10086 Sunset Boulevard

… for the summer. Starting next week, I won’t be at “home base” for a few months. I’m going to be at various places in California, a combination of work and play. As I try to figure out how I will update my website, or where the Internet cafes are in the areas I’ll be staying, I realize I’m biting off more than I can chew. This summer, I am going to have to step away from the computer.

The diet is going well, even though I am still maintaining at 154 and obviously I am not going to reach my goal by the 29th of this month. I’ve added some carbohydrates back into my diet and increased the exercise, which has me feeling the healthiest I’ve felt in many years. Does that mean I’m staying at 154? Hell no! The rest of the weight is coming off. This summer I’ll be working on completing my diet story and the book.

I’ll be checking email when possible and perhaps post the occasional update, but I won’t be returning full time to 10086 Sunset Boulevard until late September.

Hope to see you then - have a wonderful, safe and healthy summer - Jo

American Idol has become a rather bizarre show and last night’s grand finale was no exception. Katherine McPhee’s father was in the audience, crying. I would feel deprived not to see him moved to tears by his talented little girl, week after week. But seeing a bespectacled David Hasselhoff in the audience, tears streaming down his face, made me feel like I’d eaten bad mushrooms. That and the very disturbing Clay Aikin lookalike surprise duet.

And then Taylor comes on to sing a duet with what at first appeared to be a contract girl from the adult film industry. Toni Braxton made her entrance in a white baby-doll nighty and strutted her stuff, at one point encouraging Taylor to cop a feel. That might have been appropriate if they were singing “Love to Love You, Baby” but the song selected for this duet was “In the Ghetto” and in thinking about the lyrics to that song, I don’t know what part of it got her so hot and bothered. The look on Taylor’s face seemed to say “this is not how it went in rehearsals”.

American Idol was different this season. The winner is not someone likely to be packaged and become just another generic singer designed only to sell records, what the show is really all about as Clive Davis reminded us a few episodes ago. “Units” he said. It’s all about the “Units”.

By next season I plan to have TiVo so that I can record the show and then fast forward through most of it which should make it around 10 minutes to each hour of air time, thus cutting a lot of the crap.

I picked Taylor out of the crowd the first time he appeared on the television screen. There he is, that’s the one. I knew it before I heard him sing as did many others, evidenced by the outcome. There’s something about the guy, he’s a one man show. And he won. Taylor Hicks won.

Below is the most read piece on this website, posted this past March. It seems appropriate to repost it now.

Dining Out With Taylor Hicks

The gray hair, the smoldering eyes - imagine you’ve found yourself seated at a table for two with American Idol contestant Taylor Hicks. You feel proud to be out with the man who can so easily admit to having been the Easter Bunny at a mall. The waiter introduces himself and starts to tell you the specials. That’s when the evening begins to take a strange slant. As the specials are described, Taylor follows each one up with a “Wooo” and his torso angles sideways, his neck stiffens. People are beginning to stare and you realize this is not going to be the kind of evening you had in mind.

You wonder if the guy has some kind of affliction - a good natured Tourette’s Syndrome perhaps? Is he for real, full of adrenaline from the joy of living life and making music?

The wine arrives, none too soon and Taylor proposes a toast “to happiness”. That’s really sweet, all Taylor wants is to be happy. You take a nice long draw of the much needed beverage, a hearty Merlot, but as you swallow, Taylor reacts to the rich wine with another hoot, a holler and movement to the side that almost knocks him out of his chair. Wine comes out of your nose, which brings forth another spastic outburst from the good looking odd ball.

You order dinner, but it arrives in doggy bags. You are politely being asked to leave the first class restaurant and dinner is free of charge. Taylor is ecstatic, he doesn’t know he’s just been slighted. He whoops it up on the way out, thanking the waiters, the maitre d’ and anyone who will listen, for what he perceives as a free picnic.

“Ain’t Los Angeles great?” he marvels as you stroll to a nearby park, where you munch dinner out of containers. He’s easier to be with outside of the confines of a busy restaurant. This has turned into a fun and memorable date, but you’re still relieved when it’s time to say goodnight and he doesn’t try to plant one on you. Getting too close to Taylor Hicks doesn’t seem like a safe bet.

But I am betting on him to be the winner of this year’s American Idol.

Previous Post - Fifty Candles Part I

Shortly after Stan departed on his journey to the great beyond, I started dating a man seven years my junior. My one and only claim to a “Boy Toy“. I tried to tell myself I was in love, but I wasn’t. I didn’t even like the guy. But damn, he looked good in his BVDs sprawled on my bed, or lazing naked by my swimming pool. I had a friend who was a bartender at the local pub and she had been showing me pictures of a party that had taken place there the week before. I stopped at a picture of a young man sitting at the bar and said “I want that”. She chuckled and with a gleam in her eye said “I thought you would”.

She arranged a meeting. There was a party at the pub the next evening, an event with music and she called him up. After all he was new in town and she thought he might like to attend. And oh yes, Jo would be there, the one she had told him about. I took great care with my appearance that evening and I arrived late, just to make an entrance. The power I had back then. I miss that power now. I had no doubt that this guy was mine. He was new in town, 26 years old, 6′3″ and was the editor for the entertainment section of the local newspaper. All the girls wanted the handsome newcomer, but I came in, lined him up in the cross hairs and moved in for the kill. I then embarked on what would be the most boring year of my life.

Elliott was not interesting. He looked like he would be, but he just wasn’t. With his good looks, he was as vain as they come and loved nothing more than to talk about himself, his thoughts, and beliefs. He was very proud that he didn’t believe in reincarnation, didn’t believe in ghosts, didn’t believe in an afterlife. Didn’t even wish to discuss such mumbo jumbo. That was fine with me, I really wasn’t looking for conversation. I can remember going on a long hike with him. I’d asked him to walk ahead of me, just so I could check out his rear view. Tight butt and long, long legs. He’d be yammering away about something and I’d be devouring his body with my eyes, thinking about how much fun I’d have with him that evening.

About 45 minutes into our hike, I realized he’d been talking the whole time and I had no clue what he was talking about. He said something and waited for my response, I tried to cover but he stopped, turned around and looked at me and said,”Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?”

I was so busted. His feelings were hurt and he told me he felt like he was just being used.

“This is a problem for you?” I asked.

Apparently it was. I thought a man would welcome being treated as a sex object, but he sulked. Things were not going to last too much longer.

One night, I was awoken out of a deep sleep by Elliott shaking me.

“What is it?”

I thought we might have an intruder and he needed me to protect him.

“Over there, over there.”

He pointed to Stan’s altar, which I had set up in my room and furnished with candles, incense and fresh flowers. I looked over to where Elliott was pointing, just a few feet in front of us.

“Something moved.”

I felt a surge of maternal tenderness toward my little sex object. He looked so boyish, his black hair rumpled and he was shaking like a wet puppy. I put my arms around him and cuddled him,”Sshh, it was just a bad dream, everything is okay”.

He pushed me away and said, “It wasn’t a dream. Something woke me up and something just sat in front of your little shrine thing like a big sack of potatoes. It was a g-g-ghost!”.

Yes, he actually stuttered.

And then I got it. Stan had just made contact. How clever! It would have been easy for him to make contact with me and I would have always wondered if it was my desire to believe that created what I perceived as contact. Elliott was a self professed non-believer of ghosts and Stan had just been his first. It was clear to me and I started laughing. It was such a great joke. Elliott looked at me horrified.

“It’s okay” I said, still laughing “its Stan, my friend Stan”.

The shock registered on Elliott’s face as he said,

“your dead friend Stan? your dead gay friend Stan?”

“Yes” I said still laughing “and you’d be exactly his cup of tea”.

At this point the horror was too much.

“You’re not helping me” he was indignant as he got out of bed, grabbing his clothes from the floor. He really was terrified to discover such things existed and that he’d just had a close encounter of the ghostly and gay kind.

“Oh, come on, you don’t believe in ghosts anyway. Be a good boy and come back to bed” I called after him.

He wouldn’t listen, he was getting out of this house, away from this madwoman and her gay ghost friend. He wouldn’t stay at my house after that and we ended the affair shortly afterwards.

So, as I do my reflecting on the last fifty years, Stan comes to mind. I only knew him for a short time, but he made an impact on me. He was a true friend, one who made the effort postmortem to give me that all important answer to the most burning of all questions. Something remains after our bodies die and in his case, it retains a wicked sense of humor.

I had a big shock last week. I don’t know why it was such a shock, I mean I’ve known for forty-nine years that my fiftieth birthday would arrive, but it came as a shock nonetheless. Perhaps I thought there would be a cure for it, by the time I reached the senior years, I just don’t know. It’s not as though the day before my birthday, last Saturday, I was thirty four years old and I woke up on Sunday morning to find that it was my fiftieth birthday, but that is exactly how it felt.

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on how I’ve lived the past years of my life and acknowledging the reason that it feels that the birthday “snuck up” on me. The past 16 years of my life have not been fully lived. There have been moments, events, but a good chunk of that time was a dead zone and that’s not good. The fiftieth birthday landmark has really hit it home that I can’t cash in all the unused years. A note to myself for the future -“use the years!”

In reflecting back on events and people who have shaped who am today, who I am at fifty, someone comes to mind as having made a special difference in my life. Stan. Stan was a tall, masculine, intelligent man and was the perfect friend. He once described me as a beautiful blond while talking to his boyfriend on the telephone and then added “don’t worry, the blond is a she“. He always made me feel good about myself and I could always be myself with Stan, he was a comforting shoulder to cry on. He gave me the best advice. “Pray to be ugly” he said to me once, after he had patiently listened to the latest woes of my love life. I looked at him horrified and then we both laughed. He had a way of putting things into perspective.

I remember the first time I went to visit him after he told me of his illness, the first time I set eyes on him knowing that AIDS would soon claim him. I was worried about crying on that visit, afraid I would dissolve into tears and have to be comforted by a sick friend whom I should be comforting, but we laughed as we always did. He told me about being gay.

“I was never in the closet. I knew right from the beginning. At twelve years of age, I was down on the beach in Miami cruising for guys”.

I laughed so hard as this dignified man told me of his promiscuous youth, I laughed so hard I did indeed dissolve into tears. My well dressed, eloquent, business man friend, now in a long term monogamous relationship, telling me about his days as a tramp. Oh, it was priceless. He never felt like a victim.

“I didn’t have any doubt that I had AIDS, once it first was announced on the news” he told me “going for the blood test was just a formality.”

Stan kept busy putting all his personal affairs in order and setting things up so that his boyfriend, his life partner would have no worries about the financial future. I visited Stan quite a bit after that. In the entry way of his house he had a little wooden altar, a shrine. I had admired it, which led to a conversation about our belief in the hereafter. It was to be the first of many such conversations. He told me, closer to his death, that he was about to go on the journey he’d always been curious about. It was like planning for a trip.

At some point during our friendship, my seven year relationship ended and my life became very strained and hectic. I didn’t see Stan as much, or really grasp how close to the end he was. I had run into him at the store at some point and felt frightened by what I saw in his eyes. The next time I saw him, he was enjoying a brief remission and I mistakenly believed he was getting well. I wanted him to be well.

He called the week before he chose when and how he would die, but I wasn’t home to take the call. He’d been saving up the heavy duty narcotics that were prescribed to give him relief and sleep at night. When he reached the point where he could no longer care for himself, he was going to swallow enough of the black pills to put himself to sleep permanently. He’d watched too many friends die from AIDS, looked after many of them in his country home, making sure they were sheltered and cared for as they wasted slowly and painfully away. He had no desire to put anyone through that and I understood and accepted it. I just didn’t think it would come so soon.

I’d planned to call him back, but I was in the middle of moving house and the time sort of slipped away from me. I’d call him back as soon as I was settled. I didn’t know that he had called to say goodbye. I got the call the following week that Stan was gone and there were some items I needed to come and pick up. He had left me the little wooden altar and it’s contents.

One of the last conversations I had had with Stan was of a spiritual nature. In a moment straight from a Houdini story, he said,”If there is any way I can make contact with you after death, to let you know that we go on afterwards, I’ll do it”.

Unlike Houdini, we didn’t set a time frame, we didn’t limit things by how or where it would happen. If there was a way, he’d have to be the one to figure it out.

Next Post - Fifty Candles Part II

Refreshing new feeling! Coca-Cola, crisp and cold, with the spirited taste that’s never too sweet. New fun way to enjoy the same! With berries, cherries, mint and lime…captured in ice!

I’ve missed posting about American Idol - there’s been so many odd things that deserved a mention.

Especially last week at Graceland. Did anyone else think Priscilla Presley looked pregnant?

A post later this weekend to update on a few things, but in the meantime check out this amusing recap of last week’s American Idol.

I enjoyed a movie marathon evening with my nieces during the time I spent with them. One of the movies chosen by my youngest niece was Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. I’m not that fond of Disney’s version of the story, but the bonus DVD turned out to be worth a look. It has some interesting features, including “One Hour in Wonderland” the first Disney TV special. It aired on December 25th, 1950 on NBC and was sponsored by Coca-Cola.

The special opens with Santa putting out presents. A wholesome young girl (sexy little minx) dressed in a little Santa outfit pops out of one of the packages carrying a tray of Coca-Cola in glass bottles. The announcer says:

Every day millions of friendly Americans, young and old, in millions of American homes, large and small, pause and refresh themselves with the wholesome, delicious goodness of ice cold Coca- Cola, and today, Christmas Day the Coca-Cola company and your friendly neighbor who bottles Coca-Cola, invites you to pause and be refreshed by an hour of wholesome, delightful entertainment.

Toward the middle of the show everyone breaks for refreshments, ice cold Coca-Cola in bottles of course, and the announcer continues:

Yes friends, one of the pleasures of every day living is the delicious, wholesome goodness of Coca-Cola. While Walt and his friends pause to refresh themselves, may we suggest an ice cold Coke right from your own refrigerator is perfect refreshment for you and your guests. During the holiday season and throughout the year, keep plenty of Coca-Cola on hand, then you will always be ready for anyone who drops in, for where there’s Coke, there’s hospitality.

Gotta love that last line. Check out the DVD for yourself. Edgar Bergen and his puppets are rather disturbing, but it’s an interesting little bit of Disney history. There’s a nice tour of the studios and it features the man himself, Walt Disney.

Monday update: A gain of four pounds - up to 158. I don’t see added fat and with all the exercise I’m thinking it’s muscle weight. Next week will tell.

I’m feeling like Superwoman, in spite of the fact that I’ve gained weight. I’ll update to add the exact poundage Monday morning. Taking an honest look at myself, I have to say it must be muscle gain. I’m sure it wasn’t the ice cream, the cake, the turtle pie, the giant pizza or the white chocolate mochas. Okay, I did have a vacation of sorts and enjoyed falling off the diet wagon.

I did a lot of work out of doors this week and the body feels good. I had hardly any muscle soreness after three days of manual labor. Fat melted, muscles are toning and I am no longer invisible.

I have strived to get to this point, but now that I am here, I have a little problem. Not one I’m complaining too much about mind you. Men see me again. This visibility brings danger. I’ve really thought this over and I have come to the conclusion that men are my Kryptonite. I need to stay away from them for the time being.

Questions are asked of me now, like “are you single?”. I dread that one. It’s the “I’m interested” signal and I don’t want them to be. I find myself lying about my marital status. “Separated - here temporarily while I get things sorted out”. Well, I am here temporarily and I am sorting things out. Not really a lie.

Yesterday a neighbor asked me how old I was. “On the doorstep of my fiftieth birthday”. “Girl, you look good!” that was nice, but then she asked me “are you single?”. “Separated” came the lie. It didn’t stop her from trying to sell me on her son, or give me the encouraging news that I could still have a younger man, which she did at my age and had “the best sex of her life”.

It’s not that I don’t want a man in my life, I just don’t want one right now. I know he will slow my progress down to a grinding halt. Not through any fault of his own, just through my own obsessive nature. The all or nothing feeling I get when one individual becomes the focus of my attention.

I am at last giving myself center stage. My wants and needs are important again. I want a home, a place to call my own. I want to write and I want to paint. I want to enjoy the Zen of gold panning. I want to photograph old graveyards and find out about the people buried there. I want to live up in the mountains and hear myself think. I want to be able to hop in the car and make the trip down to Los Angeles when I’m tired of listening to myself think. To drive down Sunset Boulevard, visit the ghosts of Hollywood and stroll on the Santa Monica Pier. I want to travel. I want to walk on Hanalei beach at sunrise again and hear the thunder of young men as they hit the beach running to catch that first wave, leaving a whiff of Coppertone in their wake. I want to learn to surf.

Am I dreaming? Yes, but now that I am a single woman, I think I can have the lifestyle of my dreams. I’ve figured out a way to do it - if I can just stay away from the Kryptonite.

Something that I’m still getting used to is having choices - good choices. The kind I like to think about. Where to live, what to do and when to do it. After all the years of feeling tethered I’ve been a bit slow in fully grasping that I have such freedom and decisions are mine to make and mine alone. I’m getting back to some artistic ventures that I had left by the wayside and even considering moving back to Nevada County. Perhaps just for the summer. I don’t know yet, I’m still mulling over all of the new possibilities that have presented themselves and I like how things are shaping up.

At the end of the day yesterday, I curled up to read a  newspaper I picked up on my way out of the Gold Country last Sunday. Police blotters from small towns usually provide some amusement and this one did not disappoint:

• At 3:46 a.m. a caller from the 300 block of North Church Street said a man in a white hat was looking in their window.

• At 3:09 p.m. a caller reported a possibly intoxicated man was walking in circles at a turnout on McCourtney Road. Officers located the man, a transient, who was trying to get to Reno. They gave him directions.

• At 9:59 p.m. a woman said she got a call from a man who said she and her husband were snitches and she was going to die. They got another call from the same man at 10:38 p.m. who said “Get out of the window because I’m getting ready to cap him.”

• At 12:34 a.m. a 911 caller from the 12900 block of Madrone Forest Drive could only moan and breath heavily into the phone due to extreme intoxication. The caller’s mother said she would take care of the person.

• At 11:03 a.m. a caller reported a juvenile was brandishing a knife and a toy gun at bus drivers on Conaway Avenue.

And my favorite:

• At 6:55 p.m., a caller from the 200 block of Sutton Way reported a neighbor was vandalizing a vehicle with mustard.

As often happens, when one has the most to write about, there isn’t the time to write.

Things are changing in my life now. The week spent in the Gold Country was an eye opener and as soon as I have processed what went on I’ll write about it - but this week I’m at my Mom’s place, doing outdoor spring cleaning. I knocked down a 60 foot wooden fence single-handedly with some kick boxing moves and a hammer, disturbing generations of large insects that have called that fence home for the last 30 years. Nice way to unload pent-up energy and burn off the good food I enjoyed while visiting the foothills. I hauled that damned fence away too. Just when I was feeling as though I had become my Dad, that I was now the man a neighbor hollered out “wow, what a woman!” and later on a passer by called out “you go girl!”.  Then there was the one guy who said “I promise to be good, if you promise not to beat me”. Wishful thinking on his part. Finally a man pulled up with a pick-up truck and offered his help, which I accepted. He was just in time to help me with the last friggin’ load. Tomorrow night I’m dressing up in something feminine and colorful and going out to a Cinco de Mayo party to listen to some music and enjoy some good food.

Last night I was going through some of the Life Magazines from the early 60’s. How much things have changed since I was a kid and yet some things have not changed at all. More about that once I’ve gone through all of the magazines. Plenty of ads I want to post, but this one, from 1964, caught my eye (click on the pic to enlarge):

Enjoy the best America has to offer. Enjoy Old Taylor 86 bourbon…flavor that cannot be imported! Like the world famous Hollywood Bowl, bourbon is uniquely American. Bourbon’s taste is never smoky, never bland. And Old Taylor 86 has a genuine flavor difference…flavor that satisfies the desire of Americans for a real drink. Of all premium bourbons, it’s the one Americans like best…the best America has to offer. Try a delicious bourbon Manhattan tonight.