Beware The Zombie Surfpocalypse!

The diner is nondescript, or I should say it is descript in all the ways a typical diner should be. Certainly not the sort of place you'd expect one of the world's most fabulous people would (or I should say, would have their assistant) reserve a lunch date with an intrepid culture-beat writer. But that is exactly where I find myself as I sashay in from the dusty mid-summer heat. I scan the front dining room, again expectations turned upside down when I see her in a corner booth, baseball cap pulled slightly askew, deep in concentration scanning her iPhone 5. People of this stature aren't supposed to be on time, let alone early! But it was only the beginning salvo in a series of attacks on the defenses I thought so well fortified after years of interviewing celebrities.  I approach the table slowly, not wanting to intrude too abruptly, but she sees me coming and leaps up, sending ashes from the dangling cigarette precariously attached to her famously full bottom lip flying onto the floor around her. "Oh! these horrible things. I try to give them up! Every week I promise Cherché I'll give them up!" Cherché, her adorable miniature bullterrier barks approval (or is it disdain) at just the moment I notice him there, tucked behind her oversized Dolce de Rossi bag.  She waves her hand nonchalantly, registering my surprise, "Oh, I eat here all the time. Ron, the owner let's me bring him in as long as he keeps his mouth shut (she shoots Cherché a dagger of a look. Cherché seems to notice not one bit.) As we sit down, a buxom, tattoo'd waitress saunters over. "I'll have the usual, Ginger," my subject nods and they look at me expectantly. I fumble around the plastic menu and settle on lemon tea. They exchange a knowing look, a giggle and then as Ginger spins off, she explains to me, "I've done these sorts of thing here before, and for some reason everyone always orders lemon tea!" Her air is breezy, knowing and deliciously unconventional. It's hard to imagine someone of such ferocious reputation being so warm, but that is just what she is, welcoming me into her world as if there's nothing to it. Here is a woman who's seen everything, done just about everything, knows everyone who's anyone and can sit with me, a rumpled, crumpled mess with the same sort of delicate graciousness and generosity you always think would be reserved for only the inner circle. I can already tell, I'm in for a wild ride.

Or so I might start out the next EBNY post. Fashion fashion fashion. Celebrity glitz propaganda blogorama tumblr archive runway surf and skate symposium warehouse sale.  As a sometime part of the Surfashion Industrial Complex, I accept the ensuing zombie apocalypse as the natural evolution of bacterial infection. And since I wasn't there from the beginning, I can only assume this was where it was always heading. Yeah, I watched World War Z last night.  And yes, it freaked me out a little.