A few years ago my friend Janet said to me “I’m saying yes, yes to everything.”
I thought, wow, Kimberly just said the same thing to me a few months before. She said, “Fredde, I’m saying yes to everything, every single new opportunity, it’s yes.” I didn’t want to be left behind — I prefer no – so I tried to get out of my comfort zone and sometimes, but not all the time, I was going to say “Yes!” Read the rest of this entry »
Everyone is always moving on to the next big thing. What is up with you people? That cupcake fad sure took off. I knew why, and I was on it so fast. I’m still on it in case anyone asks. Like someone will. In the same way that I always came home from a trip to London, Paris or even New York sporting a new fashion trend, I was carting back boxes of Magnolia cupcakes from the bakery’s West Village location as gifts for friends. Turning them all on to my addiction.
I’m not fickle. In fact I’m the opposite, loyal through and through. All y’all have moved on to pies or those fancy small French macaroons. I’m sticking by the cupcake. Oh, yes I am.
So, how come it took you so long to get into the biscuit craze? Can I toot my own horn here and tell you how long I’ve been a fan of the biscuit? Jumping in to answer before you say no. A long-ass time. My whole life, in fact. My southern grandmother, we called her Granny, made them for me. Pretty sure she dunked them in some bacon fat before they went into the oven. Those buttery, flakey biscuits came out perfect. Served piping hot, butter melting everywhere, dripping onto the plate for my first unforgettable bite. There is nothing quite like it. Until now. There are restaurants in Los Angeles serving piping hot, perfect biscuits. My friend Andrea called yesterday to update me: “Yet another place serving biscuits, a great review today AND it’s on Abbott Kinney.” “Let’s go right now,” I said after jumping up and down. And we did. Read the rest of this entry »
Mother’s Day was always a meaningful day in my life, but not because of my own mother. Because of my father’s mother. She was born on a day in May that fell on or near Mother’s Day. Each year her family celebrated her birthday on Mother’s Day, no matter what the date of her actual birthday. Her large clan would all come to her little house, deep in the Valley, to honor her. Most of them lived nearby, but not us.
We would hop in the back of my dad’s convertible car and head over Coldwater Canyon. He drove with only one hand on the wheel. My dad was handicapped and needed his other hand for the controls that were attached to the steering wheel, both the gas and brake in one. It was very unsteady. Add to that the sharp curves going over the mountain, his cigar smoke filling my lungs, and his spit flying back into our faces that we tried dodging — well, it was quite the E ticket ride. (For those born after they were discontinued in 1982, E tickets were for Disneyland’s most thrilling attractions.) Read the rest of this entry »
First of all, you were born on Mother’s Day and I cannot think of a better gift. Ten days late with full chubby cheeks, you could lift your head up, which would blow the nurses away. You never stopped blowing me away.
By four months old, your dad and I were walking you in and out of New York museums. You also inexplicably turned orange which alarmed your parents so much that I made an unwell baby visit to the pediatrician. He looked at you and asked right away if we were feeding you a lot of carrots. Oops my bad. Yes, WAY too many jars of strained carrots, your favorite. By age one, I knew you already appreciated art. You could also finish sentences in your baby books. Well, to be fair, one-word sentences. This was very impressive to the other mother’s in Washington Square Park where we played every day.
Turning you orange, one bite of carrots at a time!!
What the hell is Happy Hour and why is everyone talking about it? The happiest hour for me is when I eat. But if it means standing around with drinks in your hand, eating from some communal barrel of glop, count me out. I don’t think Happy Hour would have appeal for me even if it were at a restaurant I wanted to go to. It just sounds awful. Or am I a snob?
The other day, I was recommending my new favorite restaurant in L.A., Tar and Roses, to someone who then asked, “Do they have a Happy Hour?” I was baffled by the question. It’s so foreign to me.
And then I got an invitation to join my daughter and her best friend Cody and a bunch of their hot 27-year-old friends for what I thought was dinner. But it wasn’t. It was Happy Hour at some Mexican restaurant’s bar (Marix Tex Mex). And while I think it’s brilliant for young people not yet making big money to be able to eat like that, I just couldn’t do it. I asked for a proper menu. Read the rest of this entry »
Alan,
Thank you for everything. Let me start at the beginning. When I was just a wee thing (well, maybe I’m still a wee thing), at a barely verbal age, you taught me, your puppet, this trick and we took the act on the road, performing it for any visitor.
Alan: What’s 2 + 2?
Fredde: 4.
Alan: What’s 4+4?
Fredde: 8.
Alan: 8+8?
Fredde: 16.
Alan: 16+16?
Fredde: 32.
Alan: 32+32?
Fredde: 64.
And magically Alan, you made me appear to be a genius. Which was a far stretch — because genius, I would never be. You were my very smart older brother and I was your academically-challenged little sister. You carried the heavy burden very early in life of having to take care of me. And, look at the job you did! Read the rest of this entry »
I didn’t elect myself to be the poster person for skin cancer but that is who I am. It’s not a title I’m proud of, though I do share that challenged DNA with my brother. It’s our fate. Let me warn you ahead of time that I might get way too graphic here, so stop reading if you can’t stomach it.
At just 29 years old, living in New York, I felt a zit on the back of my neck. When it didn’t seem to go away for months and months, I went to a family friend and doctor in Beverly Hills, a plastic surgeon I had once worked for and asked him to shoot it up with whatever it is that makes pimples disappear. He took one look at the back of my neck and said skin cancer. I emphatically told him it couldn’t be, that it definitely wasn’t and that he should get that needle out and just make it go away. Reluctantly, he did but not without a lecture on my family history. Being a family friend for years, he had removed many skin cancers from both of my afflicted, white, sensitive-skinned parents. And now, my brother was starting to deal with basal cell skin cancer. “Not me!!! Just shoot that mother-fucker of a zit up and I’ll be fine.” And yes, those were my exact words.
Some months passed and now it looked really freaky, though I couldn’t see the back of my neck, I could tell by feeling that it wasn’t right. My fault for not listening. I went back to the doctor, Kurt Wagner, and he did a biopsy. After he called me with the report, I went in for my first of many years of surgeries to remove a lifetime of sun damage. Read the rest of this entry »
As a half-and-halfer who leaned too much to the gentile side, I might have secretly liked one Jewish holiday — Passover. To be honest, it’s the only one I knew. Barely. “We’re going to Seder dinner at Celie’s,” my dad would announce each year. Celie was my dad’s younger sister who treated him like the baby of the family. My dad, known as Duke, and stricken with polio as a child, walked his whole life with a brace & cane. It was Celie, till she died, who hand made for him the flesh-colored, stretchy compression socks that improved his circulation. Chappy, my aunt Celie’s husband — okay, my uncle — would conduct a pretty serious, religious event. He was sanctimonious, no-nonsense, and an easy foil for my fun-loving dad. I always came starved, but ate very little.
This was a rowdy, boisterous group — a ton of aunts, uncles and cousins that all knew each other well and lived in the VALLEY. They seemed to include my brother in their group. Me, not so much. So, I clung to my dad for comfort, laughing at and enjoying everything he said, hanging on like it was his last day on earth. That’s how it was with us all my life. He was an older dad. Magical. My hero. And out there in the Valley I was often petrified. I secretly longed for that other soon-to-be-celebrated holiday, Easter — with the gentiles. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m bold sometimes. Shameless really. I had moved with my kids to Santa Monica, just a few blocks from a coveted, very hard-to-get-into nursery school. Circle of Children. I knew someone (hadn’t seen him in years) that was famous, actually, his wife was the famous one, and I read somewhere that their kid went to this school. I totally used the connection, dropping the name at my interview — without permission — and got myself, or rather my son Barnaby, in. I said I was shameless. A mother’s gotta do what a mother’s gotta do. Not only did I use that connection but I revealed to close friends my secret entree into this “private club” of a preschool, and they got their kids in too.
This place totally catered to celebrities, so much so, that when I met a big-name actress at a party, she told me she pulled her son from the school because of the obsequious manner in which famous parents there, including herself, were treated. And she is really famous, but it sickened her. And there was a hierarchy; we, the not-remotely-famous, were put in the lower, B group, and not with the A-listers. The parents of Barnaby’s group were television actors, or people who created TV shows, and losers like me. Barnaby was an outside kid. Literally, kept outside. Inside, with a roof over their heads, were the name kids. Each morning, I threw on my sweats (confession: I didn’t throw them on, I slept in them), pinned up my hair, applied no makeup and dropped my kid off, having to pass Spielberg, Rob Reiner, Tom Hanks and sometimes Schwarzenegger. Daily. Oy, it was annoying. Your kid is only three or four years old, you can’t just drop him on the corner and say good-bye. You had to park and walk in each day, passing these people like you were on a studio lot. Preschool is not AA, I can break anonymity here. At a certain point each day, the B group got to mix it up with celeb kids, and on one particular day when I went to fetch Barnaby, a teacher pulled me aside. Apparently Barnaby hit the Hanks kid. The teacher had both kids in tow. I looked down at my son and said, “Say you’re sorry to Chester, Barnaby.” “I’m sowwy, Chester.” “Great, let’s go.” I always wanted to get out of there fast. I felt like we were imposters. Read the rest of this entry »
Not sure how I got roped into it, but it would be Easter vacation, and I was game to head with a group of friends to a hotel I knew and loved — The Riviera in Palm Springs. My friend Libbie and I hitched a ride. Not really hitched, but, you know, found someone driving there, and asked if they wouldn’t mind dropping us off. I didn’t do freeways, hated driving in general. So there we were. No car. But, at a great hotel with a pool, and that’s all I needed. Well, that and a good turkey sandwich. Or turkey club.
One of the girls’ dads had made all the arrangements and what Libbie and I paid was very low. Oh, by the way, this was a one-bedroom suite with way too many of us.
We parked ourselves on the couches and the rest took the bedroom. All good. We would wake up, drink our Cokes (at least that’s what I drank) and head to the pool. That pool area was a club scene. We girls were hot enough but there were hot girls and guys everywhere. Each lounge chair was taken. We all cared way too much about our tans. Baby oil, often mixed with iodine, and tanning cream was abundant. A sea of aluminum reflectors held under chins nearly blinded you in the already too-bright desert sun. The smell of Coppertone permeated the air. I put in record-breaking hours lying in that hot desert sun. (I now put in record-breaking hours at the dermatologist.) Read the rest of this entry »