Manhattan Beach, California.
Central Park West.
The Brady House.
Fallingwater.
DeLorean.
Space Station.
Amalfi Coast.
Sailboat.
St. Lucia. (Not recommended for business calls.)
Paris.
Everest.
I am ready for the pandemic to end. But I am having way too much fun on Zoom.
I started thinking it might be time to retire this blog when my holiday newsletter looked like crap on a mobile phone, and I realized that Blogger hasn't updated its platform since phones were invented.
Free is still good, but at this point it's kind of like free fruit cake.
But we'll proceed.
Ethan has returned to college for the spring semester, and Samantha is living with her mom, so as of now it's just me and Jo and the two bad dogs living in this rambling two-bedroom apartment. It suddenly seems like 4,000 square feet.
2021 is the year we're transitioning "their bedroom" into "the spare bedroom." We're re-sanding the floor for the first time since 1929, and re-painting the walls from 2002 Baby Blue to 2021 Manhattan Co-op Gray. (Hoping the light gray redecorating trend hasn't passed yet.)
In process:
We're also going to pare down the furniture and junk to make it look less like a hoarder's den. "Would your mother-in-law be willing to sleep here?" is our guidepost.
In other news, I will have FIVE new books out in 2021--all Dr. Seuss. Two came out this month; the other three will be published by May.
Other than that, I'm happy to be alive, grateful to be a husband and a father, optimistic that the Hawkeyes may finally win NCAAs this year, and more relieved than I even imagined to have a new president.
It's almost as if all the money for the border wall has been redirected to repair the rift in the space-time continuum.
Happy New Year.
I was up late last night. Obsessively checking presidential vote tallies in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. As I did the previous night. Refreshing my browser every thirty seconds at 1 AM. When is the tranche of Pima County votes coming? My poor wife asleep next to me.
When I woke up this morning, Biden was ahead in Georgia. The day was sunny. I had time for a walk in the park.
By the time I checked Twitter again, near Central Park South, Biden was up in Pennsylvania. And I knew what it meant. Those of us who were up late refreshing our browsers over and over. We knew.
I try not to post about politics, because: (1) I'm not going to convince anybody, (2) nobody asked my opinion, and (3) I don't really want to know your opinion either.
But I will make a brief statement about human beings.
I believe in kindness, and fairness, and love, and respect. I don't care whether we share the same god, or the same holidays, or the same skin tone, or the same socioeconomic status, or the same anything. You do your thing. I do mine. We co-exist. We'll get along just fine.
There is, however, a basic threshold of human decency that I require of others. It's a relatively low bar--God knows we all have our flaws.
But it generally excludes people who are pathological liars, cheaters, narcissists, and, for lack of a better term, obnoxious blowhards. I avoid people like that. I don't support people like that.
I have a bit more tolerance for people who do. But, honestly? Not very much. If you're not Biff, but you're still one of the goons who stands behind him and laughs at his jokes and nods when he makes fun of others? You and I are not going to be close friends.
I am who I am. We all set our moral floors.
That green November softball field, and the yellow and orange leaves, and that phenomenal tree in the middle of the Sheep Meadow, and the playgrounds just waking up with the very first toddlers and nannies of the day.
And I know what everyone is thinking, as I pass them, every jogger and dog walker, everyone here in this wonderful anarchist jurisdiction of bleeding-heart liberal elites.
We're all smiling inside, and thinking how great it is to live in this melting pot of a place. And feeling grateful for the return of that basic threshold of human decency, however tenuous.
During the Berlin Airlift following WWII, an American supply pilot dropped candy to kids in East Berlin.
Halloween 2020 on the Upper West Side was our own "candy drop" during tough times. Several of our townhouse neighbors went all-out with their decorations. Ours was one of the few apartment buildings welcoming trick-or-treaters this year. But lots of kids came by--we gave away ten big bags of candy.
Some of our visitors...
We even made the local news--sort of--that's my back and arm at 2:53!
As always, we try to address the most pressing issues of our day: world hunger, global warming--and today, the location of Roddy McDowall's beach house.
To cut to the chase, 23560 Malibu Colony Road.
In 2011, several home movies shot by Roddy McDowall at his beach house in 1965 were uploaded to YouTube. They featured stars like Paul Newman, Natalie Wood, Rock Hudson, Judy Garland, and Julie Andrews.
But searching for the address of the beach house on Google always comes up empty.
So I viewed each of the videos to see if I could figure out where the house was.
First clue, of course, was Malibu. And it was directly on the sand.
Second clue was that several of the home movies included shots from the beach itself. Looking west, a continuation of houses along a curving sandy cove, eventually to a point of land jutting out to the south. No pier in sight, by the way. And no Point Dume in the background.
This narrowed the search to essentially two spots in Malibu where the land curves into a cove, and where there is no pier and no Point Dume.
Possibility #1 would've been on Malibu Road just east of Corral State Beach. However, (1) the video clearly shows houses stretching all the way around the cove, and there are few houses along Corral Beach; (2) Roddy's house opens directly onto the beach at sand level, while the houses on Malibu Road tend to be up on stilts; (3) one of Roddy's videos shows the road in front of the house; it is flat on the land side, unlike the hillier Malibu Road.
Which leaves possibility #2: Malibu Colony, also known in the old days as Malibu Movie Star Colony. The houses in the distance extend all the way along the cove. The houses are close to the sand. And the land to the north is flat.
So Roddy's house was likely located somewhere along Malibu Colony Road. But where?
The big clue was from a video featuring Julie Andrews and her daughter.
Roddy followed them as they left his house--out onto the street. Looking into the distance, you can't see the end of the road--so it is a ways off.
Julie and her daughter get into their car, which is presumably facing east. She starts the car, then backs up, turns around, and heads west.
That means the only exit was to the west. Which means they were to the east of the main road into the colony.
The best clue comes in the final seconds of the video--a car turning from the main road--the only intersection in the colony!
So Roddy's beach house was likely one of the first three houses east of that road--since replaced with larger houses.
