Couch #10 – Bela and Susan

Couch #10 – Bela and Susan – June 9th, 2010

Couch #10 belongs to Bela and Susan.  The day bed/couch was bought when some family was coming to visit from Sweden.  They had bought a regular bed online which they never got, because the company had legal issues.  So they bought this and assembled it last minute.   They live in a home, built in 1941, bought in 2000,  in the Pico-Robertson area of Los Angeles, which is one of the Jewish parts of town.  They feel lucky to be there.  This is beyond home to them.  He is an architect and she is a university administrator.    They have been married for 30 long years.  They like each other.  They are on their second date.  Bela has an older daughter from a previous marriage and they have a daughter, their baby, who is 23 and married.  They also have a large, wide-bodied V8 cat named Stanley.   Bela and Susan enjoy going to Huntington Library.  They are members at the cheap bastard level.  He takes pictures and she sits around.  They also went to the Getty Villa recently. They like to go to museums and look at stuff.   Bela does etching.  Susan sews and likes to read.  Bela is also a photographer.  He also does drawings and art on paper.  He works 630 to 430 every day doing heavy administration and tedious work which allows him to afford to do art.  It’s a trade off.  Susan has an excellent legal education and english degree.  She has a dual degree in biology.  She worked herself from nothing to state of extreme poverty as she quotes from Groucho Marx.  Bela went to the Swedish Royal Academy of Art for bookbinding.  He worked for Sports Car Graphic  magazine as an art director.  Susan also was an actress on “James at 15” in 1977 for Fox.  They are cats of 9 lives.  Bela and I  both know David Sotelo from Art Center At Night Photography Classes, but we really just met that day.  Bela likes Bach’s Cello Concerto while Susan enjoys Taj Mahal’s “Senor Blues”.  Susan likes to cook and Bela enjoys it, whether it’s Indian, Persian, Italian, Spanish, Chinese or Mexican.  Right now she is on a Portuguese kick.  Bela likes “The Frisco Kid” with Gene Wilder, whereas Susan likes the Marx Brotheres in “Duck Soup”.  He is impressed that I took a sour situation and turned it into something positive.  Susan thinks I need to get a haircut and a real job, but wishes me well.  Apparently I’m so not Jewish.

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