of money in New York City (and the wealthy enclaves of New Jersey and CT) doesn’t understand much about life in the city. The New York Times recently ran a story about how and why it is impossible for the middle class to survive in Manhattan (\”What is Middle Class in Manhattan\”

From the age of Edith Wharton to Gordon Gekko to Mayor Bloomberg (quite literally), money has always ruled Manhattan. But everyone knows that the days when writers or intellectuals or even smalltime professionals prominent in classic Woody Allen films of the 1970s could (sans family support) rent habitable three-bedroom apartments on the Upper West Side are long gone. Even Elizabeth Wurtzel confirms in her recent New York Magazine piece what all New Yorkers (in any of the boroughs) recognize: finance people have invaded once semi-affordable bohemian downtown enclaves (New York Magazine Elizabeth Wurtzel). The Village is out of sight, as are Tribeca, Soho and even Chelsea.

I am fascinated by the stories people tell me about marriage, divorce, and family in a world like the privileged West LA I grew up in the sense that private schools and elite colleges are the norm and yet alien in so many ways. LA money and New York money resemble one another far more now than they used to, other than the obvious Hollywood/finance dichotomy, but that’s another story. Particularly if these reversals of fortune brought with them depression, people ask me about my experience and I feel (because they tell me) I have made some small contribution in the form of hope, support or just insight.

But my Henry James American Scene-like navigation of Manhattan is not limited to the world of money as I dance at Luigi Jazz Dance Centre and have friends both from dance and FB trying to make it as playwrights, actors and musicians. This has always been part of the city’s magic: the best people in every field come to the city to make their mark. You’re surrounded by talent you can almost taste in the air you breathe. It’s just that these artists generally can’t live in the city and commute both for their craft and their day jobs from Queens, Long Island or the (fast disappearing) less expensive parts of Brooklyn. It therefore requires some ingenuity and planning to get together when they live 35 minutes away on the subway rather than 5 minutes on the 4 from 59th Street, say.

Of course, I have friends in parts of New Jersey and CT who are not in what would be considered suburban New York and completely remote from life in the city. In other words, my experience of the Tri-State area is quite diverse and I consider myself a woman with friends in many stations of life who is privileged–by virtue of not having to work to survive–to develop deep and meaningful friendships with many people I would have no time to talk to or see were I working a traditional salaried job.

All this to say, my life is in many respects the life of a retiree or a divorced childless woman with enough money from the divorce to enjoy life without working. I would like for more of that life to revolve around ideas and I hope that it will in the very near future. But to claim that my life in the four years since I recovered from an incapacitating depression in which I neither traveled nor dated nor shopped nor socialized in any sense is intellectually vapid, when from prep school to Yale to UCSB, my life revolved around ideas can’t be right.

Also, since Mom retired (sort of) she reads the LAT and Wall Street Journal religiously and on weekends, the New York Times. She dutifully cuts clips from the book reviews and arts sections and leaves them on my bed. In October, I attended Camille Paglia’s lecture at the 92nd Y, which I would not describe as a vapid engagement. I may not often buy and read the books whose reviews I read every weekend in LA but Paris Hilton I am not.

And aside from the fact that my chances of writing for pay–short of a book which cannot be published in my father’s lifetime–are evenly split between literary journalism (book reviews) and lifestyle or celebrity journalism (fluff of various kinds), my interest in food and fashion are not impractical. An ABD in English who never intends to finish the dissertation and go on the market will necessarily diversify and since my childhood and adolescence are rooted in the entertainment industry, it makes sense for me to dwell in a world I know very well.

(I have already explained that private school tutoring for someone with my background, orientation, and personality is best pursued a place I live just 3 months a year and that due to my relationship with J and obligations to my father, I prefer to stay in CA about 75% of the year. Personal assistant work for a financier or corporate type is also, if not ubiquitous in the city, then not impossible to come by as even a brief perusal of Yale Alumni Magazine classifieds attests; there is currently an ad for a job as a personal and research assistant which pays some 90K a year and this is one of three such positions available.)

As for my interest in food and fashion, I have this to say: 1) I love food and I don’t cook, 2) where I grew up , eating well in restaurants is part of the point of having money in the first place as it is recreation rather than sustenance. Until April 2010, I was a lifelong size 2 and it’s fun to dress up and shop when everything fits you and you look good in just about anything you try on or order online. I’m still about 13 pounds up from my lifelong weight and have more curves so I have to adjust slightly, but I enjoy clothes immensely and because I’m on a budget, I have great fun shopping consignment stores around America and getting amazing deals on things I could never afford firsthand.

I am grateful for my friend’s unkind private remarks. I know he cares and never meant to hurt me though his droning on about inheritance tax grows tiresome. In lit crit jargon, his comments would be called “thoughtful resistance” and I feel better for having articulated a coherent response and defense of my life and choices.

I will therefore leave off with my Valentine’s Day dress from Tadashi Shoji, a marvelous and well-respected designer who creates fashion for those who cannot afford true designer clothing, at least not firsthand. I have a FB friend who was in the military and now (perhaps improbably) covers fashion. I had recently heard of Tadashi but knew very little about the house and I am absolutely in love!

Most dresses are between 300 and 500 and I am contemplating for next Christmas in NYC, a green beaded gown worn by the New Zealand actress from Two and a Half Men, among much else in film and TV. I think it requires a more ballerina, statuesque figure than hers but I posted it a few weeks ago and if it fits even half as well as the claret dress I received in the mail last night, I think I will buy it. Apart from the symphony, my life in Los Angeles and SB afford few opportunities to dress up in a gown.

The claret dress was a special offer for 148 (the green is 488 but will go down soon I am told to around 300) and I loved the color and the cut. It’s slightly stretchy and Tadashi has unusual sizing. An XS is a 2 and a S is a 4-6. I think I’m between the XS and S but only because this is a stretchy fabric and Carl recommends I see a tailor to remove the slight bagginess in the low back. I’m afraid if I go down to the XS, the top will not fit as it does now.

I am well aware of the headlights problem but both Purrmission Lingerie, our high-end store in town with Stella McCartney, Marie Jo, Chantelle and La Perla, and H and M sell headlights reducers, vulgarly known as pasties. I do not think the v-neck coupled with the boat neck would allow even for a strapless bra. For 10 dollars, one gets five pair of what are essentially glorified bandaids.

Here is the full-body shot with my iPhone before I ran to the gym for weights and a brief swim.

Of course it will be better after dancing for a solid week in NYC as well as climbing four flights of pre-WWI stairs in a brownstone but this will be a nice dress and because my teaching gig (yes for pay) in New York started late, I will be able to wear it both to the SB Symphony “Firebird” on 2/9 (the State Street Ballet and SB Symphony doing Debussy, Stravinsky and Brahms) and Valentine’s Day with J. This will be our third Valentine’s Day dinner together which prompted my mother to say, “Goddamn, three years almost!” It’s really 2.5 years but given I was dead for so long–10 years–and before that, not involved in romantic entanglements much less legitimate relationships, it’s all quite shocking!

Happy Wednesday!

Posted in Family, Fashion, Film, Food & Wine, Philosophy, Relationships, Television, UCSB, Uncategorized, Westlake School For Girls, Yale | Tagged CT, depression, dresses, graduate school, Grey Laswell, grey's anatomy, happiness, literature, money, Morning Glory, music from Grey's Anatomy, new jersey, new york city, parents, relationships, Suits, Tadashi Shoji, tutoring, wealth | Leave a comment