Los Angeles | BEGUILING HOLLYWOOD

Listen up, sometimes the holidays are hell — even in Hollywood

December 28, 2019 by Vickie Lester

This is the wonderful Lucille Ball broadcasting from CBS about 80 years ago. Much more recently (okay, okay, on Christmas Eve) I recorded a short story all about a Hollywood holiday, archangels, juvenile delinquents, and aging actors. I downloaded a great open source program called Audacity, clamped a microphone to the table in front of my computer, donned headphones, and spent four hours recording a 34 minute narrative. You would think since I wrote the damn thing the words would […]

Categories: Audio, Books, Entertainment, Film, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Marriage, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #ampodcasting, #hollywoodandmine, Archangel, audio, behind the scenes, Hollywood Holiday, Ketamine Christmas, Lucille Ball

It’s that time of year, my angels. Get comfy and I’ll read you a story… Ketamine Christmas, 1991

December 25, 2019 by Vickie Lester

I didn’t know what to get you, so… This story is 34 minutes long, and in fine Hollywood fashion it’s about a dysfunctional family’s Christmas. I hope you have as much fun listening as I did recording.

Categories: Audio, Books, Christmas, Culture, Design, Entertainment, Fiction, Film, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Short Stories, Story, Uncategorized • Tags: #hollywoodandmine, Archangel, audio, Christmas, Hollywood story, home for the holidays, Ketamine, short story, Vickie Lester reads you a story

Happy Eve, sugar-plums!

December 24, 2019 by Vickie Lester

If you visit here (the website, not the downtown location where this picture was taken) on Christmas Day you can hear a short story which turned into a not-so-short half hour recording about a Hollywood holiday twenty-eight years ago. In the meantime something suitable for the children by Clement Clarke Moore (because the one I’ll be reading you tomorrow is most certainly not). The image of A Visit from St. Nicholas in the author’s hand is courtesy of the New-York […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Culture, Design, Film, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Photography, Uncategorized • Tags: a visit from st nicholas, Christmas Eve, Clement Clarke Moore, Dasher Dancer Prancer Vixen Comet Cupid Donner and Blitzen, DTLA, Hollywood Holiday, Vickie Lester reads you a story

And lo, chiaroscuro!

December 24, 2019 by Vickie Lester

How did I achieve this painterly effect? Sit tight and I will tell you how to go all Caravaggio for Christmas. First do a load of hoodies and sweat pants in the laundry. Put them in the dryer and when they come out all toasty and warm pile them on top of you on the couch. Find your phone. Set it on portrait, then stage light, strike your best Leonardo-esque (I mean the Renaissance painter, not the actor) pose. Have […]

Categories: Art, Christmas, Culture, Design, DIY, Film, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Photography, Uncategorized • Tags: #hollywoodandmine, Caravaggio, chiaroscuro, Christmas, Christmas cheer, Leonardo, painterly, Vickie Lester reads you a story

Is it any wonder they used to call it Tinseltown?

December 23, 2019 by Vickie Lester

Last year I arrived in Los Angeles via train after a long sojourn back east. When the Sunset Limited rolled into town at five a.m. a few days before Christmas, I, with my runny nose and high fever, stepped outside feeling pretty dreadful. Yet when I saw the tall palms and glorious angles of Union Station my heart soared — I’m not ashamed to say it, there really is no place like home. As the sun rose — tucked into […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Christmas, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Memoir, Photography, Travel, Uncategorized • Tags: #hollywoodandmine, art deco, Christmas, Christmas in Los Angeles, Union Station, Vickie Lester reads you a story

Feeling buoyant

December 1, 2019 by Vickie Lester

First, my friend in New York sent me the letter below in reference to my griping about the sound of my voice in the previous post, next I got a text saying something about a bravura opening, and then I went to see more friends and the sound engineer among them told me he would be happy to advise me how to set up a quiet space to record and calmed me down about the whole process. Amazing. And you […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting, friends, gratitude, Heidi Gutman, Mickey Mouse, Minnie, thanks, William Kuhn

Waiting for the Muse to Skype

November 28, 2019 by Vickie Lester

Lily harbored a den of coyotes in her back yard. They went about their nocturnal haunts stealthy-like, unless they were circling to prey and then they raised all hell. Yelps and howls, high-pitched and stunningly shrill, vibrated in the dark. In echoing canyons or flat streets stretching to meet the hilly wilderness, Los Angelinos — both dreaming and about to be eaten — startled into heightened perception. Lily and her coyotes (well, they would doubtless have been surprised to discover […]

Categories: Art, Audio, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Life, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Pets, Photography, Publishing, Story, Thanksgiving, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: Cecil Beaton, coyote, Happy Thanksgiving, Los Angeles, Thanksgiving, Vickie Lester reads you a story

You say movie and I say cinema but didn’t ya…

October 25, 2019 by Vickie Lester

Sit yourself down and watch a glimmer, a gloss, an illusion, a projection, a stream of a story? . I seem to recall a million years ago, when I was a schoolgirl in London, referring to movies as cinema. Is there a difference between the two terms? No. . What a lot of kerfuffle about the old guard dismissing the new guard. . I don’t watch Marvel movies either (hint, see reference to my advanced age above) misters Scorsese and […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Humor, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Theater, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized • Tags: All About Eve gif, Bette Davis, cinema, flounce, Francis Ford Coppola, friends, Martin Scorsese, tea with George and Vickie

For on the page you will find that your greatest virtue can lead to your gravest sin…

October 20, 2019 by Vickie Lester

HOLLYWOOD & MINE By Susannah Corwin “People in the East pretend to be interested in how pictures are made, but if you actually tell them anything, you find they are only interested in Colbert’s clothes or Gable’s private life. They never see the ventriloquist for the doll.” Scott Fitzgerald 26. In the 1800s the world came up with the idea of bestowing personhood on companies. At the time it meant that corporations had to follow the same laws as people, […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting, #hollywood&mine, a novel in which real people or events appear with invented names, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Hollywood novel, read, roman à clef, Vivien Leigh

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