10086 Sunset Boulevard

Kent’s wife had not been much more than an acquaintance to Julia before Sunday. Now, as she had a chance to talk with Carly, she could understand why Kent had loved her, why they had been such a perfect couple.

Julia had met Kent five years ago and from that first meeting, it was clear they would become good friends. She had thought, on more than one occasion, that if it hadn’t been for Carly, she and Kent would have been so much more than friends. She even entertained the thought that things might change in the future. She was ashamed of those thoughts now. Ashamed of the envy she had felt towards Carly over the past few years.

The news of Kent’s death just five months earlier was a shock. It was still a shock and no one who knew him had really absorbed it just yet. Kent loved life and lived it to it’s fullest, always surrounded by friends and up for anything and everything. Collapsing, just after returning home from a skiing weekend, he was gone before the ambulance could get him to the hospital. He was just shy of his fiftieth birthday.

This was the first opportunity Julia had had to speak to Carly since Kent’s sudden departure. She had sent flowers and a sympathy card, but in person she had no idea what to say and so they sat and talked of other things. She admired Carly’s ability to look forward, filling her time after work with evening classes and planning a trip to the Galapagos Islands in the fall. Carly’s grief was palpable, even in her smiles and talk of the future. Julia realized that she was actually beginning to like the woman who had been married to Kent for twenty five years.

Kent had been the love of Carly’s life, they had raised two children together and now the children were young adults and had left home. This would have been the time for them to spend together, alone, as when they were first married. Now not to be.

For Julia it was different. Her husband had left her. She had not experienced the joy in her marriage, as Carly and Kent had, there was no partnership, they hadn’t traveled or enjoyed life together and had no plans for the future. The void in her life had been there before he walked out. The loss, once she got over the shock, was minimal.

But here they both were, neither one having anticipated that they would be without partners at this stage of their life.

They were silent for a while, munching on heavily frosted, colorful cupcakes garnished with Peeps bunnies, watching the children hunting for Easter eggs. How much happier she and Carly would have been on this occasion if Kent were still alive. He should have been there.

Without even thinking of what she said, until she saw the horror on Carly’s face, she uttered “what a shame it wasn’t my husband who dropped dead, instead of yours”.

Whenever I encounter a six foot rabbit, as I did today, I get the urge to see this movie:

There’s nothing like going to see a matinée and then coming out of the movie theater just as its starting to snow, coming home, building a roaring fire in the fireplace and getting dinner started while the snow continues to fall. It’s been a good day. I’m up in Nevada City keeping my nieces company while their parents are away. We girls are having a good time.

Horton Hears a Who is the movie that prompted us to go out on this snowy day and it was worth the effort. The animation is top notch, the colors vivid and they did such a great job bringing Dr. Suess’s vision of Whoville to life. If, like me, you loved this book when you were a kid, don’t wait for the DVD to come out. If you don’t know a child you can take to see this movie, then sneak into a matinee full of kids. They remind you to laugh at the parts you would have laughed at if you were still under ten.

Having a family mix from both sides of the pond, it always amuses me how often British men are mistaken as gay. I used to work with an American fellow who was homophobic and requested of me that I handle our gay clientèle. On many occasion I had to inform him “they’re not gay, they’re just British”.

Simon Cowell, however, does prance along that line and has recently found it necessary to dispel gay rumors and also to affirm his use of Botox: “To me, Botox is no more unusual than toothpaste,” the 48-year-old said. “It works, you do it once a year – who cares?”

Hopefully he has false teeth and uses a mouthwash frequently.

I wonder if Simon will reconsider his cosmetic choice, now that certain Botox related problems have come to light. Botox may actually harm you! Who would have ever thought that injecting toxins from bacterium clostridium botulinum, one of the deadliest germs known to man, could cause harm to a person’s body? No one could have seen that coming.

Perhaps it has seeped into his brain, causing him to continue saying strange things to Paula about the moth, the melon ball and the cornflakes and causing people to wonder “what the hell is Simon doing with his hand?”.

Or maybe it’s just our drinking water. According to The New York Times “There are traces of sedatives in New York City’s water. Ibuprofen and naproxen in Washington, D.C. Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety drugs in southern California.”

Oh, what the right marketing firm could do with water bottled in those cities!

Pamela is getting a divorce again. I missed the part where she married this latest gem. What rock does she find these guys under?

Once upon a time Pamela was a natural beauty with a natural body. I don’t know what she’s done to her face, but we all know the story of her breasts, implants in, implants out, implants become replants. She is the plastic doll, the ultimate dumb blond. At what point did she decide that she would rather look like an inflate-a-mate than the lovely girl in the picture? Perhaps becoming the plastic bleached blond bombshell gave her a shot at bigger financial gain than she would have if she had remained as beautiful as she once was. Within a year of this photograph, part of a Playboy spread, she had begun the transformation.

It did allow her to meet and marry fine specimens of manhood including Paris Hilton’s mistake. It gave her the opportunity to become a high paid porn star.

Making one’s living by being a sex symbol has to be the pits, once the years start mounting up. It’s hard enough for the rest of us to deal with the traces of time, without public scrutiny, but where does Pam have to go from here? More plastic surgery? Bigger boobs, smaller boobs? No matter what she does, I think she’s doomed to become a parody of her former self. The face is already pretty comical, in a sad, soulless way.