Hollywood: A scene from my life before kids

This is a creative non-fiction account of a day in my former life as a development executive in Hollywood for a well known actor's production company. It's told in the third person. Can you guess "Brian," the Hollywood celebrity's identity?

After guiding his spaceship-like Porsche into his private parking space on the Warner Bros. lot, Peter enters his company's office, in Building 81, just down the hall from Clint Eastwood's production company. A year ago Peter partnered with an A-list actor and acquired these hips digs in this much sought-after building. Peter walks through the lobby, past the framed black and white posters of classic films that he had nothing to do with, past the door leading to the bathroom that contains an orgy-size shower that Steven Seagal had designed when he occupied this space. He doesn't notice the new, overly-smily intern sitting at the reception desk.

Further into the office he nods a good morning to Greg, assistant to Anne, the VP of Development.

"Can I have a cappucino?"Peter asks.

"You got it," Greg answers, jumping up.

Greg beckons the intern to follow him. "This morning," he says to the intern in the kitchen, "you will learn to make the perfect cup of cappuccino."

"Great!" The intern exclaims.

"Making cappucino is a pain in the ass," Greg says, struggling to clean the steamer spout. The intern's broad smile disappears.

"Get me my brother!" Peter shouts out to Hannah, his perky blonde assistant who is attractive but not so attractive as to make the MAW (model, actress, whatever) wife jealous.

Hannah quickly dials the number, one of hundreds she has memorized.

"Tom?" She says. She's very polite, very proper, very efficient. "I've got your brother, Peter, calling for you." She places Tom on hold, swivels around in her chair, gets up and enters Peter's domain, a spacious office modeled after Sylvester Stallone's office, replete with a sink-in, big-enough-for-sex-sofa, German 1970s black leather and metal chairs and a glass desk perfectly organized for the day by the super-assistant.
"Tom's on two," Hanna says and then she closes the door behind her.

A day at Halo Pictures has begun.

The phone buzzes non-stop. The two assistants handle three or four calls at once. Anne doesn't allow the intern to answer the phones after she twice gave the incorrect name of callers. Anne will fire the intern later today when she has time. For now, she scrambles to put together notes for Peter's latest "great" idea: a romantic comedy set in white trash culture.

Greg and the intern reappear with the perfect cup of cappuccino. Hannah knocks on Peter's door, enters and places the cup on top of a napkin in the far right corner of the desk.

And then Brian saunters in to the office. He wears gym shorts, a black T-shirt and sneakers. He's been playing basketball on the set of the hit TV show that put him on the map.

"Hey! I'm Brian," he says casually to the intern. He offers his hand. The intern's jaw drops. She stammers but no sounds come out. "Welcome aboard," Brian says.

Hannah catches her breath as Brian approaches. He defines sexy. Even in his sweaty, post-work-out-mode, or maybe because of it. She stands up as he leans in to kiss her and offers him her mouth. Hannah always kisses him on the lips.

Anne is in her office, on the phone, fighting with an agent who won't give her the spec script that went out that morning. Brian knocks on her door, gives her a big smile and makes a comical gesture about the agent on the phone. He comes around her desk and kisses her firmly on the cheek.

"Brian just walked in," Anne says to the agent. "Should I put him on the phone so you can tell him yourself why you're not letting us have the script?"

Brian puts his hand out to take the phone, but the agent gives in and agrees to send the script. Anne gives Brian a thumbs up. He reciprocates and heads out to the assistant area.

In the assistant area, Brian chit chats with Hannah and Greg. Anne comes out to join them. Brian has a casual ease about him that almost makes those with him forget he's been People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive. For a few moments the office is filled with giggles and silly jokes, fun banter and Brian's charm. 

But then Peter emerges from his office. Hannah quickly returns to her desk and Greg turns back to his desk.

"Brian!" Peter says too exuberantly. Next to Brian, Peter seems small and nerdy in his tight black pants, tight black T-shirt and army boots. "How are you?" He laughs giddily.

Anne rolls her eyes and goes back to her office. Just last night Peter had whined to her about not being invited to Brian's party over the weekend.

Inside Peter's office, Brian throws himself onto the oversize sofa. He puts his hand up his T-shirt and plays with it, revealing his taut stomach. Does he notice the picture of Peter's nubile twenty-year old wife in the Demi Moore naked-while-pregnant pose? Or the naked post-baby picture of the perfectly whittled body with just a hint of pubic hair showing? Or the naked-with-two-year-old-child card that went out this past Christmas? If so, he doesn't comment.

Instead, he says, "so I've been thinking. I don't want to do romantic comedies. I want to concentrate on smart thrillers, dark dramas."

Peter's goofy smile fades. He's spent the last year looking for romantic comedies for Brian to headline. He spent all weekend working on his white trash rom-com idea.

"Hannah! Get Anne in here!"

Anne hears the desperate shout before Hannah summons her. In Peter's office she doesn't sit on the sex-sofa with Brian. She sits on one of the very uncomfortable chairs opposite to get a better view. She knows something significant must have happened because neither Brian nor Peter say anything.

"Great shoes," Brian finally says. Anne just bought the leopard skin shoes at the Nordstrom sale that weekend, her only respite from twenty scripts and two five-hundred page manuscripts she had to read.

"Thanks," she says.

"Okay guys, good to see you. Gotta run." And with that Brian is off, but not before kissing Anne and Hannah goodbye.

"Anne, we'll reschedule the white trash meeting," Peter says. "Hannah, cancel my lunch and get me Dr. Rosenbaum on the phone."

Everyone, except the intern, knows that when Peter wants Dr. Rosenbaum, his shrink, their day will be miserable.

After she gets the shrink on the phone, Hannah comes to tell Anne about Brian not wanting to do rom-coms. Anne shrugs.

"We'll make the white trash rom-com a white trash thriller," Anne says.

In Hollywood there are many ways to spin a story.

**All names except for mine, Clint Eastwood's and Steven Seagal's have been changed to protect the guilty.

(I posted a previous version of this before my blog went public.)

Enjoying every moment

We lived in San Francisco when I took this picture of Caroline with her grandfather. She loved to read.  Brown Bear Brown Bear was her favorite book. We had a feisty, spry ninety-year-old next-door neighbor who used to say to me, in the way that older people do, "enjoy every moment because she'll be grown-up before you know it." I would laugh and say, "oh we do!" But the truth is, I didn't enjoy every moment. I enjoyed many moments. Just not every moment.

Around the time this picture was taken Caroline was an awesome sleeper. I enjoyed that. But a few months later, when she started to crawl, she decided she wasn't ever going to go to sleep again. I didn't enjoy that. She was so determined that she wasn't going to go to sleep ever again that she started to vomit every night when we put her down. I didn't enjoy that.

Eight years later I can actually laugh at Caroline's determination not to go to sleep. This was so telling of her personality. She is still so determined about many things. Reading is still one of her most favorite activities but she has moved on from Brown Bear Brown Bear to A Wrinkle In Time and other third - grade favorites. 


My ninety-year old neighbor was right. Time does go by in a flash. But what I realize eight years on is that those moments I don't enjoy now may be moments I'll appreciate in the future. Like in another eight years when I'm sitting in the passenger seat next to a sixteen-year-old determined to get her driver's license.

Do you have moments that were difficult for you at the time, in the moment, but that you enjoy and appreciate later? Maybe even years later?

Chocolate Chip Pie

Right before I went to London for Junior Year Abroad - a long time ago - I visited my sister, Sarah, in Washington D.C. We went on a very long bike ride and oh, how my muscles cramped and ached the whole flight to London the next day!

The night prior to the long bike ride we hosted a dinner party. We made a delicious chocolate chip pie, the recipe for which Sarah had found on the back of a chocolate chips package. I don't remember the brand. I made the recipe often over the years and every time I made it I remembered the too-long bike ride and that painful flight to London and would laugh out loud.

A few months ago I came across the recipe again in my little book of handwritten recipes and introduced it to the girls. It has become one of Caroline's favorites desserts. Like almost all my recipes, I tweaked the original; mine contains less butter and has a crispier crust.

This pie is just as delicious warm and oozing as it is cold.

Ingredients


1 9" unbaked pie shell *
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
12 oz chocolate chips

*I confess, I do not make my own pie crust. Yes - big sigh - I buy the 9" deep-dish pie crusts in the frozen section.

Directions:

Remove the pie crust from the freezer and let thaw for 20 minutes. Prick the pie crust with a fork all over. Bake in the oven at 400 F for 10 minutes or until baked but not brown.

Melt the butter in the microwave. Let cool. I put mine in the refrigerator while I'm preparing the other ingredients.

Beat the eggs until foamy.

Measure the flour and sugars into a bowl and then add to the eggs. Mix well.

Add the cooled butter and mix well.

Add the chocolate chips.

Pour into the pre-baked pie crust.

Bake for 45 minutes at 350 F or bake until brown on top. Insert a fork in the middle before removing it from the oven. If the fork comes out clean (the chocolate chips may stick a little) it is done.

Enjoy!

The easy-to-print version can be found here.

All the camp's horses

I've been going through our house, purging ruthlessly, creating huge piles of items to be sold at the upcoming garage sale and creating piles of items to be donated to charity. We've gone through books, clothes, toys, games, ride-ons and boxes that have not been opened in fifteen years. An exhausting process. But a few very special items have turned up in this process.

Yesterday I found my Camp Longacres T-shirt, my name tag still sewn inside.

When I showed it to Caroline she immediately put it on and wanted to sleep in it.

Camp Longacres is a sleepover horseback riding camp outside Buffalo, NY. I spent eight summers at Longacres and probably rode most of the horses listed on the T-shirt. As Caroline read through all the names from Abe to Zippy I  could picture each horse vividly: Blue Mist, the gray pony; China Heart the dun quarter horse jumper; Chips, the  round bay pony who was my favorite pony, Pepper's, girlfriend - I think we actually held a wedding for them one summer; Deamyn, the pony my family took home for the winter for years; Fudge Ripple, a big pinto and my favorite horse my first summer at camp; Jenny, a lazy appaloosa; Major, a big handsome bay with a long loping stride; Prometheus, a palomino pony; Red Majesty a chestnut with a choppy gate and Striad, black and very fast.

Longacres was a place of extraordinary freedom for its campers. I spent hours exploring the creek, catching minnows and picking wild blackberries with friends, unsupervised. Other than showing up for  riding lessons twice a day, campers got to choose what they did, whether they visited the arts and crafts cabin, the pool, the archery field or played horseless horse show. As I got older I spent most of my time at the barn, grooming ponies, cleaning stalls and riding. Sometimes we rode five hours a day.

We sang Johnny Appleseed before every meal in the lodge and gorged on candy and junk food from the canteen after dinner. My first summer there, when I was eight, I chewed more gum than seems possible, an extraordinary treat since I wasn't allowed to chew gum at home. Often I forgot to spit my gum out at night so I would wake up with bubble gum stuck in my hair and my counselors would smear peanut butter in my hair to get it out. I only took one shower in the four week I was there, the night before my parents came to pick me up.

So yesterday as Caroline read off all the horse names I closed my eyes and relived those carefree summer days. My favorite childhood memories.

Caroline wants to go to overnight horseback riding camp next summer and I think we may just let her go.

Cooking with the London Underground

I love to cook and when I cook I always wear this London Underground apron.

Recently, Caroline asked me where I got it from. When I was twelve-years-old my best friend, Suzanne, went to London and brought it back for me. The first time I wore the apron I remember my mother pointing to Kensington High Street, the tube stop she and I my father used when they lived in London years before. 

The apron is vinyl, easily wiped and I immediately began wearing it whenever I cooked. I loved to cook bake. I made cakes, cookies, cupcakes, fudge, brownies, banana bread and salad dressing. The recipes came almost entirely from my mother's tattered Fannie Farmer cookbook from the 1940s. In high school I branched out and began cooking main courses.

At the beginning of my sophomore year in college my sister, Jane, gave me my own Fannie Farmer Cookbook as well as a little notebook filled with neatly printed family recipes and recipes from our mother's tattered Fannie Farmer that weren't included in the updated version.

(The Mocha Layer cake recipe above was my favorite cake growing up. The recipe comes from the 1940s Fannie Farmer edition.)

Sophomore year I lived with four roommates in an apartment where we took turns cooking for everyone. My dinners always included dessert. For my birthday that year my roommate, Jane, gave me Smart Cooking, a cookbook endorsed by the Canadian Heart Association that was "heart- healthy." I cooked recipes like Triple-Cheese Lasagna, Gazpacho and Cream of Broccoli soup and easily wiped the splatters off my London Underground after each dinner I prepared.

I spent my Junior year in London. My tube stop was Goodge Street, although I could get off at Tottenham Court if I didn't mind walking a little further. My classes were at Oxford Circus. Ironically, I didn't bring my London Underground apron with me. I had packed almost entirely in a backpack and the apron, well, it seemed like an extra that could be left with the rest of my college stuff, in boxes in my parents' basement. In London I was cookbook-less and made mostly veggie-filled omelettes in a dingy basement kitchen of the residence I shared with American college students also studying in London. My roommate, Suzy, and I sometimes made cakes from from- horrors- a mix. The kitchen was not sufficient for making cakes from scratch.

Back at college for my senior year, I lived with five roommates and cooked dinner once a week for everyone, wearing my London Underground apron. I cooked many batches of spaghetti sauce and made many pans of brownies. I also cooked from the companion cookbook to Smart Cooking, The Lighhearted Cookbook.

I left the apron and the cookbooks with my parents when I travelled around Australia for a year after graduation. In Australia I baked many potatoes and barbecued a lot of chicken over campfires.

In Boston for graduate school, the apron re-emerged. My roommate, Sarah, gave me The Silver Palate Cookbook, and I cooked cajun burgers and herb wrapped beef tenderloin from it and its companion, The Good Times Cookbook.

In Los Angeles, working in the film industry, I hosted many dinner parties and culled most of my recipes from the above mentioned cookbooks. I bought this chocolate desserts cookbook on sale on a whim and tested many of its recipes at my dinner parties.

And then I met Tim. Not at a dinner party but on a blind date. He loved to cook, too, and he also had quite a cookbook collection, although he didn't have a London Underground apron, or any apron at all. We cooked pesco-vegetarian dinners together and I baked him some of my old family cake recipes wearing my London Underground apron.

And then we got married and our cookbook collection merged.

Tim likes to give me cake recipe books. Southern Cakes is my most favorite. If you have only one cake recipe book, have this one.

And then the girls arrived. The delight of testing new recipes turned to the drudgery of nightly meal planning. But the girls and I bake together. A lot. And I still try out new recipes. Often the new recipes come from blogs. I still turn to my old cookbooks. I find a soul-soothing comfort in the ripped pages of my Fannie Farmer and the food-stained pages of my college cookbooks and the Silver Palate books.

Sometimes the girls wear the apron. I have to tie it in the back so it's not too long. Caroline is only four years away from the age I was when Suzanne gave it to me. Over the years I forgot where the apron came from. I simply grabbed it, tied it on and began cooking. It wasn't until Caroline asked me about it last week that I remembered.  I wonder if Suzanne remembers giving it to me. I'll make a note to ask her.

Peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes

When I was little my father told me he loved Reese's Peanut Butter Cups when he was a young boy and that he used to eat a lot of them to help calm his nerves. Apparently his mother, my grandmother, told him that peanut butter calmed the nerves.

So, sometimes, like last night after Caroline had a big blow out about getting in the shower, I have a need for a little peanut butter and chocolate to calm my nerves. Not certain if it's the soothing process of baking or the consumption part of it that actually calms the nerves - perhaps a combination of the two. Regardless, it's entirely decadent and satisfying.

Peanut Butter Cupcakes:

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 cup smooth natural peanut butter
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs

Sift flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together in a mixing bowl. Add graham cracker crumbs (make your own in the blender!). Add the peanut butter and the butter and beat until mixed. Add the milk and vanilla. Beat until mixed. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each one. Pour into greased cupcake pan or paper cupcake liners.

Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees F. Makes 24 cupcakes.

Hungarian Chocolate Frosting:

5 oz unsweetened chocolate
1/4 cup hot water
2 1/4 cups confectioner sugar
2 egg yolks
6 tablespoons soft butter


Melt chocolate in double boiler (don't try to zap it in the microwave. You need it over the boiling water to cook the egg yolks). Add the confectioner sugar and the hot water and beat with a spoon. Add the egg yolks and blend in. Beat in the butter, one tablespoon at a time, waiting for each one to melt before adding the next.

Spread on the cupcakes while the frosting is still warm.

Rover in the road

Katherine and I are very much alike which is one of the reasons I suspect we clash so much. If there's any opportunity for mischief I know she'll grab it. I know this because I have very clear memories of my own mischievous behavior. And Katherine and Caroline love to hear about all the times I misbehaved as a child - something my mother has been enjoying indulging them with during our visit!

One of the stories that both girls love to hear is about me running some errands with my mother when I was three years old. The bank was our first stop. My mother left me inside the Rover, in the front seat and told me she was running into the bank and would be right back. As a final parting word she reminded me not to touch anything.

I watched as she rounded the corner and disappeared into the bank and then I immediately reached out and grabbed the gear shift, shifting the car into neutral. With no parking brake on, the Rover slowly slipped off the slight incline into the street and stopped in the road. Terrified, I hid as much of myself as possible under the front seat.

When my mother returned a few moments later she was shocked to discover the car blocking traffic in the middle of the street and no sign of me. When she found me under the front seat she was so relieved that I was spared punishment.

Tonight, on our walk to a neighborhood restaurant, I showed Caroline the exact spot where the incident occurred and she took a picture of me with my mother:

In the picture we're standing on the very incline that the Rover rolled down. The bank is still there. That's Caroline's finger covering up the lower left corner of the frame.

Ten years Later. Ten things I remember.

A lot happens in ten years but every year when this day - August 26th -  comes around I spend a few minutes thinking about that day, about us when it was only us. About how it all started.


1. Our first phone call. We chatted for fifteen minutes and then Tim hung up. I couldn't figure out why Tim hadn't suggested a date; it seemed like we'd had a fun conversation. My friend Heather who had given him my number laughed when I told her and said Tim was a very proper Southern gentleman and I should expect his phone call in the next few days.


2. Our first date at Ago restaurant. At the end of the date Tim told me how much he had enjoyed meeting me and could he call me again. Wow. I was impressed. He had me right there. When I told my sister I'd had a great blind date she said: "So tell me about my future brother-in-law."


3. Our third date. Hiking. A great date.


4. Flowers. A lot of flowers. A Toblerone chocolate cake on my birthday. A potted plant and A LOT of dirt fell on the birthday cake I made for Tim. I didn't tell him until after he'd eaten it and told me it was the best birthday cake he'd ever eaten.


5. Three days of giggling and laughing in Cabo.


6. The ceremony was my favorite part of the whole day. I wasn't expecting that. Even today that's what I love remembering the most. Everything about it.
Tim's childhood friend, a minister, started the ceremony with: "Today we are here to celebrate the marriage of Anne and Tim." I can hear her voice.
My father walked me down the aisle and then forgot to stand up and say, "we do" when the minister asked who was giving me away, leaving my mother to stand up alone and declare: "I do."
The two of us saying our vows in clear, confident voices. I surprised myself. I was expecting my voice to be shaky.
Tim had a hard time getting the ring on my finger. We laughed.
Walking - no floating - back up the aisle at the end of the ceremony. One of the most wonderful moments of the whole day.


7. And then disaster. My sisters and girlfriends couldn't figure out how to get the wedding dress bustle up. Three people were fiddling around under my dress and no one could figure it out. Finally, we called the store where I had bought it and turned out they mistakenly put a different bustle system in than originally planned. Thanks a lot.


8. Ten minutes before the dinner was supposed to start the wedding cake had not arrived. But when they told me I didn't care. This was my wedding day nothing else really mattered (at least once the bustle was up!)  By the time we sat down to dinner the cake had arrived and it couldn't have been more perfect.


9. The dances. We laughed throughout our entire dance. It was terrible. We were terrible dancers.
My father and I were supposed to do the foxtrot but I had no idea what he was doing. He swept me around the dance floor, grinning giddily, while I laughed and kept repeating: "This is NOT the foxtrot they taught me at Arthur Murray's!"
My sister and a friend performed a jive. This helped everyone forget our bad dances and get out on the dance floor.


10. At one in the morning when everything was over we realized we had forgotten to arrange a way to get to the hotel so we walked through the warm summer air along Bloor Street to our hotel. Much more fun then taking a taxi.


Happy Anniversary T.

Fly on the wall - day in the life of a hollywood production company

After guiding his spaceship-like Porsche into his private parking space on the Warner Bros. lot, Peter enters his company's office, in Building 81, just down the hall from Clint Eastwood's production company. A year ago Peter partnered with an A-list actor and acquired these hips digs in this much sought-after building. Peter walks through the lobby, past the framed black and white framed posters of classic films that he had nothing to do with, past the door leading to the bathroom that contains an orgy- size shower that Steven Seagal had designed when he occupied this space. He doesn't notice the new, overly-smily intern sitting at the reception desk.

Further into the office he nods a good morning to Greg, assistant to Anne, the VP of Development.
"Can I have a cappucino?"Peter asks.
"You got it," Greg answers, jumping up.
Greg beckons the intern to follow him. "This morning," he says to the intern in the kitchen, "you will learn to make the perfect cup of cappuccino."
"Great!" The intern exclaims.
"Making cappucino is a pain in the ass," Greg says, struggling to clean the steamer spout. The intern's broad smile disappears.

"Get me my brother!" Peter shouts out to Hannah, his perky blonde assistant who is attractive but not so attractive as to make the MAW (model, actress, whatever) wife jealous.

Hannah quickly dials the number, one of hundreds she has memorized.
"Tom?" She says. She's very polite, very proper, very efficient. "I've got your brother, Peter, calling for you." She places Tom on hold, swivels around in her chair, gets up and enters Peter's domain, a spacious office modeled after Sylvester Stallone's office, replete with a sink-in, big-enough-for-sex-sofa, German 1970s black leather and metal chairs and a glass desk perfectly organized for the day by the super-assistant. "Tom's on two," she says and then she closes the door behind her. A day at Halo Pictures has begun.

The phone buzzes non-stop. The two assistants handle three or four calls at once. Anne doesn't allow the intern to answer the phones after she twice gave Lisa the incorrect name of callers. Anne will fire the intern later today when she has time. For now, she scrambles to put together notes for Peter's latest "great" idea: a romantic comedy set in white trash culture.

Greg and the intern reappear with the perfect cup of cappuccino. Hannah knocks on Peter's door, enters and places the cup on top of a napkin in the far right corner of the desk.

And then Brian saunters in. He wears gym shorts and a black T-shirt and sneakers. He's been playing basketball on the set of the hit TV show that put him on the map.
"Hey! I'm Brian," he says casually to the intern.  He offers his hand. The intern's jaw drops. She stammers. "Welcome aboard," Brian says.

Hannah catches her breath as Brian approaches. He defines sexy. Even in his sweaty, post-work-out mode, or maybe because of it. She stands up as he leans in to kiss her and offers him her mouth. She always kisses him on the lips.

Anne isn't aware Brian is in the office. She's on the phone fighting with an agent who won't give her the spec script that went out that morning. Brian knocks on her door, gives her a big smile and makes a comical gesture about the agent on the phone. He comes around her desk and kisses her firmly on the cheek. Anne hangs up, follows him out to the assistant area where Hannah makes adept small talk with him.

"Brian!" Peter says too exuberantly, emerging from his office. Next to Brian, Peter seems small and nerdy in his tight black pants, tight black T-shirt and army boots.  "How are you?" He laughs giddily. Anne returns to her office and rolls her eyes. Just last night Peter had whined to her about not being invited to Peter's party over the weekend.

Inside Peter's office, Brian throws himself onto the oversize sofa. He puts his hand up his T-shirt and plays with it, revealing his taut stomach. Does he notice the picture of Peter's nubile twenty-year old wife in the Demi Moore naked-while-pregnant pose? Or the naked post-baby picture of the perfectly whittled body with just a hint of pubic hair showing? Or the naked with two-year old child card that went out this past Christmas? If so, he doesn't comment.

Instead, he says, "so I've been thinking. I don't want to do romantic comedies. I want to concentrate on smart thrillers, dark dramas."

Peter's goofy smile fades. He's spent the last year looking for romantic comedies for Brian to headline. He spent all weekend working on his white trash rom-com idea.

"Hannah! Get Anne in here!"

Anne hears the desperate shout before Hannah summons her. In Peter's office she doesn't sit on the sex-sofa with Brian. She sits on one of the very uncomfortable chairs to get a better view. She knows something significant must have happened because neither Brian nor Peter say anything.
"Great shoes," Brian finally says. Anne just bought the leopard skin shoes at the Nordstrom sale that weekend, her only respite from twenty scripts and two five-hundred page manuscripts she had to read.
"Thanks," she says.
"Okay guys, good to see you. Gotta run." And with that Brian is off, but not before kissing Lisa and Hannah goodbye.

"Anne, we'll reschedule the white trash meeting," Peter says. "Hannah, cancel my lunch and get me Dr. Rosenbaum on the phone."
Everyone, except the intern, knows that when Peter wants Dr. Rosenbaum, his shrink, their day will be miserable.

After she gets the shrink on the phone, Hannah comes to tell Anne about Brian not wanting to do rom-coms. Anne shrugs.
"We'll make the white trash rom-com a white trash thriller."

In Hollywood there are many ways to spin a story.



**All names except for mine, Clint Eastwood's and Steven Seagal's have been changed to protect the guilty.

Remembering Jasper

The first time I saw him he was sitting on the sun splashed dining room windowsill at my sister's house in Canada. She had kept him and his brother for a month until they were old enough to get the vaccines needed to enter the US. She and her family called him "The Brave One." His little three-pound kitten self was unimaginably cute. He seemed unimpressed with me, even when I told him I was there to take him home to California. He opened his mouth in a yawn and stretched out.

Twelve hours later I lay in my little one bedroom apartment in Hollywood listening to him running about, crunching loudly on food and periodically scratching, scratching, scratching in the litter box. I didn't sleep that first night. Somewhere I had read that when you first got a cat you should confine them to one room. My mistake was confining he and his brother to my bedroom.

I named him Jasper. I don't know why. It was a name that came to me and it seemed to fit. I kicked him, along with his brother Charles, out of my bedroom at night so I could sleep. He and Charles found a comfy spot to sleep at the back of a closet in the living room. Every morning they came scratching on the door at 7:30 and got into bed with me. After a month I let them sleep with me. They slept snuggled against me, Jasper usually on top of the covers, on my leg, all night long. The boys, as I came to call them, always greeted me at the door when I came home from work. Jasper insisted on being picked up and snuggling against my shoulder. If I was carrying groceries and went into the kitchen first, he would climb onto me, shouting at me.

Jasper grew bigger and bigger and by the time he was two he weighed fourteen pounds. I had moved into a two bedroom apartment with a friend and he started sleeping under the covers with me, often on top of me, his buck tooth digging into me. Every evening when he heard my car pulling into the back he would race down the hall to the back door where he greeted me, shouting and demanding to be picked up. He followed me from room to room much like a dog. He came when he was called. He stopped tearing around the apartment when I asked him to. He was amazingly cooperative. He loved meeting new people. Once I gave a cocktail party for my college's LA alumni branch. The Canadian Consular General attended with his wife. Jasper spent the whole party in between them, being petted and fawned over.

By the time he was five he weighed 16 pounds, a weight he remained at for most of his life. He was a large cat. The vet suggested he should lose weight. I moved into a one bedroom apartment by myself and Jasper was furious at the move. He didn't greet me at the door for two weeks. But he came to accept that apartment. He often sat outside on the porch I screened in for him, but his favorite spot was a little sleeper that attached to the windowsill at the front of the apartment where he had a perfect view off all the goings-ons of the eclectic residents. Every evening he cuddled up on me while I read my scripts and manuscripts for work. He attended every dinner party I gave, always amusing the guests by jumping into recently abandoned chairs and sitting upright, as though he had every right to be there. Which he did.

He was athletic; he could jump great big leaps. He caught a bird who flew into my apartment and ate the whole thing save for a few feathers. His brother helped, of course. But I know it was Jasper who really caught the bird. Once I took him to Toronto with me for the holidays and my parents had recently acquired a new Airedale puppy. Unlike his brother who was determined to get into a knock down drag-out fight with that dog, Jasper wanted nothing to do with him. In order to get away from one of his brother's run-ins with the puppy he took a flying leap that must have carried him five feet into the air and at least seven feet across. My father, a witness, said it was a "heroic leap."

He happily moved into a little house when I married Tim and then made the trek north with us when we moved to San Francisco. In San Francisco he found his happiest spot, the top deck of a cat throne in a sunny, warm, south-facing bay window on the second floor. In San Fransisco he posed for his portrait, spending a whole day sitting on the couch in the living room while the artist tried to paint him. He accepted both my girls, letting them pat him and not running away when they shrieked at him. He was an amazingly tolerant fellow.

In San Francisco he became an adventurous cat. One night Tim came home and while he was bringing a large load of dry cleaning in, the boys slipped out the door. I heard Charles crying loudly and finally found him outside the front door but no Jasper. It was a typically windy, cool San Francisco night. I called Jasper a few times and he came galloping down the sidewalk, back up the steps and into the house, meowing loudly as if to say, "what? I was out for a stroll."

 We had a sunny deck and garden in that San Francisco house and I bought leashes for the boys and we started bringing them outside with us. Jasper loved this privilege. It was the first time in his eight years that he had ever spent time outside. He seemed happy to stay on the deck. We started letting him out without a leash. Then we became a little too comfortable with the whole thing and would go inside to get something, leaving the boys outside. A few times Jasper wandered off the deck into the garden. He always came back when he was called. Once, we forgot he was outside. Caroline was not yet two and I was upstairs with her when I heard terrible cat fighting noises. I knew at once it was Jasper. I raced down the stairs with Caroline following me and out the door. No Jasper. Not on the deck, not in the garden. Someone from the house behind ours said he saw two cats fighting in the next garden over and one looked like a Siamese. I called him and called him. So did Caroline. He didn't come. And then I saw him, tentatively poking his head out from under our next door neighbor's back porch. He wanted to come but was too terrified. Tim climbed over the fence and handed him to me. The leash went back on.

He moved back to Los Angeles with us and eventually found a comfortable spot on the top deck of the cat throne in front of a breezy window. He learned to stay out of the girls' way. He spent four nights in the ICU at the vet with pancreatitis. He lost a little weight. He started slowing down. He stopped greeting me at the door. But he still managed to catch a lizard who had made its way into our house. He and his brother ate everything save the tail.

He slowly developed an understanding with the girls. They pet him on our bed. He hissed at Katie once when she was three. She bit his ear. I told her he was within his rights and she said she knew that. She liked to talk about that, how Jasper had hissed at her only once when she "bited his ear." He knew just how to handle a child who pushed her boundaries. He visited each of the girls classrooms for four years running, letting all the children pat him. He enjoyed those outings.

Katie fell madly in love with Jasper, the cat who didn't run away when she pet him, the cat who let her lie on top of him, the cat who hung like a sack of potatoes when she picked him up, the cat who came in to her room every night to say good night. The first time she slept over at a friend's house I found Jasper sitting on her bed at seven o'clock, waiting for his little girl to come home and go to bed. He was a good, good cat.

Every night after the girls went to bed, Jasper ate his supper and came to sit with us on the sofa until it was time for bed. He always followed me to bed and slept with me. It was such a comfort to wake up with his hot little body pressing into me.

Jasper didn't choose me. Nor did I choose him. He just happened to be born to the litter of cats that was available when my sister called looking for cats as a gift for me. But he accepted me, was devoted to me and provided me with sixteen years of loyal companionship. He was always there, affectionately pressing his head into my shoulder or laying his paws across my lap. He sensed when I was upset and needed comfort. He didn't ask for much but he gave so much. He lived a good life and was very loved. In the last few years when I ran into someone I knew a long time ago, they would say, "Oh my gosh! You still have those cats?" Everyone who met Jasper remembered him. He was just that kind of cat.

On the second day I had Jasper, sixteen years ago, when I was twenty-six, I made a pact with him. I told him I would always love him and take care of him as best as I possibly could if he would be the best cat ever. We both made good on that pact. I wouldn't change a thing and I don't think he would either.

Jasper

April 21, 1993 - August 13, 2009