Sim Carter: Past Tense Imperfect

I got one of those promoted Instagram posts a couple of days ago, Colbie Caillat announcing her new single 'Goldmine' from her upcoming album, The Malibu Sessions. Caillat became a phenomenon after her pop-catchy Bubbly received a gazillion hits on YouTube back in 2007.  The California girl shot to fame while I was still working my old steady freelance gig at 805 Living magazine out in Westlake Village, California and the editor asked me to interview her for our back-of-the-book feature, PS. The singer, born in Malibu, was raised in Newbury Park and went to area schools in Thousand Oaks. As was often the case, we didn't meet, I interviewed her over the phone. I won't pretend to know her. It's not as though I was able to trail after her for a week, like the Rolling Stone journalist in Almost Famous, observing her in action. We didn't keep in touch. If I got an invite to go see her perform, I didn't accept it. I didn't tag along with the phot...

Early summer means Wimbledon when millions of us—our rackets long outdated, zipped into cases, stuffed into hall closets—tune back into the game of tennis. I used to love tennis, or the idea of it anyway. Tennis whites bringing out the brown on arms and legs, the players and their idiosynchratic grunts and groans. The 70's were the heyday of my tennis ardor, Breakfast at Wimbledon a yearly tradition. The romantic possibilities of Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors. Billy Jean King and Martina Navrátilová. The sex appeal of Ilya Nastase. Arthur Ashe followed by the long-haired Bjorn Borg looking like Peter Frampton. McEnroe and his anger management problems. Those were the days I played it too, poorly, the sweet spot of victory ever elusive.  Eventually I let it go, but still Wimbledon calls every year. The names familiar with year after year of victories, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer, the Williams sisters, Novak Djokovic. This year the name on everyone's lips is the Californi...

Lost in Thought, Jeremy Lipking It was just shy of ten years ago that I was doing a regular freelance writing gig for 805 Living magazine. A glossy regional, the magazine’s editor, Lynn Andujar kept me busy every month but our April 2006 edition had me whirling. I tracked down seven artsy types, local to our suburban hood, for our Arts Appreciation piece, and while a few of the subjects have stayed with me, none so much as the gifted painter Jeremy Lipking.  Already well-known for his figurative realist paintings, Lipking was fetching thousands for his art, but I was clueless. And enthralled. I’d never seen anything like it. Paintings that were at once both almost photographic in their exactness, yet lush and ethereal. I met him at the Calabasas home he shared with his wife and daughter, frequent muses for his work. The house with its immaculate white walls and rich, dark wooden floors, orderly, nothing out of place, was utterly unlike the artist’s atelier of my imagina...

I just added some links to a smattering of the work I did for 805 Living where I was a regular monthly contributor from 2004 to 2008. I stopped writing when my real estate work amped up to the point I simply didn't have time. Somewhere in storage there's a big old cardboard box full of pieces that I wrote about area places and people including Q&A's with some notable names ie Colbie Caillat, The Bachelor's Chris Harrison, CNBC 's Jane Wells, ABC's Ellen Leyva, Patrick Warburton, Anne Lockhart, surf queen Mary Osborne and more for the magazine's last page feature, PS. I'm going to try to find that big old box and scan some additional pieces and put them here.  I'm not delusional enough to pretend I'm doing this for you. I know it's for me. For my ego. You don't even have to read 'em; I can see them. I can say 'okay, Simmy, you never threw a decent dinner party in your life but every once in awhile you wrote some...