"'She was seen as too sexy and too lightweight to be serious,' her longtime agent... said... Ms. Babitz was a precocious child of Hollywood, born on May 13, 1943, stopping traffic at 13."

"(A soon-to-be famous actor, spying her on her front lawn in a leopard print bathing suit, cruised her in his convertible before realizing her age and speeding away, she recalled in 'Eve’s Hollywood.').... She clocked the popular girls.... 'When they reach 15.... and their beauty arrives, it’s very exciting — like coming into an inheritance and as with inheritances, it’s fun to be around when they first come into the money and how they spend it and on what.'  Eve’s inheritance was her appetite, her curiosity and her zaftig beauty, like Brigitte Bardot with a shag haircut and hip huggers. She was a hedonist with a notebook. Eve hung out at the Troubadour, the West Hollywood club that nurtured Jackson Browne, the band Buffalo Springfield, for whom she made album covers, and Steve Martin, whom she made over by showing him a book of Jacques Henri Lartigue’s photographs featuring crisply dressed men in white suits on the beach in France at the turn of the century. In 1963, she wrote to Joseph Heller, the author of 'Catch-22,' angling to find a publisher for a nascent novel that never materialized: 'I am a stacked 18-year-old blonde on Sunset Boulevard. I am also a writer.'... Then in 1997, trying to light a cherry-flavored Tiparillo while driving her Volkswagen Beetle, her clothing caught fire, searing most of her body.... Holed up with her cat in her West Hollywood apartment, Ms. Babitz became a recluse — and a pugnacious conservative, converted by the talk radio that became the backbeat to her new life...."

From "Eve Babitz, a Hedonist With a Notebook, Is Dead at 78/A child of Hollywood, she wrote of the sensuous pleasures of Los Angeles, and sampled them enthusiastically" (NYT).

A strange obituary. And I've elided Frank Zappa, Salvador Dalí, and Marcel Duchamp. 

Creepy, really. You'd think "Me Too" had never happened. She died of Huntington's disease, so maybe this obituary was composed years ago. 

The scene on the front lawn in a leopard print bathing suit seems like the scene in the Kubrick movie where Humbert Humbert first lays eyes on Lolita. The Times sounds Humbertish referring to Babitz as "a precocious child." The editors left in "stopping traffic at 13." Maybe that's the tone of Babitz's writing. She wrote "When they reach 15.... and their beauty arrives, it’s very exciting" and "I am a stacked 18-year-old blonde on Sunset Boulevard." And all this is added up to the role of "hedonist." It's as though the New York Times has devolved into Harvey Weinstein. Ah, but she turned into a conservative — "a pugnacious conservative" — so no holds barred. 

"There exists a visceral John Wayne kinship between Israelis and Texans, and Rick Perry gets it."

"As a Jewish cowboy (or 'Juusshh,' as we say in Texas)" Kinky Friedman says "Hell, yes!" he'd vote for Rick Perry.

[Rick Perry has] visited Israel on many more occasions than Obama, who’s been there exactly zero times as president. If I were Obama I wouldn’t go either. His favorability rating in Israel once clocked in at 4 percent. Say what you will about the Israelis, but they are not slow out of the chute. They know who their friends are. On the topic of the Holy Land, there remains the little matter of God. God talks to televangelists, football coaches, and people in mental hospitals. Why shouldn’t he talk to Rick Perry? In the spirit of Joseph Heller, I have a covenant with God. I leave him alone and he leaves me alone. If, however, I have a big problem, I ask God for the answer. He tells Rick Perry. And Rick tells me.

(Via Instapundit.)

What's the Joseph Heller quote he's channeling?

1. "'And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways,' Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. 'There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else, He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a supreme being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when he robbed old people of their power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?'"

2. "God does have this self-serving habit of putting all blame for His own mistakes on other people, doesn't He? He picks someone arbitrarily, unbidden, right out of the blue so to speak, and levies upon them tasks of monumental difficulty for which we don't always measure up in every particular, then charges US for HIS error in selecting imperfectly. He tends to forget that we are no more infallible than He is."

3. "Now THERE'S a hollow state to be in, isn't it — to believe in God and get no sign that He's there."

Help me out here.

Or maybe thisis a better place to look.