So as anyone can see, if they are in LA., I have ended the drought. There is a sadness that comes along after the elation, because soon hills will be sliding, and people will be losing their homes as well as their patience.
This has never been a place where things happen half-way. If I had gotten a dog Saturday as I thought I would, she would not be able to go out walking, and I would probably be sorry. As it was, I had to audition and am being considered by the very kind woman in charge of it all, who rescues dogs and afterwards finds out that the females are pregnant and advises you against the puppies that came out for fear they will ruin the floors, which my new landlady would certainly not enjoy.
I apologize for seeming so small-minded and focussed on the trivial, but with great power comes great responsibility as everybody seems to understand but the people with great power.
I am no longer reading the newspapers, as nothing seems to be getting any better and in spite of my great capacity to change things, apparently I am not able to change them for the better except when I am in Amsterdam, and that is a high price to pay, except for knowing Daniel, his beautiful children, and the boys with whom I dined those lovely evenings when Peter cooked. Amsterdam is a truly wonderful city except for the wet and the bleak and the fact that they don't know they aren't in charge of the world anymore and that nothing has changed since whatever century it was that they ran things. The great thing about LA is in spite of its being so spread out you can still walk everywhere as long as you don't want to go to too many places.
Also there is still the telephone on which I am able to speak to my beloved Taffy of the once great Starland Vocal Band of Afternoon Delight which unfortunately did not give their follow- up song to the Ages which would have made them immortal as their manager was Jerry Weintraub who was a shit, and cared only about John Denver. His wife Jane Morgan didn't do that well either. But it is well I am learning to live in sort-of silence, as Mrs. Lande, my Nazi housemother from Cherry Lawn School in Darien, Connecticut, the capital of anti-Semitism in the US where most of the students were Jews so the townspeople would close their shutters when we walked into town along Brookside Road would have said I couldn't do. As a matter of fact, what she said was "If you were in a room by yourself you would go crazy," and Ha Ha, I haven't. Yet.
The day we all walked into town because it was so exciting was the day they were shooting the railway station scene from Gentleman's Agreement, the great book-into-movie about anti-Semitism in the U.S. and we all wanted to see Gregory Peck in the lean, handsome flesh getting off the train. But when everybody got there, they learned the scene had already been shot, so they all went back to school. I, though, sat on a bench in the station and wept, as I loved movies so, and had imagined Gregory Peck would be Gregory Peck.
But then, God being a movie fan, it turned out the train had pulled in too far, so Mr. Peck had to go back to Stamford and take the train again. And there I was, at twelve, able to tremblingly get off the bench and ask for his autograph. Having nothing to lean against, he asked for my shoulder. I never washed the jacket again.
Many years later, at a Hollywood party, during the time I was a hit with The Pretenders so was asked everywhere, people in Hollywood being-- don't be shocked-- un poquito bullshitty, I met him at a party at Allan Carr's house, and we became friends. "This is where I stood with Ingrid," he actually said to me, Greg, that is, as he told me to call him. We met again and in a major way when I was living in Paris, writing for the Wall Street Journal Europe-- is there no end of miracles?-- and I was actually his date for a reception. He had a cane and I had broken my arm so as we limped towards the ambassador, he said "Don't we make a beautiful pair?" A darling man, who later recorded the poem I wrote when my dog Happy died. You can hear it online. I have to choke at people who actually idealize Matthew McConnawhatever, imagining that is a hero.
Well, as we know, nothing in Hollywood, U.S.A. being moderate, the gutters are now filled to more than capacity, and my battery is low, so I must close. Fortunately I am wearing my serious raincoat, so I will likely make it home if I don't fall into the sewer which I believe they have. The record being played on the amplifier is "Baby, It's Cold Outside," the huge hit by Frank Loesser, the greatest songwriter of his generation, whom everybody has forgotten, and who listened to me audition me at MCA when I was 20, seduced me, and sat naked at my piano playing Warm All Over, the love song from his soon to be hit The Most Happy Fella, which everyone has forgotten as well. He was a true shit but then everybody can't be Gregory Peck, or the world could hold its head high.
