thegaygardener

Changing The World One Pansy At A Time!

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

P.S.







Have you seen this video of JERRY O'CONNELL sending up the now infamous TOM CRUISE SCIENTOLOGY Video? It's hysterical. Now that "Crossing Jordan" has been cancelled (or HAS it?) Jerry should be doing comedies...he's really funny!




I have just returned from THE L.A. CITY OPERA's Production of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" Well actually that's not true, I left at intermission after an interminably long (1.5 hrs +) first act. Yea, I'm not that cultured, I guess, but this thing s.u.c.k.e.d. The sets (alledgedly three of them) were by the renowned artist, DAVID HOCKNEY. I love Hockney, but if you told me that the late KEITH HARRING had done them, I would believe you. But more to the point, you know why OPERA (with a capital O) never really translated to "the masses"? CASTING! I'm supposed to believe that some big 200+ lb. woman in a bad wig is the most desired woman on the planet & falls for some late-middle-aged guy (also in a really bad wig) who has the most annoying habit of spitting every time he hits the letter "T"!?!!?? In LOS ANGELES??? Plus I prefer my operas (as I prefer my food & my men...in ITALIAN...not GERMAN)

I don't care if they found some $20 bill (with DRUG residue) near HEATH LEDGER's body...I still think it was an accident. Yes, the autopsy was "inconclusive" as all preliminary autopsies are but PLEASE show me a $20 bill in a large metroplitan area that DOESN'T have drug residue on it & I'll show you a counterfeit bill! I really don't think this young man would have wanted to leave his daughter that he loved.
Even more heartbreaking (to me) Did you know that JAKE GYLLENHAAL is little Matilda Ledger's Godfather? I didn't til today. Jake is reportedly devastated. Who could blame him?

Labels: , , , , , ,

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Landmarks



Sorry…I’ve been a bit under the weather! (can anyone tell me the derivation of that phrase? I’ve always wondered.

Here we go…
O.K. o.k. This is the last post regarding the campaign. This blog is about gardening & celebs & living in L.A. & all things “gay” (well, maybe not all) I give you this from PAUL ABRAMS on The Huffington Post:

What we have heard, instead is this: She voted for the bill authorizing the Iraq War, but didn't mean it. She voted against the bill that inserted inspectors into Iraq but forced Bush to come back to Congress to get war authorization, but she always wanted to limit the president's authority. She voted for the Bankruptcy Bill but was pleased it did not pass. She touts her experience but has not indicated what it is she actually did that confirms that experience. She suggests she is the only one prepared to deal with a terror attack, but never indicates what her expertise is in that role. She says that executive experience, managing departments, is critical... but does not indicate that she has ever done it.

The Clintons' handlers are back in charge. Are we all just supposed to inhale?


And from the ridiculous to the sublime:

This is Sen. Barack Obama’s address to the Ebenezer Baptist Church on Monday, M.L.K.Day. It is now like the second most popular video on YouTube. It is brilliant. It is also very brave because he talks about gay people & our struggle for civil rights, something that the black community has not always been very receptive to. Watch & listen. And imagine what the next 4 years could be like (& sound like!) if we could possibly take our collective heads out of our asses & NOT re-elect The Clinton’s to a third term!?!
But that’s it, I’m done. I do not have the heart nor the stomach to face this roller-coaster ride of a political season every damn day. Politics is very much like show business in that it will ALWAYS break your heart.



Speaking of heart-breaking…HEATH LEDGER, dead at 28! I received a text message from my best friend in New York saying: “HEATH DEAD!” Hmmmm Heath? Was this some British nobleman, “Sir Antony Heath” or some-such person I’d never heard of? Noooo it could not be Heath Ledger??? Sadly it was. Details are still pouring in (Exactly what the hell do The OLSEN TWINS have to do with this? WAS it their apartment or NOT? Why was that in the first account but later retracted???)
{UPDATE from TMZ: The Olsen twins' connection to Heath Ledger's apartment is now clear. Here's the way it went down. A cleaning lady for Heath arrived at the apartment first, followed soon thereafter by a masseuse. They both entered the room at around the same time and discovered Heath's lifeless body.

The cleaning lady called police. The masseuse, we're told, called the bodyguard for the Olsens. She called him because they're friends and he's an EMT. The bodyguard was around the block at Ashley's and he immediately went over. By the time he arrived, the cops were already there.

We're also told it appeared Heath "had been dead for a while" and there were no visible signs of trauma. There was a pill bottle on the nightstand.}


A sad, stupid, tragic, unnecessary event! I have to admit I had never been a big fan, Heath always seemed in need of a good bath to me. Then came BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN & his “Ennis del Mar” Blew me away. Raw, poignant, stoic, trapped & so beautifully underplayed. I loved him from that moment on. In a little while, I think I’ll watch that film again, & cry again. Only harder.

Speaking of YouTube, if you have not done so already, can you please RATE my GAYGARDENER video there. You don’t have to watch the whole thing, I know it’s rather long, but if you could click on the link & then rate it I’d be grateful.

GayGardener Pilot

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Love that Hitch!

Because Christopher Hitchens always manages to say what I'm thinking, only in a smarter more precise way...

I hope all my friends in LAS VEGAS are listening (that is if the lawsuit that wants to disenfranchise voters, supported by Hill&Bill, fails.)

The Case Against Hillary Clinton
Why on earth would we choose to put the Clinton family drama at the center of our politics again?
By Christopher Hitchens
.
Seeing the name Hillary in a headline last week—a headline about a life that had involved real achievement—I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995—the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy "experience"—Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim "worked" well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York.

Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: "It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add."

Perfect. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mummy. Yet isn't it all—all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga—exactly like that? And isn't some of it a little bit more serious? For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her "greatness" (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done. In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband's uncontainable sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part. In the Iowa caucuses of 2008, he returns the favor by telling a huge lie about his own record on the war in Iraq, falsely asserting that he was opposed to the intervention from the very start. This is thought of, and referred to in print, as purely a tactical mistake on his part: trying too hard to help the spouse. The happy couple has now united on an equally mendacious account of what they thought about Iraq and when they thought it. What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton. (For the full background on this, see the chapter "Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?" in the paperback version of my book No One Left To Lie To. This essay, I may modestly say, has never been challenged by anybody in the fabled Clinton "rapid response" team.) Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's "issues."

One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that it conferred "experience" on the despised and much-deceived wife. Well, the main "experience" involved the comprehensive fouling-up of the nation's health-care arrangements, so as to make them considerably worse than they had been before and to create an opening for the worst-of-all-worlds option of the so-called HMO, combining as it did the maximum of capitalist gouging with the maximum of socialistic bureaucracy. This abysmal outcome, forgiven for no reason that I can perceive, was the individual responsibility of the woman who now seems to think it entitles her to the presidency. But there was another "experience," this time a collaborative one, that is even more significant.

During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and "experience" to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration? Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut. Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for us, she may cry.

Labels: , , ,

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Aftermath...

Photobucket

True story…. So I bring home Sam’s ashes after 2 weeks (!) at the pet mortuary (a long, unpleasant story) I walk into the house & place the box on a table in the living room. I call to “Max-the-cat” & say ,”Max! Sammy’s home!”Max comes running out, leaps onto the table & sniffs the box. And stands next to the box with his eyes closed in some silent animal tribute to his now gone best friend. This lasts about 10 minutes. I am awestruck. It was the most intimate & beautiful memorial I have ever witnessed.

The evening before we “went to the vet” Max & I slept at the bottom of the bed with Sam, who would only sleep on the faux leopard doggie bed that his Aunt Jen (Coolidge) bought him the Spring before. But only if this bed was placed on our big bed. I awoke at about 3:00 a.m. to see the three of us all huddled together. Max roused & I looked at him & told him that this would be the last night the three of us would be together as a little family. He must have realized what I was saying or what was happening because he started to “lick” Sam as if giving him a bath. I can still see the light of the street lamp illuminating the bedroom & the three of us round that leopard bed. Max never left Sam’s side for the next 12 hours. Till I carried Sam to the car.


t.s.elliot was wrong when he said, “April is the cruelest month.”It’s January! Not only is Christmas over & the credit card bills come due & the weather turns…but January is when my ex-the-famous-tv-star-now-dead dumped me. It was January 16th. He told me that he had decided a few months before that he “wanted to separate” I’m sure it had nothing to do with the model/caterer/whore he had hired to cook Christmas dinner. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I cried. “Because I didn’t want to ruin your birthday & Christmas” he feebly replied. “So you’ve decided to ruin Martin Luther King’s Birthday in perpetuity for me instead?” was my prescient reply. I have never looked at a January “white sale” the same again. But yea, I’m over it.

Congratulations to MARION COTILLAIRD on winning a GOLDEN GLOBE for her brilliant performance as Edith Piaf in “La Vie En Rose” (which as you know I have blogged about before) And also the luminous JULIE CHRISTIE who also one for “Away From Her” which I have not seen but heard fabulous things about her performance! Well done ladies!

Labels: , , ,

Saturday, January 12, 2008

And miles to go before I sleep...



One year ago today...and my heart still hurts.

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be not forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
Grief not, rather find,
Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be,
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of Human suffering,
In the faith that looks through death
In years that bring philophic mind.

William Wordsworth

Thursday, January 10, 2008

HILLARY DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!



Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to scale Mt. Everest died today at the age of 88.
The native New Zealander was also a passionate beekeeper!
His accomplishment as part of a British climbing expedition; even added luster to the coronation of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II four days later, and she knighted Hillary as one of her first act.

Here's something else I don't get...
When I was six years old, my Grandmother took me shopping at Wanamaker's in Philadelphia for my birthday. I loved & looked forward to these annual excursions. On this ocassion, we arrived to find picketers in front of the store. It was some kind of retail worker's strike. I started crying when "Gram" explained to me that we could never cross a picket line & would not be shopping that day, or any other, until the strike was settled. {This same woman used to drive me crazy because we were never allowed to buy anything that didn't say "Made In The U.S.A." If she were alive today, I don't know where the hell she'd shop!)
Anyway...I just thought that was the whole purpose of a strike. Unhappy workers carrying signs, picketing in front of businesses, & relying on the help of their customers, clients, & fellow working people to honor their strike, thereby hurting business until owners/management came back to the table with a better offer! Right?
So what's up with the WRITER's STRIKE?? How can anybody take it seriously when LETTTERMAN has a "seperate deal"? When TOM CRUISE's FIRST ARTISTS production company is negotiating some side "thing"? When LENO may or may not get fined for actually writing & delivering jokes? When ELLEN keeps shooting because, I don't know...she's NOT in the W.G.A.? She's on Daytime T.V? I know DAVE & JAY kept paying their writers even after the strike. And I know they & Ellen & everbody else I guess; are likley motivated by keeping the rest of their non-writing staff in business. But if Studios & Networks & Production companies get all just get around all these various rules & clauses, how is this strike ever going to work. They cancelled THE GOLDEN GLOBES which DOES hurt many, many, people. Not just the Studios & Networks but the "little people" limo drivers, makeup artists, waiters, caterers, florists. And THE OSCARS looks less likely too. But I just think either everything goes dark (No New Television, No New film production, No Awards Shows, No Reality shows which, face it, ARE SCRIPTED!) or, or, or what? I don't know. But this "Sort-of-on-strike-but-not-if..." isn't going to help anyone.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

The Comeback


Photobucket

Photobucket

Disappointed? You Bet! Shocked? Quite. But that is what’s great about the process….ah hell, I don’t really believe that. I think it says more about “The Machine” than it does about the process. I also fear it may have a little something to do with “The Bradley Effect” which ANDREW SULLIVAN explains in detail, but basically it is a theory that white voters will give false answers to pollsters in a race that has a non-white candidate. I really don’t know how else to explain that no poll, not one, not even the candidate’s own polling, had Hillary Clinton beating Barack Obama. In fact Obama had a double digit lead in most polls. Was it because she cried? Was it the endless drubbing & false statements made repeatedly by BILL CLINTON against Obama? I have no answers. All I know is that the following quote form the brilliant NORA EPHRON made me loud:

“Hillary Clinton has all the authenticity of Naugahyde”

Happy Birthday ELVIS! The King would have turned 72 today.

As some of you know I used to work in cosmetics. One of the true genius innovators in that business was a man named SHU UEMORA.
You likely know him from his hundreds of retail stores around the globe. The French giant L’OREAL later bought his company. He made really beautiful, effective, products; makeup, skin care, brushes & tools (no actress can live without his eyelash curler) Uemora died today at 79 in Tokyo. The legend began when the makeup artist on a SHIRLEY MACLAINE film, MY GIESHA, fell ill, & Uemora was brought in as a replacement. He did such an amazing job of transforming the famed redhead into a believable Japanese girl that Hollywood soon beat a path to his door. Even FRANK SINATRA used him. It’s ironic that illness made SHU’s stardom poissble because Maclaine herself was an understudy (“The Pajama Game”) who had to go on when the lead (Carol Haney) became ill & a star was born. R.I.P. Shu.

Labels: , , , , ,

Sunday, January 06, 2008

Hello! My Name is NOAH!

Photobucket

I would have blogged sooner but I’ve been looking for a pair of walruses…because that is the last animal I need before I set sail on the ARK I’ve been forced to build. It’s been raining for 3 solid days in L.A. This is the amazing thing about living here. It doesn’t rain for 5 years…& then we get 5 years worth of rain in 3 days!

Do you love the above photo of GIORGIO ARMANI?? The dude is 72 years old & looks great I think! The original pic appeared on a great website called JUST JARED
Then the whole blogosphere picked it up including The HUFFINGTON POST which ran a headless photo so we could guess the 7O yr old body it depicted. Gio is shown wearing an “Armani Speedo” naturally! And one thing it truly demonstrates is something my mother (Mrs. Trainer) always said: “TAN fat looks better than WHITE fat!” She really was a woman ahead of her time.

And you know I love THE HUFFINGTON POST(or HUFFPO as we say)
The brilliant ALEC BALDWIN (truly) is a blogger there. His piece this weekend refers to a writer named ROBERT ELISBERG. Mr. Elisberg also has a Huffpo piece about the SAG boycott of The Golden Globes. Mr. Elisberg’s general opinion of actors is not that high & he tells a funny story about a famous actress.

There's a famous story about a movie written by a legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy writer. After ridiculing the script during filming, one of the stars finally called out, "Whoever wrote this doesn't know how to write comedy!" -- with the author present. He left, wouldn't do rewrites, and the movie bombed.

Alec, in his piece, outs his former wife, KIM BASINGER, as the above critic. The former Mrs. Baldwin is referring to NEIL SIMON who wrote among other classics, THE ODD COUPLE, BILOXI BLUES, THE OUT OF TOWNERS and a hundred other comedy classics; plays & screenplays, that are hallmarks of comedy genius & that have collectively made millions & millions of dollars with the almost sole exception of THE MARRYING MAN starring…you guessed it, ALEC BALDWIN & KIM BASINGER which bombed big time. You could not make this stuff up.

I really do not want this to turn into some kind of political blog. I will just state for the record, that I am a big supporter of SEN. BARACK OBAMA. And I hope that he rides this incredible wave of CHANGE all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Having said that, I am aware of the difficult road ahead. I was made more aware of it when I attended a really fabulous post-holiday (but pre-Iowa) party last week.
I encountered a beautiful woman of “a certain age” (which is the old fashioned way of saying past 50!) We were stranded at the bar. I learned she built her own very successful business from the ground up. She was interesting so I wanted to keep talking to her…”And whom will you be supporting for President this year?” I asked. “HILLARY, of course!” “Because she’s a woman” I asked. “Yes! But I also happen to think she’s the best candidate!” “How about you?” she inquired. “Barack Obama” I volunteered. “Reallllllly?” “You do KNOW that he is a MUSLIM & that if he takes the Oath of Office, he’ll be swearing on a KORAN?” said Lydia (NOT her Real name) “Lydia!” “THAT is a LIE” “Obama is a Christian and would swear on a Bible!” I said. Lydia wasn’t having it. And our brief but volatile friendship came to a quick end. But there you have it! A beautiful, intelligent, successful, white, woman repeating some heinous canard that she read online somewhere as if it were fact! Yea. We’re in for a long, ugly haul! But God willing…truth & justice & change will prevail

TheGayGardener’s Slogan of “SWEET PEAS & PEACE” has never seemed more meaningful…at least to me!

Labels: , , , ,

Thursday, January 03, 2008

"Taking Mama to School"


I don't want to piss off or alienate anyone of you, my faithful friends, but if you don't think that this country is in a heap of trouble & that we need a seismic change, then you haven't been paying attention! And, please God, tonight in Iowa that change has begun. I give you the words of our poet laureate, PEGGY NOONAN, in the Wall Street Journal:

And so it begins.

We wanted exciting, we got exciting.

As this is written, late on the night of the caucuses, the outlines of the decisions seem clear: Barack Obama won.

Hillary Clinton, the inevitable, the avatar of the machine, lost.

It's huge. Even though people have been talking about this possibility for six weeks now, it's still huge. She had the money, she had the organization, the party's stars, she had Elvis behind her, and the Clinton name in a base that loved Bill. And she lost. There are always a lot of reasons for a loss, but the Ur reason in this case, the thing it all comes down to? There's something about her that makes you look, watch, think, look again, weigh and say: No.

She started out way ahead, met everyone, and lost.

As for Sen. Obama, his victory is similarly huge. He won the five biggest counties in Iowa, from the center of the state to the South Dakota border. He carried the young in a tidal wave. He outpolled Mrs. Clinton among women.

He did it with a classy campaign, an unruffled manner, and an appeal on the stump that said every day, through the lines: Look at who I am and see me, the change that you desire is right here, move on with me and we will bring it forward together.

He had a harder row to hoe than Mrs. Clinton did. He was lesser known, too young, lacked an establishment. He had to knock her down while building himself up. (She only had to build herself up until the end, when she went after his grade-school essays.) His takedown of Mrs. Clinton was the softest demolition in the history of falling buildings. I think we were there when it happened, in the debate in which he was questioned on why so many of Bill Clinton's aides were advising him. She laughed, and he said he was looking forward to her advising him, too. He took mama to school.

And so something new begins on the Democratic side.


BREAKING NEWS:

Something sadly not so new is the continued downward spiral of BRITNEY SPEARS. As this is written, police, fire & emergency personnel have been called to B.S. Studio City home where she apparently is refusing to obey the court ordered visitation agreement & hand over the kids to K-FED. Oh & her latest team of lawyers fired her yesterday. sad.

TMZ

Labels: , , , ,

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

All She Wrote...


Well the tree is in the trash, so the New Year has officially begun. And as I heard PAMELA ANDERSON say: “2008 is gonna be great!” (such a poet that one)

You know that Beverly Hills terrace I was doing before Christmas? Came out lovely, client likes it blah, blah, blah. But there’s a problem with water “seepage” so no big deal I’ll just get some liner/trays. Guess what? Can’t find em. Round saucers? Like a billion of them! Rectangular trays? Nope. Let me know if you find any.

In my hunt today I return to one of the loveliest places in Los Angeles; ROLLING GREENS NURSERY
in Culver City. Beautiful plants, exquisite pots, garden décor etc. & a wonderful friendly staff. No trays. Cannot even custom order them. What to do?

Eureka! I remember a place I had been meaning to check out a little further down the street called INNER GARDENS Sounds like some heavenly zen sanctuary doesn’t it? In I walk & think I have died & gone to heaven! It’s the flea markets of Paris by way of New Orleans under one Los Angeles roof! I mean gorgeous! “I’m looking for some liner trays for some flower boxes.” I say to the sweet but unhappy looking hostage at the desk. “Sure, we have some, let me get a
salesperson for you.”
If I tell you that the woman who helped me was the most charmless, impatient, annoyed sales person I’ve encountered in Los Angeles, that would be a lie. Because she did not help me & had zero interest in helping me. I realize that any one can have a bad day. Maybe her lab results just got back. Maybe she moonlights at a suicide prevention hotline & had to put someone on hold to help me, who knows. I only know I won’t go back. Even if I have a big studio or T.V. budget! But if you like beautiful things for your garden & money is no object & customer service is meaningless to you, then by all means, you go!

I cannot wait to see the IOWA CAUCUS results tomorrow, can you?

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Is it Really Over?



God I can't believe the holidays are really over.
"Seems we just get started & before you know it, comes the time we have to say so long!" as CAROL BURNETT used to sing.Anyway...good to be back. I really had the most marvelous Holiday Season. My birthday is December 19th (yea, thanks) & I celebrated here in TheGayGardener's Gay Garden with 20 of my closest friends for cocktails...so much fun! And for Christmas we had 20 for dinner at a gorgeous house in the Hollywood Hills(decorations by TGG were a bit "nail salonish" but it was very last minute) Sheer perfection! Plus a suprise visit by BUDDY THE ELF (who does look a bit forlorn in the photos but I blame that on too much cheap champagne!) who delighted one & all with more gifts than we could carry. I received so many terrific gifts (including an amazing original portrait of my beloved Sammy from my friends RAY G. & GESSIE G. (no relation) It IS a Wonderful life!
Hope you all had a lovely holiday as well!

Labels: , , ,