no high impact gyrations

The elevator in my building smelled strongly of Goulden's mustard when I got on today. So much so that in that brief trip down to the parking garage, I was transported to a world of grilled ball park franks saturated with charcoal smoke and the sounds of summer fun. The unseasonably warm 80 degree L.A. weather did not detract from this feeling of going back in time, all of it making me appreciate how connected our olefactory senses are to our memory.

Things have finally settled down here. The frenzied grading has ceased. Christmas presents have been bought. And finally I have a chance to catch up on things, review my week, maybe even the year, and wonder where all the time has gone.

Whether it is related to the Christmas season or not, I have been running into a variety of Hollywood people, perhaps more than I have encountered since I first moved here seven years ago. Maybe it's my own circles of activity that have changed, which if that's the case, I really must be doing something horribly wrong. Though I'm uninterested in the Hollywood scene here and am even less impressed by the idea of celebrities, I frankly find it very difficult to stop staring when I see someone famous. What I usually do is the "pretend I'm not staring" stare. That usually results in a stiff neck and serious eye strain. But how can you not help it? Especially when you notice that most celebrities look like ass in real life.

First on my list of bad looking real life celebrities is David Alan Grier. Now you probably won't know who he is. It took me a while to figure out that he wasn't one of the Wayans brothers. This is how he normally appears on TV. He's an okay comedian. Nothing really remarkable one way or the other until I discovered that in person he looks noticably older. In fact, he reminds me of non-other than the late:




Redd Fox!







Then last week at a sample sale, I looked over at the register next to me at a gargantuan figure looming in my field of vision. Aside from my surprise that Marcia Cross, generally considered an "A-list" celebrity, was at a sale that I would be attending, in any case, I think that she's delightfully pretty on TV so I was in no way prepared for seeing her in her unadulterated state.

Which is as the spitting image of Skeletor. I am not exaggerating when I say that she must have been about six feet tall but weighed only a hundred pounds or so. Her face gives new meaning to the word "gaunt". Yet, despite her gauntness, her hair is very red and she has freckles, making her lovely still.


My last celebrity sighting is one that makes me truly marvel at the magic of TV makeup. How is it possible that this actress, Christine Elise, most notable for her appearances as bad girl "Emily" on Beverly Hills 90210 (which I swear I hardly ever watched), someone who I only remember because of this weird thing she had going on with her jaw, would in actuality look uncannily like...

Gary Busey.

In fact, I was working out right next to her at my kickboxing class this morning and I nearly fell on the floor a couple of times because I was transfixed by her sandpaper-like skin and the deep crevasses lining her face. She looked to me like she might be a hundred years old.

Well, thank god I got that out of my system. Now I can move on to contemplating other less important things like when I'm going to finally hand in my chapter to my advisor and whether I'll get hired in the coming year... For the time being, I think I may have to go back to the elevator, breathe deeply and think of summer barbecues.