We just moved into a new townhouse, and I love it. It’s like a 1970s Palm Springs dream home, and every day it makes me feel happy just to walk in the door.
However, with every new place comes things both good and bad. Even dream homes.
(Warning: Grainy iPhone photos ahead.)
GOOD
A weird atrium in the middle of the house. Look at all the sunlight! And rocks galore!
BAD
We have nothing to put inside this atrium except a cactus that looks like a penis.
GOOD
Carpet! No more incessant CLICKY-CLICKY-CLICKY of dog nails hitting the hardwood.
BAD
Brown.
GOOD
Microwave! After four years of deliberate, microwave-free living, I was secretly excited to see our kitchen cabinets were pimped out with a microwave.
BAD
It doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t. Look at it. It’s from the Smithsonian Museum of Appliance History.
GOOD
The guest room has a Murphy bed. And as someone who has watched many a comedy film, I know that Murphy beds mean one thing, and one thing only. Hijinks.
BAD
What the hell could be bad about a Murphy bed?
GOOD
The guest room also contains a built-in desk. And a chair too. This room has everything!
BAD
When we moved in, there was a pair of old, pink panties on the chair.
Nearly every time I go out for a morning run, I see a double-decker bus jammed full of tourists with fancy cameras. And then I have to stop and let them take my photo and it’s totally embarrassing.
No, that last part is not true.
The bus full of tourists part, however, is real. And it got me wondering, what in the heck are they looking at?
I already knew this central Palm Springs neighborhood is home to swanky digs and architectural gems. And I knew celebrities and Hollywood legends made this area their playground. I just didn’t exactly where, who or what.
So I did some googling and came up with a list of addresses. (This Southern California hiking site was a tremendous resource. Thanks!) Then I grabbed my iPhone for some jogging and shooting.
This is not a comprehensive list by any means. They’re just some of the fun celeb homes I run past every day. (OK, OK. Three times a week.) And I still have at least a dozen more to photograph. So stay tuned for part 2!
Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell • 550 Via Lola
This house is one of my favorites. Doesn’t it look so breezy and fun, just like the stars who lived there?
Debbie Reynolds • 670 Stevens Road
This house is perched on top of a tiny but steep hill. If you hold your computer up to your ear and listen hard enough, you might be able to hear me wheezing.
Elvis Presley • 845 Chino Canyon
Unattractive black fence. White rocks that look like the bubbles on a stagnant pond. CREEPY ELVIS FACE. What’s not to love?
I’ve heard a lot of people say this home is tacky, but I think it’s a charming, unapologetic throwback. Living here would be like having Tomorrowland in your living room.
Marilyn Monroe • 1326 Rose Ave.
This home wins the prize for the most difficult to photograph. It’s located surprisingly close to the street and isn’t gated or anything. But there’s SO MUCH SHRUBBERY. And I always seemed to be there when the sun was in the worst possible position. So excuse the weirdo color — but it just adds to the classic 1950s aesthetic, no?
Otherwise, it’s an adorable little home. I can easily imagine Marilyn padding around the yard in a silky robe with sexy bedhead.
Nat King Cole • 1258 Rose Ave.
Again, there’s a whole lotta landscaping goin’ on.
Ronald and Nancy Reagan • 369 Hermosa Place
Stately, conservative and totally California. I would expect no less.
Clark Gable • 222 Chino Dr.
Frankly my dear, I do give a damn. It’s just so pretty! And pink!
Sammy Davis Jr. • 444 Chino Dr.
The parties that must have gone down here. Can you imagine?
Cyd Charisse and Tony Martin • 1197 Monte Vista
Dean Martin • 1123 Monte Vista
Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy • 776 Mission Road
I didn’t want to run up to the gate and stick my phone through the fence to get a better photo. Especially since someone was home at the time. Just trust me, this house is everything you’d expect of Katharine the Great.
Sydney Sheldon • 425 Via Lola
Undergoing a second draft.
Howard Hughes • 335 Camino Norte
What? You can see the home of a famous recluse from the street?
NO! Of course not.
There’s actually a great big wall around this place, bigger than what you’d find at most prisons. But I jumped really high, held my phone up in the air and hoped for the best.
Liberace • 1441 N. Kaweah Road
I love this place. I mean, not for me. But it’s so … Liberace, all the way from the lion statues to the piano mailbox.
Coming soon: Jack Benney, Zsa Zsa, Frank, Bing and Lucy!
I wanted to take my dog for a walk. I spent the whole day inside finishing an assignment, and I desperately needed to stretch my body.
“I’ll go with you,” The Husband said. “It’s dark.”
“No, no. I’m fine. I’m wearing white clothes so cars can see me.”
“Let me go with you,” he said.
“No, no. The moon is full.”
“Let me go with you.”
And so I did.
Palm Springs is always quiet, but once you get off the main street, our neighborhood is particularly still. That’s why the man was immediately out of place.
The Husband and I were on the outskirts of a park. The man was across the street, crouched on the ground, outside of a low brick wall. He hammered something. The metal-on-metal sound was almost like a lighter that had run out of fuel — “flick, flick, flick” — but deeper, heavier, more resonance.
The Husband and I both craned our necks to get a better look at the guy. And that’s when he turned and looked back at us. Terror ricocheted through my body. Suddenly it was difficult to breathe.
“WALK,” said The Husband in a voice I’ve never heard before.
Everything in my body told me to not run. It would make the man mad. I forced my feet to maintain a normal pace.
“I told you to WALK,” The Husband said. “GO.”
The nearest car headlights were at least a mile away. Only one house had a light on, but that was two blocks away. My dog has such short legs.
The man was behind us.
“Hey,” he yelled. And we kept walking.
Palm Springs is incredibly dark at night. It’s so people can see the stars. It’s something I’ve loved ever since I moved to the desert — the darkness here is so much more complete and sincere than nights in the Midwest.
“I said HEY.”
I cursed myself for wearing white. In darker clothes, maybe I could have slipped into the park. It would have been easy. But with the stupid moon grinning down on me, reflecting my T-shirt like a Crest smile, there was no way.
“Do you know where Ramon. I mean, Raymond Cree,” the man said. He didn’t speak in complete sentences. None of his words made sense, but they had the tone of a threat. “Tell me Vista Chino.”
“No,” The Husband said. We continued walking.
My body had a visceral reaction to the man, who was now an arm’s length behind us. My heart trembled on the outside layer of my skin. Heat rolled through my body like lava. A very clear voice inside said, “Walk normal. Keep steady. Stand tall.”
I understood that no matter what happened, I was ready to accept it. I turned around to face the man.
“That way,” I said and pointed in the opposite direction. “Go the other way.”
We didn’t see the man go. We just looked behind us, and he was no longer there. At that point we quickened our step. We expected the man to reappear at any moment. But then he didn’t, and we were home.
“I’m sorry I yelled,” said The Husband. “Do you think I overreacted?”
There comes a time in everyone’s life when you have to suffer for the one you love.
For me, that moment arrived yesterday when I got a bag of poop in the face.
In order to explain, first I need to tell you a little bit about my dog. When I got her from the animal shelter, her name was Iris. I thought she was given that name because she’s fancy. Turns out, it came courtesy of her fucked-up irises.
This dog was born completely deaf and about 90 percent blind. Her left eye is tiny, ice blue and completely useless. Her right eye is brownish, and she can use it ever-so-slightly. She can see well enough to get around most of the time, but not enough to avoid walking into the occasional mailbox or telephone pole.
Her eyes actually float in two different directions, like a cartoon dog that’s been hit in the head with a frying pan.
This is why I named her Lemon. Because she’s a wonky used car.
That said, she’s also brave and spunky. She literally stops to smell the roses, and she loves nothing more than burrowing under my knees when I take a nap. Her life is entirely scent- and cuddle-driven, which is admirable. For a dog, she’s pretty good at teaching people to enjoy the succulence of life.
Lemon also loves to hit the hiking trails, which is why I take her up the Lykken Trail about once a week. I suspect someone in her family tree once mated with a mountain goat, because she’s a surprisingly good hiker despite her ridiculous low-rider legs.
Yesterday she pooped four times as we approached the trailhead (Aside: Do you think dachshunds poop more because they are stretched out and therefore have longer intestines? This is my theory). I picked up each pile in a plastic bag and secured the bag around the handle of Lemon’s leash. So I was still carrying it with me, but I wasn’t actually holding the sack of nasty.
Another dog approached us, which always spooks Lemon. It doesn’t matter how friendly the dog is, imagine getting your salad tossed by a cold nose that you didn’t even see coming.
After the dog passed, Lemon was a little frantic and skittish, but we still progressed up the mountain. At a particularly thin point of the trail, I noticed two women barreling toward us. I imagined the ladies getting caught in a tangle of dachshund, the whole ball of them tumbling all the way down on rocks and rattlesnakes, eating cactus for lunch.
There was only a slight outcropping where Lemon and I could pull over. And just in time too. The women rounded the switchback as I was scooping up Lemon into my arms. And in that motion, the bag of poop launched itself off the leash and smacked me directly in the face.
It would actually be no big deal — after all, there was a layer of plastic between the poo molecules and my cheek — except that these ladies happened to be filming some kind of reality show. One woman had a helmet cam, the other a handheld device. When I ran into them at their car later, they said they were with some kind of TV production team.
So if you happen to see footage of a sweaty hiker chick getting a bag of poop in the face on YouTube someday, that chick might be me.
I’m a firm believer that almost everything you need to know about a person can be determined over lunch.
It’s certainly a far better gauge of personality than the music they download, the clothes they wear or the car they drive. I always get so frustrated when I’m watching “Law and Order” and the cops find all their clues by looking at the victim’s bookshelf. I end up screaming at the TV, “That book doesn’t mean your victim was in a cult! Maybe she went through a harmless Wiccan phase!”
No, if you really want some insight into a person, just grab lunch. (Obviously that’s not an option for the “L&O” cops, since their victim is dead and therefore is not a quality lunch companion. But this is my analogy, and it works for me.)
My theory was confirmed the other day when I grabbed a salad with Steve Poltz, a musician I have liked for a long time.
This is Steve. I stole this photo off his website.
If you aren’t already familiar with Steve Poltz, here’s the quick and dirty low-down: He hails from Palm Springs. He formed a band called The Rugburns, and they played all over the world. The band eventually parted ways, but Steve Poltz continues to play solo. He dated the singer Jewel for a while and wrote a lot of songs for/with her, including the hit “You Were Meant for Me.” You can also see him in the video for that tune.
He’s the one who is not Jewel.
You might also remember this Jeep commercial, which used his song, “You Remind Me.”
I used to listen to The Rugburns when I was growing up in Ohio. Those were the pre-internet years, when a teenager in the Midwest had to acquire new music by any means necessary, which included using fake IDs to get into 21-and-up shows, trading music with your friends and shoplifting. I was so hungry for music, I would use a VCR to tape the MTV show “120 Minutes,” then play it back while I held my cassette player against the speaker to record the music from the TV. The result was scratchy and shitty and low quality, but it was music and it fed me.
I damn near wore out my cassette tape of The Rugburns’ “Morning Wood,” my reward for trading in albums by Public Image Limited and Frente.
“Morning Wood” was a fixture in my little red Chevette (no relation to the Prince song), until the tape met an untimely end during an irrational, hallucinogen-fueled drive to Chillicothe in the middle of the night.
RIP, beloved Rugburns tape. Now I will just enjoy your songs on YouTube.
Through happenstance and a great friend named Dean Lockwood, I ended up having lunch with Steve Poltz the other day. It was delightful. Here’s what I learned about him.
1. Steve Poltz stands up to greet people.
2. He has a firm handshake. Not aggressive, not floppy, but appropriately in the middle.
3. He is kind to servers. As someone who was once a waitress, I can tell you this is a huge indication of overall character.
4. He ordered the kale salad, a meal that is both nourishing and hearty without any added pretense. That probably says something about Steve, but I’m not going to go so far as to compare him to kale. Also, he ate his food with gusto but paused long enough to offer everyone else a bite.
5. He politely listened to all of my boring stories. If you know me at all, you also know I tend to babble when I get nervous or excited. So the fact that Steve Poltz put up with this and was still nice to me by the end of the meal — well, that says a lot.
6. He really, truly loves making music. Steve has spent decades on the road — not for adulation and fortune it could bring, but because he genuinely enjoys doing it. He has a strong musical point of view, and he has remained true to his artistic integrity.
Put all of that together, and you’ll understand why I can’t wait for Steve’s show next weekend in Palm Springs. Proceeds from the backyard benefit concert will raise money for the Palm Springs Kiwanis Club literacy program and the Boys & Girls Club. (Cool piece of trivia: Steve Poltz participated in the local Boys & Girls Club program in the 1970s.)
I’m definitely going to be there on Saturday. So is my dad.
If you don’t already have plans, show your support for some good causes and a good-guy musician. And if you do already have plans, break them. This is going to be worth it.
