Brushes with Fame

She put the “giving” in Thanksgiving.

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‘Thank you for everything, dear Aunt Eleanor’

It’s blowing a gale here in Amagansett. The bird feeders are down, the grill’s been knocked cattywompus and the windows that Dude Man painstakingly washed on Sunday? Well, let’s just say they’re clean.

I say all this because I can’t possibly go for a walk, much less a bike ride. And it’s too early to start baking the pies. (My SIL, who arrived late last night from San Fran, is still jet-laggedly sleeping.)

So I have no excuse to postpone (yet again) writing about Aunt Eleanor.

Aunt Eleanor died almost two weeks ago. And, though she was 98 years old, I still can’t believe she’s gone. I’ll spare you all the cliches. But suffice it to say that even when a person is very very old, it can still be a shock when they die. Maybe even more of a shock, since you’re so used to them being around. (And note that I say “die,” because that’s what she did. I know this may be an unpopular view, but I bristle at the use of the term “pass” when you really mean “die.” Please say “die” when I do it. Please.)

The last time I clapped eyes on Eleanor. Last summer, at a family cookout, holding court, as usual, glass of champagne at hand

Anyway. You can read her obituary in The East Hampton Star right here for the public details of Eleanor’s extraordinary life. How she didn’t just read to kids, she founded a day care center. How she didn’t just bake, she baked cookies to lure kids to Sunday School. And how, at the age of 45, she set out to “do everything I’ve always wanted to do.”

Eleanor with her daughter Christine at her 90th birthday party. By this point, she had accomplished most of “everything I always wanted to do”

I’ve been putting off writing about her because it’s so hard to sift through all the memories I have of her. See, she was more than “just” an aunt. Dude Man’s parents died quite a while ago; his mom in 1985 and his dad in 1995. Eleanor’s house was just a couple of blocks away, so she and Uncle Buddy became like surrogate parents to us. Especially since mine were so far away.

Speaking of my mom, she and Eleanor got to know one another rather well. We got together when Mom came to visit. And there was the memorable occasion of The Child’s college graduation, when we experienced the nightmare of an out-of-control GPS system (it directed us on the “shortest route,” which meant navigating downtown Providence, RI, an experience which, trust me, you do not want to replicate) and sharing an Airbnb in Inman Square which was supposed to be “conveniently located” to the Harvard campus but which was most decidedly not. If they hadn’t bonded before then, well, they were now effectively joined at the hip.

The scene at The Child’s graduation. Eleanor and Mom are in there. Somewhere

The Dude has some particularly good Eleanor stories, since he spent many summers at her house when he was small. He recalls her dropping him and his two cousins off at Reed Pond with nothing but sleeping bags, fishing poles and a couple of cans of beans and picking them up the next day. She’d honk the car horn and they’d emerge from the woods. They were seven, eight and nine at the time.

Dude Child practicing his snake-handling as his Bro Bill and Cousin Charlie look on

My memories are more recent ones, of course. She and I bonded over books. I’d ride over on my bike to drop one off, and she’d invite me to sit with her on the screened-in porch and dish. “He can’t marry that woman,” being one of her more famous observations on the fiancee of a shirt-tail relation. And we’d speak on the phone fairly regularly. She didn’t dish out sentimental remarks, but I treasured the time she ended a call by saying that she “loved talking to me” and “wished we lived closer.” Me too, Eleanor, me too.

Eleanor with her niece Amy and her pseudo-niece Me, at her house a couple of blocks away

Oh, and even after Eleanor sold her house nearby, we would get together in the summers at her son Charlie’s and wife Chini’s infamous Taco Tuesdays out on Lazy Point. At one of these, one of Chini’s incredibly hunky sons walked by after a surfing session, his wetsuit stripped down to the waist revealing his perfectly-toned vee-shaped torso (these are casual affairs, these Taco Tuesdays), when Eleanor remarked, “He has a nice figure, doesn’t he?”

Eleanor and me at a Taco Tuesday. (So sorry the wetsuit-suited son isn’t also in the picture)

Well, as they say on TV, there’s “much much more.” But I can’t handle any more.

Besides, there are pies to bake.

Pies from a Thanksgiving repast, past

Happy Thanksgiving, Aunt Eleanor. You gave us a whole hell of a lot to be thankful for.

Amagansett, New York. November 2023

 

The Four Seatmates of the Apocalypse

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‘Fellow travelers from Hell’

Now, why couldn’t it have been Drew Barrymore and her daughter who sat behind us on our 17-hour plane ride?

See, I happened to run into Drew and her daughter in the lobby of our building the other day, and boy, was she nice. I had spotted a cute little girl sporting an unmistakable school uniform and said, “Hey, is that a Brearley Girl?” (Brearley being the name of the exceptionally fine New York City girls’ school that The Child attended.)

The Child rocking her blue Brearley jumper

The Brearley Girl thus addressed responded with true B-Girl enthusiasm as her mother beamed. I then praised the school and threw in a few deets about my own Brearley-burnished daughter. (Math Whiz, Tech Genius, Forbes Thirty Under Thirty honoree, and so on and so forth.)

Realizing I was being, well, gushy, I focused my attention on the blue-jumpered sprite in front of me. “Hmmm…fifteen?” I guessed, knowing that little girls want to be thought of as much older. “Ten. Next week!” she piped up. That’s when the mom chimed in with the girl’s name, then held out her hand and said, “I’m Drew.” Me, (knowing that celebs, at least in New York, never want to be acknowledged as such) “Nice to meet you, Drew. I’m Alice. I live in the secret apartment.” (To ten-year-old) “Wanna see?” So I opened the swing door next to the elevator to reveal the shiny red door to the Ken & Barbie House. “I’d show you, but I’ve gotta run. Maybe next time!”

Now-grown still-youthful Child plus shrinking aging Mom inside the secret apartment, AKA the Ken & Barbie House, on my last Very Big Birthday

It was a lovely encounter, especially when I remembered that Drew had been our main competition for the K & B House. (She wanted it for one of her staff.) It would have been so nice if it were she who sat behind us on our flight. Though I realized that wouldn’t happen, since no doubt she would have flown first class.

I briefly considered first class when booking our Africa trip. I say “briefly” because I practically had a heart attack when I saw the price. When I told Dude Man, he said something like, “Why not go for it; it’s only money.” When I quoted the figure, he said, “For both of us, right?” “Nope; multiply that by two.” “Oh.”

I think he was relieved when I admitted that, even if we sprang for it, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy myself. I’d be thinking every single minute of those 17 hours that the flight was costing as much as the entire tour.

Some of the things that made the trip worth every penny: elephants

So there we were, settling into what Delta calls Premium Select (which wasn’t exactly peanuts, though they did give you some), when I see a mom and a dad towing two small children down the aisle. I’m crossing my fingers and holding my breath when, sure enough, they stop right behind us and consult their boarding passes. “We’re right here!” chirps the female parent in one of those gratingly annoying sing-songy Mom Voices.

Oh noooooo.

Well, all I can say is that I’m so grateful that Dude Man bought me noise-cancelling headphones — and that I elected to bring them on this trip. (Which I almost didn’t, since we were going to be traveling from lodge to lodge and bringing head phones meant more gear to tote.)

Aboard our first flight home. Sweaty palms, but no need for headphones

The kids — boy around seven, his sister, around five — weren’t so bad, except for the occasional obligatory seat-back kick. It was the parents. They kept it up with the (loud) sing-songy voices: “Mommy’s going to go potty. Would you like to go potty too?” “Here, let Daddy help you pick out a movie.” Whereupon he reads the description of every single child-friendly film. “You loved Frozen. Oh look! The Little Mermaid!”

Seventeen hours, friends. Seventeen hours.

Well. Flash forward three weeks. Through three weeks of amazing African adventures. Enough to fuel many a blog post.

Me with cubs. Lion cubs, not people cubs

Our travel home started with an hour-long ride in an open safari vehicle, followed by a flight in a plane so small it was like wearing a plane, then a small regional jet from Maun to Johannesburg. Six hours and two airport lounge stays later, we’re settling into our seats in Delta Premium Select when I hear, “Let Mommy buckle that for you.”

Yes, it’s them. The Flying Family From Hell. Same seats, right behind us. Same sing-songy voices. Same periodic kicks in the back. For seventeen hours.

Those noise-cancelling headphones were worth their weight in gold. God bless you, Sony.

The only way some children should fly. In my humble opinion

New York City. October 2023.

“She’d better put a bell on it”

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‘A story about Queen Elizabeth’

It’s been a while since I wrote a piece that qualifies for my ‘Brushes with Fame’ category. I’ve got some pretty juicy stories parked there. About Steve Martin, Vladimir Horowitz, Karl Malden, Willem De Kooning, Malcolm Forbes and even Elvis.

This week the long-expected-but-still-shocking passing of HRH Queen Elizabeth reminds me that I have one about her, too. No, I never personally met the Queen, but I knew somebody who did — and here’s his story. (Oh, that person in the crown at the top of this story? That’s me with two regal pals — hi, T! hi E! — channeling queenhood on a recent birthday.)

Here’s another birthday shot — this one taken in honor of my mom’s 90th. Because, why not? Mom’s a real queen in my book

The person I knew who met Elizabeth the Queen was, in fact, pretty famous himself. His name was George Shearing, and he was a celebrated jazz pianist. He not only played at Birdland, he wrote  “Lullaby of Birdland,” a song I bet you know, even if you don’t think you do. But I bet you haven’t heard it played on a massive pipe organ in St. Thomas Church. (Which I did, at the funeral of Sir George.) Continue reading

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

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‘I wonder what little Harry Houdini’s answer was.’

Way back when the earth’s crust was cooling and I was a youngster, there was a show on local TV called “Texas Bruce.”

The full name was “The Wranglers’ Club with Texas Bruce.” Texas Bruce showed cartoons and did silly jokes and suchlike, and had a whole peanut gallery of kids (The Wranglers) on hand. I remember that his sign-off was “Hasta la vista, mis caballeros,” a phrase whose meaning, of course, was a mystery to us Clinton County kids. We gathered it was something like “good-bye,” since Texas Bruce would be waving while he said it.

Anyway. One of his “bits” every show was to ask the boys and girls in his studio audience what they wanted to be when they grew up.

So glad Dude Man did not grow up to be a snake charmer. Tho he is a charmer

The TV station was in St. Louis, which was then — and still is — a very Catholic town. How Catholic? Well, when “Hair” played St. Louis, they had to cut the nude scene.

So. Texas Bruce would be going down the rows of Cub Scout-outfitted boys and Brownie-dressed girls asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” To which they’d answer, “A nun.” “A priest.” “A nun. “A priest.” “A priest.” “A nun.” Honestly, I’d say at least 70% of every audience answered “priest” or “nun.” Which led one to worry about population trends for the greater metropolitan St. Louis area.

What does this have to do with Harry Houdini? Well. I used to work on the Kimberly-Clark account at Ogilvy. In fact, I’ve written about this before in a rather amusing piece titled “Hoohah Time is Story Time.” In that story I mention, among other things, that on client trips to Appleton, Wisconsin (KC’s headquarters), we Ogilvyites would stay at the Paper Valley Hotel. (There was no valley anywhere near, but they did make paper there.)

Speaking of Kimberly-Clark, Huggies had a campaign with babies acting out future careers. Here’s The Child as a magician. Which she sort of is

The Paper Valley was one of those hotels where they put little paper tent thingies everywhere: one to tell you to reuse your towels, one with the TV channels on it, one to tell you not to smoke, and so on. (I guess, being a paper-making town, the hotel got a deal on these.) And there was one with famous Appletonians. No kidding. There are famous people from Appleton. Edna Ferber. Willem Defoe (really!). And my fave, Harry Houdini.

Houdini was such an Appletonian that he claimed to have been born in Appleton when he was really born in Hungary. Appleton Street was renamed in his honor, and there was a Houdini Historic Center I’ve been to because Ogilvy hosted one of their Christmas parties there for the Kimberly-Clark clients. (Since then they’ve changed the museum name, maybe because they’ve added some exhibits on Senator Joe McCarthy. Who was also an Appleton boy.)

God forbid you should ask little Teddy what he wanted to be when he grew up. Other than a U of Washington Husky, that is

Side note: I always wondered why we hosted the KC Christmas parties in Appleton instead of New York City. Maybe the clients didn’t like to travel? Or maybe they just didn’t like to travel to New York. I distinctly remember one rare occasion when a KC client came to New York for a meeting and asked if we could have “breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

But back to those Paper Valley business trips. I would sometimes gaze at the Harry Houdini paper tent thingie and muse about what would happen if Texas Bruce asked little Harry, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Would he answer, “I’d like to be bound with chains and dropped to the bottom of a river”?

Grown-up Harry realizes his childhood dream

I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t say “a priest.” But that’s probably because his father was a rabbi.

New York City. May 2022

 

Remembering Betty White

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‘She was a real softie in a couple of Q-Tips commercials’

Okay. So maybe her work as Sue Ann or Rose is more memorable, but I will always treasure the experience of working with Betty White.

Q-Tips — along with Shake ‘n Bake, another brand blast from the past — was one of my first writerly assignments when I came to Ogilvy in 1979. (Read all about how I got there in “Take A Letter, Miss Henry.”)

70s KC Me, dreaming of a job in the New York Ad Biz

In those days (and probably now, too) you couldn’t write a commercial for Q-Tips that mentioned cleaning your ears — even though that’s what most people did with Q-Tips — without including a rather harshly-worded warning:

An actual Q-Tips Box with the actual warning. Only it’s too small to read, so I’m putting it here, too:

So we did these rather namby-pamby spots with mothers and babies that talked vaguely about “softness” and included cloying scenes of an adoring mother tapping the Q-Tip on, say, a little girl’s nose. I was responsible for at least one of these, called “Still My Baby.” Forgive me; here it is:

Well. After my co-workers and I got through cracking ourselves up with parodies like “Not My Baby,” “No More Baby” and the lovely “It’s Not Really A Baby,” my partner and I decided to break out of the Baby Box and try something new. Continue reading

My Night at The Museum with Jeff Goldblum

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‘I almost forgot my mantra’

The other day I was messing around on Facebook and saw that some genius has invented Jeff Goldblum jigsaw puzzles. Yes, now you can spread Jurassic Jeff all over your coffee table and have hours of Fandom Fun. “Look! I found the piece with his glasses! See? There’s the reflection of the dinosaurs in the lens!”

No, not Jurassic Jeff of the Jigsaws. This is, instead, one of the few royalty-free photos of Jeff I could find. Though, since he is Screen Royalty (at least to me) I still might get sued

This photo definitely does not give Jeff justice. Though it does have a certain, well, twinkle. As does Jeff in the flesh. See, I had a close encounter years ago with His Jeffness. And yes, I’m going to tell you about it.

First, though, a bit on Jeff. Continue reading

The Pick-up Artist

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‘The ole Creep-O-Meter gets a workout on the streets of New York’

I bet I still have his business card stashed away in a drawer somewhere. Yup. I was in my twenties, fresh off the ‘boat’, as it were, when I was approached by James Toback, former sort-of-famous writer/director and now much-more-famous sexual predator.

I’m not going to show you a photo of this extremely creepy guy, partly because you might be eating your lunch or something (he’s pretty gross-looking now, and he didn’t ‘present’ much better thirty-odd years ago either, trust me) and partly because I can’t find a public-domain picture of him. If you haven’t seen the news, you can read about his ‘technique’ in the full L.A. Times story by clicking here (Warning; there is a photo of him). 

Continue reading

Crime ‘n Stuff

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‘Waves of summer mayhem out East Hampton Way’

Well. No turkeys-storming-the-birdfeeder excuses today. I’m late because Labor Day Weekend brought me a full complement of competent Twenty-Somethings to liven things up here around The Compound. And after they left I had to immediately erase all traces of their occupancy (change the sheets; wash the towels; wipe up the avocado-toast crumbs) — or feel super sad.

These turkeys are welcome at my ‘feeder’ any ole time. I miss ’em already

So now that I can walk around the house without feeling assaulted by reminders of a rollicking good weekend (oops, somebody left her wineglass out by the pool; er, that would be me), let me get down to the actual topic of the piece. Which is crime.

Now this is a crime: floaterless pool floats

Yes, crime. Out here on the Eastern End of Long Island, otherwise known as The Hamptons, we do have our share of crime. In the summertime much of it has to do with road rage, which is understandable when you consider that the local population explodes from around 20,000 to upwards of 60,000. Some sources say 100,000, even. All I know is that they all have cars and that all summer long it’s impossible to leave my driveway without doing that queen-wave-with-a-smile gesture that means “You’d better let me out now, if you know what’s good for you and that shiny finish on your passenger door!”

Why, just the other day I watched in wonder as a Range-Rover-wielding Botox Fan backed out of Brent’s Deli (home of the Best Fried Chicken on the Planet) right into a hapless Camry waiting at the red light. I hope she at least bought him a bucket. With sides. Continue reading

“Yet’s go to Ye Yake”

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‘Gosh. Illinois’ largest lake has been around for 50 years’

Now before you Whippersnappers out there start in with “Hey, isn’t Lake Michigan Illinois’ largest lake?” Or even “What’s so all-fired old about 50 years? There are lakes (see afore-mentioned Lake Michigan) that have been around for, like, a zillion years,” let me point out that Carlyle Lake (or if you’re feeling fancy “Lake Carlyle”) is the largest lake within the borders of Illinois, and that it’s a man-made lake that’s been around since 1967. So there.

This picture from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shows the Carlyle Lake dam and spillway in all its glory. Nice stats, too, if that floats your boat

Carlyle Lake is also the only lake named after my personal home town, Carlyle, Illinois. But I’m not going to get into Fun Lake Facts. My mission here is to entertain. And so, actually, was (and is) the Lake’s. Oh, there was some serious flood-control going on. But for my family and friends, The Lake was really all about fun and games. Continue reading

“You looked so nice I almost didn’t recognize you.”

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‘Appearances can be deceiving. Or something like that.’

So. Today is February 14. And yes, I did get something red and shiny for Valentine’s Day: my nose. Maybe by next week — when it’s (fingers crossed) only a miserable memory — I’ll find this cold amusing enough to write about. We’ll (sniff) see. In the meantime, I’m going with what I originally planned.

Which is a riff on Being Compared to Someone Else.

You know. Like when someone comes up to you at a family reunion and says something along the lines of “You remind me so much of your Aunt Net”. (A real Aunt of Mine whose name was Annette. She wore a hairnet, which is how she got that nickname. Or so we kids thought.) Continue reading