Hiya everyone,

I am not trying to specialize in dead authors this week, honest, but I was kinda sad to read that Judy Mazel, author of the Beverly Hills Diet popped this mortal coil today at the age of 63. I knew Judy, actually. In my earlier incarnation as a journalist on Star Magazine (yes, I know, I was one of THEM), I went to her house to interview.
She was a very thin, very...excitable woman who was clearly starving. The whole interview was about her diet, and her desire for food. She was heating up two bagels in her Beverly Hills apartment (in a high rise on the corner of Wilshire and Comstock) and I'd been having sex all night with a wonderful new man and I was eager to get through the day to get home to him and she was eager to sink her teeth into those bagels.
It was all she talked about.
"I got the bialys, the bagels with everything."
"Great," I said, thinking, we're bonding, but I'm not getting anything useful.
Rule number one in journalism: never go back to the office without a story.
I had researched her in the short drive from my office on Beverly Drive to her apartment (ten minutes, tops) and rather guiltily turned up unprepared, something I never, ever did) but she gladly took the reins, distraught when her over-zealous efforts to encourage me to lose weight resulted in her burning the bagels.
"Start with pineapples," she said. "You won't feel hungry."
I dunno...she was so mad with hunger we had to go by the bakery near my office so she could buy two more bagels.
Judy was a character all right...I'd never thought much about what happened to her until the online piece today. I'm sorry she's gone, but I hope God gives her more to eat than pineapples and bagels...

Aloha oe,

A.J.