Posts Tagged ‘Bruce Marder’

Little Mermaid

Saturday, March 5th, 2011

me, always swimming

As a little girl, I loved to swim, still do. Just about any chance I got to go swimming, I would. I dreamed of having my own pool. My bigger dreams were to be an Olympian swimmer and also to swim the English Channel.

Pools and water became an obsession as well as a love. I would look into my backyard and fantasize a swimming pool. It never appeared. My dad always lived in an apartment building with a pool so there was usually a place for me to swim. When I was older and using his for exercise, I would have to share it with his elderly neighbors. They could get nasty and it was tricky navigating around their crankiness. Some of them became my new best friends in life … as long as we stayed in our own lanes.

When I saw the David Hockney series of pools, I totally understood how the swimming pool was his muse.

David Hockney's A Bigger Splash, 1967

When I was a freshman in high school and was forced to swim, I often lied and said I had my period, which in fact I really didn’t get until my sophomore year. I felt more comfortable and relaxed holding my breath under water than just about anywhere else. I wasn’t really aware of how therapeutic it was, but swimming under water there put me in a serene state, one I have never found again.

I went to a high school that housed one of the most famous pools in the world. Beverly Hills High School has an Olympic-size swimming pool with a hardwood floor that closes over it to become a basketball court. Mesmerizing. You’ve probably seen it in Frank Capra’s Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which was filmed on location there. Remember James Stewart & Donna Reed falling into the pool in their dance clothes? Well, I won swim contests in that pool during lazy summers. And not just won, but set some serious records. (more…)

Germ Warfare

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

me and the friends that surrounded me, Tracy, Kimberly and Stacey


It is the end of an era. I just found out that Broadway Deli in Santa Monica closed. I wasn’t about to recommend it or anything, it really wasn’t all that exciting. But I’m sort of blown away by the news. It held a lot of sentimental memories for me. When the ex-husband left me for another woman — okay, that wasn’t in the least bit shocking, but it happened — I was shaken. I’d walk up to tables of random people at the Broadway Deli and announce that my husband just left me for another woman and did they happen to know of anyone they could set me up with. Sometimes, friends would point to tables I missed and say, “Oh, look you haven’t told those people over there, or them there.” And so I would march up to complete strangers and do my line.

When the long predicted (by my father) infidelity happened, my friends showered me with support and we often ate dinner at the Broadway Deli. Sometimes also at Remi, next door, but that too closed, ages ago. I didn’t go to Broadway Deli much anymore, but it is where I had my first date with the man that would become my future husband. I love the memory of that date. It’s a part of my history, my story. Our story.

He will tell you I threw myself at him. And I have my version. You can be the judge.

I was having breakfast at Nate ‘n Al’s — basically my father’s commissary. He ate there every day except Sundays when he said “they bused in the gentiles”. This was after the not-so-shocking news about my current husband which my father had predicted for twelve long years. My dad would often say, “He will leave you for a girl he meets in the program”. He meant my husband will find a woman in the PHD program he was enrolled in. And he did exactly that. Hey, it’s all good, in case you think I’m some sort of a victim, which I’m not. It was full speed ahead or in my dad’s philosophy “NEXT!” which is what he would say if a show was cancelled or his movie project fell through. Only, I use it (and even he did) for relationships too. If it ends: NEXT!!! So, in the spirit of Next, I was with him early (which I hate) and dressed nicely, maybe even with a touch of makeup (rare ). At our table was Rodney Dangerfield and Bob Hilliard, a comedy writer who had written for the “Honeymooners.” So, you get the idea, all old Jews and me. (That should be the title of my book, “All old Jews and Me”. I want to remember that. But, I better use it quick or it will be “All old Jews, Including Me.”) (more…)