Photo by Paul Drinkwater/BravoThe Quiet Womanseemed like a good idea at the time. After all, it's where the pickled-livered Newport debs like to trawl for wallets la Anna Anna Anna Anna Anna Nicole, and that sounded like a swell time to me!
I arrived early to meet my sister—by which I mean I arrived exactly on time—and was treated to a 15-minute conversation about money. Specifically, how much money Dude A had for a down payment for a house, and how much money Dude B thought he should be forking over.
The conversation went a little something like this:
Dude B: If you have half a million dollars, that's a down payment on a $2 million house. I am so unbelievably boring I can't even believe it. Dude A: I am more dull even than you, old chap! Right now if I buy the house I live in in Corona del Mar, it would be $5,000 per month. I believe I just said that my rent right now is $3,400 per month, but Commie Girl could well have misremembered that. B: That's a lot of fucking money for us to be bandying loudly about in a bar filled with gold-diggers. Let's not offer to buy anyone a drink. A: Okay. Then when this cute girl is finally impelled to join our conversation because she can't believe you're recommending buying a house in Huntington Beach when everyone knows there are childhood cancer clusters there from soil contamination in the oil-drilling areas, oh, and also there are Nazis, let's tell her we're stoned on really good stinky purple buds and not offer her any! Even though we're really very nice, I suppose. B: Excellent plan! A: I say! What ho! Fin.
With the Quiet Woman all played-out—though there were quite a few codgers making cow eyes across the bar, which could have become interesting (sociologically speaking; or maybe that's cataracts)—we headed to La Cave. There, my sister said I'm puffy, but only in a temporary, alcoholic kind of way. It might have been payback, now that I think on it, for my having told her most people think she's a man.
I have little to say of La Cave, as we shared one entre, and dinner still cost $90 pre-tip. See, they do this very clever menu thing that consists of not giving you one. Instead, they roll out a dessert cart full of fleshy goodness—can you imagine how gauche it would be to ask the price?
Afterward? I was crabby!
Also? Many people think my sister is a man.
The local art media were getting all crazy at The Shed on the Balboa Peninsula Saturday night for the opening of Elizabeth Turk's residency, which seemed to comprise marble busts of lesboriffic sea nymphs who are bald. Think marble Joan Jetts, covered in a sassy, salty crust. The media, they were cooing, and perhaps even throbbing. Why? Because Tom Blurock, the mild-mannered and genial host at the Shed, always has excellent wine. For not $90!
The media appreciates this.
We talked amongst ourselves as we always do at these things—the civilians will have nothing to do with us, and we really can't blame them—and I discovered an interesting factoid! Namely? My good friend Richard Chang of The Orange County Register is a big, giant puss!
“Blah blah blah, boring thing,” said he, as I nodded placidly. Then he asked a question. “Do you ever have people ask you to not put things in the paper?” he asked.
“Mmhmmm,” said I.
“And do you . . . keep that agreement?” asked he.
“Of course!” I averred.
“Then I'd like all our conversations to not be in the paper,” he ventured.
“Fuck off,” I gently murmured. “You have to say, 'Off the record' beforehand,” I sweetly reminded him. I continued, for clarification: “That's the rule. You big fucking idiot!” Then I explained to him tenderly that he hadn't said a goddamn thing I would have any interest in printing. Until now!And then I told him to fuck off again.
Afterward? I was crabby.
Also? Richard Chang is on my list!
I was almost home at 9 p.m. Saturday night, when the drugs kicked in and I realized going home at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night would have been stupid because I looked really hot and not puffy at all.
What could I do, looking so hot and unpuffy? I pondered. Then I hit it! I called a cop buddy on the off chance something was perpetrating: I figured cops get all the best dope—and maybe some hookers while we were at it.
What was my buddy doing? He was playing poker! At some guy's house in Tustin! With 20 or more other people straight out of a Benetton ad in a huge playroom/garage that embodied everything good about suburbia! Especially suburban blow!
I sat right down and was immediately staked. “Get ready to lose all the money,” I said, out to charm, and as I was playing at a table full of codgers making cow eyes, most everybody was. Then I won all the money, hand after hand, and everybody didn't love me anymore, especially when I started smirking and it became clear I'd just won with trash when at least one person had had jacks to open and I didn't quite have my flush, and also I didn't quite have a pair. Fetchingly, and ever the lady, I done stuck the money in my bra. Afterward? I wasn't crabby at all.
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