Once upon a time, when I was a freelance journalist in Los Angeles, a friend, Laurel Erickson, who was a news reporter for the local NBC affiliate, and I decided to throw a big picnic bash for our friends and colleagues. I don’t recall what we served the first year–and was there a second?–but the last year we gave our joint party we made chili in huge pots that Laurel borrowed from the KNBC commissary.
We cooked it in Laurel’s condo, but then–somehow magically the pots ended up under the purview of cooks from the commissary who brought them to Will Rogers Park and, after reheating, doled the chili out to our guests. This left Laurel and me free to swan about, playing the gracious hostesses to our guests: I to my motley crew of freelance journalists and Laurel to pretty much the entire KNBC new team, which included, of course, Maria Shriver.
Maria and Arnold didn’t exactly deign to mingle with us. They stood on the periphery of the picnic area, with their dog (or was it dogs) and watched. I remember wondering then what the hell Maria Shriver saw in Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was gross, crude, and loud; she was refined and smart. He was a bodybuilder, for god’s sake; she was a TV journalist with an enviable career, not to mention being a Kennedy. But I was old enough then, and I certainly am now, to know that what creates a couple is often a mystery to all onlookers, so I figured there was something about him that she got. I respected her, so I respected her choices (not that anyone cared what I thought). Somewhere I have a photo of the two of them with their dog (dogs?) standing and watching us. I thought they looked lonely.
It turns out, however, that in some ways their standoffishness served them well. That third (or was it the second?) year, our picnic had become a mini-event, such that KNBC sent a film crew to cover it for use as background for their weather report that evening. Unfortunately, the 11 o’clock news was missing some of its usual reporters. Seems that the commissary cooks had only reheated the chili. Seems that was insufficient to kill bacteria brewing from the heat of the day. Seems we gave food poisoning to all our guests.
That too was reported on the news that night.
Photo credit: blog.faboverfifty.com
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