Blessing #21 -- Ship's Toast

If you were to read the last 8 months of R17, and mind you I'm not sadistically suggesting you do, you would no doubt pickup on my grieving. Which at peak times was overwhelming and frightening. I always felt like I was walking a tight rope over a steep bottomless canyon. 

The trauma of Deb's passing still has the impact of an oncoming train, but I feel like I've been given a pocket schedule and know when and how to step off the track to dodge that pointy cattle grid.

The other thing you'd notice is my unexpected embrace of the paranormal and surprising beauty of unexplainable randomness. Hence the graphic (above) from a light-sourced random number generator.

In that spirit I'd like to share the memory of how Deb and I first met. But to do that we have to go back a little further to 1983 when I was an overeducated, underemployed short order cook at a swanky health and tennis club on Overland Ave., which randomly enough, is now just 1/4 mile from the house I've lived in for 30 years.

There, while swimming in the pool on my break time, I met Michael Allen, the screenwriter who penned Enter The Dragon. He was a jovial ex New Yorker, with a slim swimmer's body and a leathery dark tan. Since the success of the iconic Bruce Lee film he had a lot of free time (and apparently money) to live the dream -- the same writer dream I wanted.

Michael introduced me to his wife. I have forgotten her name but she was very sweet and her ex-husband was Mel Newhoff, founder of Abert, Newhoff and Burr, one of several creative boutique ad agencies in Century City. 

Fast forward a couple of years, lean years when I paid my dues as a mailroom clerk and wrote thousand of recruitment ads, and I found myself working for Mel Newhoff. First, at his eponymously named agency. Later, because he liked me, at Bozell Advertising in Santa Monica. 

That's where I met Jackie and Beth, a producer and an account supervisor on Kawasaki Jetskis. Did I mention we were all in our late 20's and early 30's?  And the pheromones coming from that West Los Angels office could be detected by mountain lions as far away as Elysian Park?

Jackie and Beth were convinced I'd be the perfect boyfriend for their friend, Debbie Weinblatt. They wanted to set us up on a blind date. I was never a fan of that phenomena, which I'm sure in the era of online dating platforms doesn't exist anymore. But, my father had passed away earlier that year and I thought, "why not?" 

Plus, I was 31 years old and still rocking the triathlon body and a tight blue Speedo.

But the blind date NEVER happened. And here's where the rando factor comes into play again. 

One summer Saturday, in August no less, 33 years ago, my buddy Jamie and I were playing for the Bozell softball team. Pretty sure I hit two grand slam home runs that day, but my memory is subject to further investigation. On the way home from the game, Jamie pulled over in his car and waved for me to stop. 

This was before cellphones and right after smoke signals.

I walked up to his window and he said, "my buddy works as a production assistant and they just wrapped filming a Batman movie. Anyway he's throwing a huge party up in the Hollywood Hills, want to go?"

I was literally one red light or one turn of the head from missing this last minute random invite, but luckily I didn't. With nothing better to do I decided to get out of my comfort zone, forego the folding of the laundry or the annual scrubbing of the bathroom, and go to this complete stranger's house.

Turned out he was not exactly a complete stranger, the production assistant's father was Van Gordon Sauter, president of CBS News. And his mother was Kathleen Brown, sister of Jerry Brown, governor of California. Moreover, I don't know if you'd call it a house, it was more like a Jed Clampett mansion. Big enough to house 300 guests!

Among those guests, and you probably saw this coming, was one Debbie Weinblatt. 

Turns out (more randomness) Jackie and Beth knew someone else on the Batman production team and were also invited to this mammoth bachannalia. Again, what are the odds of such a coinky-dink?

Instead of an awkward, forced blind date with all its incumbent uncomfortable moments and job interview type questions, we had the good fortune to come face-to-face. In a relaxed more convivial situation. And then only after a string of random random events (wrote random twice for emphasis). 

We laughed.

We clicked.

We ended the night at Ship's Diner off La Cienega -- where every booth had its own toaster so you could customize your sourdough, rye or pumpernickel settings. 

Because I had sworn off carbs at that time, I'm not sure I partook in the on-table bread toasting. 

Besides, I wasn't hungry. 

I was smitten.