The House Next Door

The House Next Door #2

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Note: This is not a plot in one of my novels. At least not yet. This is the true story of the house next door to mine in one corner of the city of LA.

#2

The house next door has never really been lived in. It was built, I’m told by the neighbors who pre-date the monstrosity, by an East Indian for his new wife. It was to be her wedding present—their palace in the Americas. According to these same neighbors, the couple moved in, sometime in 2006 or 2007, and then moved out a week later. Why they left so quickly is unclear but I believe the young bride’s aesthetic sensibility was so challenged by the ghastly manse, that she was unable to cope. No one saw them again.

After their departure, the house changed owners a couple of times but was still empty when I moved in next door in the summer of 2009. During the contract phase of my purchase, I was told the house was owned, but not yet occupied by a mystery man named Al, reported to have been the owner of a film studio somewhere near Pasadena. It turns out Al was an actual person but all I ever saw of him were the two or three, possibly four times he showed up in various expensive, mostly vintage, sports cars to swap them out with other very expensive sports cars which he kept in the behemoth’s 12 car garage (Don’t get any ideas–the garage is hideous too). Al seemed nice enough. Each time he came, he was accompanied by a different gorgeous woman who was five inches taller than he—eight if they were wearing heels. He usually had a crew working on the house and he told me once, while on one of his infrequent visits, that he’d be moving in as soon as the work was completed. He put in a pool out back and statuary (as in something, anything made of cement) in any open spot. To my eye, he was just making the place more grotesque but once I was settled into my own house, despite the proximity to this gargantuan wanna-be Getty Villa, I didn’t really concern myself with the pink cement steps leading to the front door or the sculptures of the twenty-foot tall naked women around the pool, which I’d need my ladder to really appreciate. I went about my little life, writing, trying to get work and taking care of my son. Then all of a sudden, Al died.

The House Next Door

The House Next Door #1

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I don’t live in a particularly glamorous area of Los Angeles. In fact it’s not glamorous at all. It’s the kind of neighborhood with both a shut-up elementary school surrounded by chain-link fence that attracts graffiti artists, as well as a shopping mall that features stores like Ferragamo and Burberry. I’m pretty sure my neighbors aren’t buying the out-sourced products sold there and I know I’m not. At any rate, in this same middle-of-the-demographic neighborhood, exists a house. It’s a monstrosity of a place–huge and ugly and out of keeping with the one story ranch houses around it; most particularly MY house directly next door, a brown stucco number built in the 1960s with vintage electrical wiring and plumbing from the same era.

My arrival in the ‘hood occurred at the nadir of the housing crisis. If not for the decline in market values, I would never have been able to buy in this or any other neighborhood for that matter…. but that’s another story.

Note: This is not a plot in one of my novels. At least not yet. This is the true story of the house next door to mine in one corner of the city of LA.

 

Musings on The Muffia

The Muffia’s Reading list

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From time to time, I’m going to share with you some of the books we Muffs have read or, as I suggested in another post, most of us have read. When you look at the selections, there’s really no theme, even though some statistician might come along and say, “Over time, the Muffia’s reading choices are 21% memoir, 40% authored by women, 63% fiction, 11% historical, 92.5% contain graphic sex, etc.” And yeah, you’re right, this adds up to way more than 100%, which shows you how much I value statistics–often they just don’t add up. I took a course called Statistical Analysis in college and the book we read was, How To Lie with Statistics, so I feel confident making the claim. But this doesn’t alter the fact that the Muffia Book Club reading list is as scattershot as the randomly choosing titles from any metropolitan library. We’re as likely to choose the new Hilary Mantel novel as we are a book about shoe fetishists. 

Musings on The Muffia

Introducing The Muffia

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The Muffia is a Los Angeles based, all-women’s book club. We share a love of food, clothes, sex, books and wine—well, actually we enjoy most kinds of alcohol. Generally, all of us read the books our hostess (it’s a rotating position) chooses but there are a couple of miscreants—like Lauren—who hardly ever do. They have become adjectives, so predictable are they. To be flakey and cancel at the last minute, or to not read the book is to be “Laureny.” When Lauren reads the book for a change and somebody else, like Quinn, doesn’t read the book, we say she is the “new Lauren.” The members of the Muffia, henceforward known as the “Muffs,” have complicated lives and often complicated relationships, which sometimes get us into trouble. We’ve also been known to stir up new trouble—even when it can be avoided. Usually it’s because some wrong needs to be righted, small as that wrong might be. Someone needs to take care of these things. And sometimes we get into trouble just because!

Musings on The Muffia

Introducing the MuffStuff Blog

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You probably know me as Anna but the truth is, I was given the name Ann Royal Nicholas at birth. It always felt like too big a name and I went by Annie until I was twenty because whenever I said Ann Nicholas, people invariably heard: Ann Ickles. When Wilhelmina signed me, she thought Anna was more fitting and I’ve been going by Anna ever since.
Who would have thought there’d be a plethora of Anna Nicholases out there–many of whom are also actresses and writers. One of them is almost hostile toward me.
So my team suggested I was now grown up enough to use my real name on my new book while eliminating future confusion and threats. But my name is still Anna. At this point, it’s become part of me and I’ve earned it. What’s in a name anyway? I’m an actress. I change my name all the time!