Pajama Jeans: scourge of the modern american ass

The Yank insists that we watch Fox News; to me, it feels like an anthropology experiment.   It was the same when I tried to explain the British democratic system to the Americano.  He couldn't understand why we thought a hung parliament was not a good thing.  'Because if we left things that way nothing would ever get done.'  'But that's great' he retorts, 'nobody wants government to interfere in our lives by actually doing anything.'  For the good of our friendship we have a moratorium on discussions about universal health care...

Anyway, I bit my tongue,  turned my attention to the advertising, and happened upon THE PAJAMA JEAN:



WHO buys these?!?  

If ever there was a trouser that perfectly captured  the phrase you are what you eat, this is it, and honey it looks like a rotten lettuce in a tea towel.  Since when did it become sartorially acceptable to just give up?  They are the fashion equivalent of a coffin for your body because surely enrobing yourself in these is like saying, ignore me, I'm done?  Karl Lagerfeld uses these people on his shooting range, I'm sure of it...

Monolingual = monotongue

An undisclosable source rolled over at the Chateau this morning and informed me that I had been yelling in Italian in my sleep. This is a relief because one if my greatest fears is that America will render me monotongue. Not good in a State where the driving is so bad that being able to source insults from three languages is an absolute plus - generally while they pause to scratch their head you can execute some kind of borderline legal maneuver, euro-style.  If I recall correctly, in my dream I was trying to book us a hotel in Rome, so then the shouting would make perfect sense.  And hopefully not too terrifying for my witness. It's the wild gesticulation I'm more worried about:  you can take the girl out of Sicily...

My other home's the Chateau Marmont

So this is the kind of crisis I like.  Because my Malibu residence is closed all day for waterproofing and other heavy building work, I have decamped to the Chateau Marmont to work.  Here's my desk.

And the view above my desk:

 I'd like to say that this falls into the category of 'middle-class crisis of the day' (you know, like when you are having a bad day because Waitrose have run out of fettucine) but it's really not the case, this takes pretentious crisis to a whole other level:  the LA Standard.  It's akin to the time that the Hopa had a tantrum because his regular Sushi chef was not at his local restaurant.  Now THAT's when you know you are drinking the LA Kool-Aid.  I wonder if there's rehab for people that leave LA?  Seems to me like he's going to need it given he's about to move to New York...  Good luck with that!

In pictures:  a really hard life...

 

 

Malibu. Jealous much?

I am currently under self-imposed house arrest at the Hopa's Malibu pad.  Really, could life get any better?  This has been my office for the last four days as the Hopa and the future Mrs Hopa (FMH) nipped off to Jackson Hole for a bit of skiing with the celebs.  

Permission to be jealous, I fucking would be.  

Honestly you never need to leave the house except to go run barefoot on the beach, which  to coin an American phrase, is awesome.  It's almost too perfect.  The deck gets sun from early morning until around 2.30pm, which is great because anyone that tells you that you can write a heartfelt cinematic masterpiece whilst sunbathing naked is lying, you never do anything of the sort.  What you actually do is cruise the surfers off on the waves to your right with the zoom lens on your camera and write postcards to everyone you know currently living in the wettest greyest most miserable parts of the globe (London, Paris) telling them all about how you are sunbathing naked on a private deck cruising surfers with your zoom lens... really, I am like SUCH a good friend...

Anyway, once the sun goes in you have to actually haul your ass in front of a computer and concentrate on what you are going to do with Don Draper (keep it clean please ladies).  FYI, that's what I am actually doing right now, writing a spec script for Mad Men.  Watch this space (not with a zoom lens...).

 Images for your perusal below:

Louis Mongrel's riding bitch

So in true gentlemanly fashion the Americano offered to drive me down from SF to LA.   And not just on the 405, but on the PCH.  And in a convertible too.  That's class.  

The Yank and I solidified our burgeoning friendship doing the reverse journey many moons ago but on the 405.  For the Euros amongst you, this is the highway that cuts through the heart of the face of California you will never see on the cover of a Beach Boy's album, namely, cow country.  And it stinks, literally.  It's just hours and hours of cow's in fields and truck stops, that's it.  You don't even get radio reception and of course the particular vehicle we had only had a tape deck.  The Yank and I were reduced to buying Country Classics Volume III and Tom Jones' Greatest Hits.  Country Classics ate shit on the first play-round, so that was it, four hours of Tom Jones.  I now know all the words to every song just on hearing the opening bars.  That's a skill (that is only useful if you are ever in a lock in in the Welsh Vallies, which, you'll be astonished to learn, is not what I pray to God for when I go to bed at night...).

Anyway, tales from road trips past aside, here are the pictures that speak a thousand words.  It was a phenomenal drive.