The Biggest Dick in the World

A story from Los Angeles on a cold New York night

Hello fellow travelers, from a frigid night in Chinatown. It snowed earlier today! Just as I was writing about how in god’s name New York restaurants are going to navigate the prospect of being told, again, that they may not have indoor dining. The capriciousness with which the city lays down these edicts is maddening. Do I see places flouting the rules? Sure. Do I dine or drink at these places? Sometimes. Carefully. I also have people over for lunch, for dinner; the Fifth Column podcast tapes here. We’re navigating using our best judgment. It would be nice to let restaurateurs do the same, alas.

Speaking of the Fifth, we are in the midst of building out a sound and video studio. It’s kind of an unusual set up, in that I inherited, as part of my new lease, the pony-apartment across the hall. It’s been cleaned up, my friend Alex Brook Lynn came over today and offered a gazillion tips about what we’ll need to trick it out, equipment-wise; Matt Welch (one-third of the Fifth) and I will furniture shop on Friday. New content coming!

In the meantime, I offer some double-warmth, video shot a summer ago in Portland (Portland summers are amazing; head there then if you get the chance), about something that happened in Los Angeles back in ye olden times. It’s a chapter from my upcoming book of essays, FORTY BUCKS AND A DREAM, STORIES FROM LOS ANGELES. Here’s the lede, and the video!

I believed my ticket to stardom would arrive in a big car soon after I arrived in Los Angeles. It did not. Nor was it in the Porsche 911 I found myself stepping into one evening, a car that belonged to a man I was told had the biggest dick in the world. Though he told me this himself, I first heard it from my sister-in-law.

Sandra was a northern Italian girl with Gina Lollobrigida curls and a gap between her front teeth. A visual artist, she had no interest in acting but knew I did and thus alerted me to a man she had met—let’s call him Hal—who was casting a movie. Hal had told Sandra he liked her look and asked her to audition, which she did. Why, if she had no ambitions of being an actress, had she auditioned? Because she was a pretty 25 year-old to whom someone had told, “I want you in my movie.” While this might cause someone in Schenectady to scratch her head, in Hollywood, it’s axiomatic that you go.

“I told him about you,” Sandra told me. “He wants to meet you.”