Warren Buffet with a birthmark

On weekdays, I generally arrive at my gym by 6:30a.m. – bleary-eyed, cranky, and eerily resembling a troll doll. Recently, through the slits of my crusty eyelids, I noticed a new employee at the front desk. I noticed her mostly because of her penchant for shrieking “Good morning!” or “Happy Tuesday!” (above the din of my iPod) in an obscenely perky voice. When I turned to politely acknowledge her in hopes of shutting her piehole, I discovered that she’s a beautiful young Latina – who is, apparently, heading straight from Bally’s to the set of Cleopatra.

Every freaking day.

I know she’s like 22, but really, who starts work at 5:30 a.m. (the time the gym opens) in FULL MAKEUP AND HAIR? I consider myself a morning person, but at that hour, the fact that I’ve managed to insert a toothbrush into my mouth without taking out an eye is, for my money, worthy of commendation and a plaque.

The hosts of the Today Show – who get up at a similar hour – lie in a chair asleep while their makeup is troweled on, and they make ten million dollars a year. This girl gets up at the same time, applies just as much (okay, a lot more) makeup and makes ten dollars an hour.

What’s her damage?

Maybe she’s incredibly insecure and believes that her beauty is her only asset.

Maybe she’s convinced that Bally’s is Schwab’s Drugstore in 1952 and she’s gonna be discovered by Swifty Lazar.

Or maybe she’s just one of those annoying overachievers who sleeps four hours a night, collects recyclables for the homeless, and will eventually be running the world.

Just in case, I’d better start being nice to her. And maybe I should comb my hair.

2010-08-27T14:42:11-07:00August 27th, 2010|Uncategorized|

Peeing in the Palace

A while back we attended a charity event at an estate in Beverly Hills that was on the market for $125,000,000.  And no, that is not, unfortunately, a typo. This home, a brand new, 45,000 square foot villa with inlaid marble floors, frescoes, leather walls and gallons of gold leaf, is modeled after the Palace of Versailles.

I’m not kidding.

Although guests weren’t allowed inside (it was a garden party), the owner is close with a friend of mine, and my friend took us on a hush-hush private tour of some of the rooms, like the 40-seat theatre (with adjacent candy room), the ballroom, the wine cave, and the catering kitchen, which is larger than our entire house and had racks of flatware and china for 200 – always a plus if your friends work up an appetite trying to find their way back from one of the 15 bathrooms.

“Holy crap,” I thought as I stood in one of said bathrooms, where a masterpiece was mounted over the toilet, “I’m peeing under a Renoir.” What kind of person builds a home like this? What kind of desperate need to impress is this?

As we wandered back through the gardens and out to the pool, my friend walked up to the lady of the manor and introduced us. A well-preserved fiftysomething blond, she was standing with her gorgeous 26-year-old Italian boyfriend who appeared to have fallen out of the pages of the most recent Vanity Fair. I noticed that she was holding a plastic iced tea cup, so I said, by way of conversation with someone who had about six more zeroes behind her name than I did, “Oh, a Starbucks fan, huh?”

She glanced at the glass, and laughed heartily. “Are you kidding me? They charge three bucks for an iced tea. I make my own!”

2010-08-22T17:32:29-07:00August 22nd, 2010|Uncategorized|
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