Day 90: Larry David stalks me

When you live in Santa Monica, you're never more than a stone's toss from a celebrity.  One time on a playdate at Britta's house, Britta and I started to get really creeped out by this man parked in his car in front of her house.  He sat there for over an hour, tapping away on his hand-held device.  We decided he was casing the neighborhood.  Britta called the police.  When they came and questioned him, it turned out he was a papparazzo stalking a pregnant actress who lives up the street.  I'm not sure who she is -- she is on The Hills or Gossip Girl.  I do, however, know the old school Thirty Something peeps who live on Britta's corner - Ken Olin and his awesome wife, Patricia Wettig, lately of Brothers and Sisters fame.  In fact, my life is like six degrees of Thirty Something.  Peter Horton is a dad of two adorable little girls at my son's school.  My friend Carmen is friends with Ken Olin's brother, Doug.  And when Carmen was house hunting, she took me to see a home she was considering buying, then owned by Mel Harris.  Apparently if you throw a stone in the Palisades, or Santa Monica, you will hit a cast member of Thirty Something.

And now Larry David is following me around.  First I saw him last week at AK, when he assured all of us the bathroom he just vacated was the safest bathroom in all of Los Angeles to enter.  Tonight, he inexplicably showed up at my son Beckett's baseball game.  I will assume he has a boy on the team we played.  One time Bruce Willis, friend and collaborator of my husband's, showed up to watch my son Aidan's baseball playoff game.  Bruce has three daughters - I don't know if they play baseball, but boy, did he did dig watching my son pitch!  Oh, and Owen Wilson likes to watch my son play soccer.  He is Aidan's pal Joey's uncle.  Sometimes he or Luke will show up on the sidelines.  Within moments of their arrival, young women come out of the woodwork and start drifting closer and closer, until they are surrounded.  They usually say their goodbye's or just slip out in the second half of the game and disappear.  Brian Grazer and his ex, Gigi Levangie-Grazer are also regulars at the baseball field, and basketball court where my sons play.

On a sunny day you can see Sean Young peddling around town with a scarf on her head -- something slightly off-kilter and unravelled about her that is hard to put your finger on.  I'm not sure what it is, but if Glenn Close was busy and had to pass on Fatal Attraction, I feel like Sean Young with a bad perm could be extremely believable as the rabbit-boiling, overzealous lover of Michael Douglas.  My friend Steve, a traveling vet (http://www.911vets.com/) inoculated Paris Hilton's puppies, and euthanized (in the same week!) the elderly dogs of Stevie Nicks and Carole King.

But my favorite celebrity citing by far was one someone pointed out to me which I never would have guessed in a million years.  When I was moving out of my little studio on Euclid to move in with Mark, a few of my neighbors and I had a collective yard sale.  A tall, older blond gentleman who I recognized from the hood came across the street to peruse our albums and ashtrays.  He was friendly-- we chatted for a minute.  After he left my friend Abby said, that was Troy Donohue.  I stared in amazement as he mosied back across the street into his non-descript apartment on Euclid.  Sometimes you go out like a lion, and sometimes you go out in garage-sale dwelling, rent-controlled apartment anonymity.  I'm guessing fame, for some is not all it's cracked upped to be, and it's more appealing to be left alone to do the mundane crap the rest of us get to do, unaccosted.