Birthday Cake

It's a good one.
I'm inspired by Taste Spotting on the web. Gosh, there is so much to eat in the world. As you know, restaurant Angelini, on Beverly, a favorite. Marino on Melrose for very good food plus tablecloths and big leather booths to sit in and relax. Mario at the helm. Always good to be in a place where the lights are on, somebody's home and they take good care of you.
Ina Garten's coconut cake with cream cheese frosting.

Art - the movies - Potiche

Latest movie?       Potiche with Catherine      Deneuve. 

Latest book?         Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.

Latest  art trip?     LACMA yesterday for Art & Music with Philip Glass. 

Latest play?       33 Variations with Jane Fonda 

Catherine Deneuve stars in Potiche at LACMA and here she is doing the Q & A afterwards. Lovely at 69, she is all woman. During the course of the movie her hairstyle changes as her character moves from "trophy wife" to Umbrella factory boss. From teased bubble to bouncy flip. Funny. Laughed all the way through. 

Books: Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann

There is a driving beat inside the sentences of this work that pull me forward, make me look, increase anticipation and joy and breathtaking wonder, again, the sentences, like feet across the tightrope, one sentence at a time. 
           Read this book and say Oh - MY - God. 




"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again."
                                                                         - William Faulkner

Art - Theatre

I love the way John Lithgow began his recent one man show at the Taper. He looked at the audience and said what are you all here for? All you eager faces out there? What are you doing here? You want to be told a story. And he went on to tell how his favorite P. G. Wodehouse story revived his ancient father when he went back to help the old man who had become so ill. He began to read him his favorite story and then he acted out all the characters for us, there on the stage.
Touching. Immediate. Bigger than life, yet simple and real.
Such good theatre happening in LA now. Last weekend it was Jane Fonda in 33 Variations. Wow, the precision of the acting, the inventive set and the words that flowed through me and made me think, which is what the theatre is for..thinking, feeling, all the colors of life

Food as ART, Campanile Restaurant

 Campanile, still as good as it gets.
Located in a sunlit Italian-style building built for Charlie Chaplin in the 1920's, it is a Hollywood landmark. Chef Mark Peel is right there watching over things, creating remarkable and innovative dishes. The lights are on and he is home.
From the bibb lettuce salad to the prime rib, which of course I cannot eat because the cholesterol is waaaaaay out there, so I eat the sauteed trenne with bolognese sauce & peacock kale & shaved parmesan. A bottle of red wine, of course. Dessert? Flourless chocolate cake, can't eat that either, but I do, I have to live. Ok, so when I die and go to the heaven that is MY heaven, I want to go to Claridge's, and eat the food that is from Campanile......AND Gino, and sleep on Anichini linens, and read the great fiction of the world, beginning with Proust, makes sense, I'm in bed, and it's MY heaven. Turner Classic Movies has to be on the flat screen with Bette Davis or Humphrey Bogart which I watch in my pegnoir set. Ah, heaven.

my LA

Here we are, driving the streets, with funny little things that appear. Cash cows, tiny cars, and the rhythm of a city that constantly moves east to west, north to south, and the tires are blowing and the hum of the motors is going, and whatever car you are driving is being torn up by the pot holes on Wilshire Blvd., constantly. Ever think about the dirt that accumulates in your house from all these cars?

Still....I love LA.

Los Angeles what a week.....

Here's the view from my terrace window. I live in LA. I love it. Ok, Ok, I know the traffic is bad, but the upside is the neighborhoods have improved, by a long shot, better eating, better shopping, more movies. This week was packed. Saw an evening with Joel Grey at the Paley Center for Media and watched fabulous old film of his early days on TV. I hit the Los Angeles Art Show in downtown and was gobsmacked by John Baldessari's A to Z collection, sold as a set in mixgrafia, as well as Michele Mattei's glorious flowers in photography. Did the girl thing & bought new capri pants at J.Crew. Jumped into the writing life again with Jack Grapes and his merry band of pranksters, poets and tempest tossed writers. Spent a lovely Saturday evening at the Colburn School of Music downtown for a Brahms concert, and did the flea market in Santa Monica yesterday with Lisa. Finished off the week with dinner at Angelini Osteria, my favorite restaurant in town. I mean really, the weather is 75, the rest of the country is in the deep freeze and even though my car needs some repair from the major pot holes in Wilshire Blvd., I can't complain about this city. LA? I love it. 

Books: Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman

If you read Ann Patchett's introduction to
                          BINOCULAR VISION,
you will surely turn the page,
and the next page,
and the next.



I am awestruck and filled with wonder.

My breath has been taken away.
These very short stories are touching,
mind bending,
they make me want to read them aloud and
              savour
each
                                                 and every word.
Oh God, the glory of living in a world with art.


"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again."
                                                                         - William Faulkner

ART/ Photo LA

UCLA Bamboo - Kathleen Blurock photo

Went to PHOTO LA 

Nan Goldin, check.
Elliott Erwitt, check.
Julius Schulman, Imogene Cunningham, check check check.

Also saw some interesting things at PHOTO EYE,
a 2001 space oddyssey looking ilfachrome that was fab,
Robert Tat's usual great selection
and some tough looking street stuff at Rivera & Rivera.
The Australians had "sculpted" photography.

German, Netherlands, London all covered.
Interesting stuff.

"It is through living that we discover ourselves - at the same time as we discover the world around us." 

                                        - Henri Cartier-Bresson 1952

Food as ART, the genius of Gino Angelini

 When I die I want to go to Gino heaven where I can eat all day and never get fat, never be overloaded or sick. I can go from warm octopus salad with arugula & cherry tomatoes to tagliatelle with lamb ragu and wash it down with the lovely La Massa without a care that it will be too much for me. I can even eat the warm Nonna cake with pine nuts and vanilla ice cream, so divine. God won't care, neither will Gino. He'll just laugh and take another swallow of whatever he is drinking. It's easy for him to cook in heaven, no heat. A few tables with comfortable chairs and a wall of wine whose bottles are magically replaced as one is removed. The tables are in the middle of an olive grove with little bamboo lights hung from the branches. It is heaven, Gino heaven. But it's MY Gino heaven,
here on earth, in Los Angeles, on Beverly Blvd, and all you have to do is call.