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Rob Brinkley, Dallas Dillon,
Doss Alexander and the Bentley
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We all love Dallas, but let's face it - it's definitely not the place to be in August. In the past my family and I have always gone to New England to escape the blistering Texas heat, but this year we decided to head the other direction and check out the scene in Malibu. I found our fab rental home while doing an Internet search and came up with what was called "the Malibu Dream House". It turned out to live up to its name and more. The all glass, steel and travertine pad shares a private beach with Cindy Crawford and her husband Randy Gerber as well as former Disney head Michael Eisner. I never spotted Michael, but Cindy, Randy and some of their too-cool-for-words friends like surfer Laird Hamilton came out on the weekends and strolled the beach. But that's nothing, we saw celebrities everywhere.
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We spotted Brad Garrett from Everybody Loves Raymond at the local grocery store, Jeremy Piven enjoying a quiet dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant with his mother and some hottie, Elle McPherson with her husband on the same evening (she wasn't wearing a stitch of makeup and still looked unbelievably gorgeous), and best of all, Paris Hilton and her current boyfriend Adrien Grenier at Nobu. The paparazzi hang out every night outside of Nobu waiting to pounce on sated celebs. Victoria and David Beckham also made an appearance and when they came out of the restaurant there were so many paparazzi flashing away the parking lot seemed like daytime. I had an interesting chat with a paparazzo from TMZ.com who told me that a few nights earlier Brad Garrett came out of Nobu in a not-so-friendly mood and threw the guy's camera on the ground.
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PinkSneakers Producers Dorri
Knizatko and Kristy Wampole |
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Terri Provencal, Friend
and Abi Ferrin
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When you go to a place like Malibu, everybody wants to come and visit. We had a constant stream of houseguests the entire time who were all great fun, but the "Best House Guest of the Year Award" definitely goes to Rob Brinkley from Paper City and Doss Alexander from Neiman Marcus. They told me that they were bringing me a really big present, but you can imagine my surprise when they pulled up bearing two bottles of champagne and a Bentley! Rob apparently sold his creative soul and promised Bentley that he would write an article about his experience in Malibu with the car. Malibu is just as shallow and pretentious as any of our other favorite places, so driving around in a $200,000 car helped change our image from definite nobodies to possible some-bodies. People thought that Brinkley and Doss were some big time movie producers and they drew a big crowd when their friend Bunkey Vroom did a photo shoot of Brinkley and Bentley at a local surf shop called Bu Land.
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Enough about big time celebrities, let's talk about Dallas' up and coming stars. Earlier this summer I received an email from a production company called Pink Sneakers who wanted to begin casting for a new BRAVO reality TV show about "fabulous Dallas women". In my initial conversation with them, I was very blunt about how I felt about previous Dallas based reality TV show debacles like Shear Dallas and the most undignified one of them all, Wildest Party Parents featuring the Campisi family. The last thing we need at a time when we are all working so hard to shed the stereotypical "big blonde" image is another lame, unflattering and embarrassing look into Dallas "high society". After a month or so of phone interviews and requests for pictures and bios, they narrowed the field to 20 women and blew into town at the end of July with two producers. Kristy Wampole and Dorrie Knizatko came to my house with camera in tow and proceeded to do a two-hour interview with me, my assistant Jeanie Riley, my husband and son. As much as I tried to keep the conversation on the high ground, they kept digging for dirt. My son coughed some up by telling them how many pairs of shoes I have and then gave a private tour of my closet. Jeanie told them how stressful it was working for me because you never know what you're going to be doing from day to day. My husband Bill said he would never be on the show because he prefers to keep a low profile.
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Kim Kroll and LaDena Miller |
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I tried like crazy to get the names of the other people they were interviewing out of Dorri and Kristy, but their lips were sealed. Terri Provencal from Modern Luxury ended up throwing a little "casting call" cocktail party at Bice for the people who had already been interviewed plus a few more Terri thought they should see. I know you're chomping at the bit to know the list, so here's what I've got: Patty Crews, Capera Ryan, Abi Ferrin, Francesca Allegra, Patricia Gunn, Carmaleta Whiteley, LaDena Miller, Kim Kroll and Rosalyn Colombo. There are ten more, but I'm as much in the dark as you are. According to Kim, who stayed at the party until the end chatting with Dorri and Kristy, they felt like they had the five needed to do the show. The next step was to edit all the footage and present to the people at BRAVO. If BRAVO liked what they saw, then the five women would be contacted and if they all agreed to do the show, then the shooting would begin. As I sit here writing to you from the Malibu Dream House, dear readers, I haven't heard another peep, but when I do, you'll be the first to know.
Now it's time to pack, return home and brace myself for the brutal Dallas fall social season. |
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