I have a tie for most beautiful of the evening:
Queen Latifah
Carey Mulligan
The Queen, because she shows the world curvy is gorgeous, and Mulligan, because she is young, edgy, and adorable.
Kristen Stewart is a close runner up. I like that she’s uncomfortable being there and can imagine her wearing high tops under her Marchesa dress.
Most original: Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Sarah Jessica Parker.
I’m at lunch yesterday with my son Jack. We look at the menu and as we’re about to order, I see it’s cash only. I don’t have enough for both of us to eat so I tell him to order and I’ll have tea. I’m fine with that.
A minute later, a woman comes over to me and says, “I couldn’t help but overhear you. Would $20 cover your lunch?”
I’m speechless. Jack is speechless. She says, “I know what it’s like to want to have lunch with your kid. Please, take it.”
I do. I write her a check. She tells me her name is Narda Zacchino. She is both beautiful and kind. This act of kindness leads to more talk. I learn she had been an editor at both the SF Chronicle and the LA Times. She’s now a fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications. With her was her husband, the political columnist Robert Scheer.
When our lunch comes, Jack says, “People are amazing. Even strangers.”
For the first dozen or so years of my career, I was a book publicist. I worked at different Bay Area publishing companies, including Ten Speed Press (eclectica), Mercury House (literary fiction), EarthWorks (environmental), Nolo (self help law) and Collins Publishers SF (big picture books, food and sports). I always liked being a publicist because I got to visit different people’s worlds, briefly, and then leave.
Turns out, I’ve visited a lot of strange worlds. So, as I procrastinate finishing “Ravenous”, my food and eating memoir which is due at my publishers end of this month, I thought I’d share a few stories.
It was 1987, and I was the receptionist at Ten Speed Press. Somehow, while answering the phone and taking messages, I booked Ermie Mickler, author of the seminal and wonderful “White Trash Cooking” on the David Letterman show. I got promoted to publicist the next week.
I flew to New York and met Ernie and his partner, whose name I no longer remember. We went to the Letterman show, where Ernie was booked to cook chicken feet.
Ernie doused an electric skillet with enough oil to cause a heart attack from just looking at it. When the oil was hot, Ernie cooked the feet, which still had the toenails on. The feet curled in on themselves, turning into something from a horror movie. I seem to remember some jokes about foot fetish. Ernie ate a few feet on air, I think Letterman demurred.
After the show, we went to get some drinks down in the meat packing district, which was a lot more funky then than it is today. After, I put Ernie and his friend into a cab, then stood on the corner, waiting for another one to show. It didn’t. But a cop car kept circling the block, and finally stopped and pulled up to speak with me.
They thought I was a hooker.
I said, pardon me, but do hookers generally wear a black pant suit, pumps, pearls, and carry a Coach briefcase?
You have a point, they told me.
Still, I said, thanks for the thought.
Eventually I caught a cab and called it a night.
That wasn’t the last time I visited the Letterman Show. About a year later, I worked on a weird little book called “How to Repair Food“. I pitched it to the show, saying that if you stick limp celery into ice water, it stands straight up again. Well, they loved that, so I’m soon back to the show with the book’s co-author, John Bear, who demonstrated how to make a limp celery stalk erect.
I call this period of my career, my “food porn phase.”
Which was shortly to be followed by the “scatological phase.”
KQED Forum will be doing a full hour on the Yoga Journal SF Conference Friday, 1/29, 10 AM.
Interviewed for a piece in today’s New York Times.
Not the planet, the music website. I’m always ridiculously late to learn about current technology, though I’m married to technology man (TM).
TM introduced me to Pandora Internet Radio and I am in love! Just put in the artists you like and it plays back those artists and those they think you will like. So far, batting close to 100. Such a great site.
I am not a fickle woman. I have very, VERY few crushes and when I do, they last for a long time. Like Viggo Mortensen. As Aragon in Lord of the Rings, he was a beautiful and soulful warrior, and a terrific actor. My crush lasted for years.
And now, Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart. Bridges is a remarkable actor. Handsome, powerful, intelligent, creative, and married to the same woman forever. He’s a photographer, singer, and composer — an iconoclast as well as a Renaissance man. And that beard. mmm mmm. My new official crush…
Donate what you can. I donated to Doctors without Borders.
I read today that Stanford Professional Publishing Course is closing.
I was on the faculty of the course from 1988 to 2000. I have many fine memories teaching there, sharing my subversive pr campaigns on books ranging from the brilliant White Trash Cooking to Flattened Fauna. I also sat in on some classes including one taught by John Kennedy, Jr. on the planning and launch of George Magazine. One earnest student asked him what the mission statement of magazine was. He turned beet red and said, “Next question?” prompting the class to crack up.
I’m sorry to see the course close down. But I guess it’s getting harder and harder for companies to justify the thousands of dollars it takes to send a person.
Ciao SPPC. I salute you!
A beautiful piece by Roger Ebert on no longer being able to eat food.