Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Thursday, Jul. 19, 2007 - 7:47 p.m.

DUDE!!!

::insert leo getz here::

Okay. Okay, okay. So, I'm standing in the store behind the information desk today. Okay. And this woman walks up, okay, and she's really pretty and looks very refined, and she's got these sunglasses on that sort of look completely refined and totally matching her outfit, see, and she sort of dips them down like she's going to take them off and looks at me over the rims, and she says, "Hello, I'm Jackie Collins." And I'm like - literally - "Ohmigod, you certainly are," okay? And she's all, I've just been to a book signing in the area, so if you don't mind, I thought I'd drop in and sign some copies of my book here, and I was like omg, Jackie Collins is standing in front of me and wants to sign her books, okay, so she and I went to the front of the store, where she signed all the copies of her newest book, okay, and she was totally nice and very charming, and it's amazing, because she tells you what she wants, okay, but it totally doesn't come across as a star or diva telling you she wants green M&M's only or anything like that, okay? It totally comes across as a completely charming, utterly reasonable request, like, "Oh, if it's not too much trouble, could you walk across that flaming pit to bring me a nice cold drink of water, dear; I'd go myself, but I simply don't feel like taking a single step," okay, and you're all, "yes ma'am, Ms. Collins, right away, Ms. Collins, would you like me to stand there on fire and crush some ice for you as well, Ms. Colilns?" and you'd do it, okay? Because she's so nice-but-irresistibly-firm about it. Like, you know that woman gets every thing she wants merely by stating she'd like for it to happen, and at the same time, okay, you can see that when she needs to, she can really whip out the deathray-seething-fury-do-it-my-way-now-or-die look that can cause network execs and snooty french ma�tre d's to fold in less than a heartbeat for fear of instantly impending and massively torturous death. But she probably never needs to whip that look out, okay, because she's just so utterly freaking charming and calmly self-assured, that not only does it not occur to you to be at all offended at any request on the planet she might make (not that any of her requests were at all offensive, because they were not), but you don't feel in the slightest like you're being told what to do. It's more like someone has made this perfectly reasonable suggestion that seems so utterly, obviously...well, obvious, that you kind of mentally smack yourself on the head V-8 style and go "duh" and then do whatever it is she asks.

And also, she's the third published author to come into the store now, and by FAR the nicest and most respectful, though also John Connolly was super nice and very, very adorably Irish. (And has gorgeous handwriting; it looks like calligraphy). The third author came in WITH HIS FREAKING AGENT and was bossy and self-aggrandizing and demanding and a host of other negative adjectives, and I hated his guts. His agent swept in just ahead of him and started issuing orders. He bossed the MOD around, and while he was doing that, The Very Important Author bossed me around, like I have nothing better to do but to kowtow to his ass the second he walks in the door, on accounta how he's on his way to a Very Important Book Signing Event at the store out in Thousand Oaks. Not to mention he did it with this air of arrogant detachment like I was a bug he'd hire someone else to step on so that he wouldn't get his oh-so-expensive-and-chicly-stylish shoes dirty. Please. Contrast that with Ms. Jackie Collins, who is very "I'll just sign them right here, don't even bother to move them, it's no fuss at all."

Oh, and by the way? She looks FABULOUS. I just looked her up on Wikipedia and found out she's 70, which I frankly find impossible to believe, because she doesn't look a day over 50, if that. She looks freaking gorgeous and much prettier than she does in photos. Not that she doesn't look pretty in photos, but she looks kind of made-up in them, but in person, she has like this effortless-looking grace and beauty that pictures just don't capture.

So sometimes living in LA does not totally suck. :)

Peace out,
Katie

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