LA en vie

When did pimps and hos become a good thing?

The other night I took A to a huge costume store to find a Halloween costume. A ran into some friends from school, so I wandered off into the other aisles. I was very tempted to buy a large python which wraps around your shoulders and whose mouth fits over your head like a cap (it's eating you); I would have bought a Darth Maul costume if I could have found an adult version. He's my favorite Sith-- he's so graceful.

But I was most amazed to see the Halloween costumes for women and especially for little girls. Whatever happened to fairy tales and pumpkins and historical figures? Almost everything for females was short, tight, skin-baring and sexy, even for six-year-olds.

A handsome young black guy was in the store buying a white wig and Snow White costume. He said he was going as Snow Ho with the Seven Pimps. He actually looked really cute in the white wig ("I'm Snow White in reverse," he said).

But since when did pimps and hos become something people admire? Since I left the States, for sure.

An equestrian store in Malibu advertises, "Pimp your ride!" and PimpMySpace is the biggest site to help you jazz up your page there.

I'm just asking.

Halloween happiness

In Paris, I had stopped loving Halloween. It was too exhausting emotionally to defend it against the knee-jerk anti-American French attacks on it.

Here, it's so nice to see people still celebrate it as uncomplicated fun. It's my first American Halloween in many, many years.

The white sky: California version

 

The smoke has made for an eerie view the past three days. The sea and sky have merged into a single white horizonless cloud. It looks as if the boats I can see are floating in space.

The Malibu fires have died down, but everyone is still talking about them. I have to admit that I made a list of things to put in the car if we had to evacuate quickly. And I was glad I left my most precious mementos in Paris. I had read too many reports of fires in California.

More than twice as many people had to evacuate for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and far, far more lost their homes and are still suffering, more than two years later. I couldn't help contrasting the rapid response to this fire, and the federal government's help and concern, to what happened and is still happening in southern Louisiana and Mississippi.

The PCH: too quiet

The Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) normally roars downhill from me all day long, like the white noise of the river. Monday and Tuesday it was closed between Topanga and Malibu Canyon because of the fires in Malibu. Yesterday afternoon at 18h30, rush hour, all I could hear was loud surf.

Fire too close for comfort

From a woman I know in the Valley

Go home

These cutesy little oval stickers seem to have originated with "MV" (for Martha's Vineyard), when the islanders, or more likely the summer people, decided to pretend their offshore paradise was a country, and made a decal like the ones European cars have when they travel abroad.

I've even seen one for the island of Sylt on the North Sea (the German MV). The decals are probably popular because they imply that one belongs to this elite place whose initials only the insiders recognize.

But now they have become so widespread that there is a backlash. I saw this one here in L.A.  It just says "Go Home."

Bumper sticker I like

The famous passenger

We have a young British visitor at the moment. She got off the plane Friday with big eyes. "J.K. Rowling was on my flight!"

Mystifying phrase

"I'm good" does not mean je suis bonne.

The handsome SS soldiers

Today I don't have anything to write about, so I turn to the past. A strange episode when I was living in Munich ("the world city with heart"), which I loved far more than I have ever loved Paris. Maybe it was just a different time in my life.

We went down one weekend to Berchtesgaden, about an hour south of Munich, and one of the prettiest parts of Bavaria, which is the most beautiful part of Germany. It's in the foothills of the Alps and the houses really do all look like this, with flowers on all the balconies and perfectly groomed green lawns. The lawns must be partly natural, because the hills are all the same beautiful smooth green.

Besides the pretty town of Berchtesgaden, with its pedestrian zone, there is the dramatic fjordlike Königssee (King's Lake), a salt mine you can slide into, and a visit to the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's favorite hideaway on top of a mountain nearby.

When we walked toward the buses that normally take you up to the Eagle's Nest, we froze. In front of the buses were dozens of tall, slim, handsome, blond young men in SS uniforms. A film crew was setting up around them.

The young men were laughing and taking photos of each other. They were smiling and polite to strangers asking them questions.

It struck me for the first time that the SS had been glamorous in its time. And that that was part of why it all happened.