Sugar Bowl Mix: Sylvester Stallone's riding helmet

My riding helmet belongs to Sylvester Stallone.

At one point when I worked in Hollywood one of my best friends was an assistant (the film biz's fancy way of saying secretary/ runner/ script reader) at Sylvester Stallone's production company.

My friend had a lot of interesting duties. I used to tag along regularly for day trips to Sly's Malibu beach home to "check it out" and makes sure everything was as it should be. This particular duty included lounging on the beach and taking a dip in the sparkling pool that had SLY emblazoned on the floor. I changed in one of the bedrooms, a shrine to Sly that was filled with framed photos and posters of his holiness and that was painted an unlikely pink.

Another of my friend's duties was was sorting through the fan mail, much of which included gifts - everything from golf clubs, food, books, pictures to, yup, riding helmets.

I don't know if Sylvester Stallone rides or is even interested in horses. But apparently one of his fans was into horses enough to go to Millers, an upscale equestrian store in Manhattan, purchase a black velvet riding helmet, package it up and ship it out to Sly care of his production company.

I've ridden horses my entire life so as soon as my friend opened the riding helmet he was on the phone to me asking me if I wanted it. (Note to anyone thinking of buying the perfect gift for your favorite celebrity: Save your time and money. The celebrity will never see it; assistants take everything.)

The helmet didn't fit. It was too small. Who buys a size 6 1/4 riding helmet for Sly? I called up Millers and explained I had received the wrong size helmet as a gift. With no questions asked and no receipt they told me to mail it back COD and they would send out the right size. I had to send two helmets back before the perfect fit arrived. I've been wearing it ever since.

By the way, the pony in the background is Mary-Kate Olsen's old pony, CD.

Such is life in Los Angeles.

post signature