The Big Weenie Hollywood California from Memories of Hollywood

“Welcome to Hollyweird.”  I heard it first as an 11 year old (fresh faced and fresh-lunged) from my Mom when my sis and I arrived from Oklahoma.  My first impressions were: a lot of buildings, hills and palm trees.  I felt there was “more civilization” than what I was used to in Tulsa.  But things […]

The actor Victor Kilian was bludgeoned to death at the Lido Apartments in Hollywood in 1979, a few weeks before I moved in.  Around that time and in that area, though I certainly wasn’t aware of it, there was apparently a lot of dying going on.  A few miles west of my place, and just […]

Sometimes the outside appearance of a building gives no clue to what the inside looks like.  The Villa Elaine on Vine Street was not only an example of this but also a serious case of false advertising.  From the outside it looked (and still does look) like a sleazy set for some old film noir […]

I saw that it was 4:55 am; I never let the alarm wake me up.  It’s not that I didn’t set it, I did; I just always seemed to wake myself up right before.  It’d been that way for years, and had become part of my morning ritual.  Like shaving in the shower, or downing […]

My REALLY bitchin’ summer, though I wouldn’t have known to call it that yet, was the summer of ’79.  That summer introduced me to the ease of a California lifestyle, tailored to the needs of an 11 year old. From the very beginning I played tourist, kicked back poolside and read some really insightful stuff; […]

Marilyn Monroe died almost exactly five years before I was born (and exactly fifty years before this writing). Living as she did before my era, I, of course never met her, and in fact have only ever met one person who ever knew her.   But more importantly, for the purposes of this story, she died […]

Boxing used to be a lot more popular than it is now.  There seemed to be big fight going on all the time, especially in the Welterweight and Middleweight divisions, where there was always a scrum for the number one spot.  I never knew better boxing analysts than those 7th and 8th Graders back in […]

Seattle’s a great place to go if you want to access your inner hippie.  If you think you know a lot of things but want to give it a test and need a proving ground, I recommend you try the fertile volcanic soil of the Great Northwest.  That’s what I did.   I’d worked at a […]

South Beach used to really suck.  Especially for a kid having to live there after several great years in Hollywood, CA.  And having to arrive there in the hot summer of 1982 just made it worse. 1982. We’re not talking modeling agencies and clubs and bars and celebrity sightings.  This was before all that.  Instead, […]

Twenty-Five years ago today was a day I’d been looking forward to for a long time and was the most exciting day (even though I knew exactly what was going to happen) of my life.  It was the day I traded the sour, hot air and bug spray smell of my family’s south Miami Beach […]

The mid 90’s found my friend James and I with very different living situations.  We’d both dropped out of college a few years earlier and took divergent paths that had finally led us again to the same place, the same situation.  He’d served a couple of hitches in the Marine Corps and ended up at […]

My time in Hollywood wasn’t one Celebrity encounter after another.  Although I went to school then and later with a couple of people who turned out to be famous, my personal experiences were of a more “jejune” variety…  that is, except for getting to see a hirsute (hairsuit?) Ed Asner  anchor one end of a […]