Posts Tagged ‘Freddie Duke’
Tuesday, March 12th, 2013
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. (more…)
Tags: fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, Libbie Lane clothes, Libbie Lane purses, Pea Soup recipe, preschool, pulling strings to get into schools, schools filled with celebs, treated like a second class citizen because you're not famous in Hollywood
Posted in Recipes | 17 Comments »
Saturday, March 2nd, 2013
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.) (more…)
Tags: Amazing club sandwiches, baby oil and iodine sun burns, Beverly High friends, coppertone suntan lotion, Diana Boos, easter vacation, fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, hot boys during spring break, Libbie Aroff, riviera hotel palm springs, Shula Benjamins, teen girls on wild vacation, very big tans in the 70's
Posted in Reviews | 7 Comments »
Friday, March 1st, 2013
There was one prerequisite for our birthday dinner for Robin. A red leather booth. Where to find one? So few places left with that old Rat Pack-era feel. I still miss them. One of my all-time favorites was Sneaky Pete’s. On the Sunset Strip. It was next door to Whisky A Go-Go, where Duke’s Coffee Shop was until recently. Waitresses were dressed in really short-skirt barmaid outfits. A place where Johnny Carson sometimes sat in on drums with the musicians. How great was that? Good that it’s been closed for a hundred years, or it might make me miss my father too much. I went there with him all the time for steak and a baked potato with tons of butter, sour cream & chives.
Peggy had gone last week to Dan Tana’s, the dimly lit, checkered-tablecloth, celeb- oriented Italian in West Hollywood. Libbie thought it was perfect for the Robin dinner. Since I never went to Dan Tana’s much back in the day, it would be a nostalgia-free zone – no memories with my dad to weigh me down. Still, I spent the rest of the week toying with the idea of changing restaurants. Many texts and phone calls back and forth between the girls. Robin said she would be just fine if we all met at Nate n’ Al’s, the Beverly Hills deli we all grew up in, but some of us just couldn’t envision a birthday celebration there. So, I never cancelled the reservation — and here is how retro Dan Tana’s is: they never called “to confirm.” (more…)
Tags: Best Girlfriend dinners, Dan Tana's Restaurant, Food in the 70's, fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, growing up in Beverly Hills, I want the 70's back!!!, Lawry's Restaurant, Ma Maison, Red Leather Booth's, retro restaurants Los Angeles, Scandia Restaurant
Posted in Recipes | 3 Comments »
Thursday, February 14th, 2013
A random chick asked me to share a two-bedroom bungalow half a block from the beach on a Venice walk street. The year was 1979. There wasn’t much else going on. I was living in my friend’s kitchen that had I converted to a very small bedroom by simply hanging a Japanese print curtain next to the refrigerator. It was pretty ghetto. But it was easy reaching from my bed for a can of Tab, and I had a six-pack-a-day habit. Anyway, I can’t resist the beach, so I said yes. Problem was, I didn’t know this girl all that well. And soon learned there would be no chicks staying-up-all-night-in-PJ’s laughing. Turns out, she was a full-blown groupie. And an alcoholic. She spent her nights at a recording studio with some band that shared her in the late night hours. Most of her days were spent cleaning the recording studio. Not for money, just because she was a fan. My roommate was never home to pay her rent on time. And if she were home, she would start a fight to get out of paying the rent. Fun times.
I would spend hours listening to a new artist, Elvis Costello, and the song, “Watching the Detectives,” which I would play along with on my drum practice pad outside on the patio. It was a sorry little existence. I never felt safe alone at night, and I was pretty sure my big cat Cosmo, who went missing for hours at a time, had joined a gang. Some nights, I would go with my friend Pam to little bars and joints on the strand, Cosmo trailing behind us. Cosmo wore a scarf the way dogs did in that era, which means I put the scarf on him. He didn’t wake up in the morning and say, “Hey, I think I’ll sport this great red scarf today.” Cosmo would wait outside those little bars for us and then follow me home. By the way, I never drank, so I’m not sure what we were even doing in those joints. Something to get us out of the house, I guess. Most days I wore stars on my face. Sometimes I carried a wand. A combination of vintage and punk clothes was my wardrobe. I was very colorful. Speaking of colorful, the roomie once told me this story. Actually I had heard this story for years, I just didn’t know I was now living with a “famous” person. Or is infamous the better word. (more…)
Tags: Beef Su Chow at Ah Fongs in Beverly Hills, Beef Su Chow recipe by Pauli Moss, Chinese food, delusional director and personal assistants, famous groupies, fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, living in Venice on walk streets in the 70's, wearing stars on my face
Posted in Recipes | 13 Comments »
Saturday, February 2nd, 2013
You’ve heard it, opposites attract. My parents were just about the most opposite you could find. And, I never even thought about that until just now, while sitting down to write about their relationship. Your parents are the only parents you have, so you don’t stop to think, “What did they see in each other?”
My mother was quiet, elegant and intelligent. My father was loud, lovable and crass. Taste was not exactly his strong suit except, of course, his great taste in women.
They met at a party. He saw this stunning, very young, exotic looking woman modern-dancing. Alone. Seductively. Twenty years older, he was intrigued.
Cliff Notes to get you up to speed: They dated. He knocked her up. He said he didn’t want kids. She was set to have an abortion. Her family strong-armed him or he had a change of heart. Or both. She had their first child, my brother Alan but first they had a quickie wedding. In Vegas, where else? First meal in their home together, my mother cooked. My father complained about the way she made the eggs. She threw the whole pan of eggs at him. Two years after the first child, she was pregnant with me. I was a teeny tiny thing. Still am. She had taken the drug DES which would later be known to cause cervical cancer in the daughters of women who took it to prevent miscarriage. (more…)
Tags: B-movie producer Maurice Duke, Divorced parents that got along well, Eveylyn Duke, fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, marriage and divorce, Matzo brie recipe, Maurice Duke, My father married my mother twice, Raised in Beverly Hills, unconventional marriages
Posted in Recipes | 26 Comments »
Saturday, January 19th, 2013
First Life
Lucy was abandoned by her mother at the age of two weeks. She was found next to a big trash bin in an alley in Beverly Hills.
Second life.
Emma, my stepdaughter begged her father to let her keep the kitten at his house in Coldwater Canyon. Lucy moves in to the Coldwater house and is helped by Emma to pee by rubbing low on her belly. Tiny circular strokes, the way a mother cat would lick a kitten to help teach their baby to pee. She is bottle-fed. After a few months she is fully realized kitten that can pee and eat on her own. She does not however fit in all that well. Lucy remains a feral. Docile at times, she is starting to lose her audience. Lucy is not a warm and cozy kitten that wants to be held. Let me put it this way…she wants to, but she will have to bite you.
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Tags: augie duke, cat obit, cats with more than 9 lives, feline obit, feral kittens, fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, Friskies cat food, Iams cat food, Lucy our cat
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
Thursday, December 20th, 2012
One of the most memorable calls of my life was one that I picked up from my answering machine twenty-one years ago, Christmas Day.
It was my first Christmas alone after my husband had left me for another woman (READ THAT STORY HERE). I was still reeling from that hit — and not because we had some loving marriage, but because of the betrayal.
I had gone on two very casual dates with a new man. Didn’t know if there would be a third. First date was for lunch at the Broadway Deli in Santa Monica, the second was dinner at Remi, a great Italian restaurant. Both were on the Third Street Promenade, and are now gone. It was followed by a game of pool in a sports bar across the way. Throughout both dates, I kept the conversation going, filling in the empty spaces with my unique backstory – growing up in the slums of Beverly Hills, my one-of-a-kind, loudmouth producer dad, my quirky, Texas-born, goyishe mom. Yakety yakety yak. Was he even listening? Who knows? The first date was October 24th and the next was a few weeks later, in November. And that could have been that; it wasn’t exactly a relationship moving quickly or even a relationship at all. But, for some reason, I really liked those two dates, as they may have been the first dates in my whole life. When I was younger, you met someone — there were no dates – and just sort of moving in right away was the norm. (more…)
Tags: Broadway Deli on Third Street Promenade, first dates, fredde duke, Freddie Duke, goat cheese appetizer recipe from Remi Restaurant, half Jewish half gentile, Remi restaurant on third street promenade
Posted in Recipes, Reviews | 14 Comments »
Friday, November 23rd, 2012
My dad, the over-protective Jew, had a couple of mantras. One was never ride on the back of a motorcycle. Another, never go for a ride in a small plane.
Uh-oh. I did both. Behind his back.
By the way, I can say Jew, because I am one. You can’t. I mean, if you’re not. Just saying.
The girlfriends I made growing up were the ones who went to school on Jewish holidays, along with the other six kids in Beverly Hills who weren’t Jewish. I don’t know why, but I was drawn to gentiles. I’ll be making a point in a second. I often went with these friends and their families to church, and never once, including with my own family, did I enter a temple. I wasn’t a religious churchgoer; I just sort of tagged along on a Sunday morning if it followed a sleepover the night before. Trust me; even then, I never wanted to wake up before noon.
On many weekends, I was the guest of my best friend Susie at the Gun Club. Yeah, that’s right, Gun Club. A Jew at a gun club is an oxymoron. Susie and I made an odd couple – she, the athletic tomboy, and me, the undersized neurotic Jew. Here’s how different we were. For her 13th birthday, Susie’s parents gave her a rifle, a Browning 22, along with deodorant, an ironing board and an iron. She remembers walking to Kerr’s Sporting Goods, at the corner of Peck & Wilshire, across from Saks Fifth Avenue, with her rifle wrapped in brown paper, so that she could get it fitted to her size. On my thirteenth birthday, the doorbell rang and a bouquet of red roses was delivered with a note from my dad telling me how beautiful I was. If you want to see just how beautiful, check out the photo below! (more…)
Tags: Dorothy Lohn, dune buggys, Els Lohn, fredde duke, fredde duke and susie lohn best of friends, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, gun clubs, jews in small planes, late 60's fun times, Maurice Duke, no helmuts riding motorcyles, race cars, Susie Lohn, twin engine Cessna
Posted in Recipes | 28 Comments »
Monday, October 22nd, 2012
My husband and I waited all day for the arrival of our imaginary grandchild. It’s a boy. His name is Jackson. He’s quite real. What’s imaginary is the idea that we are his grandparents. Jackson was already nine months old and we had yet to meet him. That’s because our surrogate child lives in Northern California and we haven’t been up there since the birth, and she hasn’t been here. A brief explanation of Jackson’s mom, Tory. When my daughter Augie started second grade, I spotted this tiny, adorable student in her class. She looked dazed and confused, kind of lost. I asked Augie about her and she told me that Tory was new at school. I said, “Let’s bring her home.” So, we did. And she stayed, occasionally for months at a time. The chaos in her own home made it appear that our family was functional. Everything’s relative. Secretly, I liked that she thought we were “normal.” We got so much more out of the deal. Tory was a real find.
Now, many years later, I texted Tory, though I was concerned she was on the road and might glance at her phone while driving. But it’s Tory, more adult than any of us, even at thirteen. She had to be. I get texted right back. Oh, did you think it was today I was coming down? It’s tomorrow, and then I have to leave the following day. I walked into my husband’s home office. “I got the day wrong. There’s a movie in Santa Monica, want to see it?” (more…)
Tags: augie duke, best brown bread in Los Angeles, Blue Plate Taco, fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, Imaginary and real grandkids, Ivy at the Shore, Maurice Duke, michael barrie, The Ivy Restaurant, Tory Taylor Wester
Posted in Reviews | 13 Comments »
Saturday, October 13th, 2012
I know exactly how many times I have stolen and what I have stolen and I’m not proud. The two times, as a kid, I took from places like Newberry’s and Orbach’s, and both times caught, were a great lesson. So, I would never do that again. Stealing towels from hotels with my father was a given, and I stopped that a very long time ago. I could and would also steal ashtrays, usually for my dad, from a restaurant in Europe maybe.
I’ve known some kleptos in my life. Some real ones.
It scared me when I was stolen from. Personally stolen from. When I was 15-years old and lying in my bed in a mono-induced near-coma, a friend darted around my bedroom. I followed her with my eyes because I couldn’t even lift my head, that’s how ill I was. She touched everything in my room, holding her notebook and schoolbooks in her hand. There was no reason to be holding all of that, as she had just arrived to visit me. Something seemed so shady about this visit. This friend would walk all around me, from one side of the room to the other, and would touch some items like my Indian print, one-of-a-kind dress. Suddenly it was folded and put in between her books. I had witnessed the abduction of my favorite dress! Too shocked to say anything, I let her leave. With the only strength I had, I reached over to turn my radio back on. Peggy Lee’s “Is that all there is?” played over and over and over as I remained a hostage in my Rip Van Winkle state. I never confronted her.
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Tags: fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, Kleptomania amongst friends, mono, Purple Apple Slaw recipe, shameless stories of theft, stealing
Posted in Recipes | 7 Comments »
