where those who were to be admired were Gregory Peck and Cary Grant. Outside the elegant Hotel Montage, the paparazzi are waiting to take pictures of... hold your breath... Kim Kardashian. I really like this hotel so am trying not to be saddened/nauseated. There is not much left to believe in in what/whom people choose to admire.
But the village itself remains a treat, fine weather and a slew of tasty/overpriced restaurants. And today I got the key to my storage locker so I can get my furniture, bought bagels for my freezer at my new apartment, which I move into on Saturday, and if all goes well some great or little or insignificant work will emerge.
I got an e-mail today from my admirable friend Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress alum, the first serious reviewer to laud me in the Library Journal, suggesting I donate myself in archive to an institution. Mercy. She added that I shouldn't throw out or delete anything... very helpful since I spent last early evening on my computer, getting rid of things I thought not worth saving, with the exception of all my material on Mary Miles Minter, a great Hollywood murder case from the Twenties that a very bad book was unfortunately written about already. I found Mary Miles, a once a child star very very late in her life, and knew King Vidor, a great director who was fascinated with her case, the murder of William Desmond Taylor, with whom she had been very much in love, in a pushy, adolescent fashion. He was probably gay in those wondrous days before everybody started coming out, which I personally find very boring. Who cares what those people do in bed. Let them just be talented.
King... even as I write of him, it is hard to use that name, as it seems so unlikely, and is even harder to call someone... was always being invited to parties as he was such a great remnant, besides being a still very witty man at the end of his very long day. Once they gifted him for going to an event with a gold fountain pen, and he showed it to me and said "I'd give it to you, but I'm crazy about it." A charming gent.
So I am getting ready to vacate this elegant-even-if-they-do-wait-for-Kardashian-outside-hotel... I mean it is a different world, and everything has come down a peg or twelve including the world... and move into my new apartment, found while strolling aimlessly or maybe unconsciously purposefully directed by hidden forces. It is truly beautiful, new floors and one of those young women sharing the bricked front porch who apparently earns enough in her early twenties that she can afford what it took me a lifetime of creativity and the death of an evil stepmother to be able to negotiate. I am told that these woods are full of those creatures, people in their twenties who work for banks and various trust companies earning incredible salaries, and wonder, as they used to say, when it meant something other than the explosion of the planet, what the world is coming to. Or better still, where it's gone.
But the good news is I am half a block away from a place that features Japanese foot massage from young Asian men who also do some great shoulder and arm and back work for an hour, and it costs only $35.00. Just across the street is another place, newly opened, with a fountain, a room with music, a book full of homes you could have bought for a few million, hot tea and an imported chocolate where the massages, from women, start at $250 but if you get a series they reduce it to $200. Beverly Hills.
