It's Thanksgiving. So I am giving Thanks.

I'm giving thanks for my health, my continued employment, my varied interests and finally and most importantly for my wonderful friends.

Is is heresy to write that I don't like turkey? I'd be giving much more thanks if the Pilgrims had served Fettuccine Carbonara...

Image: Butterball

IFRA regulations, letting go and hope from the House of Chanel..

Not that anyone cares but the powers that be in the EU have declared that your perfume might kill you, and has to be neutered. Evil compounds like Citrus and Oakmoss must be stampted out: if you enjoyed Annick Goutal Eau de Hadrien please rely on your memory of it and walk past what passes for it today at Bloomingdales.

Guerlain hasn't been passed over, the new Spirteuse Double Vanille is a little less Spiriteuse and I don't even want to think what might have happened to some of the Miller Harris scents that I love. I don't think I want to investigate except to stock up..

I can only hope that the French will rise up against the threat of changing Chanel No 5 (if not Mitsouko). Surely the desecration of a shining example of all thing Fwehch will cause them to wake up and pelt the walls of the IFRA offices with orange peels until sense (and scents) are restored?

Because really, what's the next step? A statue of Marianne holding aloft a bottle of Purell?

Image: artsmeme.com

Jack Frost Nipping at Your Nose..

My friends at Perfume Posse wrote about a new Diptyque candle that is scented with "marrons grille". There's something about the scent of roasted chestnuts that is New York at the holidays for me, even though I've not lived there for 25 years. For all I know they might not even do it anymore, and lord knows I've enjoyed these decades of the absence of actual Winter and look forward to it's to be hoped decades more. That, and I actually don't care for chestnuts.

But I do have gilded memories of running around mid-town in an overcoat on errands, scarf and a Tam in place, smelling the roasted chestnuts on the crisp air and smugly cursing the tourists for slowing me momentarily down.

I know, you're all asking yourself, "how does he remain single?"

Photo: Food Network

V is for Vacuous, Part Deux.

Well, the new series premiered. They did do a lot more in the first ten minutes introducing the Visitors (which you saw in the previews); cramming into one hour a mention of "universal healthcare" and a reveal of the whole plot that the original took three hours to get to. But the original stuffed the story full with extraneous backstory. Like character development.

But they have done some interesting twists; the spray-painted "V" is now a mark of the Visitors rather than the resistance. The latex is thicker and we've had one major character come out as a lizard. I'll be there to see what happens next time..

V is for Vacuous..

The remakes continue: ABC is premiering the new version of V, the 80's SciFi allegory of fascism in the form of Aliens who pretend to be benevolent humanoids on a mission of peace who turn out to be big lizards with bigger shoulder-pads whose favorite snack is.. us. The original is being shown on SyFy right now in all it's 80's glory and I am loving it: Jane Badler as baddie alien Diana gives a performance Joan Crawford would have high-fived and Marc Singer loses his shirt with regularity. I do remember the posters for the original series in the NYC subways: somewhat retro prints of the smiling aliens greeting children and the elderly with bland sayings like "The Visitors are our Friends" defaced by a spray-painted red "V". Nobody knew what the heck the ads were about; it's a concept that's been done enough to be cliché now, then it was an attention grabber.

One of the things that will not be in the remake is the Los Angeles lair of the resistance fighters: the site at Glendale and Beverly where the old Red Cars exited the tunnel starting at the Downtown Subway Terminal Building on their way to Glendale and Hollywood. That site, which you can read about here and more fascinatingly here is now the site of an inexplicably expensive new apartment building called Belmont Station. Inexplicable because it's located in a neighborhood that is still fairly gritty on a very busy street that is traversed by both Glendale Blvd at street level and the Beverly Blvd Viaduct, meaning motorists can see into your more-expensive-than-Westwood 5th floor bedroom. I'm still not quite sure how this parcel went from being a proposed park, to affordable housing to overpriced rentals for hipsters willing to pay top-dollar for apartments in a neighborhood they'd better think twice about walking at night...

Photo: ABC

Grabby? Good..

A friend I met in college in my small hometown in New England was once asked how she felt about the large Lesbian population in the area, if she'd ever been propositioned and how she reacted. I'll always remember her response: "Yes, I have and I politely refused" When pressed about not being annoyed, freaked out or angry at being importuned upon she calmly answered "I take it as a compliment; one day, far sooner than I would like the propositions are going to stop. So I intend to enjoy the fact I'm getting them, no matter how personally inappropriate they might be"

Wise woman..

Image: Collectiblechildrensbooks.com

Art in the City, and we're up in arms..

Roxy Paine's 2007 piece Erratic has landed in Beverly Hills' Beverly Gardens Park and there has been some predictable reactions: letters to the editor of The Courier excoriating the purchase (some 300k) and the general appearance of the piece.

I can understand. On the one hand, I love it. There's something so otherworldly about the simulacrum of a stone made out of hammered and welded stainless steel. Plunked down into the verdant strip of grass in Beverly Hills makes it more confrontational than it is in the more urban one of New York City's Madison Square Park. I can also see where some would look at it and be appalled. It's disturbingly organic yet machined. In this town, the home of Michael Bey movies it could be construed as a by-product: a Transformer Turd in our park.

As I said, I like it, and I like the artist. I'd have loved to see some of her other pieces chosen for the city, like Conjoined or Inversion, but perhaps there were reasons these ultra-pointy lawsuits-waiting-to-happen weren't in the running. But it's getting people talking about the city, the art here and perhaps getting people to go out and enjoy a nice walk in our beautiful park. In my mind that's priceless.

Photo: James Cohan Gallery

Hooray for Hollywood

NCIS LA premiered this evening, and it's enjoyable: LL Cool J and Chris Connelly have a nice spiky repartee going on, and anything that gives us more and better Linda Hunt is a good thing.

One of the things I noticed is that the "secret" headquarters of the NCIS looks to be one of the Arthur and Nina Zwebell buildings in Los Angeles. I wrote previously about one of them; this one looks like the Andalusia. I love that the filmmakers have a love of classic LA architecture (Buffy did too) but it kind of comes across as silly to have them open up to soundstage sized sets with touch-screen jumbotrons and software that can identify the DNA of the Mongolian Fruit Fly. Oh well, I'll just look at the scenery and hope LL takes his shirt off.

Photo: elcabrillohollywood

Traveling with friends

This past weekend my BFF Bitsy was in town on business and decided that she needed a long weekend away from her high-powered and high-stressed job. Fortunately for her, her job is also relatively high-paid, so she could afford to take herself to a room at the Ojai Valley Inn, and nice enough to invite me for the ride. I am lucky to have a couple of friends who are perfect traveling companions: Bitsy and I are like 16-year olds together: we called our Garmin "Sally Lou" and delighted in her harrumphing electronic exclamation "Recalclulating" whenever I thwarted her plan to get us onto a traffic clogged artery I knew to avoid. At the resort we sat by the pool and drank Daiquiris and read trashy novels, quoting them to each other and laughing at the abuse of adverbs.

Ojai is a beautiful place with a great bookstore and a lovely downtown. Try not to miss the "Pink Moment", just before sunset when the hills to the East are bathed in the pink light of the sunset. Just the thing to have a Daiquiri to with your BFF..

image: Association of Water Agencies Ventura County