go west old woman

In a couple of days Mr Sax and i will be headed off to california. this is not planned to be a 'fun' visit; rather we are going to see his mother who is seriously ill. the trip could be, in fact, quite the bummer. still i am feeling a little excited about returning to california, a state (and state of mind) that i love.

i would like to say that we will visit big sur, stroll down the boardwalk in santa cruz, eat sour dough bread and order from the raw bar in sausalito and check out what's new and happenin' in the castro. northern california is not my fave part of the state although it beats the hell out of the real north north where bikers reign and people marry their cousins. get up there around oregon but before you hit the state line and you'd be surprised to meet the natives. they're never the kind of californians who are depicted on tv. on the other hand, the type A monsters who populate the silicon (that's silicon as in computer chip, not 'silicone' as in boob job, implants, or former boob job implants before everyone went for saline. Los Altos is high pressure congested and pretty ugly. Still, i want to go even if what i wind up dealing with vis a vis my mother in law is mostly sadness and despair but hey life is short and i'm getting old so while i'm on the west coast i'm going to make the best of it. 

the nerve!

I just can't get over the nerve of some people...who shall, for the time being, remain nameless. A youngish woman author (first time novelist, regular contributor -- on contract! -- to Vogue) i interviewed and wrote about (but never met in person) for the Bedford newspaper met with me for the first time. she brought her children with her. that was fine. we agreed to meet at Scoops for ice cream. what was not so fine was how she let her kid (covered in chocolate and of course she was insufficiently supplied with napkins being that the au pair, who would have remembered to grab enough had quit), take a nice healthy leak on Bedford Road 50 feet from the library. Which has a bathroom, of course. "It's ok, he's 3," she said, somewhat defensively. inside the building (at last), she proceeded to tell me how she prefers immigrant help ("they work harder,") with her kids, that she can either "write or work out" (is this an excuse for being 30 pounds overweight?) and that because she writes very slowly, very painstakingly, she must be a better writer than me. "How do people in town feel about you being a sex writer?" she asked, finding it hard to believe that the local paper's columnist and Bedford magazine contributor wouldn't be run out of town on a rail should anyone figure out that she is the author of 8 books on sex tips. Should i delete her number from my phone....or ask her to blurb me when i write my own semi-made-up book?

hiram bullock dead

A friend just sent me an email telling me of jazz guitarist hiram bullock's sudden death on friday. i can't say that i knew hiram well but i knew him a little. he dated a woman named lisa for several years back when lisa and i were friends in greenwich village. we all went to the beach together several times. by then hiram was already kind of famous but since i didn't watch Letterman and wasn't at all into jazz, i was fairly oblivious to what he was all about. what i saw was a fat, funny, genial young man lying on a towel on the beach, smoking a doobie and catching some rays. i also remember going to his apartment in a chic new trendy building on hudson street that had double height windows and gleaming white heart pine floors but no furniture except for a glass top coffee table and a couple of leather sofas. there was a rooftop health club that came with the apartment and the guests were joking that hiram had no excuse now for not working out. i know it didn't work out with lisa who also had a little thing going i think with david sanborn. lisa was into jazz musicians and more particularly black jazz guys. that was pretty par for the course at the time. jewish girls. black men. but the men had to have a special talent and not just for using cocaine.

i was surprised to see that hiram was only 52 when he died. causes as yet unknown. the band leader paul shaffer called bullock the greatest guitarist since jimi hendrix and i suppose that might be true. although some people think that pat metheny should get that title, or john scofield. i'm willing to grant that hiram really was the best...except that for most of his life, he was plagued by demons. 

hiram, you were sweet

rest in peace

i know a lot of folks are going to miss you