Everyone has a story to tell about the Blind Date from Hell. Comedian Richard Lewis` wasn`t even a fix-up, it was a wrong number. ”The phone rang in my house,” says Lewis, ”and it was this woman asking for another guy. We started talking, and it turned into the hottest conversation I ever had in my life. Finally, I said: `Where do you live? I`m coming to pick you up.` ” So Lewis drove over to his lady love`s house in a fever, only to find, well, as Lewis says, ”I`m no big deal, but she was frightening. She wanted to go to Hawaii. I wanted to go to the doctor!”
Some Hollywood legends have a mystique all their own. Marilyn Monroe is one. James Dean is another, and now there`s an entire book devoted to ”The Death of James Dean” (Grove Press). Author Warren Newton Beach claims Dean was obsessed with death. He quotes Dean`s friend Maila Nurmi, better known in the 1950s as Vampira, as saying that Dean had a ”mortido,” an impulse toward death. ”He was photographed many times with ropes and nooses,” writes Beach. ”He said he would never live to see 30.” Actually, he never lived to see 25.
If living really well is your goal in life, there`s a book that can tell you how to go about it: ”Courvoisier`s Book of the Best” (Salem House), edited by Lord Patrick Lichfield. Among other things, it tells you where to go and whom you`re going to meet once you get there. When it comes, for instance, to Hollywood parties, Lichfield says among the best are ”charity movie premieres such as `Rocky IV` and `Out of Africa,` but L.A. society is bored to tears with the same old celebrity faces. The Gabor sisters will go the opening of a filing cabinet. The Reagans are about the only names to cause a tremor in Hollywood Hills.”
REPLAYS
”God loves all men but is enchanted by none.” Isaac Asimov.
”Perhaps God is not dead; perhaps God is Himself mad.” R.D. Laing.
”One thing I have no worry about is whether God exists. But it has occurred to me that God has Alzheimer`s and has forgotten we exist.”
Jane Wagner.
