The other day I watched the 2013 Players tournament. I started watching it on a Thursday, continued to watch it on Friday, and watched it through the weekend. I brought some books down so I could read while I watched, but I didn’t open them.  I didn’t call anybody to talk about it because I only know a few people who play the game, and I didn’t care what they had to think.  I watched it because it was so damn engrossing.  Especially this course, where there’s so much water and sand to get a player into trouble. Tiger had already won three tournaments this year and always had trouble at Sawgrass. In fact, he only won the Players once, and that was ten years ago. But Tiger’s a story onto himself and I root for him because, in spite of his personal flaws, he is one of the greatest golfers who ever played the game, and I’m rooting for him because I want to have lived in the time when THE greatest golfer played.  I used to root for Phil Mickelson because he’s a lefty, as my dad was, and because he’s such a nice guy.  And I liked Sergio Garcia because I remember when he was starting out and hit an incredible shot from behind a tree and ran fifty yards down the fairway after he hit it to follow the shot. That was such great enthusiasm. But Tiger is in a class by himself. He doesn’t give anything away in interviews, he seems like a cold fish, and we know he doesn’t treat woman very well.  But he has a near perfect swing, he’s always working to improve, and he wants it more than anybody else. He just WANTS it.

So when Tiger wound up playing with Sergio on Saturday, both men tied for the lead on the third day, it was engrossing. Especially since Tiger has always beaten Sergio (except when they once played a match game for TV and Sergio won and jumped up and down as if he had won a Major), and Sergio does not like Tiger–and is outspoken about it.  And sure enough, on the 4th or 5th hole, Sergio hit his ball to the right of the fairway and Tiger hit his in the rough to the left.  The crowd was around Tiger. Sergio was to hit first. And just when he was ready to swing, Tiger, 50 yards away, pulled a 5-wood from his bag. Sergio went to swing. The crowd made noise at Tiger’s surprising club selection. Sergio hit a terrible shot and then looked over towards Tiger’s gallery, annoyed. Later he would blame this poor shot on the crowd noise, which might have cost him two strokes. He said Tiger was wrong to have pulled his club when he did. Tiger said he was told Sergio had swung already.  But the die was cast. These two now really didn’t like each other, and they were playing together, and it was good drama for us back home watching it.  Wish my dad could have seen it.

The next day there was more drama, because Sergio had talked about the fact that he and Tiger weren’t very fond of each other, and Tiger tried to maintain his coolness. “I’m tied for the lead,” he said. And that’s all he cared about.  After 16 holes on this last day it looked like it was going to come down to Tiger and Sergio. And then Sergio went to the infamous 17th hole and hit two shots into the water. And hit another in the water on 18.  He went from being 13 under and tied with Tiger to 7 under and not even on the first leader board. Tiger, being Tiger, won.

There were two NBA basketball playoffs over the weekend, some hockey playoffs, and Mommie Dearest was played over and over again on TNT. Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford is magnificent.  But nothing compared to the Players championship. Nothing was as riveting as watching Tiger and Sergio.  So, Dad, wherever you are, I’m sorry for snubbing my nose at you when you watched Arnie and Jack and Lee.  Golf isn’t boring.  It’s like baseball. It’s slow, and plodding, and selective.  And when some of these pros are playing, it can be unforgettable.

You get The Call from your sister. You call the airlines to change your flight to anytime today. You fly cross-country with your wife hoping that you’ll be there in time.  Your sister had given you the option, to wait another day or two and go directly to New York. Or to go first to Florida.  It wasn’t a choice.  You had been to Florida the week before and spent as much quality time as she could handle. You joked and teased and even read chapters from your memoir aloud.  She was your best audience.  The chapters were about growing up and she was there. She was always there.  She was there when you didn’t want to enter that writing contest and she insisted you mail your essay before she would drive you and your date to a movie.  She was there when you returned from college and handed her a joint when she asked if you were still doing “that stuff.” She was there on the phone every day for the twenty years since her husband died. She had such strong liberal opinions. She whispered, as you read to her, “Such beautiful writing.” Who else would say that to you?

And when you left, just a week ago, she hadn’t started having the accidents that happened just a few days later.  Staining her bed sheets. Mortified and embarrassed, apologetic and resigned. This elegant woman. This is no country for old women.  The young in….

Our young, our children, in tears.  They talked to her regularly too. She had lived long enough to know things. She knew that she wanted the best for them.  She loved them and they loved her.

You arrive just past dawn. She is in the bed the hospice people brought. Her mouth is open. Her eyes are closed. You approach, put your hand on her thinning white hair, press her skull to let her know you are there. You whisper in her ear. She stirs. She knows. You say, “I’ve brought my book, I will read to you.” She purses her lips.  “It’s all right,” you say. You tell her your wife is here.  The woman who, though of another race, is most like her.  Your sister is filming this on her iPad. The last goodbyes. She says, loudly, “Do you really think she wants to listen to you reading? She’s a captive audience.”  But you don’t care. She had told you it was beautiful writing. It wasn’t, really.  But that’s the way she has always been. Supportive. You want to read to her about her husband. Her parents. The apartment in Brooklyn and the house on Long Island. You want to send her back in time. You don’t want your sister or your wife or the caretaker there. Let them go to the kitchen and have something to eat. You will stay behind, with her, with this woman who you love and who loves you unconditionally. You will read to her. And talk to her. And tell her, “It’s okay to let go. When you’re ready. You’ve seen everybody. “

The caretaker said she felt the presence of the departed in the room. “Her husband is here. And her parents. They have come to take her to the other side.” She is Jamaican. She believes this. But you don’t and you tease her. “My father is here? Are you sure? Hello, Dad,” you say and punch the air. “What? You do that?” the caretaker says, shocked at your being irreverent at such a serious time. But that was your relationship with your father. He would understand. If he was really there.

“That man is there again,” the caretaker said. What man? “Outside the window. In the back. He’s been around for three days now.”  Your sister said he was probably homeless and didn’t belong there. It is a gated community. There is a canal out back that runs a long way.  You look out the bedroom windows but don’t see him.

The liquid morphine is in a brown bottle. There is a syringe which can hold 20 mg. Your sister started with ten, waiting for you. She fills the syringe and injects it under the tongue.  It’s too hard now for her to eat or even to swallow, but the liquid works by absorption.  You will take turns injecting this liquid every hour, and then upping the dosage by the afternoon, and doubling it once again by evening to decrease her discomfort. You had asked her doctor about this and he said “Only if she’s in pain.” This is the merciful way. The nurse had said they couldn’t do it the way you wanted it done. Otherwise, she said, it would go down this way: she would starve and she would choke on her own phlegm. And that’s how it would end. But this was not the way you had promised her. You promised to not let her suffer, and now she was suffering. Her body was full of cancer. It had attacked her bones, her organs, and changed her. She was 94 and had such spirit, such vitality, and now, almost like a snap of one’s fingers, she was like this. You had flown across country so you could help your sister reduce her suffering. You had done this before, twenty years ago, with your father as he lay in the hospital dying of thirst. But you hadn’t had the morphine. You could only pull out his feeding tube. And watch as he diminished over three sad days. “This isn’t the way he should have gone,” she said to you both. “It’s not how I want to go.”  And yet, here she was, and we were doing our best to help her along.

Your wife stays with her through most of the night. Falling asleep in the chair by her bed. You go in at 4:00 a.m. and wake her gently. “I gave her the morphine at three,” she says. “It was supposed to be at two, but I fell asleep.”  “That’s all right,” you say. “It doesn’t really matter when she’s not in pain. She’s at peace now. Her breathing is calm.”

Your sister comes in and you tell your wife to go lie down in the other room. You sit with your sister and try to talk about what’s to come. You have to make plans. You have to take care of this business. You are about to be the beneficiaries of her will. You will have to deal with her papers, her lawyer, her accountant, her broker. You will have to deal with her property, her condo, her car. You talk quietly because you don’t want to disturb her. You look at her and then you look at each other. There are quiet tears. You are helping her, you tell each other. But you’d rather have her here talking with you, telling you where things are and what she wants.  She was most concerned how you two would get along. She knew how you were always fighting. It was one thing when you were young, but how could you continue that way as you grew up? But that was the nature of your relationship, and that was what, you tried to rationalize, made it special. Now you were talking in low voices just before dawn and it was a different kind of conversation. She wouldn’t be there to mediate between you anymore. You would have to find a way to work things out together.

“Go lie down with your wife,” your sister says. “I’ll stay here.”  You are tired, having flown through the night, and spent the day in this bedroom. You don’t want to leave, but you do, for just a few hours.  And at 8:00 a.m. your sister comes and touches your shoulder softly. “She’s gone,” she says. You jump up and go back to the bedroom. She is no longer breathing. Her mouth is open. You put your arms around her head. You try to close her mouth. You can finally hug her without worrying that it will hurt her. She is gone.

Your wife comes in. And the caretaker. There are four of you in the room with her. You look at each other. You look at her. You hug. “Her husband came to take her last breath,” the caretaker says. It’s a beautiful notion, but none of you believe it. You wish it was true.

You text your daughters. It is just after 5:00 a.m. there. It will be the first thing they will see when they awake. The saddest two words they will ever read.

“What do we do now?” you ask. The hospice people have to be notified. The mortuary. But you don’t want to have them come to take her away. Not yet. You want to stay with her in the room.  “Her spirit is gone,” the caretaker says. “It’s not her anymore.” You know this. But you’re not ready.

You go to a drawer and open it. So many silk scarves. How she loved her scarves. You take out one and give it to the caretaker. The others will be shared among the grandchildren.  Remember her. Wear her jewelry, her clothing, her scarves.

The nurse arrives. She fills in the details. Goes through the pills. She is young and sweet. You give her a scarf.

The funeral home sends two people, a large man and a small woman, who are respectful and polite. They have come to wrap her and take her away. Your sister says “Please don’t bring the gurney into the bedroom.” They leave it in the living room. They ask us to stay there as they go to prepare the body. She comes out in his arms, swathed in white, her head hooded. We can see her face. She looks like an angel.

He puts her on the gurney. Your sister goes for her iPad to take a last picture. But he says, “You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to remember her this way.” He doesn’t know your sister, but to your surprise she doesn’t take the picture. She just looks at her and says, “She looks so beautiful. She was always so beautiful.” And then they wheel her away.

“I’m going to the club to shower,” you say. You need to get out. The club is a short walk but your hip is hurting so you drive. You go naked into the Jacuzzi. You sit in the steam room. No one else is there to hear you cry. When you are done you go upstairs to where a woman sits behind a desk by the entrance. “There’s been a death,” you say to her, “and we will need to find a realtor. Do you have any that you recommend?” The woman offers her condolences and gives you the monthly bulletin where realtors advertise. “We don’t make recommendations,” she says. “I understand,” you say.  “But can you put a checkmark by the ones you think are good?”  She goes through the eighty pages and checks three. You thank her and call the one who took out a full page ad.  Her voicemail comes on but you don’t leave a message. You will be leaving the next day to New York so if you are going to put this in motion you need to speak to an actual person. You try another and get a voice. You explain why you are calling and are told that the building where she lived is one of the older buildings and that the prices have depreciated. You won’t get what she paid, you are told. And if you want to rent you will have to fix it up, repaint, maybe put in new appliances. As she talks you begin to feel offended. Who is this woman telling you about something without having seen the place?  The first floor corner condo is spacious and immaculate, 1800 sq. feet, two bedrooms, two baths, a den, living room, kitchen, all tastefully furnished. When your dad died she went on a buying spree, finally getting what she wanted without having to haggle over the details. This realtor, what does she know? She is assuming that all the old folks who live in these buildings haven’t kept them up. You invite her to come to the condo to take a look and tell her you will only be there this day. You want to show this woman that she is wrong in her assumptions, and then you will find another realtor to handle it.

When you return your sister can’t believe you spoke to the realtor. “She just died and you’re already selling the place? Are you out of your mind? Don’t you have any respect?”  She is not speaking calmly but yelling at you.  You don’t understand. You’re all leaving in the morning, you won’t be back for at least a month, why not have some idea what you have to deal with, so you can think about it while you are away? But you don’t say this. You say only, “I asked her to come and she said she would.”

A young man from the hospice service arrives to collect the bed and the chair.  You watch as he takes the bed apart.  You help him roll it out. Then he returns for the chair. You go to the den to check your computer and your wife comes to say that the realtor had come as the chair was being loaded onto the truck and your sister told her it wasn’t an appropriate time. The realtor left. You knew she would not return because it was already late afternoon.  And you get angry. You had invited this woman to come, and you wanted to see her face when she saw what a wonderful condo this was. It would be the final compliment. But your sister chased her away and though you had made a solemn promise there would be no more fighting, you can’t help yourself. You explode.  You go to where your sister and wife are and you just start shouting. You make idle threats. You say that you had thought about coming back down in a month and the three of you would take a trip to Key West, as a farewell to Florida. You say that you might have considered renting the place and keeping it for the off-season but not anymore. You just want to get rid of it. You don’t want to return to Florida. You are so angry, so irrational, that neither your wife nor your sister responds.  Instead, they leave. And they don’t return for two hours.

Alone now you go from room to room, opening drawers, looking for what you want to take, but there is really nothing for you. A carved wooden letter opener from your childhood. The small ball she squeezed as her strength diminished. The photo albums!  You sit in the den looking at pictures. So many of you as a child that you had never seen before. Little black and white fading snapshots with your father, with her, with your sister. You take all the pictures with you in them and make a pile. And as you look at them you begin to sob. Your nose runs. You are sitting on the floor crying much harder than you did in the Jacuzzi. Looking at these photos from 1948, from 1952, from 1957, when you were a baby, when you were five and ten years old. With the people who loved you and took you to the beach or to baseball games or the farm in New Jersey or to Freedomland and Frontier Town.  You are no longer that child. And the people who are holding you and laughing at you or throwing a ball to you are gone.  There is no one to tell you about your beautiful writing.  There is only your sister and your wife.  And your wife will tell you that she sees no love between you and your sister. She will be wrong, but you can understand her perspective. She comes from a family of four siblings and they didn’t fight the way you did.

As the sun sets they return. “That guy is out there by the canal,” your wife says.  You go outside. He is sitting with his back to you, waving a hand in the air. You can’t tell if he is smoking something or just talking to himself. You think about approaching him, since you will be leaving tomorrow and you aren’t comfortable with this stranger hanging around. But what if he’s on something? What if he gets angry if you go to him?  What if he pulls a weapon? What would you do? You go back inside and call the police. “What does he look like?” you are asked.  “I don’t know,” you say. “Is he young or old?”  “Hard to say,” you say. “Is he black, white, Hispanic?”  “I can’t tell,” you answer.  “He’s white,” your sister says. “He has a ponytail,” your wife says. “He’s probably homeless,” your sister adds.  You pass this on to the cop, who asks if you’d like someone to come out.  You say you would. He asks you if he is still there. You go back outside. He is gone.  You look down along the canal one way and the other. There is nobody there. It is dark now. He could be anywhere. Or nowhere.  Or maybe he had hung around her place the last three days because that’s what he was supposed to do, and now that she’s gone, he’s gone.  Maybe. Maybe Death had come as a white homeless guy with a ponytail.

At the airport you are still not speaking with your sister. But when she gets off the phone with your daughters, encouraging them to fly in so they can have “closure,” you get angry again. They were both here to see her when she was alive and could talk. It isn’t necessary for them to fly east again. Both work and it’s difficult to schedule and it’s costly and….and you want them to remember her alive. The way you remember your grandparents because you never flew in to see them buried. But it’s your sister’s turn to explode. “F. off,” she yells at you. She doesn’t care who hears her. You don’t respond. But you understand. You both need each other for this. There is no one else to yell at.

In the car service in New York, on your way to your sister’s house in Brooklyn, she gets a call from your cousin. “I think my mother just died,” he says.  His mother is our aunt, our mother’s younger sister. “You’re kidding,” my sister says. I have been quiet the whole way up, but I can’t help myself. “Ask him to ask the funeral director if we can get a discount for the two of them, for the double gravesite openings.”  The sisters will be buried side by side next to their husbands in the family circle plots. My sister loses it and starts to laugh. My wife and I join her. Our cousin doesn’t get it, but that’s okay, we will apologize later. But right now we are laughing.

This is what happens when your mother dies.

Larry King expressed surprised and asked Knight, “He touches players?”

“He told me that,” Knight said.

“You think coaches are touching players all over America?” King asked.

“I don’t think there’s any question about it,” Knight said.

Now, given, they were talking about touching players, not young boys, and not (I assume) sexually, but Paterno, we have learned, knew about his asst. coach  Jerry Sandusky and some of the claims against him. Just talking about “touching” seems so wrong, in so many ways. To think that this was on TV and then in print in 2000, it just kind of sends a shiver down one’s spine.  I don’t recall anyone referring to this interview with Knight during the Sandusky affair, but in light of what happened, and to Paterno’s fall from grace at Penn State, it is something worth remembering.  200 times over!?  Please, Joe, say it ain’t so.  Coaching’s tough enough without the touching.

The photographer Harvey Wang took a lot of shots of Capote when I was with him at the Drake Hotel in N.Y. so I put them in that book. For Brando, I found pictures I had snapped of him on his island, and when I blew them up I discovered that they were pretty good, so that has worked out nicely. As for Michener, he was never an exciting-looking man, but I did take pictures of him with his wife Mari and at certain functions where he was honored, so I included those.  For The Hustons, I used only the photos that I had permission to use, and added the varioius book jacket covers (as I did with the Conversation books).

Once these books were done, I got to work on my two novels, both Hollywood related, one I would call picaresque (Catch a Fallen Star) and the other a moral dilemma thriller (Begin Again Finnegan).  My main characters are based on some real characters, though I’ve certainly fictionalized them.  As I’ve always fancied the idea of being a novelist, these are books that are dear to my heart and I’m curious to see what people think of them.  

The Book of Shmoga brought me back to my days as a college humor magazine editor. I had so much fun writing this satire on self-help inspirational books, this take-off on the yoga craze. But I also did a lot of research, so it’s not just blowing monkeys out my ass..

ICONS is a collection of 13 long profiles I wrote as cover stories for Trendy magazine in Poland. They do such a terrific job with these pieces, with wonderful and striking covers which I have included in my e-book. I’ve also included photos I have taken with Angelina Jolie, Cameron Diaz, Halle Berry, Anthony Hopkins, Anthony Kiedis, Nicole Kidman, Sharon Stone and Kim Basinger.  Didn’t have any photos with Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, Penelope Cruz or Tom Waits, but those are some of my favorite pieces.

The 3 books that I haven’t yet released are all ready to go, but I’m waiting for covers to be done for the 152 poems about the famous I’ve written (Celebrity Salad)–these are verses that try to capture a moment in time, my own epiphany about each star.  The journal I kept about working with Al Pacino on his WildeSalome documentary (“I Want You in My Movie!”) is a true behind-the-scenes of my two years on that project, before Al and I had a falling out and he continued tinkering with that film for 3 more years. If you get a chance to see it, make sure you do. It’s worth your while.

And finally there’s You Show Me Yours, my memoir. It covers my life through 1980 when I left Brando’s island.  There are chapters about growing up in Brooklyn and Long Island, about UCLA and the Peace Corps in Ghana, about my start as a freelance writer doing these first-person New Journalism pieces, and as an interviewer and how I wound up at Playboy. There’s a chapter on my year with Barbra Streisand and another chapter on my time with Brando.

It’s a lot of work to put out and who knows if it’s smart to do this all at once. But I must say that I’ve been very discouraged with the publishing world, with agents who don’t read, with publishers who won’t read unless it comes from an agent, with bookstores that keep closing. In the end, I just decided to take my writing life into my own hands. I don’t think magazines will review self-published e-books, but hopefully there will be readers out there who will have their say.  I’m proud of all these books.  They’re the best that I can do.

It’s 4 p.m and I’m hanging out at this warehouse-sized loft in downtown L.A., two blocks from where an episode of CSI-Los Angeles is being filmed.  I’m waiting for my turn to appear before four art and antique dealers for the Discovery Channel’s new reality show Final Offer.  The show is based on one from England called Four Rooms. The idea is that four separate dealers will be presented with different objects which may or may not tickle their fancy. The seller first presents what he has brought to all of them, then he chooses which dealer he would like to negotiate with first, second, third, and, if he hasn’t sold it by then, fourth.  The only caveat is that if he turns down an offer and walks out of the room, he cannot go back to accept it later. It’s sort of a cross between The Antique Road Show, where “experts” look at what you’ve brought and give you an educated guess at how much it might be worth, and Shark Tank, where you present your business idea to four entrepreneurs who, if they like it, will make an offer to partner with you.

I was asked if I wanted to participate because one of the producers knew of my association with a lot of the movie stars that I have interviewed and gotten to know over the years.  I wrestled with what I might consider parting with: art that Henry Fonda gave me; first edition books that were made into films and signed by the stars (Silence of the Lambs, signed and inscribed by Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster; Leaving Las Vegas, signed by Nicolas Cage and Elizabeth Shue; The Misfits, signed by playwright Arthur Miller and director John Huston; Schindler’s Ark, the true first of Schindler’s List, signed by Liam Neeson and author Thomas Kennelly;  Born on the Fourth of July, signed by author Ron Kovick and by Tom Cruise and director Oliver Stone); a sketch Anthony Hopkins did while I was talking to him; some annotated pages in Barbra Streisand’s handwriting of an interview I did with her; film posters signed by Jim Carrey, Elliott Gould, Oliver Stone, Diane Keaton and others. I also had a few dozen items that Al Pacino signed for me over the years, including a Scarface shirt and poster which contains the complete script of the movie, a few Playbills from the off-Broadway plays The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Chinese Coffee,  two signed scripts (Revolution and City Hall), a signed photo of the actor when he was young and handsome,  an unopened Scarface two-disc anniversary DVD, a Dec. 21, 1990 Entertainment Weekly cover story I wrote, and a dozen or so signed and inscribed books that became Pacino films (Panic in Needle Park, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather, And Justice For All, Carlito’s Way, Cruising, Donnie Brasco) or were plays that he did (American Buffalo; The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel),  and two biographies about him. The first was by Andrew Yule and since Al didn’t like it, he told me mine was the only copy he ever signed, expressing his feelings with “Forget About It.”  The other was the one I had written, a compilation of a series of conversations that I had had with him over the years.  Since he had written the forward to that, he didn’t mind adding his signature.

I decided to go with the Pacino potpourri.  I really had no idea what it all might be worth, but my wife has been on me for some time now about downsizing and getting rid of some of the stuff that clutters our house, and I thought that Pacino wouldn’t get upset with doing this because for years he’s been asking me when I’m going to stop finding these things for him to sign.  But before I would go on national television to negotiate with savvy dealers I thought I’d better get some idea what all this stuff might be worth.

A West Hollywood book dealer who specialized in rare signed first editions told me that anything signed by Al Pacino that wasn’t a photograph was worth at least $500, even in a book that had nothing to do with him, like Philip Roth’s A Dying Animal which Pacino had signed after he told me that he was thinking of playing the character in a film. (Ben Kingsley wound up in the role and the film was called Elegy).  When he saw how playful some of Pacino’s inscriptions were, he said such books could go for thousands, especially in such hard to find books  like The Panic in Needle Park (“This was my first picture & look I’ve learned to spell”), Serpico (“This was my fourth picture & I’m still able to grow a beard”), Pavlo Hummel (“How do you find these books!”), and American Buffalo (where I asked him to curse me using the F. word, which is what his character used over and over again when he first entered the stage, and he complied).  Of all the books, though, it was The Godfather that most impressed him, because it was not only signed by the author, Mario Puzo (a hard enough signature to obtain), but by producer Robert Evans, by one of the screenwriters, Robert Towne, by Pacino (who wrote “Please try to understand”) and by Diane Keaton, who devilishly had looked at the previous signatures and then turned to the last page and wrote “They all lied! Kay,” referring to the memorable last scene of the movie, when Pacino as Michael Corelone lies to her (Kay) and then closes the door in her face. The book itself wasn’t in pristine condition: the cover was chipped, the binding a bit loose—but with those signatures he felt a true collector might fork over a bundle to have it.

So, armed with whatever knowledge this visit brought me, I put all of these items on our dining room table and asked my wife to take a look and give me a bottom-line estimate. Since she was the one who wanted me to downsize, I figured she should at least give me an idea of what I should hold out for. She said she had no clue.  I told her what some of the stuff might be worth. I also said that I had no idea what the shirt might go for, but it was signed on both the front (“Best wishes”) and back (“Oh man, you are nuts”) and that signing was done on a private jet to Las Vegas, the day I flew with Pacino when he was thinking of doing Oscar Wilde’s Salome on the MGM Grand stage.  He was making a film about the play and asked me to be in it as his ”biographer,” and though my asking him to sign the Scarface shirt didn’t make it into the final cut of the film, it well might make it as an outtake when the DVD is released.

“Fifteen thousand,” my wife said.

“Fair enough,” I said. “That’s my bottom line.”

* * *

But even with The Godfather book and that crazy shirt, I wondered if that number was accurate. After all, a dealer is also looking to make a profit, and that had to be taken into consideration.   So I went to the loft which had been furnished to look like four different rooms and two other sets where the seller presented to the dealers, talked to the host, and did a pre- and post show interview to explain his strategies and expectations going in and what he thought of what happened going out. There must have been 60 people there all doing their jobs—setting up lights and cameras, dealing with the sellers and their items, making sure forms got signed, making food for everyone to nibble on throughout the day.  As I unpacked my Pacino smorgasbord I saw the dinosaur skull and bones in a crate and two Andy Warhol drawings, one of the artist Joseph Beuys, which impressed me. There was also a dress that Marilyn Monroe wore on her last, unfinished film, Something’s Got to Give.  All items worth a lot more than my Pacino items. So I knew that these dealers had money to spend. But did my stuff fit with their clientele?

I spoke to one of the producers, who told me that an 8.5 carat ring from Kashmir was sold for $250,000 and flipped that same day. He also said that one of the dealers was disappointingly tight with his offers and didn’t make for good TV.  I couldn’t squeeze any more out of this producer, but I did realize the importance of choosing to negotiate with the dealers in the right order.  One didn’t want to go to the most interested dealer right away.  Best to first go to the ones who might not be interested, to get a feel of the show, before entering the rooms where one had to be tough to get the best possible deal.

By 6 p.m. I entered the door to Patrick Painter’s room.  As I shook his hand, which was heavy from the two oversized diamond and gold rings on his fingers and the two diamond and gold bracelets on his wrist, I called him Peter and he corrected me. I looked at the gold bling around his neck and on two fingers of his other hand and thought, I chose the right guy first, because this man, the owner of Patrick Painter Gallery, Editions and Artist Representation, is someone who wears his gold proudly and doesn’t easily part with it.  I asked him if anyone ever told him he looked like Elton John, which he did, though he was a bit more bloated, and he said no, but I didn’t believe him.  Again, score one for me for picking the right door, because I would soon be out of there. And we didn’t waste much time.  “I’ll give you $3,000,” he said.

“For which piece?” I asked.

“For everything.”

“Multiply that by ten,” I said, “and we can start talking.”

He wasn’t amused, and I shook his hand again and walked to Jake Chait’s room. He

was a 29-year-old dealer (I.M. Chait Gallery) who specialized in auctions.  He asked me how much I wanted, and instead of beating around the bush, I just said, “Forty thousand.”  What the hell, I jumped up ten grand because I knew Chait wasn’t that interested, I could see it in his blank expression. He said that he didn’t want to insult me with a low offer, so he decided to pass. “Jordan’s your guy,” he said, mentioning one of the two remaining dealers. I wasn’t disappointed.  Why haggle when it won’t get anywhere?  It was already late, I’d been there for over four hours, and I had called my wife to tell her to eat dinner without me.

My third choice was William Roland, who was an antique dealer and auctioneer (Roland Antiques) based in New York.  He was friendly and preferred to talk first. He didn’t ask me what I wanted, he told me that what I had he wanted, and he was willing to pay me….$5,000 for it all.  I said that wouldn’t cover The Godfather book.  He jumped to $6,000, then $7,000, $8,000, $10,000.  I smiled and said, “We’re not close.” He looked stressed. “I really want to bring Pacino back to New York,” he said and then his lips started moving and I could hear him whispering numbers to himself.  I leaned forward and said, “If you’re thinking of going to fifteen, it’s not enough.”

“Fifteen thousand,” he said, snapping out of his self-induced calculations.

“Afraid not,” I said.

“That’s a strong offer,” he said. “I’m serious about this.”

“So am I,” I said.

“You’re not here to sell, are you?  You’re too emotionally attached to your items.”

“I’m not sure about that,” I said. “I might be. But for the right price, you can have them.”

“How about The Godfather? I’ll give you $1,500.”

I smiled and shook my head. He went into auctioneer mode once again. “$2,000, $2,500, $3,000, $3,500.”  And he stopped. That was his limit.

“I’m looking for more than that,” I said. “It’s a one-of-a-kind book.”

He looked at me and saw I wasn’t going to budge and he decided that Al Pacino would just have to stay in L.A.

I went into the fourth, and last, room, where Jordan Tabach-Bank was waiting. He owned Beverly Loan in Beverly Hills, and was known as the Pawnbroker to the Stars.  Apparently when stars needed money, they brought him their jewelry, fine art or entertainment memorabilia and he gave them money and held it until they could repay with interest. He, too, was young and aggressive. “I like what you have,” he said, “but the problem is that because so many inscriptions are personalized I’d need to find a buyer named Larry to sell it to.”

“I can understand that,” I said, “but I have written a book about him and I am in his latest film, Wilde Salome, so you’d have to agree that I’m a legitimate association.”

“I don’t think you’re right,” he said. “In fact, I’m 100% sure of that.  I’m 120%.”

Well, I thought, Jake Chait was wrong. Jordan wasn’t my guy. But then he surprised me by saying he was interested in The Godfather. I told him I’d already turned down $3,500. “I’ll give you $3,700,” he said. Pacino had written my name in his inscription, so I guess Jordan wasn’t really 120% convinced that it had little value.

“Not enough,” I said.

“What number are you looking for?”

“$7,500.”  I knew that was probably the price he might get for it, and not the price he would pay, but one has to start somewhere.

“I’ll give you $4,000.”

“I’ll go to six,” I said. This was now getting to that murky area where a deal could very well be made if we decided to split the difference. But Jordan held firm.

“How about the shirt?” he asked. “I’ll give you $750 for it.”

“That’s one of those unique items,” I said. “There’s nothing like it.”

“With the poster, a thousand dollars.”

This was a shirt my daughter had called “nasty.”  She thought it was basically worthless. Who would ever want it?  Wait till she heard that I was turning down a thousand bucks.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said, “take my book, which we both signed, and you can have the shirt, poster and book for $1,500.”

“Forget the book,” he said.

Forget my book? How insulting! I was told by that West Hollywood bookseller it might be worth $750. I was giving Jordan a bargain.  Well, then, forget his thousand.

***

“You did what?” my daughter, who is a therapist, yelled into the phone when I told her about the shirt. “That shirt, are you kidding me? A thousand dollars for that shirt? And you said no?”

“It might be worth more,” I said.

“Not to me it isn’t. And I’m the one who’s going to inherit all your shit when you’re gone. And you know what I’m going to do with it? I’m going to bring it to Goodwill and circle it over my head chanting your name as I toss it in their clothes bin. You should call that guy tomorrow and say you made a mistake and see if he still wants it.”

“I walked out of the room, honey,” I said. “You can’t go back. That’s the rule.”

“Rule my ass. If someone wants to pay a thousand dollars for a shirt you didn’t even pay for, for Al’s signature, there’s no rule to keep you from selling it.”

“I also turned down $15,000 for everything. Your mother’s bottom line.”

“Are you trying to give mom a heart attack? You know how much she wants you to get rid of your stuff. You know what you are? You’re certifiable. You are one crazy man.”

“Wait till the show airs,” I said. “Then we’ll see.”

But, alas, my segment didn’t make the final cut.  Had I taken one of the offers, sold the shirt, The Godfather, or the whole collection, I’d have been on my first reality show. But it’s probably all for the best. When my wife found out that I turned down fifteen grand for a bunch of books that are kept in a cabinet in our closet she said she wasn’t surprised. “We’re never going to move, because you’re a hoarder,” she said. “You can’t get rid of anything.”

So, to prove her wrong, I contacted an auction house. They want to sell all of my books, not just the signed Pacinos, and I said yes. Only not this year.  Maybe next.

But—get this—if you have any interest in traveling with Victor, learning about photography from one of the true masters of the art, he’s decided to take six people on a trip around Ecuador. This isn’t a trip for the casual traveler—this is an adventure, and an opportunity to have your life changed, if photography on this level is what you have ever dreamed of doing.  I don’t make recommendations lightly, but I’ll just say this: if my ambition was to become a world-class adventure photographer, good enough to work for major magazines, I’d jump at the opportunity to study with Victor Englebert.

I took a look at the photo workshop he is offering at http://mediaworkshops.weebly.com/ and I thought for what you might get out of it, it was very fairly priced (around $200 a day for 10 days, excluding airfare and room).  When Victor sent this to me, I thought I would write this blog about it and mention it on my website.  This is not for everyone. It’s for the dreamer, the believer, the adventurer.  I doubt that he’ll do this very often. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  But don’t just take my word for it. Go to his website. Check him out. Thank me later.

Your 90^th’ birthday is worth celebrating not for the number of years you’ve lived, but for the way you’ve lived those years. 90 is a cause for celebration in and of itself, just to have survived the rigors and challenges of day-to-day living. But for you, Deborah, all that  you’ve packed in and all that you’ve given back is really a lot more than that. I remember once bringing John Huston to the home of a wonderful Dutch sculptor named Jan de Swart.  Huston was a director, a writer, a pugilist, a painter, a horse breeder, a gambler, and a ladies man, and when he looked at the artist’s work he said, “You must have led two full lives.” To which Jan responded, “And you must be Methuselah.”

When I think of all you have accomplished, Deborah, I think of Jan’s remark because, based on your hearty health and mental agility, you’re on your way to becoming Methuselah, who was purported to have lived for 969 years.

But Methuselah is more a metaphor for longevity than accomplishment (though he was the grandfather of Noah and stuck around long enough to see the Ark built).  You, Deborah, are a woman of accomplishment.  Rancho La Puerta , of course, is your gift to the world of health, exercise, eating right, and appreciating nature.  There is also the Fundacion La Puerta, your environmentally-aware gift to the people of Tecate.  There is the New Americans Museum and Learning Center in San Diego.  There are your 17 years of service in Washington, D.C.  There are your countless lectures, all aimed at the theme of Living Right.  There is your fight to prevent child obesity through education. There are all your well-earned awards, including being named Mrs. San Diego, Humanitarian of the Year, Philanthropist of the Year, and just overall Best Person, for all the years you’ve given to help motivate and encourage others.  In all you’ve accomplished, and all you will continue to accomplish, you have served as an inspiration and a guiding light to all who know you.

On a personal level, you have given me the gift of the Ranch, for which I will be eternally grateful. I first came to the Ranch as a journalist in 1997, bringing my wife and two daughters, ages 17 and 14. After just two days I saw that this would be the one—and probably the only—place where I would be able to get my daughters to join us as they worked through their teenage years.  They took to the Ranch like birds to flight or tadpoles to water.  I wrote about what a magical place this was.  I described how Grandpa Raven, your stone-reading Indian in residence, shared his wisdom in a fun and gentle way. I wrote about the freedom one had to explore, about the exercise one got just walking from one’s room to the dining room, about the conversations one had with guests who didn’t feel like strangers, about the steam, Jacuzzi, newspapers and lemonade in the Men’s Health Center (I miss the lemonade!), about how I didn’t recognize my younger daughter after she had just had her hair cut, and I introduced myself to her as if she were someone I was meeting for the first time.  Her words—“Dad, it’s Hana”—have become part of our family lore.  I returned with my family the following year, and again wrote a story about the Ranch.  And again, the third year.

By that time I was told that I had become a “friend” of the Ranch, and if I ever wanted to return to write or just to get energized, I was welcome. That was a clear example, Deborah, of your extraordinary generosity.  But my wife was uncomfortable with such a gift. It’s part of her Japanese culture that when you are given something, you should also give something back. And that’s how I became a presenter at the Ranch. I asked you if you’d like me to offer a workshop, or talk about the people I’ve written about, and you said yes. So now my wife feels more comfortable doing Pilates, advanced yoga, and swimming here. Nothing’s really changed…for her.  But my enrichment continues to grow as I get to know some of your guests on a deeper and more personal level. Thank you, Deborah, for that as well.

Over the years that we’ve come to the Ranch—and I think we’re now past the 20 visit mark—I’ve been able to share some memorable experiences with different members of my family.  I brought my mother here from Florida once, and when she arrived in San Diego she was in a wheelchair—a surprise to us, but she didn’t want to say anything for fear we might suggest she not come.  I got my exercise that week pushing her wheelchair, and she got hers by taking various classes in that chair.  I brought my sister and her husband here and had a wonderful bonding time with my brother-in-law, the memory even more special as he passed away at an early age a few years later.  I brought their son here and we bonded by laughing so hard at our inadequacies in a Pilates class that we were politely asked to tone it down.  When my daughters complained about eating at a table with people they didn’t know, I remember telling them that they should be more open-minded, then said, “Let’s see who we wind up sitting next to tonight. If they’re uninteresting, we will eat by ourselves the rest of the week.”  I felt pretty confident we wouldn’t be doing that, and they agreed with me after we sat down next to a woman who said she worked for President Clinton at the White House, and the man she was with said he was the brother of the president’s Chief of Staff.

I’ve gotten so many stories, even stock tips, from people I’ve met at the Ranch. I once met a composer for Madonna in the Jacuzzi, who turned me on to a singer I had never heard of named Madeline Peyroux. I once met Bill Moyers in the men’s health center. When I told him we had John Huston in common—he had interviewed Huston for one of his PBS shows and I had written a biography of the Huston family—he told me that he had recently bought 10 copies of my book on interviewing to give to his staff. That, I said to him, was the best review I could ever receive.

When Alex lost his battle with cancer, you showed me the incredible depth of the research you did concerning his disease—a remarkable testament to a mother’s love. It was such a difficult time for you, and I know that you and Sarah have continued to improve the Ranch the way he would have.

I could go on and on talking about my experiences at the Ranch and what this place has meant to me and my family, but it’s not about just us—it’s about all of us who come to the Ranch.  It’s about you, Deborah. It’s your vision, your input, your care, your ability to choose people like Manulita, who has served your guests now for 50 years, and Phyllis, Joe, Cesario, Barry ….it’s about how you manage and how you delegate and in the end, how you understand how to continue to make the Ranch as special and unique and as comfortable as it is.

Happy 90^th, dear Deborah. It’s been an honor and a privilege to know you.  Thank you for helping us become a little healthier, a little wiser, and a lot friendlier than we would be without you.

With love and affection from Hiromi, Maya, Hana and

Larry