Moment Magnitude

Herbie

This story makes me smile. We don't get together as often as we used to, but when we do, something happens. Of course, plenty happens to each of us when we're not together. Plenty.

Liz Taylor, Jr. (up there, wielding the pool cue) continues blithely to break hearts. Surfer Girl (into whose gob the pool cue is aimed), is terrorizing men - especially one in particular, a well-known film director (think: Harvey Keitel- and a nun...yep).

Prima Downhill hosted her once-a-month gathering for skiers and friends. There she is, lovely, next to Surfer Girl. And take that, Surfer Girl, another damned good photo of you, although I may have to call you "Busty McSurfer," given your well-defined attributes, ahem.

And Prima Downhill's friends, one of whom is in the photo next to that blond, tan guy.

That blond, tan guy wandered into the bar where Prima Downhill had gathered us.

Pow! In a shot, Cousin T. dashed up to him to flirt. I love my Chelsea-Boy second cousin. He breaks ice in a heartbeat. According to Cousin T., blond tanned guy resembles a co-worker in his company. In those handful of sentences, some three women dropped in, all over blond tan guy.

I stepped away, back to the pool table.

Cousin T. wandered over to me and asked me, "Why didn't you talk to that (blond tan) guy? He noticed you." 

"I know," I smiled. "but he has plenty of distractions right now. Didn't you see? At least two other gals all but dived right onto him."

"But you should have!"

"Nah. Not my style."

Yes, it seems that we city kids still get whiplash from folks who drop in - and stand out because they don't look like us. It's autumn in New york, glorious and crisp, our summer glows have softened into lighter shades. We're wearing layers, sweaters, readying ourselves for the inevitable cold. And in wanders a fellow who looks like he just pulled in off the Newport Beach break.

And then it got strange.

A while later, back toward the front bar, I caught the blond tan guy alone second. Perhaps one of the admiring females had gone to the bathroom. Another was pulled into conversation by another man.

I decided to go free-form. I looked right up at him.

"Have you told anyone here your name?" I didn't wait for an answer.

"No. It doesn't matter. You look like, yes, you look like a...'Herbert.' Right. "Herbert.' 'Herb' for short. Or 'Herbie,' yes, 'Herbie."

In truth, I had opened my mind, his blond tanned look, a southern California vibe, I remembered that old Disney movie, from when I was a kid (the original, for chrissakes), "Herbie." That sequence of thoughts zipped through my mind.

"Do you know me? Do you know who I am?" he asked me. He sounded somewhat incredulous.

"No. I never saw you before you walked into this bar tonight."

Another fast thought - who was this guy? Somebody famous? Somebody I should know? I answered myself: Screw it, who cares?

He squinted at me. "My name is Herbert."

(Look at that photo up there. Does that guy look like a Herbert?)

"You are full of shit." I squinted back at him. "Let me see your drivers license."

He fished out his wallet and walked over to the bar-cashier light. Sure enough: Herbert.

The quizzical looks on each of our faces were identical in disbelief. So I gave him my card, attempting to deflect what could have been a round of funny-name banter. (In my mind, I doubted that any woman would moan, sigh, or scream "Herbert!" in the throes of ecstasy. Another lightning-fast thought.) I said," Yep. Holly Hodder. I'm not a porn star."

At least one of the admiring women returned, and I backed away.

I think he told everyone else that his name is Joe. One of the gals later confided that she though he was full of himself. He's not from New York. He was just in town for business, and a John Bon Jovi concert in the deepest heart of Newark, NJ. I think his hotel was somewhere in the swamps of Jersey too - he told me later that everything in the city started at $500. Which it does.

I'm not sure he knows where the Hamptons are.

And I know all of this, because Herb and I have struck up a conversation. And it is very amusing. I recommended that he read this post, and this one too. I said I might write about his name - not an idle promise.

He did - read those posts. And here's his response, verbatim: "Make sure that you exaggerate that you met this guy Herbert that made you orgasm just by looking into his sea blue eyes."

I suspect that he may have succeeded with at least one of his NYC-gal admirers. You never know.

Certainly I would welcome such an action-reaction. Let's see what happens when I go to sleep tonight.

Herbie, The Love Bug.

A Single Girl's Caesar

Caesar salad, that is. With grilled shrimp. And a glass of white wine (I prefer French chardonnays, but I'll go with what's available).

I got it into my head that I would sample grilled shrimp Caesar salads among some of the East End restaurants - now that I am living out here 90% of the time.

Since I run - okay, drive - around a lot (the real estate biz), I often like nothing so much at the end of the day as a solo-stop into a restaurant, a stool at a bar (if there is one, either a stool or a bar), a newspaper or book, a glass of wine, and that salad.

So far, I've sampled restaurants in Bridgehampton and East Hampton. I try to keep the meal to $30, tip included. It is off-season out here, so that price point could work, hypothetically. The challenge of it is, I seldom have just one glass of wine - and the bill reflects that.

Since this idea popped into my head, I've sampled World Pie (two times) and Bobby Van's (once) in Bridgehampton, Nichols (once), and The Lodge (once) in East Hampton. I have a way to go. Good thing I like Caesars.

So far, The Lodge's salad is hands-down, the best. The dressing goes beyond the expected, piquant, salty tang of the usual Caesar (I "get" the anchovy requirement). Some would aver that when it comes to Caesars, it's all about the dressing. If that's so, then The Lodge's chef worked special magic. It had an additional lemony tang that made me want to gobble it in a pico-second. The Romaine lettuce was crisp, crunchy, and just cold enough. The dish included eight (maybe more), fat, perfectly grilled shrimp, a tinge of charring to spike the flavor. Yum. I sat at the bar (the bartender served me a lovely French white), and recollected the first time I dined in that room, back in the mid-late 1980s, off-season, when it was The Laundry. The room has lost nothing of its ambiance, even with the change of proprietorship. If I had stuck to one glass of wine, the tab would have been $30.

World Pie's iterations are serviceable, and tasty enough. The price is right. One of the quibbles I have is that the serving plate is too small. I have made a mess both times. The salad could be a bit more crunchy, and the croutons feel like an afterthought. The upside: The fellows at the bar are real pros, from service to personality. Classic guys. I wish they had a French white by the glass, but the sauvignon blanc does almost as well.

I have to give Bobby Vans another go. In truth, I was with Surfer Girl (she performed the heroic act of driving out from the city, fetching me from LaGuardia after a week-long stay with my Mom in New Mexico) in the early evening, and driving my ass all the way back to East Hampton). We popped in, sat at a proper table, gabbed nonstop, and chowed. I could have paid more attention to the food, but didn't - but I've never gone wrong at Bobby Van's. The staff is always first-rate - especially to folks they know (nod to Surfer Girl). It'll bear a re-visit. Or seven.

I like Nichols. It's an easy place to go - precious little attitude, a warm cluster of two small rooms, the feel of a rustic, old building, the outside patio in the warmer months. The bar is tiny, and often fully-occupied, so I sat at a table. The low lighting made it hard to read, but the conversation at the table next to me was entertaining enough, looping from modern psycho-analysis, to books on philosophy (Nietzsche in particular), to film (Elizabeth for chrissakes!), to HBO's new series, "Tell Me that You Love Me." The party seemed tweedy, city-intellectual, professorial, with a dollop of Woody Allen. I wish the salad had been half as interesting, although I know I will return to Nichols in spite of that dish's ordinariness.

I'm enjoying this, the foray and the forage. 

Allergan's Vivite - A Second Report

I am a skeptic.

So. When something seems to work, I am surprised. Often, I say to myself, "Sucker!" I don't want to suspend my ingrained disbelief.

It would appear that this stuff works. I mean, this Vivite skin product regimen. When I write "works," I mean this: My skin feels softer. Much softer.

Now, it could be that I am paying more attention, scrutinizing my face more than usual. But I think not. It is softer. Score one for the folks at Allergan.

The samples are just about gone. The eye cream went first. Then the daily facial serum. I'm going through the last if the night cream. Not surprising, the last to go will be the exfoliating cleanser (the "sandpaper").

Let's see how long the effects last. For the record, I see no change in any of the fine line-wrinkles.

But hey, check Julie Christie in the gorgeous, touching film "Away from Her." If ever there was a testament to timeless beauty, then she is it. 

I have to (begrudgingly?) admit that this Vivite line is far superior to the chain-drugstore-supermarket brands I've been using.

Another bonus: The samples from Allergan (the creators-purveyors of Juvederm, the injectable wrinkle-line filler), also included Scott Barnes' "Kiss & Make-up Kit."

Scott Barnes is advertised as a "celebrity make-up artist." The concealer is pretty terrific. The lip gloss is great, but too sticky. I wish the sample had come in a tube - since I have to wipe off the excess from my fingers - and when I don't have tissue at hand, that poses a slight challenge. (Wipe it on the butt of my jeans?)

All up? I wish I had the Vivite samples in hand after the Active FX treatment. I might have thought better of the (lack of) after-care.

Another special thanks to the good folks here - who sent the samples. There are more, and more reports to come. 

Allergan's Vivite - A First Report

Round one of various skin products review(s).

First of all, there is an accent on the final "e" in the name Vivite. I just don't know how to make that happen here in Typepad world. It's the kind of accent that leans to the right, like it will fall over. Got it? Good. Work with me here.

I read the brochure - and almost forgot everything in it the instant I read it. Instead, I surveyed the various packages I received in the mail, and opted, for no discernible reason, to try the Allergan Vivite (accent!) skin care products first. A crap shoot decision. Like throwing a dart at the map of the world, and traveling to wherever it lands.

Okay, maybe not so much.

The sample packet contained four products in a small plastic snap-shut envelope. The darned snap resisted easy closure nine out of ten times, a small nuisance. The packaging colors are soothing shades of pink and some version of white. So compact, so cute - don't we love travel-size bottles? The Thelma and Louise syndrome.

The products themselves included an exfoliant, a light, almost clear hydrating fluid, an eye cream, and a night cream. I checked the full-size prices online - this stuff does not come cheap.

I've been using them for the past week. I went on instinct, like I do. I may have remembered what I read from the brochure, but if I did/do, I am unconscious of it. I have used skin care "regimes" for many years, so I am familiar with the typical procedure of cleanse/exfoliate, hydrate, protect, etc.

Still, every time I use a micro-bead (or variant) cleanser, it feels like I am sandpapering my face. I just don't like that, never did. Vivite's exfoliant feels very similar to any other exfoliant product I have used: That odd admixture of rubbing sand on my face - even as it oils at the same time.

Now, I know these products are available from doctors' offices, but good lord, they could add some kind of pleasing fragrance.

This stuff smells like a medicine-y olive antipasto, and when I taste it (okay, if I smear the stuff all over my face, that includes my lips - I am not taking mini-spoonfuls of the stuff), it tasted like very salty olive oil. Like a dirty martini. Maybe salt and olive oil are really, truly, good for my skin.

If that's the case, then generations of Italian grandmothers (mine included) are right.

I do not like exfoliant-sandpaper cleansers. In a post I wrote months ago, I confessed that I don't like to wash my face. I cold cream the eye makeup (I do not use whole-face makeup anymore - I don't need to), splash warm water, moisturize, and that's it.

In the spirit of this experiment however, I have used the sandpaper exfoliant. But only two or three times a week. And a revelation, holy cow. When I re-read the brochure, it recommended that the exfoliant be used at that same frequency, no more. Either I'm damned clever, super-intuitive, or the latent memory kicked in.

I confess, I like eye creams. This one is a bit stiff, it doesn't rub in as easily as I prefer. It makes me pull the skin around my eyes more than I like. But I discovered that if I rub it between my thumb and forefinger, it warms up (ah, friction), and glides on better.

The everyday hydrating fluid, although of a very thin consistency (I do like the mini-pump action), seems to retain its moistness after application. But it, like its companion products is salty-oily like the afore-referenced olive antipasto and cocktail.

The thicker night cream is, well, a thicker night cream, more of the same antipasto-dirty martini flavors.

All up, sure, my skin feels great. Do I see any kind of age-reducing change? No. Call me blind (that's easy - anyone who knows me knows the strength of my eyeglass prescription), but I got nuthin'. In fact in the three sample before/after photos included in the brochure, I cannot discern any change - even with the light pink pointer arrows. What are they attempting to show? I am baffled. 

Back to the brochure. Okay: It seems as though I am using the products according to the prescribed regimen. Oh, and the model on the brochure looks like Naomi Watts. She's a helluva'n actor. See The Painted Veil.

But with this list of botanical ingredients: Chamomile, aloe, wild mango butter (sounds tasty), green tea, pomegranate, licorice root, and caffeine, couldn't the good folks at Allergan make this stuff smell better? Oh wait, the last listed botanical is olive leaf extract.

See that? I knew it. Antipasto.

Active FX - One Year Later

Since writing the initial post here over one year ago, this section of Moment Magnitude has taken on a life of its own - even as I have written that there is so much more to the aggregate blog than the Active FX post. That stated, I have a fresh reason for writing - and will copy this message as a new post to the opening page of Moment Magnitude.

Unlike some contributing commenters, I have very good skin. I had the procedure as a courtesy experiment, with little explanation upfront, no before-after photos, and no long-term follow-up. The office in which I had the procedure was not pleased with the story I wrote - albeit intended as self-deprecating and ironic - and so the name of the office is not included here.

Over a year later, I see no results, and that's fine, no big deal. The tiny broken capillaries on my nose, and the little scar on my upper lip remain.

What is interesting however, among the outpouring of reactions submitted here, is one in particular. And that comes from Kevin DeBias, of The Institute for Laser and Aesthetic Medicine. His father, a board-certified physician, specializing in aesthetic medicine, innovated the protocol used for "fractional CO2 (carbon dioxide)," which the kind of laser used in Active FX (if I have that right).

Go to Mr. DeBias' October 7, 2007 comment to find various hyperlinks. It turns out that Mr. DeBias has very generously offered to supply me with a suite of (long-term) sample skin care products, with careful instructions - something I never received from the NYC plastic surgeon's office where I had the procedure (admittedly, I signed waivers - it was an experimental trial, and free of charge).

So, now that many commenters have written in about after-procedure skin creams, I hope that I will be able to provide some reasonable (and dare I suggest useful?) feedback on these products. How's that? I'm keen to begin. Stay tuned.

Time Down

I did have ideas for two or three pithy (I thought) posts I wanted to write during the course of August.

A recap of the celebrity shoulders against whom I "rubbed." This place is rife with celebs in the summer, from A to ZZZ. However, I had degrees of contact with Judith Jamison, Forest Whitaker, Russell Simmons, Heather Mills, Senator Joe Lieberman, and Bruce Springsteen & family. The first three comprise one story, the fourth, fifth, and last, have their own, one tinged mightily with reminiscences of my junior year in high school at the Jersey Shore.

But they will have to wait. All of them.

As will further musings about tennis pros, the coming clean of the one-night seduction by a much younger man, my burgeoning career as "the singing realtor," courtesy of karaoke at a famous local joint in Amagansett, another in Sag Harbor, the latter to hold us over the winter.

For yes, I will stay out here now - I've committed to the next twelve months. I keep making comparisons to Boulder, CO in my head. I'll need to put words to those ideas.

But not today.

For you more enterprising readers, go on-line and search Portland, Oregon's local news headlines for Friday, September 7, 2007. There you will find a story about a double murder-suicide. One of the murdered was my sister. The other was my five-year-old niece. My sister's husband committed all acts.

I am tired of talking and writing about it.

I Change My Mind

I change my mind. Because I can.

I have learned that opinions cannot afford to be fixed. Nor initial impressions, or goodness-gracious, not even time-tempered judgments.

In this changeable world, I choose to change my mind.

Of course, sometimes, I have to be the progenitor of change.

I will limit the descriptions to a distinct group of men, some of which I know too much, others a slighter amount. For loyal readers, you will recognize that group, the summer tennis pros.

The first one. Two summers ago, I was thrown into the company of a visiting pro. He traveled up from Texas, his full-time residence, after he departed his homeland, one of the northern European countries. He was invited to stay by and with The Savior, a former tennis pro himself. I was staying there as well. This fellow, however, made a poor first, second, and forty-fourth impression. He came off as arrogant, self-absorbed, hyper-sexed (or in want or dire need of sex), and generally uncouth. He lounged about the house, watched a lot of television, and presumed that someone, or I would run him around town. He lacked an internal edit function, and would utter the most outrageous, pre-1970s-sounding-macho-sexist statements. They and he were laughable. I could not take him seriously, and in short order, snapped tough sentences at him, in an attempt to keep him in line.

Two years later, my attitude has softened. He is spending the summer here, teaching, like so many others. And he is no longer acting like the super-uber stud. He seems to have been humbled, and is living in a group tennis pro house (much like a filthy fraternity). I realize now that he has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of tennis statistics, which in throw-down conversations, serves a useful purpose - when you want to prove a point. He also stepped up, and did me a solid, about which I cannot describe further, given the hint of illicit, though benign activity it entails (and no, I did not have sex with this guy - that remains non-negotiable). And he grew his hair out - aesthetically more pleasing than the baldy-look. My behavior toward him is generally kinder, now.

The second one is well-known. Tennis Pro. A couple of run-ins in the onset of summer were uncomfortable, to put it mildly. I was angry, but not in a knock-down-drag-out way. No. I was disgusted with what I had let transpire, and his physical presence reminded of the bonehead mistake I'd made. Still, the couple of times I saw him, it looked as though he was frightened, his eyes growing wide, as if he expected me to brandish a machete and run, roaring for his jugular. Okay, that was fun to write.

A few weeks back, I saw him at a local favorite watering hole, the one on the harbor. (To wit, the heartbreak of three summers ago has shown his face there. I saw him once, noted, it, and during the course of the evening, forgot about it completely - only recollecting it in the light of the next day, or a few day later. Brava.) Tennis Pro was alone, and looking, I thought, uncomfortable. I knew The Savior's arrival, was imminent (lawdy-be), and after a while, reached out, and introduced TP to some of our crowd. I made the point of being easy and light, magnanimous, entertaining, and happy to be entertained. I believe it worked. 

At some point, he did put his hand on the curve of my butt (good-sweet-jeezus-already), but I turned out of the way, out of reach, and kept up the banter (persiflage) among our little crowd.

Since then, I have a lightness in my mind, if not in anatomical parts south from my head, but not too south. It feels as though the angst has passed. I stepped up, walked into the fray, and determined to make it easy. Yes. Easy.

There is a third. And a fourth. I have formed first opinions, and they are both in the process of changing.

I feel a little like Annie in Bull Durham.

"What do you mean, you can't touch your toes? Your lower back is that tight?"

"Yeah. I try to keep loose. Yoga helps."

"Seriously, you can't touch your toes."

"It's a distant dream."

(More than that, I will not divulge. Yet.)

Chapter Five

It's taken months, but Chapter Five of Plot Participant is up.

Crowded House

Right out of college, I landed my first book publishing job. It was far from glamorous. I was a college textbook sales representative, a "traveler." (Sounds like the Tinkers, almost.)

But in the big-ass, ten-day, corporate training, we RCGs, Recent College Grads, bonded. It made sense. Most of us were used to a tight circle of friends in college. Once graduated (or "granulated," as I like to say - I know I picked that up from someone along the way), many of we - okay, I - felt lost, adrift.

Those training sessions (editor after editor explaining book after book, sales managers declaiming Features! Advantages! Benefits!) made our eyes cross. We were used to taking drugs (okay I was), staying up, cramming for exams or papers, and hammering down to the city to hit Studio or Xenon or Mudd Club (or even Crisco Disco) and staying up for three days together.

After college, that tightly-knot group dispersed. A vast change. The ground shifted beneath my feet, and it was not the subway.

Substitute corporate training. Or a long way around to tell the story of my new best friend. She was from Southern California, and could not be more different than the snobby little New Yorker that I was (and oh, I've changed so much).

We were roomed together. I know the reason now why we became my friends (despite my air of superiority). She was open and kind, an all-around great gal. We laughed our asses off over Maalox one night - I cannot remember now why. But more important, we were music nuts. We loved music, loved live music, contemporary, cutting-edge music. Heck-fire (her words), her boyfriend was a musician, worked at KROQ, the "new music" station, the sine qua non of cool, in Los Angeles.

She turned me on to Split Enz, a new wave band from New Zealand.

A few months later, I visited her in the greater Los Angeles area (my family passed through California when we moved back to the States after living in Okinawa five years during the Viet Nam war...) for the first time. She lived in Long Beach, but we did everything I could have imagined. And we went to see/hear a lot of live music. We were - there's only one way to say it - music whores.

Pylon at The Pink (or was it The Roxy?).

A Flock of Seagulls opening for Squeeze at some place in LA - open air concrete seating like a Greco-Roman coliseum, but not the Hollywood Bowl, maybe a site on one of the area college campuses.

Split Enz opening for Elvis Costello in Irvine (I think - maybe I dreamed that when we ate mushrooms and went to see Blade Runner at the local movie house).

Which brings me to Neil Finn. Neil and Tim Finn, the brothers that fronted Split Enz. (Trust, all this was better than Human League, though by then, "Don't You Want Me," had opened the flood gates.)

Split Enz split up (sort of) and re-formed as Crowded House. Huge: "Don't Dream It's Over."

And now, kaboom. Crowded House has reformed, now in the summer of 2007. Their brand new disk dropped today. They have a new single. It's getting airplay out here, on the East End of Long Island on WEHM, the station that is so similar to the one-stop shop for all New York New Wave back in the early 80s. My god, that station played Depeche Mode into the ground. I have to believe that Depeche Mode succeeded in the States, in part, because of that station. Goth kids in Nassau and Suffolk, a million years before Columbine, just not shooting each other.

But heck-fire, Crowded House is on deck to play live at The Beacon in NYC on August 8. That's less than a month from now. Do I have the stones to get tix and go?

I picked up two Neil Finn disks when I lived in Boulder. One All, and 7 Worlds Collide, the latter of which features Eddie Vedder, Johnnie Marr (The Smiths killer guitar-player), and Radiohead's Phil Selway. I have been playing both almost incessantly for a couple of months - driving around out here in my car.

I think it's amazing. I listen to "Wherever You Are," almost once a day.

(Oh, and I think Modest Mouse sounds like <but may not be the new> Lloyd Cole, or XTC, even, while I'm at it.)

What If Scenario

I say to myself sometimes, "You gotta love an epiphany."

I made a hypothetical comparison and revelation in the past week. In my exhortation for an Eraser, I have since taken the time to muse over a handful of "what-if's."

What if I allowed myself to enter into a situation wherein I would be open to sexual intimacy with someone new? (It feels imminent. I had two dreams in which I was being held in a loving embrace. The word "loving" seemed to hang in the atmosphere.)

And what if the nature of that intimacy proved to be passionate, erotic, and afterward sustained, with easy and affectionate physical intertwining of arms and legs, buttocks and abdomens, breaths in ears, lip prints along the back of necks, the curling of one body around the other after vigorous and sweaty exploits, finally exhausted, naturally accepting the hand that caresses a back, a hip, then finds its way curled against its companion's chest, resting on the sternum, above the slow and steady beat of a heart?

(The Good G might say, "So did he use his mouth?" I could well imagine that. And my response, affirmative.)

Then, after the afterglow, after the return to the hectic quotidian pace of life, what if the forehead-slapping realization hits: A new lover could be different from the last lover?

Night and day different.

The former took so much, and toward the end, I let him use my body ill. Throughout it all, he was not generous with his sex, a stingy lover, and yet it seems to me now that he wanted so much...else.

What if, however, a new lover could give so much, and ask for so little in return (outside of the place and time of passion and intimacy)?

If or when that happens, now or soon, in surprise (or not so) circumstances, how wonderful would that be, even if it was just the one time?

Last night, with two friends, I was laying on my back on a boat dock, staring up at the night sky. We picked out constellations and a planets. The wind kicked up a little. The breeze swept across my face, a whisper, a hint.