Summer Hotel Retreat Day 6

I didn't take any pictures today, didn't talk with anybody not connected to Antioch, except for Kevin on the phone.  Kevin's doing fine, very busy with many laughter-invoking stories to tell.

I went to a dinner in downtown Culver City this evening at the chair's house, for faculty and graduating students.  Catered in his backyard, with great food and wine, it was fun.  You access Steve's house by "passing through a walkway between two pairs of small salmon-colored Spanish court-style apartments (one of which was allegedly occupied by Marilyn Monroe in her early studio days)."  Passing MM's door was just the beginning of my Hollywood history tour.  Afterwards as Alistair McCartney and I walked back to the parking garage, he pointed out Culver Studios, where Gone With the Wind was shot.  We stopped and peered through the gates.

Here's a picture of the studio in 1920.  It still looks the same, an ornate white mansion.  We also passed the Culver Hotel, where most of the Munchkins stayed during the filming of Wizard of Oz.  From the hotel website:

The reputed stories of the Munchkins' supposedly drunken shenanigans are legendary, and helped inspire the 1981 movie comedy Under the Rainbow (starring Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher). The producers used the actual hotel as a shooting site for that fictionalized version of the making-of-Oz story.

According to some of the not-so-tall tales, many of the 124 adult midgets got drunk, sang choruses of "Ding Dong, The Bitch Is Dead," and almost wrecked the hotel.

No one so far is trashing my hotel, but you never know from day to day who your floormates are going to be, who's going to propel you into wondering what in the world could be causing that person to pace incessantly, what combination of effects makes other people slam doors repeatedly, as if they want the whole floor to know they're there—the kind of person who is constantly shouting I EXIST.  Here's a photo I took a couple of days ago of the mirror I use to put on make up.  It has suction cups on the back of it, and I stuck it on the window because I've found that facing natural light I can best see what I'm doing.  The room heater and a foot-wide ledge are between me and the mirror, so I have to lean towards it.  I usually put my left hand on the window for balance, and I sometimes wonder what someone in the parking lot below who happens to look up thinks when they see me peering so intently and awkwardly into the window.  Perhaps they think I've taken some bath salts, the evil designer drug I was reading about online, and I'm trying to eat my way through the glass.  Perhaps they think I'm a voyeur staring down at them, or an exhibitionist about to throw off all my clothes.  Or perhaps they just look and don't think anything at all.