Standing in line with a thousand other people this morning for my Swine Flu (It's Not Just for Pigs AnymoreTM) shot, I was struck by how, if only the public health system had been as advanced during the time of "The Stand," Las Vegas would not have been destroyed by the Trashcan Man's atom bomb, Nick Andros wouldn't have been beat up by those Shilo hillbillies, and our dreams wouldn't to this day be dominated by black women and darker men.
Ultimately I chose to leave the line lest it consume my day (which it would have), and I trust that the H1N1 Virus will pass me over, as my blood is 98 percent alcohol at this point.
Side note: the late artist Richard Brautigam created the paperback cover of Stephen King's "The Stand," which I bought for $1.95 in 1980. What's odd is that I remain 19 years old.
Los Angeles can be so ungrateful. Just weeks after the the city nearly burned down, the rain that usually waits until, at the earliest, Halloween arrived in amounts that anywhere else would seem innocuous.
And people were angry about it.
"How about THIS RAIN?" someone at the PTA meeting said last night. "I wonder if school will be cancelled?"
"Yes," I said. "I might have to jump in the L.A. River just to dry off."
There is some concern that mudslides off denuded hillsides will do to homes what the fires couldn't.
Still, my morning commute was often interrupted, even as my windshield wipers were on their lowest frequency, by people stopping in intersections and having no idea what to do about the rain. It's Los Angeles; can't people think of the rain as more-wet bullets?
At the gas station a team from a local NBC affiliate was getting reactions about the storm that was "battering" Southern California.
"In Massachusetts it's not considered battery until your own teeth are in your stool," I should have said, but didn't.
We need the rain. The cracked streets of the city are like Abel's blood crying from the ground. And I'm like "Well what did you expect, Abel?"
When I was 9 I found my kickstand rotting off; it seemed to have crept under my bicycle. I asked my brother John to fix it.
"There's two types of people in the world, Mart," he said, using an abbreviation of my name that means shop or store. "People who need kickstands and people who don't."
I didn't know what he meant, but he fixed my kickstand anyway. I rode away wondering which group Judas Priest belonged to, not knowing at the time that Judas Priest was already a group.
John is no longer around for me to ask, but it occurred to me at the time that he might have thought less of the people who needed kickstands, and therefore me.
Over the years I have determined that the world isn't so easily divided and, while it might be polite to not argue when someone says Democrat or Republican, fried or flame-broiled, Rob Halford or Ronnie James Dio, sometimes the only thing you can drink while listening to "Mob Rules" is a Pepsi, not a Coke.
"But there aren't just two kinds of people in the world, John," I might say.
"Really?" he'd reply. "You're alive and I'm not. You use a kickstand and I don't. Q.E.motherscratching D."
"But you're dead. You don't need a kickstand."
"Exactly."
Three weeks ago, the kickstand on my 11-year-old bicycle fell off in the middle of Wilshire Blvd. For a moment I experienced a feeling of otherworldliness, as if I were passing from this realm to another.
"You won't need that kickstand anymore, Marty Barrett," Our Lord Jesus Christ said.
I thought of the inspirational poster Footprints, in which a man's life was represented by two sets of footprints on the sand, one his, and one Our Lord's. In the difficult times, the man noticed that there was only one set of footprints.
"What's up with that?" the man said to The Lord.
Thinking fast, The Lord said, "It's because I was carrying you."
Because of the Inspirational Poster Spatial Limitation Act of 1977, it is not widely known that the man didn't believe The Lord's answer for a second, noting that the footprints were clearly left by the man's shoes, not The Lord's sandals, and that the man weighed at least 220 lbs. during the time of his diabetic coma, and had Our Lord been carrying him, the footprints would have been indented farther into the sand.
"Fine," The Lord said. "I abandoned you for someone who ate right. You going to go be Jewish now?"
I thought briefly that my brother might have meant that losing one's kickstand means that one is not truly alive. If this is true, I have been traveling through the realm of the undead since July.
In the first summer I had my bicycle I traveled to Martha's Vineyard with my friend Todd. We stayed at a hostel run by a nice Bavarian couple.
"The showers are open until 1 a.m.," the wife said, handing us towels, "and the kitchen is open at 5. We just had the showers redone so the water pressure is better than a hotel."
"I don't like it when German people tell me how good the showers are," Todd, who happened to be Jewish, said.
Come to think of it, I, who happen to be Irish, have never ordered potato latkes from a British deli. Why should I pay for what thieving absentee landlords stole from my ancestors?
What I'm saying is that to make choices is to be alive.
The upside of being no longer alive and riding a bike is that my calves are huge. The two types of people in this world are people who get calf implants, and people who don't.
Several times a month I ride my bike to work across seven miles of city streets. It takes me 45 minutes, depending on traffic. I rarely stop, even when I should.
The Atwater Bridge stands less than halfway through my journey, but it is the hardest part. It is the one place I must stop, in order to leave the street and get on the bridge, I hoist the bike onto the curbed sidewalk; I lose my momentum.
As I make my way across, I first pedal up a deceptively difficult incline into Los Angeles with both the 5 freeway and the L.A. River beneath me. By the end I am out of breath. I never look at the river, or the gentle hills of Griffith Park to my right.
This morning there was a bedraggled man who preceded me on the bridge. He was riding a rickety bike, very slowly. There was no room for me to pass him, so I was forced to slow down.
And that's when things changed. Pedaling casually, I saw a nest of birds in the rushes of the river. I saw the sun rising to my left. The bike moved easily, my legs weren't strained. I thought, "Why is it so difficult every other day?"
Because every other day I race over the bridge, competing with no one but myself, taking no time for enjoyment of the scenery or my own comfort, spoiling a joyful moment, making what should be a great ride into something with a flaw.
"Who is pushing you, Marty Barrett?" I said.
There is a rest area in the middle of the bridge, and the bedraggled man pulled to the side. Without thinking, I sped up and zipped past, soon aware of how much my legs hurt again, how I was out of breath, and how I was racing for nothing. I stopped and turned around.
The bedraggled man had resumed riding and was making his way slowly across. I got a good look at him. He was very likely homeless.
"He seems to have all the time in the world," I thought. "He's not straining himself. He's probably having the time of his life."
I thought for a moment, and decided to light the homeless man on fire. The smoke met the sunrise, and his ashes blew northwest against the line of the river. I went southwest, because the southeast is for assholes.
On the trail of the Kogi truck: Coming to terms with Twitter
Like thinking people everywhere, I see little use for the social networking site Twitter. My life is complicated; can it really be summed up in 150 characters or less? Do the people who depend on me for guidance and moral leadership deserve to only know part of my brain? Furthermore, what can they glean from
Mavervorl Killing our fish and ducks. less than 20 seconds ago from web
But I've found the one use of Twitter that is neither narcissistic nor extraneous: Tracking the Kogi trucks as they make their lonely journey across Los Angeles.
Deployed exactly six months ago, the two Kogi trucks, which serve a blend of Korean food in traditional Mexican enclosures - like kimchi tacos - "tweet" their locations for their nightly stops, which regularly draw hundreds of people.
Taco trucks, or loncheros, are a cultural institution in Los Angeles. But last year the L.A. County Board of Supervisors passed a law that would make it a misdemeanor to park for more than one hour in one location. And this law has teeth: supported by stationary restaurateurs who claimed the loncheros were unfair competition, it levies fines of up to $1000 for any truck overstaying its limit.
Since the Kogi trucks cannot say for sure where they will be or when (the website gives approximate times and locations), the "Roja" and "Verde" trucks will tweet their coordinates only when their destinations are certain. Then crowds gather.
Thus the clientele at a recent Kogi stop in Eagle Rock all seemed to have smartphones. Scheduled to arrive at 10 p.m., the truck rolled in around 10:15 to a crowd of about 110 and applause. I might have been the oldest person in line. I texted a few people (I AM AT THE KGI TSUCK) but the lack of a QWERTY keyboard and an Internet connection made me feel like an imposter.
Because of my age, I became their leader. Tiny UCLA and USC students sat at my feet and listened, rapt, to my stories of a time when mixing Korean food with Mexican food was known as a Mistake.
But the line was long. From my arrival to the time the food arrived ($5 burritos, sliders, and quesadillas, $2 tacos) was almost two hours. My suggestion? Drink.
The Kogi truck staff is friendly and, by the time we drew closer to the truck, there was a festive atmosphere. But by now we had gone beyond curious and were now hungry, so we needed the eventual food to be exceptional.
And it was. I ordered the sliders, some tacos, and the quesadilla. The sliders were unlike anything I'd ever tasted. I can see becoming addicted to this food. The quesadillas were too concentrated, the tacos too dissipated, but the sliders were a perfect combination of spicy exotic and tastes more to my limited understanding.
So I'll be back, and I suppose Twitter has won this round.
Thoughtful perspectives on selecting your upscale grave
Large, freestanding, and often rectangular outside advertisements are known as billboards. Here in Los Angeles there are a number of them, alerting potential consumers to available goods and services.
The Forest Lawn Memorial Parks, a franchise of high-quality, well-maintained, tourist-friendly ossuaries and crematoria, advertise their trendy boneyards via billboard campaigns that speak to our gentle acceptance of the mortality of our loved ones and ourselves.
Below are several of my own attempts to hit the right note with Forest Lawn's target audience, but I didn't get the gig.
Lawry's of Beverly Hills: An Airstream Full of Meat
The Valet took my car and parked it 30 feet away. Later, his coworker would charge me $6 to get my keys back. But I know how this scam works and I'm getting too old to fight it.
It used to be that if I could see where valets were parking my car, I would find parking somewhere else and walk. Why hire someone to finish the final 30 feet of what I've already spent 15 miles doing?
But I've eased up, especially when dinners are free.
I'd be dining at Lawry's The Prime Rib on La Cienega Blvd. in Beverly Hills. It was like the 1999 pilgrimage I'd made to the A&W Restaurant in Rancho Cucamonga.
"Root beer built this place," I told my unborn offspring.
And because I was familiar with Lawry's line of salad dressing and seasoned salts, visiting the mother ship would be like finding a baby Clydesdale in your Budweiser bottle and riding her all the way back to Belgium.
Upon entering Lawry's, the visitor is greeted by uniformed staff in what appear to be Russian nurses uniforms of the 40s if Stalin was running the United States instead. Our server took us to a private room where she began to perform a service with a spinning bowl that I'd first seen when I snuck away from the tour group in Mazatlan. But this turned out to be different.
Grasping a large silver salad bowl with her left hand, our server began to spin the bowl while pouring salad dressing into its center with her right. As her right hand was stretched high above her head, the server showed great skill in getting the dressing into the bowl at all. But she could have poured the dressing in like everyone else does and not worried us so.
I assumed it was a party trick.
But the greatest conversation piece was a a trolley that looked like an Airstream trailer filled with prime rib. Our carver, Jose, was wearing some kind of medallion like something one might be given by the Wizard of Oz. From the back the meatwagon looked like a car in a carnival ride. It was the type of contraption that one wouldn't expect to be filled with meat but with whole families migrating from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl searching for a better future in California.
But instead of Joads what I got was a load of meat, a gravy crater in a mountain range of mashed potatoes, and a dollop of creamed spinach that continued to leave butter deposits in my car on the way home.
I couldn't help but think that the meal I had connected me to people I'd seen in black and white photos, the women's lips so black that you knew their lipstick must have been very red. I felt jowly and I had an urge to go to the track, guard the border, and elect McCain simultaneously.
Dessert was an excellent hot fudge sundae and a thin but potent glass of Tawny Port.
As I left Lawry's my car was already rolling toward me. I had to back up, just to be polite to a valet who'd probably feel bad that I walked farther across the parking lot than he'd driven.
But at that point I felt the need to give back a little.
Many people believe the Los Angeles River to be a V-shaped storage area filled with the homeless, shopping carts, and film crews. But on one special day each year, the L.A. River has water in it.
After several days of intermittent rain, the normally bone-dry riverbed is filled with water, having been granted a permit by the L.A. Film Commission.
This photo was taken in Atwater Village (known as Atbonedrystoragearea Village the rest of the year) with Griffith Park, The Hollywood sign, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the background.
On most days the L.A. River looks like this, with an elegant "landing strip" of water flown in in post-production.
But in 1938, prior to its banks being fortified with concrete, a flood took out a bridge at the foot of Colfax Avenue at Ventura Blvd. in Studio City.
Here is that area recently.
The highest the L.A. River has been in recent years was in 2005. This picture was taken just below the bridge pictured above.
Conspiracy theorists will doubtless say, "It's wet, it's dry, it's wet again. Don't you see the pattern?" but I, like the Tibetan Book of the Dead, think that it's a bunch of stuff that happened.
"EYEBROW $10" BECOMES COUNTRY'S FIRST OFFICIAL CIVIC ICON
GLENDALE, Calif. -- Glendale, a city of 200,000 on the eastern border of Los Angeles, today became the first American municipality to adopt a picture as a motto.
"This just says who we are better than 'Vox et lex populi' or whatever it was," said Mayor Thomas F. Gilchrist (Glendale actually had no motto before today - ED). "And there aren't too many American cities - maybe New York with the Brooklyn Bridge or Los Angeles with the Hollywood sign - that could whip out a single image and say all it needed to say about the whole town like 'Eyebrow $10' says about us."
The striking motto/logo will now adorn all civic mailings and be emblazoned on city property at a cost to taxpayers of approximately $3.2 million. It was described by artist Belle Geddes-Irving as a "thought collage."
Geddes-Irving said that the inspiration for "Eyebrow $10" came to her in a dream. She tentatively approached the City about using the image as a mural but was surprised when it was immediately adopted as the City Seal.
"It's both groundbreaking and a sign of the times," said resident Ray McBride. "It suggests social networking avatars and it's really representative of the area."
Indeed, as recent studies chart the decline of the use and knowledge of Latin across the country, everyone from schoolchildren to city employees cannot read their own civic seals.
Cultural observer Martin Barrett points out that, even when translated, ancient mottos might no longer describe the place for which they were written.
"...and in that regard, Glendale, chartered in 1921, was forward-thinking because it used no motto," he said. "But I believe 'Eyebrow $10' says 'Glendale' better than any string of words in a dead language could."
Gilchrist and Geddes-Irving unveiled the new Seal today at City Hall, after which it was paraded down Brand Blvd. by a fleet of leased Lexuses fueled entirely by Drakkar-Noir.
There are several Christmas tree lots in my neighborhood, each with varying degrees of tentage and miscellaneous services. The place where I finaly bought an eight-foot Douglas fir for a total of $52 (with tip for the college kid who sawed off the lower branches and lashed it to the roof of the Conditioned Response Vehicle) was the best, with friendly local seasonal workers.
They also sold spray-on snow, which made me a little sad. If the nation's spray-on magnates really wanted to sell me something authentic, they would create a fragrance that evoked a pocketbook full of lipstick-smeared Kleenex that would be spat on and used to angrily wipe my face in church.
Most Christmas trees sold in Southern California are trucked down the 5 freeway from Oregon and Washington, and some of the lots I tried before buying were staffed by migrant workers who I'm pretty sure lived on the temporary premises and had accompanied the trees from their source.
One place was the type of establishment you walk in and know you've made a mistake immediately. The workers had a furtive, malnourished look, like carnies, and I would often turn around to see one right behind me, several feet below.
"You want?" one said.
I had already tried to ask her - in three languages (and I realize now that it was unlikely she'd have known even the rudiments of Klingon) how they got Christmas trees to be blue and was the paint fire retardant, but she just stared at me. Like most people.
So, absent the ability to say anything tactful or charming or conciliatory, I gave up.
"No," I said, and walked away. I'm sure she didn't lose sleep over it.
The lot was windswept and there were several trees that had blown over into the dirt; no one had bothered to pick them back up.
I got back in the car. 11 months out of the year, this is a vacant lot, but it looked worse today.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the little baby Jesus weeping. He had been painted red, and was on fire. At least I got the answer to that question.
Canonized in the sixth century, Fabiola, who in life divorced her abusive husband and started a hospital for indigent women in Rome, is recognized as the matron saint of nurses. In this exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 300 representations of her trademark look have been collected from flea markets and garage sales by Mexico City architect and artist Francis Alys.
It is one of those exhibits that is about the exhibit and not the art. The program notes are quick to point out that the pictures' "lowly status is incontestable."
But the renderings of Saint Fabiola - draped in red, facing left - are all over the map. Paint, oil, wood, even beans are used to create her likeness, which itself came from a lost 19th century painting by Jean-Jacques Henner, no relation to Marilu or to Doug Henning.
Because my artistic forte is to add .66 percent to existing collections, a discipline I call sexasectumism, I have placed two more representations of Fabiola in the collection, one made from bone and skin and the other from common McDonaldland dairy substitutes. I wonder if anyone will notice. I wonder when the grant money will come in.
Though born in the fourth century and by no means an A-List saint like Francis or Augustine, Fabiola proves through these loving outsider tributes that she is no Holla Back Girl.
I don't know who they voted for, but a group of needlessly belligerent homeless people I met the other night reminded me that hope is once again stirring in America.
"The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" is one of Barack Obama's books. I feel confident that I don't need to read any more than the title to get the gist.
Does every president and presidential candidate write a book? Yes.
I spent 30 minutes on Amazon.com typing in the names of candidates from Mitt Romney to Ernest Hollings. Every major presidential candidate from as far back as I can personally remember has written a book (including George W. Bush and Dan Quayle - 744 copies new and used from .01), and I have a feeling that most of them are only used for reference material by reporters and the opposing campaign looking for spelling errors.
I have collected these books in an Amazon wish list only for convenience. Do not buy them for me.
Anyway, "The Audacity of Hope" is itself a hopeful thing. Obama has hope that people will know, or at least look up, the word "audacity." A candidate has not put that much trust in an electorate in a long time. And I see things changing already.
1. It was dark and I was walking from my office on the other side of Wilshire Blvd. toward the venerable bar The Prince. As I approached a a group of three vagrants, two male and one female pushing a shopping cart, they began muttering, and I had a feeling it was about me.
"Kill you," the first man said.
"I got a gun," the other man said.
"Hi," I said.
As I passed these two men (without incident, and without speeding up or slowing down) and approached the woman, I could smell her despite my long history of mouth breathing (usually on phones).
She did not say anything but one of the other men said, "Go get your own woman, motherfucker, that one's mine."
"OK," I said, filled with good feelings.
The Audacity of Hope: In this new America, you have hope that I want to mate with, and perhaps marry, your foul-smelling, cart-pushing, crack-addicted life partner.
2. Last week Newsweek announced that it would publish behind-the-scenes accounts of the Obama and McCain campaigns. Newsweek reporters agreed to not publish any of this material until after the election was over, and have now begun releasing tidbits, such as Obama's opinion of his debate performance and several Sarah Palin anecdotes dealing with her lack of preparedness for the vice presidency.
When it was reported that Palin thought that Africa was a country and that South Africa was the southern region of that country, and when I mentioned this at my office, a co-worker accused me of liberal hysteria.
"But what about all the stupid things Dan Quayle said, or that George Bush said," I said. "Things that pointed to a dangerously incomplete education - ?"
"You selected those things," he said, "because you didn't like those people anyway. I'm sure all the candidates you liked said stupid things, but you gave them slack because they might have been misquoted or they had an off day."
Not true. I'm still holding a grudge against Joe Biden for plagiariazing a Neil Kinnock speech in, I think, 1987.
"Just like every conservative wants to believe that Obama is an Arab and a Muslim, you want to think that Sarah Palin is retarded," he said. "If she doesn't know that Africa is a continent, she's retarded."
The Audacity of Hope: In this new America, people want to believe the best of each other, even hoping that campaigns won't run retarded people to make other retarded people feel better.
3. To prove that one doesn't have to be retarded to not know that Africa is a continent, I called someone I lived with for 17 years.
"[name withheld]," I said, "Who did you vote for this week?"
"I didn't vote for Obama because he's into the abortions," the person said. "And I didn't vote for McCain because he's too old. [name withheld 2] told me to vote for the Libertarian. I forget his name."
"His name is Bob Barr," I said. "And the Libertarian party says the government shouldn't have the right to interfere in that matter. It's in their platform. I would have voted Libertarian, too, if I thought they had a chance."
"You mean the Libertarians say yes to abortions?" [name withheld] said.
"They don't say no, which is slightly to the left of where Obama is," I said. "So you didn't try to get any information on the Libertarians, you just asked [name withheld 2] and believed what (he) said?"
"[name withheld 2] is really up on things," [name withheld] said.
"By the way," I said. "Africa: continent, country, or city?"
"It's a country, Marty. You should have studied that in school."
Then [name withheld] asked me to explain the Electoral College, which I did, saying that it was retarded.
The Audacity of Hope: In the new America, you will vote for someone just because someone else told you to, even if you don't know the candidate's name, because you hope the other person knows what he's talking about.
Here is one of the many wildfires killing our fish and ducks, redux. I can't help thinking that whatever goes on in the Harmony Motel has something to do with it.
I don't know if I am getting away with something or if what I am doing is really a victimless crime:
Dear Starbucks Customer Relations,
Please tell me what governs my use of Starbucks couches and chairs in its common areas. If I want to sit and read a book for two hours, must I 1.) have purchased in that visit a Starbucks product that is visible 2.) have proof that at one time I purchased a Starbucks product or 3.) none of these? May I read a book at your facility if I am drinking from a non-Starbucks vessel?
Yours, Martin Barrett (dec.)
You don't care about my life and you don't deserve to know about it, but suffice to say for reasons of delivering an offspring to school and not wanting to drive to my office 15.1 miles away and then back three hours later to pick aforementioned offspring up, I once holed up in a public library with an excellent Internet connection and a thermos of coffee to do some work on school days.
But no longer.
Budget cuts have forced the library to shorten its hours and have driven me, along with my car, which I also drive, to a Starbuck's in a mini-mall. For the past couple of weeks I have brought my truckstop thermos of imported Dunkin' Donuts coffee to this Starbucks and have sat and worked for several hours in its shaded patio (this is California) filled with comfortable frat house furniture.
I keep expecting a barista to approach and ask to sniff my thermos. The conversation would go like this.
BARISTA
Sir, I -
ME
What the hell do you want?
BARISTA
I just -
ME
You just what? Some people have to work. Are you working now?
BARISTA
Yes, actually, I wanted to check if -
ME
You're saying you're working right now? Do I look like a bowl of milk that needs air blown through me?
BARISTA
What? I -
ME
Do I look like a goddamn bowl of milk that needs air blown through me?
BARISTA
I -
ME
Say it!
BARISTA
I -
ME
Say it or so help me I'll choke you with these Diana Krall and Jack Johnson CDs. Jack Johnson I can understand, but Diana Krall - what was she thinking?
BARISTA
I WANT TO SNIFF YOUR THERMOS.
ME
You mean Edward James Thermos, the name I've given my thermos?
BARISTA
Yes
ME
For what reason do you want to sniff my thermos?
BARISTA
There's a mandate from Seattle that I smell-check any vessels I can't get a visual confirmation on
ME
And you like this part of your job?
BARISTA
Well Yes. Yes, I love it.
ME
Well, for every time you've subjected me to post-"Blue" Joni Mitchell, I'm going to deny you the privilege of sniffing my thermos. It's Dunkin' Donuts coffee.
BARISTA
Can I still sniff it?
Not enough that I used their comfy furniture I also, after downing my thermos, needed to use their bathroom. On the wall was a poster that read: "Behind every cup of coffee is a barista and a good story."
At this point I remembered the words of my friend Michelle, a former Starbuck's manager, who said that the whole transaction of ordering a coffee through receiving it had to take less than three minutes and, since the majority of those three minutes is spent after one has paid for the coffee and the line has moved on, there really is no time for the story.
So is the story allegedly possessed by each barista one that the customer has to take on faith, because there is no way he/she has time to bend my ear with personal anecdotes and even if he/she could could not guarantee that the story is good by my exacting standards, as an internationally recognized poet, filmmaker, commentator, thespian, playwright, musician, and aphakic lens wearer?
What I'm saying is that, if challenged, I will say that I'll believe the 17-year-old thermos-sniffing barista has a good story if she will believe my thermos has Starbucks coffee in it.
Refurbished Griffith Observatory gives Space a chance, doesn't spurn Pluto
L.A.'s Griffith Observatory, which opened to the public in 1935 and which commands an excellent view of the Hollywood Hills and the city and the Pacific Ocean beyond, has not taken the opportunity afforded it by its recent restoration to ditch Pluto, which was demoted from planet status in 2006.
Instead, the solar orbits of the (formerly) nine known planets are still represented at a roughly 1:20,000,000 mile scale on the walkway perpendicular to the front entrance. The Sun is located close to the front steps and the orbits of Mercury, Mars, and Earth quickly follow within the next few feet.
As visitors walk away from the Observatory toward an obelisk dedicated to the likes of Copernicus, Newton, (Heisman Trophy winner) Herschel, and Galileo, they might be forgiven for momentarily thinking that Pluto was axed because f its new minor planet status.
But No!
Just before arriving at the parking lot, a cuple of hundred feet from the engraving of the Sun, Pluto's orbit is still prominently marked as that of the last planet in our solar system.
A friend of mine from Boston, Julie Perkins, performed a show in L.A. with another friend, Jan Davidson, last night. I haven't seen either of them in eight years or more, and paying five bucks for a sketch show in a theatre with 30 other people was very familiar. Julie is thinking of moving here, and I suggested that she get used to switching her sensibilities from performing for fans to performing for peers.
"Nobody asks, 'So how do you like living here?' when you live in Boston," I said. "There's something built into living here that implies a challenge."
After the show (which was great), there was a get-together at the Beverly Hills Hotel ($18 parking), after which I drove straight down Wilshire Blvd. from Beverly Hills to my office downtown (I had to work); at 3 a.m. an eight minute coast. I had driving songs playing and I took a picture at every red light.
Driving in L.A. with no traffic makes it all worthwhile. I had time to listen to two songs. One was Bruce Springsteen's "The Ghost of Tom Joad."
Here is Johnny's Restaurant on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax. You can't eat here but you can film here, and Biggie got shot across the street (I reenact the shooting with my improv troupe. A 14-year-old is building our MySpace page).
Below is the office of one of my freelance clients. They tend to pay later every month, yet they leave their lights on all night.
Next up was Randy Newman's "I Love L.A.," a great song for a good mood.
Western Blvd. with the Gaylord Hotel in the distance. My office is around the corner.
In the past two weeks I have twice been ticketed for allowing my car to overstay its welcome on city streets. The fines total $80. But both times I was the victim of Premature Ticketing Syndrome (PTS) an Axis II malady under consideration for the next release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
I was ticketed by emissaries of the Los Angeles and Glendale police departments long before my time ran out and, according to California law, the burden of proof is on me to show that I was ticketed unfairly.
Here are the shocking details:
July 21-downtown Los Angeles. I park in a free two-hour space at 12:30 p.m. and go to my office. I return at 2:15 - 15 minutes before my time is up - to find a ticket. The ticket was written at 1:05.
I file an appeal with the Parking Violations Bureau of the City of Los Angeles which, despite its name, is actually an independent company. I enclose a letter with dates and times. Alas, I had not thought to take a photo of my car, any signage, my watch showing the time, and the address of the building I parked in front of at 12:30 when I parked there.
The Parking Violations Bureau informs me three days later that "the review has determined that the citation is considered valid" and I can request an in-person hearing if I pay the $40 ticket beforehand. In that I mailed the appeal on July 22 and that the reply was dated the day the Bureau received the letter, I have a feeling there wasn't much of a review...
So California assumes the driver is guilty and requires him to prove his innocence. Taken a step further, it requires the vehicle owner to be prepared to document and defend his parking time and be prepared to show proof lest there be a meter maid with PTS lurking about.
I don't believe meter maids/men, telemarketers, and tax collectors should be tarred and feathered. People need jobs. So I don't not like them just for their choice of job; I've certainly taken jobs I don't like.
I just require that they don't like their jobs. I can't get behind someone who says, "I really dig being a meter maid; I work outside, it's a steady gig with the city, they're cool with my PTS..."
Lest you think that Los Angeles (which, according to professional fee fighter Paul Bezaire, makes in excess of $100 million a year in parking violation fees) is alone in this matter, consider this:
August 7-Glendale, CA: Still saddened after being informed that my appeal was rejected by L.A., I park in a 30-minute spot in front of a United States Post Office. It is 8:55 a.m. and I spend the next 20 minutes in the P.O. I return to find a ticket, but this time I take pictures showing my watch, the designation on the curb, and my car. I print the pictures, write a letter, affix a stamp, mail my letter, and hope for the best.
In rejecting my appeal, the other independent parking extortionist bureau might claim that I set my watch to 9:15, but I will maintain faith in the system, like I did with God, until it utterly leaves me.
In creating a system in which tickets can be issued without the burden of proof (unlike, say, traffic light-mounted cameras), that makes it hard for citizens to appeal, and that intrinsically believes meter maids over motorists, the only defense I can offer against such an unfavorable situation is built into the structure: should our cities just believe people who want to be meter maids?
NOTE: Since these were the only times I have been ticketed unfairly in a lifetime of creative parking, I am wondering if cities are beginning to depend on the difficulty of appeals in order to keep revenue, in the same way businesses will depend on the extra $2.23 on your Christmas gift card to go unredeemed, because Why Bother?
I'd be interested in hearing from people who have also been victims of PTS.
Images of devastation and hope in the California earthquake
The worst thing I experienced during today's 5.8 earthquake in Southern California was the fact that I was filling my car with gas that cost $4.35 a gallon when it happened and I didn't feel it. Two blocks away, my family jumped under the dining room table.
Upon my arrival at my downtown office, however, I was greeted with a scene of devastation the likes of which I haven't seen since the UPS guy opened the door into the mailman two weeks ago (young children might need to leave the room):
Jack Kerouac's "Book of Haikus" fell off the television.
A canister of pens fell from a table.
That said, my collection of "Homie" figurines remained upright: representing, straightening their hair, and ironing their t-shirts.
Whatever happens to southern California in God's wrath, rest assured the homies will always be here.
So what if I only watch sports during playoffs? It's better than when I was younger, when the type of people who played sports were the type of people I avoided, along with people who drank. Now my life has changed, and I actively distrust people who don't drink.
Here is Harrison after the Celtics' 131 to 92 rout of the Lakers. The kid's exhausted.
I don't know what to do with my free time now that the Finals and Battlestar Galactica are over. I think I'll have to replace that reading lamp I broke with a golf club when I was drunk.
Because we are the same height, people often mistake me for Kobe Bryant. I have decided that I will root for the Lakers when they are in town and for the Celtics when they are at the Garden; this is the only way to keep from going nuts, and this means that the Celtics will win it in Boston.
I found the following poem scrawled on the subway wall:
I managed a frown when Big Brown let me down Coming in very last place That Seattle Slew was the last of the few To've won every Triple Crown race
When Barbaro died I felt nothing inside I erected no shrine to Eight Belles I'm open for bets that they're doing their next Mile and a quarter in Hell
And I have no regrets that, in three brutal sets Federer got stomped in the clay We hoi polloi find it hard to enjoy Sports with a dress code to play
But in the case of Celtics v. Lakers My loyalties go either way Would Big Brown prefer that the banner hang down Over rapists or over parquet?
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has determined that the 51-mile Los Angeles River is mostly unnavigable, leading to fears that developers will use this as an excuse to flout environmental restrictions.
But anyone who has seen Grease, Terminator 2, and The Transformers knows that the L.A. River is an excellent shortcut past jammed city streets, whether for racing, apprehending Bumblebee, or tracking down a teenaged John Connor prior to his valor in The Robot Wars.
Regulators and conservationists...believe the ripple effect of the decision will make is easier to develop large areas of the Santa Susana, Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains because landowners will not be required to obtain certain federal permits. Some federal and state officials fear that the decision also may undermine rules against discharging wastewater and storm water into the river's tributaries.
Corps regional supervisor Col. Thomas H. Magness IV told the L.A. Times that, just because The Terminator was able to drive an 18-wheeler down a half-mile stretch of the concrete-surfaced waterway, doesn't mean time-traveling cyborg warriors could battle throughout the 834-sq. mile watershed.
"This decision does not in any way lessen the protections on the L.A. River itself," he said.
Why go to MacArthur Park on Memorial Day? To get a new social security number and heroin, of course! No, but seriously, I only go to Echo Park for methadone and lotuses.
I'd hate to see where the Dodger faithful would be if it wasn't going their way.
In the fourth inning the screens show you what you would have seen if you'd arrived on time, and in the seventh inning, after everyone has more or less left, the screens say "The L.A. Dodgers (and the Cincinnati Reds) thank you for your support." But you can feel the sarcasm.
For years I have cringed upon hearing the word "grasses." I feel that grass, like sheep and moose, should be both plural and singular. I believe it has earned that right.
This grass lives in Malibu Lake, near some gooses.
Yesterday I needed to get to the Corman Federal Building in Van Nuys, the San Fernando Valley counterpart to the federal centers in Los Angeles proper. I decided to take public transportation because gas prices make it almost convenient.
I bought an MTA day pass for five bucks, which would cover the bus to the subway station, the subway to the articulated busway, and the articulated bus to Van Nuys, and back. I loaded my bike to the front of the bus, locked my bike at the train station, and arrived in Van Nuys unfettered 90 minutes from when I left home.
In my five years attempting to squeeze value and enjoyment out of riding subways in L.A. (which includes the articulated bus, or Orange Line, for purposes of fares), I have had my ticket checked maybe three times.
When one descends into the subway in L.A. one buys a ticket, which must be shown to any MTA employee on demand. There are no turnstiles or gates, but if a rider is caught without a ticket he may be fined $250.
That said, the honor system can't be working too well, as the MTA announced it will be adding high-tech turnstiles soon, and the occasional MTA officer assigned to ticket detail must feel abashed doing a job that might better be assigned to a basket (I feel the same way about toll booth operators).
Anyway, the complex in which the Corman Federal Building stands also houses the Van Nuys Division of Los Angeles Superior Court as well as the offices of probation officers and a radiating web of bail bond companies. So I was riding on the Orange Line with a bunch of ex-cons going to see their parole officers and families going to see their relatives on trial.
The bus was met at Van Nuys Station by four uniformed police who checked everyone's ticket (I just flashed mine, but there was no way for the officer to really see it. He didn't follow me) and apprehended at least five people and let one family go with a warning.
That the cops were out in force at the Courthouse but where one might not be seen for months elsewhere on the route seemed unbalanced, but I guess if there's a quota to fill of scofflaws who will be stuck with $250 fines because they can't afford five bucks, it's a smarter move to go where the poor people are.
Filled with rightewous indignation at the end of the day and carrying no currency but my day pass in my pocket, I made the long journey back to Hollywood where my bike was, and pulled a book from my pocket, waiting for the bus that would take me home.
As you know, I am a vagrant magnet. In 2009 I will have my own entry indicating this in the Periodic Table of the Elements. In a crowd of people I will be the person a vagrant asks for money, and they never believe me when I say I don't have any change.
As I was reading my book in the group of four people, I heard a strange honking coming toward me and knew, without looking up, that it was the voice of someone coming to ask me for money. I figured the guy deserved at least the courtesy of my looking up, plus I wanted to see the type of person who honked, so I looked up.
"Honk honk honk," said a guy holding a ragged piece of paper reading I AM A DEAF MUTE.
He was signing something to me, so I made the American Sign Language signs for NO and MONEY. He then pointed to ".50" on the other side of his paper, and I signed NO MONEY again.
Then he started signing fast and furious. I wasn't even sure it was real ASL. He was pointing up, as if to God, and at that point I said the word "No." He kept honking at me and gesturing, the gist of which was, "You have to give me something." Finally I signed STOP and said, "Go away." I wish I knew the ASL for GOD DOESN'T EXIST.
(Having watched Evan Almighty recently, I am more sure than ever.)
A friend of mine used to manage a Starbucks and I recounted something that recently happened to me at a Starbucks near the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, where the Oscars are awarded.
We had the following e-mail conversation:
Dear Michelle,
I know this part of your life is behind you, but I am curious about the Starbucks policy on vagrants.
The other day I was at a Starbucks at the corner of Highland and Franklin, just north of Hollywood/Highland, and a homeless guy came in and started terrorizing the place.
I was in a suit and tie and had my computer bag and a camera, and he saw me before I saw him, so there was no time to put on my Fuck You face, which I certainly would have, because he was drunk.
I admit that my willingness to give people money goes way down when they're drunk, unless they're hookers.
So he comes to my table and the first I saw of him was him kneeling down next to me.
"Bro I beg you bro I just need a cup of coffee bro you're a handsome guy bro - ..."
And I just didn't like him, so I said, "I'm not giving you any money."
He said, "I didn't ask you for money Bro I said I wanted a cup of coffee."
I hadn't though of this tactic before. What I should have said, of course, was Get Away from Me, because that's what I meant. So instead I said, "You can have some of my coffee."
He goes and gets a cup from somewhere, comes back, and pours like a third of my coffee cup into his before I look up again and said, "I said you can have SOME of mine."
Then he heads off to bother other patrons, then he goes outside to harass people coming in, then he leaves. Meanwhile, I'm staring at his coffee mug, thinking, "Whose coffee is this now?"
Then he comes back and starts telling this girl to my right that I'm rich and I wouldn't give him any money.
So very nicely I turn and say, "Shut the fuck up, you fucking piece of shit, and drink the fucking coffee I gave you."
Then he gets up and says (and I don't know what this means), "You're all Shit Ass," and he leaves.
From beginning to end, this journey took about 40 minutes, during which time the employees knew the guy was there and, I got the impression, were familiar with him already.
I am very conflicted about whom I give money, and decide on a case by case basis, and as I said am prejudiced against people who appear under the influence, but I'm wondering what the Starbucks policy is about people who create disruptions, because that guy had the run of the place.
She wrote me back immediately:
ok - so Starbucks policy. simple answer? there isn't one. they don't have any official policy on how to handle vagrants because in Starbucks Corporate La La Land vagrants don't exist. they have this pristine image of creating a neighborhood environment wherever they plink down a store and that is really what they want you to build: a neighborhood feeling where all are welcome. you know, you walk into a store and your friendly barista Joe starts making your favorite beverage, asking you how the kids are and what you thought of the game last night - the whole transaction taking place in under 3 minutes, the alloted amount of time that you are given to service a customer from start to finish. ideally - it is a great vision. realistically - it is total bullshit.
in my experience working for starbucks - especially starbucks in a heavily populated area like LA - you deal with things that the every day corporate suit couldn't even imagine. and because of that, and the pressure they put on you to MAKE IT WORK, you start creating your own policies regarding vagrants, thieves, drunks and assholes. and MY policy in MY stores was ZERO TOLERANCE. period. i became a cunt. seriously. i was the "heavy" that - whenever someone came in and behaved like the situation you described - would immediately jump over the counter while yelling to my assistant to call the cops, and i would tell them to get out. get out NOW. and if they didn't i would very politely start pushing them out the door. one time, i had a vagrant who was such a nuissance and insisted on getting in my customers face that several of us pushed him out the door and locked it until the police arrived and he went away. i HATED the whole scene - and by the end of my Starbucks career, after bullying and pushing around countless vagrants and drunks; after being yelled at, pushed, shoved, threatened, had stuff thrown at me and even being SPIT on, i had had enough. getting no support to behave this way took its toll on me and i just became a miserable person. and essentially that was why i left. there was nothing 'happy' about my job at all and i just wanted OUT.
it would be my recommmendation to you to let corporate headquarters know of the experience you had in that location. i do know the store you are talking about - and it is plagued with homeless in that area - but someone should have done SOMETHING. my guess is that the partners in that store were either pussies or just didn't care. and either choice is unacceptable, imho. if you call or write Starbucks and let them know, at the very least you will get a free beverage or two out of it. at the most someone will get a talking to - and they really should get a talking to for not having done ANYTHING.
i am so damn glad to be out of that world. it just was a horrible experience to have to deal with that wild card factor on a daily basis. and no matter how many people i told in the upper eschalon, there really was nothing to be done. we actually had a meeting with the SM police dept once to discuss how to handle vagrants and it was determined that we were not allowed to do anything like ask them to leave or call the cops because "they had rights too" and we were infringing upon them by treating them any differently than any other customer. that even though they might be shitting all over our restroom floors or screaming at another customer that they are all 'shit ass' it was wrong to treat them in a manner that could be deemed PREJUDICE. when i heard that, i thought Fuck you all - i'm gonna do what i want and sue the company for hiring me if you don't like it. i mean, honestly: until we actually handle the homeless situation at large, it will continue to interupt the lives of those of us who are working for a living. but my personal credo? NEVER give money. never ever ever. it's like feeding a stray cat - they will keep returning because they know that there are suckers like you who will take care of them, enabling them to live another day on the streets and drink themselves to oblivion.
Finally, a little while ago I was approached by a vagrant near my office on Wilshire Blvd.
"Mumble mumble mumble," he said.
"I'm sorry?" I said, leaning my head down.
"Spare some change," he declared.
"I don't have any change on me," I said. I rarely have actual cash on me unless it's a bunch of quarters for the bus I'm waiting for.
"Oh, so you're sorry?" he said, turning away from me.
"I said 'I'm sorry' because I didn't hear you," I said.
"Oh well," he said, "I'm sorry."
There is no through line here other than, I think, that the police have no reservations about the prejudices we share.
...but some people don't deserve an open bar by Marty Barrett
Google's Santa Monica office hired the art deco El Rey Theatre on L.A.'s Wilshire Blvd. for an informative but decidedly self-congratulatory event celebrating its You Tube user-generated video platform. Things were going just fine - and there was no reason for them not to be - when the critics showed up.
"Meet the You Tube Filmmakers," a catered networking affair culminating with a panel discussion with six directors, focused on You Tube's place as a marketing tool for professionals, even as their content sits a few clicks away from, in an oft-cited example, "Babies farting."
Located on the Miracle Mile, the 1936 El Rey was, like many preserved theatres of that era, a first-run movie house with chandeliers, brocade, and sweeping staircases. Now a trendy bar and live-music venue, the El Rey was an excellent location for this feeling-out session, in which guests opined on the constantly-refreshed dramas of old forms in new media, and how or if the old rules still applied.
Is audience-building a film on You Tube comparable to traditional methods?
"God, Inc."/director: Francis Stokes
Francis Stokes: I wanted an audience. At festivals there were 30 or 40 people in the room.
"my name is lisa"/director: Ben Shelton
"We_Are_The_Strange"/ director M Dot Strange
M Dot Strange: Half the people walked out and wanted their money back.
"In Loving Memory (Jesus Christ)"/director: Javier Prato
Is it a good thing that anyone can be a filmmaker?
Javier Prato: Yes.
Stokes: But the audience must be the determinant.
Each panelist's You Tube output has received hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views. Strange's "We_Are_The_Strange" has been translated into 17 languages - by You Tube fans. And Strange looks at You Tube as a direct road to his fans, where his work speaks for itself.
"There is no System trying to make you look great," he said.
The filmmakers ran a gamut of bookish to outlandish to South American. There were no women. Each embraced You Tube, and viral distribution systems in general, with varying degrees of hope.
Strange, dressed like Eminem, was the most Riot Grrl of the crowd.
"I am trying to raise the bar," he said. "They (Hollywood) are are getting richer and fatter. And they're getting lazy."
The filmmakers glanced on whether or not creating content (low res, free, generally shorter length) for distribution on You Tube altered the nature of the content, or affected the choices made in creating it, but "Four Eyed Monsters" director Arin Crumley said his project, no less narcissistic and touching for his time than a heyday Woody Allen's work was for his, worked well on the viral screen.
"Four Eyed Monsters"/director: Arin Crumley
Arin Crumley: From a creative perspective it makes most sense to make your stuff and send it to the web, and make it decentralized.
But do You Tube movies generate money? Crumley, who had to take the complete film down from You Tube when he got a deal with the Independent Film Channel, says Yes. But other directors seemed to say the exposure was enough.
Prato, whose "Jesus Christ" short was the only panelist's movie to arrive in the inboxes of everyone I know, espoused a consciousness-raising philosophy that seemed at odds with Christian dogma (as well as horticulture).
"It is a pyramid backwards," he said. "You plant a seed online and it grows into a worldwide sea of information."
But Stokes, who was the first to bring up monetization about 30 minutes into the panel, said he built a Google map of all the zip codes of "lisa"'s subscribers and prevailed on local movie theatres in those zip codes to screen the movie.
The panel was opened up to questions, and this is when it seemed that a few invited guests, all beneficiaries of an open bar and delicious snacks, inexplicably chose to pounce on Google.
The generation that recognizes You Tube's innovation and potential, but has doubts about its usefulness as a "film" platform, is of a different mindset from the generation that has grown up with You Tube and expects the world from a free service.
"Can you identify the commenters?" one angry young man said. "I get a thousand comments on one of my pieces (he said 'pieces') and real criticism is buried under 800 useless, useless comments. Can we ID them so we can bar them?"
A woman who identified herself as an actress seemed unclear on the purpose of the discussion.
"I'm not a techie," she said, wondering at the use of words like "upload" and "decentralize" by the filmmakers. "I am a human being."
"How do I get an audience?" another asked.
"Just say something interesting," Strange replied. He might have added a silent "Duh."
Claim Jumper is one of those restaurants to which people say you should go with an empty stomach and big appetite.
"Go with an empty stomach and big appetite!" they say.
Because the Northridge Claim Jumper is perched at the epicenter of the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, I chose to go there recently when my stomach was empty, my appetite was big, and my Richter scale needed recalibrating.
"I will have the crab cakes and the Whiskey Chicken," I told the waitress. If I could have had Jagermeister Chicken or just Jagermeister, I would have.
"Do you think you can eat all that?" she asked.
"I'll take a doggie bag if I can't," I said. I'm not proud.
It wasn't until recently that I became aware that taking a doggie bag is viewed as uncool. Not that I thought it was cool, particularly, but that someone who chooses not to throw food away would be thought of as uncool made me think I wasn't subscribing to the right magazines.
It was at a sushi restaurant in Canoga Park and I'd eaten most everything on my plate. But now I felt bloated and mean.
"Can I get a To Go bag?" I asked.
"No," I was told, "you have to eat that here."
"But I paid for it (actually I hadn't). Are you saying you're going to throw it away?"
"If you don't eat it."
"At least tell me that you'll eat it or you'll take it home," I said. "Because it's stupid to just leave this food here and not be able to take it from the building."
"We don't do doggie bags," I was told.
"Whoa," I said. That smarts.
When I worked at Pizza Hut as a teen, we would eat our mistakes. I will not say I ever made a deliberate mistake so that I could eat a pizza with the wrong topping on it, because I have evidence that my former manager reads this site. All I'm saying is that the food was not wasted.
At the sushi restaurant, I sat back down and finished my meal in spite.
People talk about animal fear. When I eat a steak, I enjoy trying to detect fear.
"Not enough fear on this one," I will say at a steakhouse. "Send it back and scare the shit out of it."
But I wonder if one's own spite changes the taste of food?
Back at the Claim Jumper, my crab cakes and Whiskey Chicken had arrived. I had a couple of margaritas and a glass of water. As I ate I was aware that I would easily finish this meal and still be hungry.
"You're really tearing through that," the waitress said. "You must have been hungry."
Maybe the experience at the sushi place a mile away had released a chemical into my hypothalamus that turned off my awareness of my own satiation in restaurants. In any case, my waitress was beginning to make me feel like I was a miracle of science, because I finished my meal and she said, "You got through it!"
I was sad that I wasn't going to be able to eat this at work.
There are food riots going on in the Southern Hemisphere. Today I found this excellent pictorial article detailing the weekly meals and food expenditures for several households around the world. I was envious of this North Carolina family's ability (left) to get pizza delivered twice a week. They must be tycoons.
Each year I go to the Hollywood Bowl's sunrise Easter service. I pack some coffee in a thermos, drive through the teller window of the Burbank Krispy Kreme, and find much better Bowl parking than I would for, say, Elvis Costello and The Police.
This year's theme, we were told, was "Peace on Earth." I have a feeling that that is always the theme and no one could put aside his precious placidity long enough to suggest another one, like "Jesus in Space." Peace on Earth. That's like calling a Fourth of July parade "Celebrating America."
Still, the event is a Hollywood tradition with local choirs, a "living cross" of children arranged in a cross pattern who dramatically doff their black robes to reveal white ones, and the release of dozens of white birds when the choir sings "Paradise City" "Let There Be Peace on Earth."
I can imagine the effect was jaw-dropping in 1921, but it's still a lot better today than bottle service.
Well, the Living Cross was a little smaller this year, Shirley Jones was not on hand to read "The Master Is Coming," and an unprecedented cello-acompanied dance performance seemed strange (in that the dancers ended up folded together on the floor), but a grand time was had by all, as always.
It left me wondering, though. When ceremonial birds are released, where do they go? Are they ceremonially captured and eaten, too? Is that what Shirley Jones was doing this year?
I thought I was pretty decisive in my political stance, but when I arrived at my polling place and found this crying Indian, I knew that my resolve about California Indian Gaming propositions 94-97 would be tested.
"I'm not sure if I agree with you, Crying Indian," I said.
"No heap deal," he said. "After this gig, I'm Spiderman at the Chinese Theatre."
Once inside, a representative of the old ladies' cabal that rigs all elections looked me over and said (I'm not kidding), "You are Democrat, Yes?"
Did I stand in the middle of the Mighty 2 freeway to take this picture? Yes I did. Was I hit by a car? Yes I was. Did the car bounce off me like birdseed, leaving me unmarked? Undoubtedly. Were all the other cars stopped because there was some kind of virus? Yeah, probably. Also, there's some ghosts.
Recently I went out of a Saturday evening in Hollywood and returned to find my car plastered with show fliers. I wondered: Are people driving Honda products with Red Sox fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror the target demographic for Marilyn Manson's promotions organization?
Yes.
Marilyn Manson is reaching out to Honda drivers in particular. Next he will focus on RV parks, children's burn units, and the AARP. I take some comfort in knowing that Manson is growing older with me and that we are taking this journey together.
Encounters, the restaurant at LAX that recently dislodged a half-ton chunk of stucco near some diners, is being renovated. I like it better this way, though; there seems to be so many more ways to get in and out of the building, and today's sophisticated menus are all about variety.
I was touring this high-end (for me, anyway) apartment complex near a golf course and had the following keyword-laden conversation with the rental agent. I mentioned I lived in Glendale.
"I grew up here and Glendale used to be a lot different," she said.
"Oh yeah?"
"A certain population moved in. Really inconsiderate drivers," she said, not mentioning any names. "They wear a lot of cologne."
She said "cologne" and "drivers" with such vehemence that I'm sure a passing Amnesty International observer would have deemed the terms hate speech on the spot.
I'm not going to move there, but not because of that exchange. It's just that, before I leave Los Angeles, I want to live somewhere without beige carpeting.
She asked me what I did for a living and I told her I was the drummer for System of a Down.
Once I directed a pub crawl version of Sean O'Casey's "The Plough And the Stars" in Boston. Plays performed in bars are an Irish tradition, and the scene from O'Casey's play about the 1916 Easter Rising was even more appropriate because it took place in a bar while the uprising commenced outside.
Anyway, I cast an elderly gentleman for the role of Peter, an ineffectual loudmouth and "lemon-whiskered oul' swine". He was about 70. I don't know why he wanted to schlep all around the city doing plays in bars for not much money, but it might have had something to do with the fact that there were four or five 22-year-old women in the cast playing spirited agitators, bar wenches, and prostitutes. He must have thought, "Good odds."
One night as reheasal was breaking up he tried to get the young ladies to go home with him. They politely declined, and he said:
"I have alcohol."
...and they politely declined again. I filed the exchange away. Did he think that alcohol would tip the scales?
The other night I had my annual Los Angeles birthday dinner at the Irish bar Tom Bergin's in Los Angeles. One by one, my friends came bearing gifts of alcohol, particularly Jagermeister. I got three bottles of Jager, which is my biggest birthday haul of the substance to date.
"I thought, 'I could be original or I could get you something you'd use'," one friend said. Indeed, we killed two of the bottles right there at the table as the long-suffering waitstaff rejoiced that it would be a year before they saw me again. (We tipped the living shit out of them.)
I also had Jagermeister at my 20th birthday on Martha's Vineyard. A lot of it. I threw up most of it. But I was poorer then and I was drinking it without any food. The other night we were able to drink it with dinner, and I didn't have a hangover the next day. In this world the poor are even denied vices.
Here is my friend Gabriela with the evening's take, which included a bottle of wine in a Chinese suit. I consider myself lucky because I think my friends and family would have shown up even if there had been no alcohol.
(I could be wrong about this - I'm no longer a 22-year-old woman.)
The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival
The American Cinematheque at Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre is a good place to see a movie. The audiences are of varied ages, and not so relentlessly young and hipsterish that I think I'm living in the land of Logan's Run.
The lady who sold me popcorn was older and sullen, rather than young and sullen, and looked a little like Janice from The Muppets. I felt like I was in Cambridge.
Recently I saw a double feature of documentaries presented by director Murray Lerner: The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, and Festival, which still spent a lot of time with Dylan but which also focused on Odetta, Johnny Cash, and dozens of other acts from the festivals of 1963-'65.
I enjoyed the first movie, released this year, because I hadn't seen a lot of the footage before. While the climax was obviously Dylan's "going electric" with "Maggie's Farm" in 1965, footage of the younger Dylan with Joan Baez tuning his guitar for him (no wonder they broke up), Dylan actually smiling, and Dylan interacting - albeit minimally - with the audience were fun to see.
The myth is that Dylan surprised the crowd with electrification in '65, and that he was booed. While we can hear boos from the audience, and while his acoustic encore is greeted with almost palpable relief, there were no cries of "Judas!" like he got when he took the act to England.
Director Lerner spoke between the movies.
"Remember, I was there," he said in response to the mythology that has been generated by Dylan's final performance at Newport, "and people swear to me that it was the audience booing or the journalists booing or people behind the stage booing. There were selected people booing, and it came mostly from the journalists."
Festival, released in 1967, was by comparison a much better movie. It was edited with audience and band interviews, and was more reminiscent of the Maysles Brothers' later Woodstock film than the raw presentation of chronological Dylan footage that made up Other Side of the Mirror.
My favorite parts of Festival were Odetta's performances. She brought the house down. And Peter, Paul, and Mary (especially Mary Travers) put on a great show, while Peter Yarrow seemed a little toolish and Joan Baez seemed in love with her voice to the detriment of the music. When I am an old man, I want to dress like Son House and Mississippi John Hurt, on alternate days.
Festival also featured cloggers, a jug band, and the Georgia Island Sea Singers. I can imagine that none of them knew what to make of Dylan, and Donovan, and Baez. Still, everyone seemed clean cut.
The biggest letdown for me was that Phil Ochs was not included. He was a Newport mainstay but was always overshadowed by Dylan. Very little footage of him exists.
I am looking forward to the release of Roy Karch's "Underground Tonight Show", a New York City cable access show from the 70's. It featured a drunken performance by Ochs in his decline that was still very good. The rights are still up in the air, so I am not holding my breath.
The ring of fire surrounding - but not penetrating - Los Angeles presents familiar sensations, and I have called upon all the descriptive instincts of my profession to translate the feeling of impending doom to people who don't live here.
Tactile
Los Angeles feels like the air is about to catch fire, as if all this dense, warm air needs is someone to light a match.
In that way, Los Angeles is like a crazy ex-girlfriend.
Visual
Los Angeles looks gray, though today's temperature (95 degrees) would suggest a sunny day. I wipe off my glasses before I drive home and am surprised by how much debris has collected on them, and my windshield when I park outside is covered with a thin film.
It's like being in an Irish bar from noon 'til close.
Olfactory
It smells like the char I would scrape off the grills at the end of my shift at McDonalds when I was 15. Back then, we would throw ice cubes on our grill, and then power-scrape the residue with a special tool. Los Angeles feels like the resulting steam and smells like the resulting sludge.
It smells like Mexico City and Sao Paulo, Brazil.
It smells like someone else's burnt microwave popcorn through a dirty vent.
It rains for a while around Halloween and then, between January and April, rains a little more. Then it stops. I took this picture walking to work, stepping quickly between the hundred or so raindrops that fell. Then I stepped in a dead bird. (Dead bird season is pretty much all year.)
Today marks the seventh anniversary of my departing Boston for Los Angeles. I left that city a broken man, my arm having been clipped by a UPS truck while I was riding my bike to work in my last months there.
Less than a year after crossing the Colorado River into California (we drove), my relationship with the person I'd traveled here with ended. I don't know many relationships that have survived westward expansion. I am told that Lewis returned from their travels feeling that Clark was a "douchebag".
We took west four cats, two mine and two hers. I know that one (Roswell, staring from the background) is dead and I think at least two more might be (at least the one in the foreground, if there is any justice). Frampton (seen there in the middle) is still going strong, and just wrote her first novel.
I came out here to be a writer for television and film, and to perform comedy on stage. I have done all those things, but I think I should have been more specific in my plans, such as "I want to write for television shows that aren't cancelled almost immediately". But I guess saying that prior to leaving would have seemed too obvious to me then.
I am going to spend my remaining time in Los Angeles (I have an exit strategy) being more obvious.
Also, when I first moved here, I spent a lot of time riding my bike on the beach. I don't do that anymore. I've been to the beach once in the last year. This disgusts me. It's like living in Bogue Chitto and not eating at the truck stop every day.
Last week I needed to renew my registration, walked into a California Department of Motor Vehicles office carrying prepared paperwork I'd downloaded, took a number, and 16 minutes later I was done. I thought of calling an ambulance to meet me and my aneurysm outside, but I survived.
Once, in Massachusetts, I spent seven hours at a DMV. Once, in New York, I spent six hours at a DMV, doing the same thing that took me 16 minutes last week.
This morning I went to a gas station with three banks of double-sided filling islands. Only the island I'd parked near (x) had no number. I quickly looked at the visible numbers as I approached the cashier. It looked like this: I asked the cashier if I could have $20 on (x=Pump 7).
In seventh grade I was confident that I would never use algebra in everyday life. And I am still correct; if that were an algebra problem, I would be credited $20 at the nonexistent Pump 6 and 1/9.
Instead, I used analogies. Thanks again, tenth grade English teacher Sheila Hallissy! First you taught me Antony's Funeral Oration, now you're saving me cash on gas!
"You sure you don't have some ambitious canvassers going up to the ice shelf to knock a couple of them off, you know, to get them on the list?" I probed. "To, you know, sacrifice a few for the good of the whole?"
"You're being flippant," he said. "But we will actually send people up to spray a non-toxic green stripe on baby harp seals so that no one wants to take their coats. Do you think anyone would buy an ermine coat with a green stripe on it?"
"Have you done any studies about how attractive seals with defacing paint on their coats are to each other?" I asked. "What are the chances of reproduction if a seal looks like ass? I wouldn't get it on with a striper."
"I think they use pheromones and musk in mating," he said.
That's interesting. In Glendale they use Drakkar Noir (and lots of it).
As I was assured on the subway in March, The Rapture was supposed to happen tonight at 7 p.m. (PST). This evening at the appointed time I had just bought a bottle of gin and was driving down Los Feliz (The Happy) Boulevard.
"Where's The Rapture?" I asked at 7:02.
"Where's The Rapture?" I asked at 7:30.
"Where's The Rapture?" I asked at 10:00.
I guess it's not happening. I'd better start drinking. I'm never going to trust the L.A. subway system again.
I currently reside in Glendale, CA. If you are cruising down the street and find a WiFi network called "Hate This Place", that's mine.
It's not that I don't like the parks, freeway access, and easy driving to my office in downtown L.A., but behind the well-manicured lawns and the idyllic suburban tableau of families strolling on a summer night, live some neighbors who make my life more interesting than it should be.
Take young Kevin Cunningham, a 22-year-old man who lives down the street. Early this morning, probably because Independence Day had passed and he thought it was no longer acceptable to shoot fireworks out in the middle of the road, Cunningham is alleged to have shot his remaining wad of fireworks in his house. This destroyed his apartment and damaged three others.
I feel like I should have had neighbors like these in my early 20's while I lived in student ghettos in Brighton and Allston, MA. But not one BC, BU, or slumming Harvard student shot bottle rockets in his own home.
While I do have exemplary neighbors, and while I no longer have to worry about Eastern European Bleeding Kansas parking since I cleaned out my garage, I still look forward to putting Glendale behind me. I'm told that this is all because my french doors face a cemetery.
We define ourselves more and more by what we have than what we believe or what we do (unless we are militant vegans, and in that case I say defining oneself by what one has is a good alternative).
Here are some people in line at the Northridge Apple Store, eight hours ahead of the iPhone becoming available and maybe ten hours before their disappointment with it (because they'll have to get it home, get it out of the box, and charge it).
I was surprised to hear that Apple Stores are closing today at 2 or 3 to get ready for the big unveiling at 6 p.m., and will probably darken their windows.
This is very much like the U.K.'s Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), instituted in the early days of World War I, that resulted in rationing, censorship, the curtailing of citizens' right to fly kites, and a restriction on the hours pubs could stay open (in order to keep a healthy workforce).
Apple's Steve Jobs said that he had scheduled the evening launch so people wouldn't skip work.
The Pantry is one of the oldest restaurants in Los Angeles, located up the street from where the Lakers and Clippers lose. It is owned by former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan, who is also responsible for many of the bike paths in the city.
I go here every year around this time for three days in a row, because I like to protest Erotica L.A. at the nearby convention center. This year I'll be holding the sign that says "You're Lucky I'm Not God."
Here is the chicken-fried steak platter. It comes with peas, mashed potatoes, your doom, and a stack of bread with an equally high stack of butter pats. Cole slaw is extra, and usually I just finish that in the ambulance.
Officials: "No chance" of Catalina fire spreading to L.A.
Fire spokesmen (as if the four Empedoclean Elements can have a spokesperson ... fine, I'm the Earth spokesman) say there is "no chance" the thousand-acre fire raging on the island of Santa Catalina can reach Los Angeles, 40 miles across the Pacific Ocean.
Firefighters maintain the blaze is about 70 percent contained and "couldn't possibly" spread to Hollywood.
This is just another example of The Man trying to keep us fat and ignorant.
Firefighters came from as far away as Los Angeles and Camp Pendleton to save the hills of Santa Catalina Island and its main city, Avalon. How? By plane and boat. Don't tell me some fire couldn't sneak on a plane or boat and disembark on this side to kill our fish and ducks.
I am not naturally an alarmist, but in the same way it has been scientifically proven that earthquakes can use trains to threaten any city that Amtrak services, so can fire hop on a boat. Those killer ants did it, so why can't fire?
Not to take anything away from Joe Walsh, founder of the James Gang, replacement guitarist in the Eagles, solo act, road warrior, Cleveland booster, but I was still surprised to see someone with a Joe Walsh bumper sticker.
I called my friend Brian, the only person other than you who would've cared.
"Who has a Joe Walsh bumper sticker?" I asked, noting that there was no "Hotel California" or "Ordinary Average Guy" iconography (though the driver also had Twinkies and Devo stickers).
"Maybe it's Joe Walsh," he said.
Joe Walsh doesn't seeem to be a sticker-inspiring person, despite his talent and many contributions, such as "Funk #49". I would be just as surprised to see a Bryan Ferry, Blossom Dearie, Sarah Brightman, John Entwistle, or Duff McKagan bumper sticker.
The Sentra turned on Silverlake Blvd. and was gone. I probably spooked him. No doubt he locked the doors in case of attack.
600 acres of Griffith Park on the east side of Los Angeles were consumed in a brush fire that started yesterday at around 2 p.m. The LAFD says the fire is half contained now. The smudge in the center of the picture is a plane dropping water on the fire. This is the church atop Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale. I got in after dark and wondered if the gates would be locked behind me. That would've stunk, because I am resistant to my mortality. This picture was taken across the L.A. River from Griffith Park around 8:15 p.m.
As you know, I am a racetrack sharpie. Here are some horseracing terms I know:
spavined canter hung like a horse parimutuel Charles Bukowski
When ACI was inboard, we read the book Seabiscuit to her. Seabiscuit's historic race against War Admiral was held at Santa Anita racetrack, which we visited the other day for dollar hot dogs. We have no doubt that the dollar hot dogs were made from underperforming horses, as this past weekend ended Santa Anita's season.
Seabiscuit's injury and recuperation, we thought, were emblematic of ACI's own early struggle, as she spent the first two weeks of her life in the hospital, pinioned with tubes.
So when we went to Santa Anita we thought it would be a moment of closure.
"Do you remember my reading Seabiscuit to you when you were in the womb?" I asked.
"No," she said, watching the racetrack Zamboni.
"What about all those Beatles songs I played?"
"I don't remember," she said.
"In your opinion," I asked, "Do you think that the trend toward fetal communication is about as useful as talking to a plant, based on the fact that you have no affinity toward Seabiscuit and you have been flinging yourself to the ground since we got here?"
"I believe that to be correct," she said.
Adding insult to injury, I have now been disabused of the notion of the supernatural wisdom of children, as espoused by Stephen King and C.S. Lewis. ACI missed the superfecta and tore up her ticket in a rage. Then she put out her cigar in a jockey's eye.
"Nuts to you," she said.
In related news, the Kentucky Derby and Cinco de Mayo fall on the same day this year. I am going to be making my mint juleps with Mexican sugarcane.
I went t'tha Dodgaz game tuhnight. Theyuh wa fawty thousand people thayuh but the place still looked empty, even though it was 8,000 mowah people than could fit in Fenway kid.
I was talkin tuh this kid about Spaceman Bill Lee 'n' Cahlt'n Fisk. I was like, "I was at tha fuckin' ayuhpaht in San Francisco 'n' they gut a section 'a' chayuhs dedicated tuh Eck."
I hadn't seen Nomah Gahciaparrar since he was with the Red Sox, an' it was good to see that his OCD had abated.
Dodga Stadium is awesome, but it's no Fenway. Pahkin' cost 15 bucks, seven Dodga Dogs cost $38.50, fowah beeyaz 'n' two Cokes cost $49, an' ah tickets in left field wuh 40 bucks each chief fuh me 'n' this kid Brian 'n' this Spanish kid Alx 'n' this kid Eric. Altogetha it was about $260 ta watch the Dodgaz stomp the Rockies on theyuh secind home game.
When th' announcah called First Base I was like "FUCKIN' NOMAH" and everybody in the stands stahted wavin' theyuh Dodga dishtowels. It was weeyud.
This fire, set yesterday by two bottle rocket-igniting Illinois teenagers visiting the city to engage in crimes, came perilously close to my bank. Thinking quickly, I overdrafted all my accounts weeks ago.
The ancient and mysterious Gaylord apartment building is visible from the roof of my office. A friend suggests that if there were ever a portal to the Twilight Zone, it would be the Gaylord.
It stands across from the site of the former Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Blvd. and is home to porn directors, hookers, coke dealers and affable retirees who have no idea.
The Gaylord is attached to an excellent bar called the HMS Bounty. To use the restroom, one must walk upstairs from the Bounty, cross the marble lobby of the Gaylord, and then go down a flight of stairs. The last time I did this, I was standing at the sink and a voice from a nearby stall said (and I don't think to me), "I'm cold inside."
I took this photograph two nights ago. As is normal with spiritually troubled places, the angel only appeared later.
A Google search for "Yoko hatred" returned with 133,000 results ("Linda hatred" resulted in three, with none of those referring to Linda McCartney. Both "Linda Eastman hatred" and "Linda McCartney hatred" netted zero, which surprised me).
If anti-Yoko sentiment took hold shortly after John Lennon met her in November, 1966, reached a fever pitch when the Beatles broke up in 1970, and tapered off to the tune of 133,000 Google hits today, what would 1FABFAN make of the fact that gas prices have gone up over 700 percent since their November, 1966 average of .32?
One of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles is Cassell's on Sixth Street in Koreatown. It has the best potato salad I have ever eaten.
Today I had a burger, fried zucchini, potato salad, and a cherry Coke there with a dear childhood friend and returned to my office, then drank some water.
"Big lunch," I said to myself, when I burped and threw up in my mouth.
I remained calm and kept my mouth shut. I got the restroom key. I walked on down the hall. I spat out the vurp contents. I came back to the office and reflected.
I wonder if I will ever hate Los Angeles; I know a lot of people who came here for one thing, didn't get to do it, and had no affection for the city to fall back on. I came here to be a jockey but my dreams were crushed. Luckily, six years in, I still get random opportunities to be reminded what a great place this is, despite its lack of snow, worthwhile public transportation, and Puerto Ricans.
Here is Highland Avenue just after midnight this morning. I took the picture while I was driving.
