My favorite way to spend the 4th of July weekend is at the beach, as I’ve done for the last three years. I have an affinity for Manhattan and Hermosa beaches, as do all of the rowdiest high school and college kids, who enjoy getting …
One month after my return, Paris is with me still, casting itself over my every experience like a transparency overlay. In the morning, when I walk to my driveway and get in my car, another version of me continues walking down a narrow 17th-century cobblestone …
I’ve recently had a new and unexpected experience in Los Angeles: that of a cancer patient. Here’s what I learned: people get cancer. Even if they’re pursuing their dreams. Over the years, I’ve thought about cancer a lot, actually. I’ve made adjustments in my diet …
In the heart of Hollywood, at the foot of Griffith Park and just east of the Walk of Fame lies a street lined with tall, supple date palms. Their green and orange bursts of foliage frame a corridor of sky that leads straight to the …
I’ve always had a thing for cafes. It began in high school, with a search for a personal identity. (That’s an interesting time in a teenager’s life – her first unaccompanied forays into social activities. What one chooses to do, where one chooses to go, …
As of two days ago, I have lived in Los Angeles for two years, and California for nearly five. It was 85 degrees downtown just one hour ago. It is 5:30pm now, and there are a good two hours of daylight left, after the recent …
I have a hard time going to bed. I have a hard time getting up. It is 11:56 pm. My husband and I are people of routine, generally speaking, and our bedtime is 11:00pm. At that time this evening, we were mixing cocktails while enwrapped …
I read nearly anything, but especially Hermann Melville, Joan Didion, E.B. White or Virginia Woolf, and I am urgently compelled to be a writer.What if being a writer is my true identity, and all this time I’ve just been distracting myself from myself? (Then, write …
At an audition this week, I noticed a repetitive scene playing out in the casting room adjacent to the one I was waiting to enter. Door swings ajar. CASTING ASSISTANT steps out to summon the next ACTOR. ACTOR enters as ASSISTANT closes the door behind …
I used to be intimidated by alcohol. I didn’t know what to do with it but pour it into half a glass of orange juice or Coca Cola, neither of which I like very much. In recent years, though, I’ve begun to understand it. There …