A few good days

Enjoyed lunch with the Bees, my friends from Westlake village, on Thursday. We met half way in the west valley at our favorite Indian buffet restaurant, Shalimar where their speciality is mulligatawny soup, saffron rice which mixes well with the paprika bright red tandoori chicken, hunter green creamed spinach, yellow curried hard boiled eggs chick peas with green peas and white potatoes. All courses followed by sweetened rice pudding with cinnamon and raisins. Mmmmm.

Fatboy was supposed to be there too but couldn’t join us for lunch. His grandpa passed on last week so he took off for the cold middle west to pay his respects. My condolences to he and his family.

David and I made our travel arrangements Friday for my to visit to see him and his family, including my new grandson, for a long weekend in Feb. It will be good to see his wife Tami, the new Benji, the old twins Grace and Hannah and of course sis Keri and maybe even Tom and Suzanne. Who knows what other surprises may bring.

Was feeling a bit blue Saturday as I was anticipating my usual venture out to visit Bergamot station art galleries where only a few opening receptions were scheduled that evening. Got itchy so I left my flat earlier than usual, got a good parking spot and saw the old regular gallery crawlers wandering around as well waiting for the wine bar to open.

Met Mike first. He’s the king schnoorer. Knows of every free-be event in town. He chatted me up as usual asking for writing tips he’ll ever use. Maybe I’m uncomfortable around him because he’s a mirror of the other world to me in some ways. I’ve been schnooring and not putting in the writing time required myself.

The best art exhibit of the evening was actually pretty cool with original classic and newly rendered reproductions of ancient album covers of various music genres. Maybe that’s way it attracted so many musicians and wannabes. The wide variety of costumes were pretty darn cool looking. Traditional conservs, GBers, Goths, PP and mad hatters.

Wanted to get into the swing of things by looking like the artist I’m not. Dressed more like an artist hipster than a hipster artist with my Chinese Mao cap, cargo pants, striped sweater and jean vest I didn’t even stand out in the circus dressed crowd.

Told people I was a writer and blogger which is one and one-half percent true. Had a couple of cocktails so I read the palms of a few beautiful women. One was a makeup artist who was “in” with the several musician celebrities whose names escape me.

She introduced me to a rock band like looking man named Billy who was dressed as if he were about to go on stage and perform in front of a hundred thousand people. He wore a feathered watch cap type hat, a long two pointed reddish blond beard. We chatted for about ten minutes. Then suddenly the gallery exploded with gawkers and the crowd gyrated straight to Billy asking for hugs kisses and autographs.

I guess I’m not as hip as I thought. Billy turned out to be Billy Gibbens of ZZ Top.Real nice fellow with a pleasant soft voice and welcoming personality. Cool cat, man. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRYy4OBEvHE

Sunday morning was a typical trip to Peets sipping, eating and reading. Mmmmm good. Got bored and a bit unsettled while listening to two very young beautiful mothers talking about a house one them just purchased at a bargain price of under three mm. Guess I became envious. I left and went to the local farmers market down the road in Brentwood. Not as cool as the one on Main & OP but I was too lazy to head down to the beach and wanted some bread and tasty fruits mixed in with a true hip crowd of locals. Lots of kids and a few farm animal too.

Did some laundry and food marketing. Had a good but too large dinner at home for a change and was grazing for hours. It felt good but I had way too much.

Today is MLK birthday with all sorts of tribute events around town. There’s one in Santa Monica so I’ll be attending in a couple of hours.

Ciao for now