Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Spring 2013 - (Page 26)
CONTRIBUTORS
TIM LONG
The “call from Hollywood” is a storied part of every
career in the entertainment business. For Tim Long, a
writer on “The Simpsons,” it came about quite casually.
“Mutual friends got me an interview with Mike Scully,
who was running the show at the time,” he recalls. “Just
by way of small talk, I told Mike about a time when I was
a kid and we got snowed into the school overnight. He
thought that would make a good ‘Simpsons’ episode,
and he ended up hiring me.” Thirteen years later, Long
has written numerous episodes of the show, been
nominated for eight Emmy Awards and, contrary to
his initial instincts, became an advocate for his new
California home (“Falling in Love With … Los Angeles,”
page 32). Here are his thoughts on being part of one of
the most successful TV shows in history.
THE WRITE STUFF
From right: California
convert Tim Long;
his co-workers, “The
Simpsons.”
Why did you want to be a comedy writer?
Outside of sports, for which I have no aptitude, it felt
like the only job that was both lucrative and fun.
What are some of your favorite personal
contributions to the show?
I like little jokes that draw on my personal experiences,
and that no one else could have come up with.
Who first told you that you were funny?
Still waiting — fingers crossed! Actually, my mom was
the first person who told me I was funny.
Camber Lay behind the
bar at Parallel 37.
P H OTO G RA P H S BY TO N Y SA X E
T
AH, WILDERNESS
Clockwise from top left:
Cleo and Judah in their
bedroom tent; the family
says “hi” just outside
their casita; Cleo
lassoing the bull head.
WRITERS AND
PHOTOGRAPHERS
26
The stewardess winces a little, saying we may
have chosen the coldest weekend of the year
to visit Tucson. I turn to my husband and say,
“Isn’t Arizona supposed to be the Florida of
the West?” He shakes his head, worried it will
be too chilly for any of the adventures we’ve
planned. We’re wimpy Californians. Forty
degrees in our foggy, single-paned hometown
can feel like Siberia. But when we touch down,
the desert air is sunny and inviting.
We hop in a cab and head northwest
through Tucson. As we climb into the foothills, Cleo, our 6-year-old daughter, and Judah,
our 5-year-old son, watch the city give way
to a stark lunar landscape. Noses pressed to
the windows, they point to the prickly pear
and towering saguaro cactuses that dot this
scrubby frontier. Mesquite and ironwood trees
offer the only shade under a sky so blue, it
looks electric. There’s a hyperreal quality to
this place, as if we’ve just landed on the dusty
set of a Peckinpah movie.
Forty minutes later, we pass the first sign for
Dove Mountain, a Ritz-Carlton resort with a
main hotel, a casita village, five restaurants and
lounges, a spa, tennis courts and a golf course.
“Here we are!” I say, expecting to see the hotel
rise up like a monolith. But it’s another mile
before it comes into view. The complex is
designed to blend organically into 850 acres of
Sonoran Desert — and it does.
After we check in, just past noon, we’d
happily walk the short distance to our suite,
but succumb instead to Gustavo, our golf-cart
driver, who takes us up the hill to the casita
village. Passing one of three outdoor swimming
pools, he points out a 235-foot water slide built
into a rocky slope. Cleo squeals with delight,
imagining the thrill ride in her future.
The first thing Tony and I notice when we
enter our casita: the airy, dramatic views of the
Tortolita Mountains and the Wild Burro Canyon.
The first thing the kids notice: the in-room
camping service. “Dad, you’re not going to
W W W. R I T Z C A R LT O N . C O M
SHOSHANA BERGER
(“Desert Hearts,” page
64) took a break from
covering supergeeks at
Wired magazine to round
up her family and head
to the high desert north
of Tucson. She was the
founding editor of do-ityourself design magazine
ReadyMade and has
written for The New York
Times Magazine, Travel +
Leisure, Budget Travel
and Sunset.
W W W. R I T Z C A R LT O N . C O M
HEART & SEOUL
BENEATH ITS SPEEDY NEON SHEEN,
THE KOREAN CAPITAL IS ASIA’S
CONTEMPORARY ART HUB. CHRISTINA
CHOI EXPLORES A METROPOLIS STEEPED IN
BOTH CREATIVITY AND TRADITION
PARALLEL 37’S
BARTENDER,
CAMBER
LAY, FINDS
INSPIRATION
IN THE
BAY AREA’S
BOUNTY
P H O T O G R A P H S B Y S AT U P A L A N D E R
SERVE’S UP
Clockwise from top left: Cliff Drysdale
at his eponymous tennis center; a view
from the Club Lounge, overlooking the
Atlantic Ocean; Bill Baggs Cape Florida
State Park’s famed lighthouse.
GAME
CHANGER
it’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon,
and Camber Lay has just arrived for work at
Parallel 37 at The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco. The lead
bartender and creator of the restaurant’s celebrated cocktail
program, Lay begins setting up for the night, making sure that
she has enough glassware and that the rack is fully stocked
with spirits. Zesters, bar knives, shakers and strainers —
essential tools of the bartending trade — are freshly washed
and drying on folded white towels. Lay arranges
BY JAN NEWBERRY
bunches of herbs she picked up from
PHOTOGRAPHS BY AYA BRACKETT
the kitchen and gathers a supply of fresh fruit.
It’s a ritual familiar to bartenders everywhere — except that
neither Lay nor her staff slices limes or cuts strips of peel from
lemons and oranges ahead of time to use as twists. “It’s my
biggest pet peeve,” says Lay. “I hate it when the lime on the edge
104
W W W. R I T Z C A R LT O N . C O M
SEEK ING A T ENNIS
T U NEU P, JAY J ENNINGS
HEA DS TO T HE COU RT S
OF K EY BISCAYNE
T H E R I T Z - C A R LT O N M A G A Z I N E
105
Bay Area-based photographer AYA BRACKETT
(“Lay of the Land,” page
104) had the pleasure of
photographing mixologist
Camber Lay’s cocktails in
San Francisco. Brackett’s
work, often inspired by
still life painting, has
appeared in numerous
publications, including
The New York Times
Magazine, Dwell, Bon
Appétit and Monocle.
74
M
My tennis game was missing: No, it hadn’t gone completely
AWOL, but it was like an engine with a misfiring cylinder.
Three solid forehands would be followed by one that landed
6 feet beyond the baseline. An ace on a first serve would
alternate with ones buried in the net. My footwork, never a
strong point, left me either waving at balls too far away or
fending off the ones that were too close. I needed a tuneup.
So I set out for the renowned Cliff Drysdale Tennis Center
at The Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne, Miami in southern Florida,
where the pock-pock sound of tennis balls is as steady — and
as constant — as the surf. After an on-court career in which he
won 35 Davis Cup matches for South Africa and a U.S. Open
doubles championship, and helped form the Association of
Tennis Professionals, Drysdale gained even greater fame as a
television commentator while building a tennis management
company that now spans the world.
Key Biscayne, however, is where he makes his home when
he’s not working tournaments, and The Ritz-Carlton center, his
first, with 10 green clay hydrocourts and one hard court, serves
as a kind of head office, albeit one suffused with his relaxed
persona and welcoming philosophy. Square stucco pillars,
plentiful plantings, and loose netting behind the backstops
rather than chain-link fences and taut windscreens make one
think the site was constructed by meticulous, tennis-crazed
European villagers. Here, Drysdale often adopts the role of
benevolent squire surveying the clinics in progress, as he does
when he speaks with me on my first day.
He tells me that he dislikes the word “clinic,” because he
wants to convey that the experience should be fun — “fun”
being his first pillar of instruction. That doesn’t mean it’s
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF THE RITZ-CARLTON, KEY BISCAYNE; KIKOR PHOTOGRAPHY;
PBNJ PRODUCTIONS/BLEND IMAGES/CORBIS
LAY OF
THE
LAND
JUST OUTSIDE OF TUCSON
LIES A FAMILY-FRIENDLY
OASIS. SHOSHANA BERGER
BRINGS THE BROOD
64
SPORTS
T HE MAESTRO
FA M I LY T R AV E L
DESERT
HEARTS
COURTESY OF THE SIMPSONS/FOX
Why is “The Simpsons” considered the ultimate
writing job?
Because cartoons can’t complain about the writing —
much. It’s very much a writing-driven show, a fact
that even our wonderful cast acknowledges.
W W W. R I T Z C A R LT O N . C O M
JAY JENNINGS (“Game
Changer,” page 74), a
freelance writer and
former features editor
at Tennis magazine, is
the editor of “Tennis and
the Meaning of Life: A
Literary Anthology of the
Game,” and the author
of “Carry the Rock: Race,
Football, and the Soul of
an American City.”
MODERN TR ADI T IONS
This page: Paintbrushes
for sale in the Insa-dong
neighborhood, where
artists studied during
the Joseon Dynasty.
Opposite page: Bukchon
Hanok, a preserved traditional Korean village,
is a window into the
Seoul of 600 years ago.
88
W W W. R I T Z C A R LT O N . C O M
T H E R I T Z - C A R LT O N M A G A Z I N E
89
SATU PALANDER (“Heart
and Seoul,” page 88) is
a photographer based in
Helsinki and Seoul, and
works for a diverse range
of Finnish, Korean and
international publications, including Monocle
and Elle. For this shoot,
she particularly loved visiting the famous dumpling
spot, Gaesung Mandoo
Gung, where they “were
making dumplings at
such a high speed, I
actually had to ask them
to slow down a bit for a
photo!”
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Spring 2013
Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Spring 2013
Contents
Contributors
Editor’s Letter
President’s Letter
Falling in Love With ... Los Angeles
Design
Technology
On the Boulevards
Shopping
Jewelry
Watches
Family
Local Knowledge
Sports
Abu Dhabi
Seoul
Fashion
Culinary
Let Us Stay With You
Heritage
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