Decompressing

After a greuling two-hour interview, I needed to decompress. I walked out of the building, only to find the car gone. Funny since I'd left Joanie inside napping. One quick phone call later, and she was driving back from the little ride she'd taken.

She announced that she'd talked to her friend Clark, and he would be glad to join us for lunch. She called Clark, and let him and I work out the directions to his home in the Hollywood Hils. And a very nice home it was. As soon as we arrived (after navigating one very twisty Laurel Canyon road), I saw the yellow Goldwing in the garage. I hopped on and checked it out, very much wanting to take it for a ride. Instead, we wint inside where Clark gave us the grand tour.

Although we'd planned to go out for lunch (Clark said it would be his breakfast), the plans changed when his wife came home. Pretty soon, we were agreeing to a homemade lunch of pasta, and watching a back episode of Judge Judy, all the while talking about law. To her credit, Joanie didn't fall asleep while Clark and I talked shop.

After a very enjoyable lunch, Joanie and I raced down to CBS, where she'd snagged tickets for The Late Late Show. I saw a rather attractive blond sitting behind us, and amazingly enough, managed to strike up a conversation with her and her friends. They were there to see Maya Angelou, only to learn that she'd be cancelled at the last minute in favor of Anne Heche. (Guess insipid holiday Hallmark Hall-of-Fame movies carry more weight than intellectual writing.) We had a very nice discussion, and I found out her name (Marie), that she was originally from Detroit, but now lived in Pasedena, and that she had, until recently, worked for GM. So we chatted until we were called by Craig's warm-up guy, Chunky B, and told to head off to the studio.

Since Joanie's back was still not 100 percent, we had to decide whether to chance the stairs, or take the elevator. The PA, upon hearing about Joanie's surgery, told us not to take the stairs. She promised to hold seats for us, but when the page showed us to the end of the line, I feared that our seats would be in back. True to her word, though, the PA had kept seats in mind for us. She moved a couple to the third row and seated u right up front. We had a bird's-eye view of the show (and the studio is very small, so we were about 20 feet from Craigs desk, and right next to the executive producer's seat. It was choice. Even better, during the monologue, we somehow managed to get Craig's attention, and at the first break he asked us what we thought of Jackson Pollock's work.

After the show, my phone rang, as if on cue. It was Marty Stark, seeing if we were still on for dinner. We agreed to meet at Lolas, just down the street from CBS. Although nondescript on the outside, inside we found a very nice place. Since Marty wasn't as close as we were, we had to hold off one very cute waitress, and order only drinks. Of course, by the time he arrived, we were feeling very good. Dinnner was enjoyable, and it was nice to see Marty again. Too quickly it was over, and Joanie and I were faced with the long 90-minute drive back to San Diego. She slept, and I wanted to. By the time we got back, I was thoroughly exhausted.