Tag: clark gable

Hollywood is a Grandma-Free Zone

Hollywood is a Grandma-free-zone and no one who is intimidated by the aging process should step foot on Hollywood Blvd.

Last week I saw them dragging a screaming old lady away from Clark Gable’s footsteps at Mann’s Theatre for being old in public. One tourist turned to another and asked, “Who was Clark Gable?”

I’m not sure what was the saddest part of that whole scene.

The newest and most profitable business in Los Angeles is a company that builds boats for people over 49 to be sent out to sea to die. There’s a three-year waiting list already.

If you think I’m imagining this insanity ask any producer or television exec what happens when you mention the word Grandmother. They break out in hives, start to hyperventilate and run from the room in terror.

Exaggeration?

I think not.

A friend and I met with a producer about a show we developed for older women.

His eyes bugged out of his head when he saw the word Grandma in the title.

I quickly covered the word with my hand and said, “It’s okay, calm down, see, I made it go away.”

After catching his breath and downing two Xanax he informed us in no uncertain terms no one was interested in women on television over 49.

“And don’t say Betty White either,” he retorted. “She is only on there because she is surrounded by young hotties.”

I never had the heart to tell him that those “hotties” would never see fifty again. Why destroy his illusions?

Forget that one of the most popular and loveable characters on Bravo television was realtor Josh Flagg’s late grandmother, Edith.

Yes, Hollywood is a world-unto-itself. Thank the Lord.

In Europe older women are embraced as sexy, wise and worldly. Men delight in their vast experience and their ageless beauty. Sophia Loren is looked on as a goddess, not an old crone.

I am not certain this is because the men in America have better eyesight or the Europeans are not as fussy about their women. And yes, let us keep in mind French women don’t shave their armpits. Of course Europe is an old country and America a baby so maybe…

In America women over fifty are invisible, unless of course they are walking around half naked with a set of store-bought DDDs stopping traffic on Sunset Boulevard.

If you would think it is a scary state of being, you would be correct. So what is a Grandmother to do?

Throw away her Oil of Olay? Pack and leave town before she brings disgrace on her family? Wear a veil?

Okay, so that does work for Muslim women.

Ah, now I get the whole Burqua thing!

Shall I repair into my golden years in a black dress and sensible shoes like an Italian grandmother? Spending all my time making sauce and rolling pasta dough?

“Come dip my homemade Italian bread in Grandma’s perfect marinara.”

Or shall I make Aliyah to an assisted living home where my children may come to visit once a month, if I am lucky?

Or if wealthy enough make a pilgrimage to Boca Raton, where I can spend my time playing maj jong and looking for a man with his own teeth who can still drive at night?

You would think I am embellishing my conundrum, but unfortunately I am not.

Last week the Beverly Hills City Council took up the issue of whether or not the police should give tickets for excessive wrinkling. The measure was, of course supported by all the plastic surgeons and Botox manufacturers. It failed by only one vote.

Isn’t it bad enough the fat police patrol is still at large, suspiciously eyeing anyone at the Krispy Krème drive thru and taking license plate numbers?

So what should one do who feels they still have more to offer the world than good lasagna or mandal bread?

Don’t move to Los Angeles is a damn good start. There is no doubt in my mind as to why there are so many kooks running through the palm-tree and homeless laden streets of LA. Why there are so many car chases across its bumper-to-bumper freeways. Why men always look like a cat that just ingested a ten-pound canary.

Simply, it is because young women are in abundance and older women are in hiding. Or, as we refer to these young chicks in over 49 circles the third-wife-to-be.

Yoga classes are filled with fifties and ups stretching and downward dogging their way back to youth. Hair colorists are so abundant you can’t blink without bumping into one and plastic surgeons are so finely honed, that a woman can leave for lunch and arrive back at work looking ten years younger.

Men check women out like Carl Sagan checked out every star in the galaxy. They balk if a woman has one wrinkle too many, reminds them of their mother or simply isn’t the perfect image of beauty they feel they deserve.

Meanwhile, have you taken a look at these aging Lotharios lately?

OY!

They have spray on tans, spray on hair, blue pills bulging from their pockets and a dating profile on those meet-a-felon sites that is filled with more lies and exaggerations than a politician’s resume. Quick dating tip here: orange jump suits are not a turn on!

They examine every woman they date with the precision of a butcher frenching a lamb chop for the Oscar’s Governor’s Ball. Their expectations are higher than Keith Richard’s partying with Janis Joplin.

As Bette Davis once opined, “getting old is not for sissies.” It is also not for women. And please don’t ask me, who is Bette Davis!

Men age well. They gain an air of distingue and intrigue. Women gain weight and arm themselves each day for another battle with gravity. A war they ultimately lose.

They Spanx themselves together as best as they can before embarking into the world, ass dragging and boobs searching the sidewalk like they are looking for lost quarters.

No bra too big

No skin too tight to hide the ravages of time.

Good News! There is always a way to cope with these depressing facts of life; grandchildren. One hug from my grandsons and I am immediately as young at heart as a 66-year-old man riding the Seine at midnight with a Paris model.

As one learns quickly in LA, there are certain foods that will arm one best for battle against the aging process and this week’s miracle food is beets. Supposedly it is the nuclear option for battling all the ravages of time. I am of course waiting for the day the Surgeon General announces chocolate as the cure all for all human ailments.

Until that glorious day you can find a good plastic surgeon on your own. But before you do, go hug your grandchildren. I promise it will help keep you young, and it’s cheaper and totally pain free.

Funny Peculiar? Or Funny Ha Ha?

 

final fig

Mrs. Dorothy Sherock, one of my elementary school teachers was fond of asking, “There’s two kinds of funny, funny ha ha and funny peculiar, which are you?”

It wasn’t exactly the same as Thoreau warning about the unexamined life not being worth living, but it stuck, and to this day I still repeat it frequently. And yes I have come to note that we are all at various times both funnies.

So when I say, “funny isn’t it how I can so easily remember the past, yet yesterday’s lunch is a distant memory?” It’s not the funny ha, ha one to which I allude.

Actually it is (funny peculiar here) how so many of the things we remember are of our own selection. Memories seem to change over time, perhaps colored by later life experience and our own desires to rewrite certain events in our history we’d have chosen to see end otherwise.

I do make an effort to linger on the happy times and, although yes, I know there were many of both, the others, well, they just make me run for the Kleenex box. So what’s the good of remembering the bad stuff? Why should I kill a tree when I have the option of choosing happy?

I remember the day when my daughter had her first sonogram and the light of my life was six and one half weeks old. Laurie saw the heartbeat on the monitor as a flash of light. I cried. It drives my children crazy that I am a non-stop faucet.

Sometimes memories live on in real life. My grandfather had a sister, Auntie Dora. I don’t recall a great deal about her apart from her physical attributes, since she always seemed old to me. At least I remember her that way. But the thing my brother Marty and I remember about her most was that she cried constantly. You’d simply say hello Auntie Dora and she began sobbing. Her nose was constantly red and her reputation as the walking water works lives on in family legend.

When Laurie was a toddler we went to mother toddler classes attached to the building where my Auntie Dora lived. She was such a sweet lady, she would walk over the days we were there to watch Laurie in class and of course Laurie knew her as the aunt who cried all the time.

Alas, it seems I have inherited her crown as the family sob sister. When I am touched by a momentary burst of sentiment, it is always accompanied by laughter and an “Okay Auntie Dora, stop with the tears.” I’m afraid I may actually outdo myself now and become the subject of much mocking and Auntie Dora allusions. Shall I tell you the truth while paraphrasing Clark Gable and Leslie Gore? “Frankly, my dear family, I don’t give a damn. This is my grandchild and I’ll cry if I want to.”

The most special thing about grandchildren is how much their opinions count. The other day as my grandson busily built a robot filled with buttons, cables and all such wiry thingamajigs, I watched in awe.

“You’re so smart,” I said. “Grammy wouldn’t know how to put that together.”

He looked up and said, “ Why not Grammy, you’re smart?”

I have received as all of us, the occasional compliments in my life, yet never was I as struck by pure joy as when my Grandson called me smart. It was as if his words validated every positive trait I ever suspected I possessed. Forget my university degree, my grandson’s opinion is what matters.

I know we’re taught not to let the opinions of others influence the way we feel about ourselves, but in our grandchildren’s case, I believe that is a whole different ball game.

Hearing the words, Grammy you make the best cookies or “Grammy I love your fried chicken,” or “Grammy this is the best gift I ever got,” well need I say more?

Your heart explodes with joy at the sound of a compliment from those little faces.

So you’ll forgive me if I pull out my Kleenex and begin the Auntie Dora sobbing routine when I receive love and hugs from the loves of my life. And if you can keep from crying when they say, “Grammy you’re the best,” then you’re a better man than I am Gunga Din.

And so Mrs. Sherock if I am funny peculiar at times, so be it. Oops, gotta get more Kleenex. Hmmm, are they putting fewer sheets in these boxes now?

 

Pistachio Fig Mandalcotti

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of oil

3 eggs

1 tablespoon of vanilla

1 teaspoon of baking powder

½ teaspoon of salt

½ teaspoon of cinnamon

3 ¼ cups of flour

1 ½ cups of chopped figs

1 ½ cups of chopped shelled pistachio nuts

Preheat oven to 350

Add the baking soda, salt and cinnamon to the flour and set aside

Mix together the oil and sugar until well blended and add vanilla to eggs and add to oil sugar mixture. Continue mixing until well incorporated and lighter in color about four minutes or so.

Slowly add flour mixture and check consistency. Dough should stand on in peaks, but not be stiff. If it is too soft add another tablespoon of flour otherwise it will bake too flat.

Add figs and nuts

And mix for twenty seconds. You can finish mixing by hand.

I put parchment paper of a baking sheet and divide dough into quarters. Wetting your hands when you make a roll from the dough helps handle it. Place four rolls on the sheet and pat edges and top until they are uniform. Sprinkle a little sugar on the top and place in the oven. Bake until done about 20 or 25 minutes depending on the size of the rolls.

Remove from the oven and let sit about five minutes, but don’t cool. Cut into slices and separate and lower the oven temp to 200 and return them into the oven for about fifteen or twenty minutes. If you like them crispier than leave them in until they are your desired crispness.

 

 

Hollywood is a Grandma-Free Zone

 

egg rolls.jpg

Hollywood is a Grandma-free-zone and no one who is intimidated by the aging process should step foot on Hollywood Blvd.

Last week I saw them dragging a screaming old lady away from Clark Gable’s footsteps at Mann’s Theatre for being old in public. One tourist turned to another and asked, “Who was Clark Gable?”

I’m not sure what was the saddest part of that whole scene.

The newest and most profitable business in Los Angeles is a company that builds boats for people over 49 to be sent out to sea to die. There’s a three-year waiting list already.

If you think I’m imagining this insanity ask any producer or television exec what happens when you mention the word Grandmother. They break out in hives, start to hyperventilate and run from the room in terror.

Exaggeration?

I think not.

A friend and I met with a producer about a show we developed for older women.

His eyes bugged out of his head when he saw the word Grandma in the title.

I quickly covered the word with my hand and said, “It’s okay, calm down, see I made it go away.”

After catching his breath and downing two Xanax he informed us in no uncertain terms no one was interested in women on television over 49.

“And don’t say Betty White either,” he retorted. “She is only on there because she is surrounded by young hotties.”

I never had the heart to tell him that those “hotties” would never see fifty again. Why destroy his illusions?

Forget that one of the most popular and loveable characters on Bravo television was realtor Josh Flagg’s late grandmother, Edith.

Yes, Hollywood is a world-unto-itself. Thank the Lord.

In Europe older women are embraced as sexy, wise and worldly. Men delight in their vast experience and their ageless beauty. Sophia Loren is looked on as a goddess, not an old crone.

I am not certain this is because the men in America have better eyesight or the Europeans are not as fussy about their women. And yes, let us keep in mind French women don’t shave their armpits. Of course Europe is an old country and America a baby so maybe…

In America women over fifty are invisible, unless of course they are walking around half naked with a set of store-bought DDDs stopping traffic on Sunset Boulevard.

If you would think it is a scary state of being, you would be correct. So what is a Grandmother to do?

Throw away her Oil of Olay? Pack and leave town before she brings disgrace on her family? Wear a veil?

Okay, so that does work for Muslim women.

Ah, now I get the whole Burqua thing!

Shall I repair into my golden years in a black dress and sensible shoes like an Italian grandmother? Spending all my time making sauce and rolling pasta dough?

“Come dip my homemade Italian bread in Grandma’s perfect marinara?

Or shall I make Aliyah to an assisted living home where my children may come to visit once a month, if I am lucky?

Or if wealthy enough make a pilgrimage to Boca Raton, where I can spend my time playing maj jong and looking for a man with his own teeth who can still drive at night?

You would think I am embellishing my conundrum, but unfortunately I am not.

Last week the Beverly Hills City Council took up the issue of whether or not the police should give tickets for excessive wrinkling. The measure was, of course supported by all the plastic surgeons and Botox manufacturers. It failed by only one vote.

Isn’t it bad enough the fat police patrol is still at large, suspiciously eyeing anyone at the Krispy Krème drive thru and taking license plate numbers?

So what should one do who feels they still have more to offer the world than good lasagna or mandal bread?

Don’t move to Los Angeles is a damn good start. There is no doubt in my mind as to why there are so many kooks running through the palm-tree laden streets of LA. Why there are so many car chases across its bumper-to-bumper freeways. Why men always look like a cat that just ingested a ten-pound canary.

Simply, it is because young women are in abundance and older women are in hiding. Or, as we refer to these young chicks in over 49 circles the third-wife-to-be.

Yoga classes are filled with fifties and ups stretching and downward dogging their way back to youth. Hair colorists are so abundant you can’t blink without bumping into one and plastic surgeons are so finely honed, that a woman can leave for lunch and arrive back at work looking ten years younger.

Men check women out like Carl Sagan checked out every star in the galaxy. They balk if a woman has one wrinkle too many, reminds them of their mother or simply isn’t the perfect image of beauty they feel they deserve.

Meanwhile, have you taken a look at these aging Lotharios lately?

OY!

They have spray on tans, spray on hair, blue pills bulging from their pockets and a dating profile on those meet-a-felon sites that is filled with more lies and exaggerations than a politician’s resume. Quick dating tip here: orange jump suits are not a turn on!

They examine every woman they date with the precision of a butcher frenching a lamb chop for the Oscar’s Governor’s Ball and their expectations are higher than Keith Richard’s partying with Janis Joplin.

As Bette Davis once opined, “getting old is not for sissies.” It is also not for women. And please don’t ask me, who is Bette Davis!

Men age well. They gain an air of distingue and intrigue. Women gain weight and arm themselves each day for another battle with gravity. A war they ultimately lose.

They Spanx themselves together as best as they can before embarking into the world, ass dragging and boobs searching the sidewalk like they are looking for lost quarters.

No bra too big

No skin too tight to hide the ravages of time.

Good News! There is always a way to cope with these depressing facts of life; grandchildren. One hug from my grandsons and I am immediately as young at heart as a 66-year-old man riding the Seine at midnight with a Paris model.

As one learns quickly in LA, there are certain foods that will arm one best for battle against the aging process and this week’s miracle food is beets. Supposedly it is the nuclear option for battling all the ravages of time. I am of course waiting for the day the Surgeon General announces chocolate as the cure all for all human ailments.

Until that glorious day you can find a good plastic surgeon on your own. But before you do, go hug your grandchildren. I promise it’s cheaper and totally pain free.

Here is my recipe for Garlic Sirloin Egg Rolls. ENJOY!!!!

Garlic Lovers Sirloin Egg Rolls

4 cloves of garlic roasted (or 11/2 cps of the roasted garlic in the grocery store already roasted and peeled. I buy the ones at Whole Foods olive bar)

1 cup of ground sirloin

2 packages of mushrooms

1 cups of onion chopped

1½ cups of heavy cream

½ cup of shredded provolone cheese (optional)

1 tablespoon of butter

2 tablespoons of oil

½ cup of Sherry

2 teaspoons salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

¼ teaspoon thyme

Egg roll wrappers

If roasting your own garlic preheat oven to 400 degrees. Unwrap outer cover of garlic leaving heads in tact. Cut off the top portion of the head so a bit of the garlic is exposed. Smear with some olive oil and wrap garlic cloves in foil and roast them in the oven for about 45 minutes. When done, carefully remove foil and squeeze garlic out to use.

Sauté ground sirloin seasoned with salt and pepper and set aside.

Cut up mushrooms and add with onions to oil and butter in frying pan. Season with thyme and salt then sauté until soft. Add sherry and sauté until sherry is reduced about 3 minutes more.

Combine sirloin in pan with mushrooms and onions. Add garlic and mix together on low heat until heated through two minutes or so.

Remove mixture and then add 2 cups of cream to fry pan used for mushroom frying. Warm on low heat until cream thickens and can coat the back of the spoon. Add two tablespoons of roasted garlic to cream mixture and stir in well. Pour through a sieve to remove bits.

Set aside and cover to keep warm.

Spread about 1 heaping tablespoon of garlic on the egg roll wrapper at the pointed edge. This is where you can add the shredded cheese if you’d like. Roll up halfway and fold in sides and continue rolling sealing with water at the end to seal. Do not roll too loose or oil will seep in. Place on wax paper until ready to fry.

Add 1 cup of oil to a ten-inch fry pan and heat to 350.

Place egg rolls in hot oil and fry on all sides until golden brown. Don’t overfill pan of the temperature will drop and the egg rolls will be greasy. Serve hot with cream dipping sauce.

Can be a meal, appetizer or made smaller to use as an hors D’oeuvre. Can be stored by separating them with wax paper so they don’t touch when you place them in freezer.