Been
having to write recommendation letters for a lot of my former students
including the wonderfully talented and handsome Damien
Davis who was in one of my seminars at NYU back in 2006. Damien’s artwork is quite impressive. I consider him to be a main proponent of the Stacy
Lattisaw/Patrice
Rushen Op art school of Ubangi Realness.
Damien is not related to me as Davis is not my real surname but I would always tell people he was the
grandchild of Sammy Davis Jr. and his last wife the Las Vegas dancer/showgirl Altovise,
who had a small supporting role in the Nancy Walker directed HiEnergy disco
musical Can’t Stop the Music 1980 featuring The Village People, Valerie Perrine, sexy Jewish hungthrob Steve
Guttenberg(who I was an undergraduate with at UCLA. The young Mr. Guttenberg could really fill out
his Dolphin shorts) and Olympic track star Bruce Jenner. Can’t Stop the Music is one of my favourite early
80s guilty film pleasures along with the Brooke Shields romantic drama Endless
Love co-starring Shirley Knight, Don Murray,Penelope Medford(Richard Gere’s ex
girlfriend when I knew them back in the early 1980s when they were neighbors with my NYC mentor George "Mommy" Byron) James Spader & Tom
Cruise in their first film roles and a beautiful Martin Hewitt who reminds me
of one of my young NYU students named Alex Casso.
Was
cleaning out a bunch of boxes and found some letters from a former admirer
Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor who is now the Duke of Westminister and worth
billions as his family is one of the riches in England and have been for
centuries. Once Lord Grosvenor gave me a
diamond bracelot which I blythely passed on to one of my best girlfriends as I
am not much of a jewelry person and hate diamonds. Whenever I had wealthy beaus I have always
done something to jinx the relationship. I guess its my inherent disdain for the wealthy.
William Waldron another Brit from the nobility that also fancied me and
owned a store on Melrose Avenue called Just William I wound up insulting. Years later I heard from his ex-wife that he
turned into a mountain man living in the wilds of the Sierra Nevadas. Warning to men everywhere: Don’t fall in love with Vaginal Davis or you
will wind up either committing suicide or going mad.
Two of my
perfect Goethe Universitat students the beautiful and vibrant Julian Scherer
and his pretty and personable gal pal Sandra Bruetting are in Berlin for
holiday and took me out for café &kuchen at the Neus Ufer on the Haupt Strasse
which was the perfect place to just hang and catch up on every little
thing. It was so wonderful being able to
spend quality time with these two amazing young people. With Julian and Sandra taking the lead I now
have faith in the future generation.