There's nothing quite like taking a walk up to Hollywood Blvd.


Enjoying the scenery.


And then suddenly noticing....


A picture of an old friend from High School! 
Have a great run Marcia....

Old magazine ads typically fill me with a sense of nostalgic warmth and an occasional giggle.  But when I saw this one I screamed, "NO!  MY EYES, MY EYES!  NOOOOO!" so loud that I thought the denizens of the neighborhood watch council would ask me to move at once. 

I'm sure you thought the life of Felix has been one long glamor-thon, but the truth, dear readers, is that this is the precise crap I grew up with in the family living room.  More specifically, our suite (the phrase my mother insisted on) was all gold, not avocado.  And when anyone, anyone would refer to the style as being Early American, my mother would narrow her eyes, look down her nose and sniff with complete exasperation, "It's not Early American -- It's Colonial"

It could have been Battle of the Bulge for all I cared, I wanted something sleek and modern.  Several years ago, in a group of friends the question was posed, "How old were you when you realized your parents had no taste."  The question was definitely a 'when' and not an 'if ' as we had all grown up in the suburbs.  Well, pretty much to a man the answer was twelve.  I had to answer ten, because that's how old I was when this shit was delivered.

I think that even maybe me in the advertisement.  The one with his head hung in shame and blindfolded so as not to see the offending furniture one more second.

You wanna know the worst part?  It was the most comfortable stuff I ever sat on.

I'm so sad about the passing of Lynn Redgrave who originally came into our field of view in 1966 with her extraordinary performance in "Georgy Girl".  I just saw the film again about a year ago, remembering how difficult it is to watch.  There's no one warm and fuzzy in the whole picture!  And Redgrave is so fearless in portraying a girl who continually subjugates and debases herself to her flat-mate and the mates boyfriend.  It's almost like shes inflicting this punishment on herself (that she seems to feel she deserves) for not being pretty.  Now granted, it's pretty easy to be unattractive in the company of a young Charlotte Rampling and Alan Bates; but still!

Her career had it's ups and downs, often taking a backseat to her more bombastic (and amazing) sister, but in 1998 she turned in another Oscar nominated performance in "Gods And Monsters", and suddenly she was hot again.  Her good fortune for that was my loss.

About six months before she did that movie, I met Ms. Redgrave.  I was talking to a friend of my one day, an actress who had worked with Redgrave on a TV series, and she told me that Lynn was teaching Shakespeare acting classes.  Now, I'm not an actor (on stage or in film anyway) but, as was typical of many people my age, I got through High School more on charm, manipulation, and jerking the system, than I did on studying.  Truth is, I didn't learn a damn thing and have the diploma to prove it.  The result is that Shakespeare has always spooked me.  The meter, rhythm, and language was foreign.  I didn't get it.  So when Cathy further explained that the classes were every Monday, they were open to anyone and they were FREE, I decided to go with her one Monday in hopes of finally de-mystifying the Bard for myself. 

Had Lynn been less lovely, less humble, and less perfect than she was, she would have probably explained that giving the classes was her way of giving back to an industry and tradition that she had inherited through bloodlines and that had become her life's work.  She never would have said anything like that, but it was entirely clear, nonetheless.

The class was held in a beautiful auditorium on the campus of the Motion Picture County Home (Old Actors Home).  Weekly, she hosted some 50-60 people, from young struggling actors, to residents of the Home who were wheeled in in wheelchairs, to other curious types like myself.  The 2 1/2 hour class was conducted as follow:  The first 20(ish) minutes she would give us a lecture on the topics at hand; acting and Shakespeare.  For the next almost two hours she had two wicker baskets, one for boys and one for girls, and if you wanted to put up a scene, you filled out a card with you name and the scene and put it into the basket.  She would call up a student(s) to do their scene, after which, with her keen eye, and encyclopedic knowledge, she would give you an almost line-for-line critique of you scene.  She would say things like, "Oh, when you did so-and-so, it was just so wonderful,"  or "On such-and-such line, I'm wondering, how would it be if you tried this--".  Always supportive, never mean, not like some teachers that friends have told me about!

For the last 15(ish) minutes she would do a scene for us!  Unbelievable!  Playing every character, she would ricochet her body around the stage emoting dialog as an ageing king, a mythological wood sprite, a 15 year old virgin maiden.  This would be done so rapidly as to make the dialog flow naturally and without pause.  Each character, fully embodied; all characters in a perfectly performed scene!

After my first class, we were introduced by our mutual friend Cathy, and Lynn was wonderful to me.  I, sputteringly, told her that I was not an actor and the actual reason that I was there and that I hoped she didn't mind.  She assured me that I most certainly was welcomed and that, if fact, she tought it was quite courageous of me to face down my fears of not understanding the material.  She also said that, actor or not, she'd bet that she would get me to put up a scene some day.  "Sorry to inform you love, but we'll make an actor out of you yet!"  I blushed.  I was 39 years old and I blushed.  The only down side was that attending required me to drive in LA rush hour from Hollywood to Woodland Hills, but really, not much of a hardship considering I was being Taugh Shakespeare, By A Redgrave, For Free!!!

After attending for about 5 months, she got the "Gods And Monsters" job, and as soon as that came out, it's like it shook Hollywood awake enough to remember that they'd forgotten her.  She became the hot flavor again for quite awhile.  Needless to say, there was never time to start the classes for her, and I never got to see her anymore.

But today I will take the opportunity to say, for all the performances I've seen and for the ones I haven't yet, and most of all for your insightful teaching and personal kindness, Thank You Lynn Redgrave.

Out of the blue today, Lance Loud popped into my head.  Actually, it's not such a rare occurrence or a lengthy journey, as he lives in my heart.



For the uninitiated, Alanson Russell Loud was born a navy brat on June 26, 1951.  He led a very unremarkable childhood until his innate fabulousness simply wouldn't have it anymore.  At age 14 he became obsessed with the Warhol factory scene and promptly struck up a pen pal relationship with Andy.  His further adolescent hijinks included taking some friends in the family car to check out the Haight-Ashbury happening and hitchhiking to Altamont to see The Stones.

Things clicked into warp-speed with the airing of the 1973 PBS documentary "An American Family" which chronicled Lance and his family.   By episode 2, Lance had moved across the country into the Chelsea Hotel in NYC, came out to his mother and the nation, and introduced us to his new friends and neighbors, drag queens and (Warhol) Superstars.  Lance became and remained famous simply for being himself.  He was a frontman for the punk band The Mumps and he was a writer (and a damn good one) and columnist for publications such as:  Circus, Interview, American Film, Details, Vanity Fair and The Advocate.

 When he and I met, we exchanged phone numbers and he put his usual signature in my address book:



 Just weeks after 9/11, at age 50, Lance died in a hospice from complications associated with Hep C, AIDS, and meth addiction.  And in January of 2003, PBS aired it's final installment of the Loud documentaries, "Lance Loud: A Death In The American Family".  I sobbed through it, fell asleep, had amazingly beautiful dreams, woke up the next morning and wrote the following to him:

To celebrate I'm initiating the first in a series of posts featuring my art collection.  This humors me as most everything in my little cottage has been found in thrift shops.  There are a few pieces that have been given to me by the Artists, but mostly it is the Hollywood National Museum of Goodwill.

To start with let's look at the one thing I have that was handed down from the family.  In 1974 we went up to spend a long weekend at my Aunt and Uncle's house in Brielle, NJ.  They had a beautiful home with a swimming pool so we were dressed in swimming togs for most of the weekend.  At some point my Dad took a picture of my Mother.  Later, back in Maryland he took the snapshot to painter and commissioned a painting of it.  The guy did a wonderful job; it looks just like the original photo.  My Mother was 41 at the time and enjoying a period in which she was at the height of her looks.  She is wearing her favorite black velvet bikini with gold metal fastenings.

The painting is all at once very cheesy and terribly fabulous.  My Mother and I had an extremely difficult relationship.  Enmeshed and unhealthy.  But when I look at this picture, I am reminded that Dee could at times be a fine and fun gal!

**Title made with apologies to Armistead Maupin.

Not unlike Mary Ann Singleton's entry through the golden gates into a wild 1970s San Francisco, I was launched into an equally mad Los Angeles in 1986.  And I was just as naive, excited and green as she was.

A few weeks in I had first tricked with, and then become friends with a guy named Gene.  He was a fast talking wheeler-dealer on the periphery of the music business.  He and a friend Darryl (an absolute sweetheart, who owned the L.A. Deejay's record pool) cooked up an idea to launch the comeback (?) of a minor 70s disco singer.  They were going to produce a dance track written by a third friend.  Gene finagled a few days of studio time (to be paid on the back end) with the proviso that they work at night when the studio was free.  I was invited to tag along as a mascot of sorts and, for the first time, walked through a green door into a magical land called The Village Recorder.


On the second floor there was a huge auditorium with a red velvet curtained stage.  On Saturdays he let the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi use it and the Los Angeles Transcendental Meditation movement was born there. (When I first worked there with Gene our desks were thrown haphazardly into the back of that auditorium.)  As he was building the place out he had, I am told, roughly a dozen secret doors and hallways honeycombed through the place.  I only ever found two.

Slowly but surely, musician friends of his began to hang out and a rock and roll salon was formed.  Takin' drugs, talkin' rock and playin' music.  They also asked if they could bring work there, and finally in '72 when a group of top flight studio musicians decided to do a group project there under the name Steely Dan, it was on.  Geordie gave in to the realization that he owned a commercial recording facility.

I don't care who you are or what kind of music you like, you have owned albums that were born in that building.

STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO.....

When I was around nine years old we lived, for a couple of years in beautiful Niagara Falls, NY.

While living here my mother was in the middle of her "Being nothing but a housewife experiment", which was ultimately a miserable failure.   Now don't get me wrong, she was a fine cook (made better by my father's instruction) an incredible and manic housekeeper.  As far as decorating, she could do much with little and she could even sew a little, when pressed.  It's just that this stuff bored her senseless.  And when bored, there was scotch.

One of the things that she did to alleviate her boredom, besides appointments with the Air Force Base psychiatrist and a Librium prescription, was to join the Officers Wives Club.  And amongst the many activities that the wives involved themselves in was a bowling league.

The film "Love Story" was released just before Christmas of 1970.  I was eleven years old at the time and certainly aware of the film from reading copious coverage about it's stars Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal in Tiger Beat and Sixteen.  By the time it got around to playing the burbs it was almost springtime of '71.  Unfortunately, my parents were not the movie going types.  My father always reasoned, "Why spend the money when it'll just be on TV in a few years."

That's where Mrs. Hutchins came in.  We had only moved to Clinton, Md. (a DC suburb near Andrews AFB) a couple of months before.  Mr. and Mrs. Hutchins lived behind our us in an old house that butted up to our 5 year old sub-division full of split-level colonial houses.  They were in their 60's and their children had long since moved away.  Mrs. Hutchins had taken a great liking to me, the way some older women do of 'special' and 'sensitive' boys.

One day she suggested we have a 'movie date' and go see the picture.  She had heard it was a very romantic picture and thought that she was in for a Loretta Young redo. My parents were fine with it and I was thrilled that I would finally be able to see what all the talk was about.  So off we sped  the seven or so miles to the Marlow Heights Shopping Center Cinema in her '69 Chrysler New Yorker.  For 5'1" and barely able to see over the steering wheel, she sure drove like a daemon.  I adored the movie, even though I was periodically uncomfortable sitting next to an elderly woman that I didn't know very well while watching such intimate and adult subject matter.

Apparently my sentiments were not shared, as Mrs. Hutchins sat stiff and ramrod straight through the whole picture.  When the movie was over and my thoughts were turning to how I could become a beautiful and smart aleck young woman so that I could get a gorgeous and rich young man like Oliver (even if it meant I'd have to die young), Mrs. Hutchins grabbed my arm and steered me in a beeline to the car.  She turned the key, looked at me and delivered her verdict, "With a mouth like that, she deserved to die!"  With that, she jammed the car into drive and we took off.  Not another word was spoken on the drive home and there was never to be another 'movie date'.

Erich Segal has passed away in London at age 72.

I just read a great post by Ask The Cool Cookie on Doing Hard Time In Shaker Heights on a Plymouth Volare he once owned.  It called to mind the following:

The fall after high school, my parents offered to buy me a new car.  So off to a dealership in Waldorf, Md. we went.  They sold Dodge, Jeep and Triumph.

I, needless to say, was desperate for a Triumph Spitfire.  The folks thought the Dodge Aspen the more appropriate way to go.  Their compromise however was the 'sporty' Aspen RT.

I was predictably pouty and sullen.  (of course I'd kill to have that car now)  The car was bigger and therefore safer, my father reasoned.  Actually, I countered, a smaller car would make me a more cautious driver.
The Aspen had automatic and power steering dad said.  They don't make Triumphs with anything but standard transmissions and power steering would be silly on a little sports car, I retorted.  The Dodge is air conditioned, he boasted.  Who needs AC with a convertible top, I whined.  Well, the Dodge is an American car and it's better built.  Shit.  The Triumph, by British Leland, was notoriously temperamental.  He had me there.  That is until I was having a stroll around the RT trying to get used to my fate. (my fate, their money.  what a brat.)  On the drivers side front quarter panel, just behind the wheel well, was the 'Aspen' name badge in a jaunty chromed script.  In the same spot on the passenger side (as could only happen in the fantasy that was quality control in the late 70s) it said 'Volare'!  (the look-a-like model by Plymouth)

I grabbed my dad.  "American great building, huh?" I sneered as I marched him around the car.  When he saw the fuck-up all the color drained from his face and he looked as though everything he ever believed in was slipping away.  (Christ, first Nixon and now this).

And I got the Triumph.

This morning I read of the passing of Art Clokey the man who created "Gumby" (dammit).
It reminded me that one day in the early 80's I was strolling down the street in my neighborhood of Capitol Hill and there, on the sidewalk I found a Gumby.

...doing what young men do.

This is an excerpt of a thing I wrote in my early 20's. The circumstances are all true, and I framed it as a high school diary entry, because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

This is what happens when I'm out of inspiration for new material, I rummage around for old stuff. Boy we're scraping the bottom today folks.


Monday, January 17, 1977.

Dear Diary: I’ve never done this before, and I still think it’s stupid. I mean what’s the point of writing stuff that nobody’s gonna see, but Miss Flemming says it really helps so hear goes. I guess I’d better tell you what’s going on. My name is Philip and I’m a senior in high school. I go to Surrattsville Senior High in Clinton Maryland. We specify the “Senior High” because there’s a Surrattsville Junior High too. They were named after Mary Surratt who has the honor of being the first woman hanged in the United States for being in on Lincoln’s assassination. There was an article last year in Time Magazine that listed the top ten east coast schools with on campus drug problems and Surrattsville was number three. Surratts Junior was number five. It seems like you can get drugs anywhere you want around here. Just go to almost any of the students, half of the teachers, all of the janitors and even a couple of the administration. I’m not talking about the hard stuff. It’s all about refer here. Refer and even more so, refer treated with PCP. Ah, PCP, CP, KW, Killer Weed, or our favorite nickname, Green. See our school colors are green and white, and when those Pep Squad geeks had buttons printed up that said “Mean Green” (referring of course to our loser football team, the Hornets) they were shocked at the overwhelming display of school spirit that produced a complete sellout. And how practically everyone in school, the vast majority of whom weren’t considered the spirited type, were now stumbling through the halls with their bloodshot, half mast eyes, and their spacey grins, sporting their “Mean Green” buttons.

HA HA HA HA , STAYIN’ ALIVE, STAYIN’ ALIVE…………………

Anyhow, none of that stuff is really for me. There’s nothing particularly glamorous, as far as I’m concerned, about crouching down in the woods or huddling in somebody’s car and smoking a bowl of weed only to go back to class and try to figure out what the hell Shakespeare is talking about, no thanks. Drinking a martini in an elegant New York nightclub wearing an ultrasuede Halston suit is more like it. I don’t know what it is about me, but I’ve always had a thirst for all things sophisticated, and so far it hasn’t been quenched with a coke at the Woolworth’s counter over on Old Branch Avenue. All I know is when I look at the sky at night I don’t see stars, I see the glow of downtown Washington, DC just sixteen miles away and I know I need to be there in the throbbing beat of the city instead of here with the tempo of the grass growing on the corner lot that surrounds our split-level colonial, that happens to look exactly like every other split-level colonial on the block.

Now just because I’m different than most of the kids here in my outlook and interests, doesn’t mean that I don’t have friends that I genuinely care for. See my dad used to be in the army and so for years we would move every time some colonel somewhere remembered to give transfer orders, and I had to learn to be the outgoing new kid. So I’m actually pretty popular here. And the beauty is , I have friends in all the different groups, collegiates, blacks, freaks, rednecks and jocks. And I’m not stuck or pigeonholed into any one of them.

Most of my life, the last couple of years, has been centered around room 109, the music room, and not because I’m a good singer (Jesus, far from it) but because that room is a nest for creativity and self expression. It happens no where else in the school. Not in the drama room, where that old fairy Chester Williams (yes, we call him Esther Williams) is more interested in Cutty Sark than in creative spark. Not in the band room where Dick Holman seems preoccupied with his weekend job at the Post Office. (His picture is gonna wind up on the wall there if they ever find out that it’s not the clarinet he’s teaching the girls how to finger.) And certainly not in the art room, where the poster boy for blotter acid know only as Buzzy thinks the greatest artist in history is the guy who drew the “Keep on Truckin’” poster.

No, it’s all in 109 under the loving and watchful eyes of Charlie Waddell. If it could ever be said about someone as old as 41, Charlie is cute. I’m serious. His light brown hair, mixed with a little grey, always seems to be falling over his eyes and ears. His 5’8” body is that of a former dancer that gravity is just starting to take a hold of, his standard uniform is either a t-shirt or sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers, and, except for a few lines around his eyes from smiling, which happens a lot, he has no wrinkles.

I first found Charlie a little over two years ago. I had just started in the school about a month earlier and along with my other classes, I was taking my one required year of Phys Ed. When I was 15 I was 5’3” and 87 lbs. and short of auditioning for the roll of a baseball bat, I had no business in Gym class. To make matters worse, the teacher, Mr. Wycznewski, who seemed to connect great sports ability with upright moral character, had divided the class into three groups based on talent.

Group One was for that select few, the Athletically Gifted. These were the guys who would spend their high school years scoring goals, hitting grand slams, running touchdowns, dating cheerleaders, driving camaros and performing other manly quests to compensate for their underdeveloped genitilia. Then there was Group Two. The sort of average, fit most of the rest of the guys, group. And finally, home sweet home, there was Group Three. My Group. Group Three, it was understood, existed solely to house the fats, fags and cripples.

Now, with this system designed to so praise the top and despise the bottom, a couple of things happened. First, even the nice, decent, Group Two kind of guys felt honor bound to make fun of those at the bottom, and secondly those at the bottom felt, and worse, accepted the failure thrust on us by the system and believed our only possible value was in supplying the fuel for the humor.

So after a few weeks I had had enough of that and decided it was time for a showdown with Wycznewski. Now to say that he and I didn’t like each other doesn’t really paint a complete picture. See my lack of sports ability combined with the fact that I’m basically a lot smarter than him seemed to indicate, I don’t know, communist leanings on my part, and so I guess you could say he was also wary of me.

“Listen,” I said to him, “if you fail me, you’re just gonna have to see me for three years instead of one.” The look on his face said I had his attention. “But, if I walk away right now and you keep giving me ‘Cs’ we’ll never have to deal with each other again.” He looked at me with a mixture of relief that the solution was so simple, and disgust that there was actually something in the world that could bring us together in agreement. He looked down at his clipboard and muttered, “Just get outta here.” Amen. I gave him a proper salute followed by a pivot turn and then skipped across the gym floor and out the door. The clang of the big double doors behind me sounded just like freedom ringing.

Just as my concerns were turning to what I was going to do to kill the next 35 minutes until third period, like a disco crossfade, the volume was being pulled down on the kids counting off jumping jacks as the decibels were increasing on…no it couldn’t be…Billie Holiday singing “Nice work if you can get it”. I followed it to the small corridor that went off the right of the lobby. Where was it coming from? The only things down this hall were the cafeteria, the band room, the chorus room and the janitor’s room. Where the cafeteria workers listening to Billie? Naw, they’d never let themselves have that much fun, it might make the food taste good. It couldn’t be the band room cause that was soundproofed. It was either the music room or, more likely, the janitor’s room which was exactly where I was headed. At least I knew that Rasheed and Mr. Johnson would have a bottle of Old Crow and I could talk them out of a drink.

I stopped in my tracks outside of 109 because the door was slightly ajar and from inside Billie was beckoning me with the musical question, “who could ask for anything more?”. ‘Well not me sister’, I thought as I flung open the door. And there was Charlie, between the risers and the piano, sitting cross legged on the floor. He didn’t see me come in as he was in a cloud of cigarette smoke, but the breeze generated by the door opening blew a piece of sheet music off the piano which, when it crossed his vision, startled him and he spilled his coffee all over the photos of nineteenth century farmhouses that were spread out on the floor.

“Well fuck me Mary!”, he blurted out. I had never heard that phrase in my life, but it seemed so perfect for his situation that I burst out laughing. Startled again, he whipped his head around to me, “Well now who the hell are you?” “I’m Philip. Here, let me help you wipe that up.” I said, grabbing a crumpled rag off his desk. “Hey, I was about to change into that.” I held it up. It was a t-shirt from the National Organization of Women and on the front it said, ‘A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle’. “Oh sorry” I answered. He got a rag from an open cabinet and started mopping up the floor. “So what brings you here?” he asked. “The Billie Holiday,” I confessed. “No, I mean where are you supposed to be right now.” “Oh, well I ah, I had some spare time and ah….”
“I see. Listen, you made me spill my coffee, if you really want to help me, get over there and make me another cup.” “Oh sure,” I took his cup to the cabinet where he had gotten the rag and saw a little electric pot to heat water, and a jar of Nescafe instant. “There’s another cup in there if you want some,” he said. “Thanks. Where’s the cream and sugar,” I asked. “Now don’t get prissy with me, if you’re gonna drink coffee in here, you’re gonna drink it black.” “ok,” I said.
“So you like Billie Holiday?” “Yeah,” I answered, “But I’ve heard this record before, and she loses the guy in the next song.” He laughed as I pulled out a cigarette. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing,” he demanded. “Well?” I said, pointing to his that was burning away in an ashtray that had once been a tuna fish can in it’s former life. “You left the door open, fool. Close it first.”

We talked nonstop for the next half hour. I told him about gym class. He asked me what I was going to do during second period for the next eight and a half months. I allowed that I hadn’t thought that far yet, but I imagined I would go out to the woods where there was always a group of freaks getting high and spend it with them. He said that while he absolutely did not condone what I had done, rather than seeing me become a worthless pothead, I could come to his room everyday. It was his planning period, he had no students, it would be our secret, and I could help him with things. He told me that every year he directed the big spring musical and the farm pictures were research for this years production of “Oklahoma!”. He told me I could be in the play as a dancer and chorus member and that in this case my size would be an asset because he needed a little guy for the other dancers to throw around in the big production numbers. I said that I thought I could probably dance, but I knew I couldn’t sing. He said that most of the kids in it could sing but they couldn’t dance for shit and I would be providing balance. About that time the bell rang, and Charlie’s final instructions were, “Be good. Stop causing trouble, and come back tomorrow.”

I did and blessed mother of Billie Holiday, my life changed.

That pretty boys with Dorothy Hamill haircuts, got to go places and do things. Ah, how fleeting is youth?

...where it just wasn't Christmas until the tree was laying on it's side, this would be your favorite Christmas movie too!