across the universe

yesterday i journeyed to the wilds of yucaipa with the doc, the chief, and valley boy, on the occasion of a party marking the sale of the los angeles reader a decade ago. the party was at the home of the paper's former owner, james vowell, and his wife codette.

coincidentally, this event also marked the tenth anniversary of my escape from the alternative press, although it turned out to be only a temporary reprise.

in any event, we road-tripped in VB's trusty dadmobile, a roomy volvo that proved plenty comfy. (and you can also read his account of this odyssey -- but finish mine first!) we had all the accouterments a road trip requires: tunes, refreshments, and good company. once we arrived in yucaipa, which is very far away from los angeles, we wound our way up through lands of horses and subdivisions, following the signs with twin "Rs" -- one backward, for the wayback days of the reader when the logo was a backward R, and one forward, for its more modern incarnation in the '90s. the front of james and codette's palatial home was draped with a black banner bearing the reader R, so we had no trouble telling it from its similarly beige neighbors.

we knew from evite that most of the people who would be there were from before our time -- names that i had heard but never put a face to, despite having worked at the paper from fall 1987 to august 1996. but the first face we saw was a familiar, if unexpected, one -- someone i hadn't seen in years, and for a long time had hoped never to cross paths with again. ah, well. time does whittle away at the sands of old grudges (or some such similarly tortured metaphor), and it was actually almost good to see him. the dude had been through some very bad shit, but he seems happy, and i am genuinely glad for him.

anyway. we wound our way past racks of old issues that james had kept around for some reason, through the den with the texas-sized tv, past a lovely kitchen, and onto the back patio, where sat several unfamiliar people and a few familiar ones, plus various kids and dogs. introductions were made, drinks were poured, snacks were consumed, pool was played, and soon the party was rolling along. down below the backyard was another, more expansive backyard set up with a misting test (how coachella!), a badminton net (where some totally crazy folks were actually playing a game), and a pretty little gazebo. it was amazingly silent -- no ambient noise of traffic or other city sounds. just the neighbors on their own sides of the many walls, reveling in their own saturday afternoon fun.

we remained for several hours, through the feast of mexican food (mmmmmm), the obligatory cake, numerous beers for the lads, and nearly a whole bottle of cabernet for me. folks popped in and out ... i was happy to see teresa and judy, two former staffers i hadn't seen in ages, although they still live in town. i ended up chatting a long time with teresa, who remains one of the more impressive and committed human beings i've ever known. and judy, who must be in her 70s by now, still completely awes me with her boundless energy and thirst for experience (not to mention ability to chat your ear off!).

i did try to talk with different people, but the heat and the altitude (4,000 feet) and the alcohol at some point did end up rooting me to one spot, which was a very pleasant spot, but still. the sun set and turned the sky a pretty pinkish orange to violet. and then the stars came out and the evening became actually pleasant after the heat of the day. we would've liked to see the perseids, but they don't really get going 'til after midnight, and we couldn't stay that long.

i initially did not want to attend this party; i had not planned to go until the chief and valley boy talked me into it a few weeks ago. it is hard to explain why. the reader was a big part of my life for a long time, but it was a long time ago. as much as i can get caught up in thinking about the past, it's usually via some proustian accidental mechanism rather than a deliberate exercise in nostalgia. which this party, by definition, was. yet some of my closest friends and most favorite colleagues come from that era of my life. i have many fond memories but also some bad ones, some of which don't seem to have diminished much with time. and, although james did a good job of soft-pedaling the fact, the anniversary of the sale of the reader also meant, unfortunately, a commemoration of it no longer existing, as it was murdered by the new times. it's not like we all sat around feeling miserable or remembering bad things. but it was hard to share too much; i do not think another person there could really understand my experience of the reader, and how tightly the bad is wound with the good. it is singularly different from anyone else's, b/c i was there so long and through so many different changes. yet it gave me a lot of things i may not otherwise have had. when i arrived -- when the publication was in the toilet after having been poorly managed nearly into oblivion -- i was very young and very stupid, and all i knew was it was a job in journalism, which was all i wanted. i had a lot of freedom to write what i felt like, and i was just smart enough to know that was something i wasn't likely to get elsewhere. surprisingly, i do have that now, again, along with the weird-but-thrilling feeling of having an effect on things simply by putting my hands on them.

when the mysterious person known as james vowell "returned" to the reader -- i of course had no idea he'd been away, or even existed -- things began to change quickly. so quickly that, almost before i knew it, the offices had moved from the north hollywood dump i'd first known to much nicer digs on wilshire boulevard in the miracle mile, right at the dawn of that area becoming "media row," as james liked to call it. i am sure it helped that he lived right down the street from that office, but it was a much better location and helped us become a fixture in the city. it also prompted me to move from the valley to the city, a decision i have never regretted. when i stepped down from being managing editor and hired my replacement, valley boy, while staying on as arts editor, thus began the last era of the reader: in my opinion, the best of my time there. yeah, sure -- the geezers had the legacy of matt groening, steve erickson, richard meltzer, blahblahblahblahblah, but we had a great staff of aces and eccentrics, not to mention some amazing writers and columnists, an awesome production department, and good ad support thanks to associate publisher ron slack. we embraced our opportunity, made some missteps and had some bad patches, but we kicked ass anyway.

and what we had most was a sense of camaraderie and purpose. james was savvy about promoting the paper -- we were a part of the community, and we mattered. every week we made something, something that you could hold in your hands -- something we could see people all over the city holding in their hands. we worked hard. we dealt with a lot of frustrations. we learned a lot. and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. and i think that feeling of fun permeated the pages of the reader. we never could rival the weekly in size, but so many people told us they preferred our paper. they liked our spirit, our unpredictability, our basic weirdness.

citybeat carries part of that legacy. we work hard. we deal with a lot of frustrations. we learn a lot. and we often enjoy ourselves immensely. we are a part of the community. people still tell us they like our paper better than the weekly. and that is, as always, kind of cool.

meet ze monsta

it is a gorgeous creature with lovely appointments. it is a faithful steed that carried me 4,000 miles without harm. it is a legacy of sorts. it is the bane of my motherfuckin' existence. it is the beast.

my father's mustang, now mine, has been a trial these last seven months. some have suggested that i not call it "the beast," as this moniker might hurt its feelings. i don't exactly believe that a car, even a sunshine yellow 1966 convertible v-8 with a boss pony interior, has feelings. but it has a personality, and a part of me believes it has a spirit, one that has been mightily riled and sorely tried by this change of ownership.

i never really name my cars or too often even think of them as male or female. the world is gendered enough; why bring inanimate objects into it? (i know ... the french, among many others, would beg to differ.) but, to satisfy the superstitious i agreed to give the vehicle a "real" name: hence, the beast also goes by butch. a proper name indeed for this monster. it is no ordinary pony. it's the fourth and by far the most frankensteinian mustang i've owned. the others were pretty much stock: a '69 coupe and a '66 convertible that were 6-cylinders, plus the '65 convertible v-8. this one has an electronic ignition box, some kind of '87 carb, a jury-rigged switch below the dash for turning on the backup lights (something my dad worked up so the car could pass inspection), all sorts of tinkerish irregularities resulting from being in my dad's possession for a decade and a half. not to mention, the 302 makes this the heaviest, loudest car i've had.

in addition to its quirks, the beast had/has some real problems -- the power steering, a crazy maze of electrical wires, something vague and so far undetectably weird with the transmission. and then late last month there was a strange and horrible accident with the battery -- long story short, battery acid was sprayed over a fair amount of the vital nearby systems. i had to replace the battery, cables, solenoid, electronic ignition box, sundry wires, all the belts, the radiator and hoses, and probably a couple other things i'm forgetting. it was really hellish, as the decay happened in stages, and i am not quite out of the woods yet, considering that since saturday i've been reduced to starting it with a screwdriver. (my dad taught me how, years ago. haven't used it since ... the last time i had a '66.) but at least i can do that 'til thursday, when it's more convenient for me to take it to my mechanic.

it's easy for me to feel even-tempered toward the beast right now, as all i require to make it go is one hand-held tool. but when it went through its period of randomly stalling in intersections (and this was before the acid damage) and starting and stalling again in the most haphazard of fashions, i wasn't so blase. i had resolved to master it, before it did me in, and i suppose we're both getting used to the relationship. which is a hell of a lot better than that period where we tried to kill each other.

what the beast's personality or spirit is, i am still learning. some of that will be shaped by me. but it was owned by my dad for a long time, and it has his habits imprinted on it. i am a somewhat more ... demanding mistress. still, it has its feral charms. i can see why dad liked it so much and kept it so long (he is singularly unsentimental when it comes to buying/selling vehicles). it's pretty stable; its extra weight can be used effectively without swinging around too much. it moves pretty sweetly when you get the acceleration just right -- it jumps forward with surprising grace for being so unwieldy -- leaving dickheads in SUVs in the dust, ha-ha! -- and gives you that momentary thrill of flying ... and that sense of possibility, that you could jam the pedal and break the sound barrier without too much effort. plus, it has a raw power that's weirdly reassuring. and the beast rumbles like a lion's purr. the power feels good. it amuses me to no end that the vibration sets off a few car alarms as i thunder in slow motion up to the 7th floor of the parking garage.

anyway, i call it butch sometimes, but i don't think it minds "the beast." wtf, there's nothing wrong with being a beast. i mean, that's what it is. and after all, in the fairy tale, the beast turned out to be a prince.

champagne supernova II

in my haste to post yesterday's exhaustive catalog of the sir ian experience, i left out one of the weirdest details.

CS and i were standing there by the non-burning fire pit, enjoying the occasional breeze and gawking about. i turned and looked down at the stone rim of the pit, where suddenly a single torn-out page from a book had appeared. before i looked at it i knew it was a page from the bible -- it had that crinkly tissue-paper feeling. when i held it closer i saw it was a page from the old testament book of leviticus ... specifically, chapters 18-19, which deals with all that jazz about "uncovering" various people's "nakedness" and such. it includes, of course, the edict of verse 22, "'you shall not lie wiuth a male as with a woman. it is an abomination.'"

we both caught our breath a little and looked at each other. we were both thinking, what a strange page of the bible to bring to this party. sir ian had briefly brandished a gideon bible on stage; perhaps this page came from it, i couldn't say for sure, although the size was right. maybe it was some sort of joke? anyway, i decided to take it with me ... partly b/c i didn't want to leave it lying around. you never know what impressionable youngsters will think about a thing like that.

champagne supernova

sir ian mckellen is a celebrated actor of amazing resume, a man who can take on anything from shakespeare to stan lee with absolute commitment and conviction. but i will just admit right now that i adore him b/c he made the character i loved the most, gandalf the wizard, from the book i loved the best, j.r.r. tolkien's the lord of the rings, into the most perfect movie creation i ever could've wanted. the gandalf who had been in my head since i first met him -- when my older sister deborah read the hobbit to my younger sister samantha and me when we were quite small -- and through all the many times i read and reread the trilogy, somehow came alive in the personage of sir ian, whose portrayal had nary a whisker nor a heartbeat out of place. although the hobbits were the true heroes of the story, gandalf was the benevolent power who helped them realize their own place in the tale, at times tempted to take the reins of destiny, but only stepping in when he knew it was his role to turn the tide. he was a priest without a religion, a guru whose ways were completely known only to him, a mysterious being cloaked in human form but devoid of almost all human foibles.

i could go on, but that would be gushing.

anyway, so last night it was a rare treat indeed for the lovely and amazing coiledsoul and i to see sir ian mckellen perform a unique version of his solo show, a knight out, at ucla's freud playhouse. i was invited b/c i interviewed him for my column this week.

the beast carried us westward along sunset with no complaints; we parked in a garage and walked a circuitous route to the theater, emerging from an alley-like hall (or was it a hall-like alley?) onto the plaza in front of the venue, where people lingered in the evening cool ... well, not exactly cool, but cooler. we were slightly bummed to find only water and coffee for sale, no wine, but what can you do? we got in line at the box office and indulged in one of my favorite pastimes, eavesdropping on the people around us. as the line crept forward, it seemed every other party had some extra tickets they wanted to unload ... and they proceeded to attempt to do so by boldly informing others in line that they had tickets for sale! when we were next in line, a man who was picking up his tickets at the first of two windows actually told the poor kid behind the counter that he was going to try to sell his extra tickets; he asked the kid if it was ok for him to stand in front of the box office and hawk them!! the young man politely replied, "sir, that's scalping, and i don't want to know about it." the guy said, "what, can i get into trouble or something?" kid, somewhat incredulously but working very hard to stay polite, goes, "well, it's illegal, sir, and ... ." i didn't hear the rest b/c we were next at the second window. it was about 20 minutes before show time at this point. as i checked the envelope before stepping away from the window, i heard a guy say he had $100 tickets for sale, and someone asked him how much. (variations on this theme happened a few times.) the man with the tickets said face value, seeming somewhat annoyed that the person would want to pay otherwise, to which the inquirer responded that he could get rush tickets for less in just a few minutes. "oh," said the man, as though that hadn't even occurred to him.

i must admit i was wondering why so many people, at least so many people in line at that moment, seemed to have extra tickets. in any event, the room was full save for a couple of empty seats in the $100 area, so most of the people must have unloaded them one way or another. i was thinking, however, that the authorities who make such sport of busting hapless people for scalping at rock shows ought to take a visit to theater venues more often.

anyway. it was mofuggin' HOT in that theater; i don't know how ian mckellen stood it. we were merely sitting in our (awesome third-row) seats and practically expiring. he was actually dashing about and acting and whatnot, occasionally mopping his brow and glugging from a bottle of spring water. he made his entrance as leigh teabing from the da vinci code, using the swinging, somehow gracefully ungainly gait of a man who uses two canes to help him walk. that alone earned applause and cheers -- clearly, he was among friends (and admirers). what ensued was about 90 minutes of anecdotes, audience participation, and, well ... acting. really really fine acting, the sort that, once he settled into a character -- whether richard III, james whale from gods and monsters, or the preacher from cold comfort farm -- took you to the place of that character, so much so that, when the bit was done, i would shake my head a little and feel dislocated, having fallen into the groove and expecting him to just go on and on in character, with me hanging on his every word and gesture.

he did bring glamdring (gandalf's sword), as he told me he hoped to in the interview, and his turn at the lord of the rings was satisfying, though not strictly just him doing gandalf in character. (i would have loved to have heard him do the speech he gives to pippin about what happens when you die, all that heartbreakingly kind stuff about "a far green country" and such, but, OTOH, perhaps it's just as well, b/c i would doubtless have started blubbering.) it was more like a dramatized reading of the part in the first book where the fellowship escapes the mines of moria, the price being gandalf's seeming demise at the hands (or really the whip) of the balrog. it was still quite thrilling, especially as sir ian came to the edge of the stage for the part where the wizard is dragged into the depths, and his blue eyes blazed with an icy fire. for the record, he told me in the interview that he planned to correct a mistake he'd made by saying, as gandalf, "you shall not pass" to the balrog. that, he informed me, was wrong; he'd gotten the line wrong. well, yeah ... gandalf actually says "you CANNOT pass." and so the universe was slightly less off-kilter once that wrong had been righted.

mckellen was quite the wry comedian, gently mocking dan "da vinci code" brown's writing and, after reading a description of his character in the book that sounded absolutely nothing like him, wondering aloud how he ever got the part. he did a bit where he asked us to name all of shakespeare's plays -- he said there were 37, and i had no reason to doubt him. "ready?" he asked. "go!" and the entire room of 500+ people started shouting at once. a cacophony of titles; it was giddy but fun, like some sort of brainy-chaotic performance art.

he told great anecdotes about his movie experiences, from his early days to more recent tales. he read/recited poetry, at one point losing his place and dashing to his nearby podium for the text, which he calmly paged through, found his place, and continued without seeming ruffled. (who knows how he was feeling inside, but he didn't look at all disturbed.) i would've just cried and run away. but then, i'm not gandalf. or magneto.

for magneto, the wonderful x-men villain, he just camped it up with the gesturing, which got a great laugh. he also told us about his experience being knighted by the queen, who at the time was dressed entirely in lime green (which seemed especially horrifying to him ... understandably) and using the throne of england as a place to stash her handbag. (hmmmm, it is good to be the queen ... .) and she asked him if he was currently working, which seemed a hilarious thing to say ... although i don't think her majesty was trying to be funny. but who knows?

anyway, we were invited to the after party at a westwood restaurant, so we strolled the sculpture garden outside the freud and chatted for about a half hour before going back to the car to find our way into the village. i decided to park in the structure next door rather than valeting it, which turned out to be the right choice (more on that later). it was around 9 p.m. and still very warm. i had brought a shirt with me into the theater, expecting to be chilly in just my lace tank top and skirt. didn't need it, and wisely left it in the car for the party.

we rounded the corner just as a gaggle of other partygoers arrived, so we just flowed to the back patio with them. nobody checked our invitations or anything; it was very mellow. as we were standing in line to get a drink, a man behind me informed a younger man that "gore vidal is sitting over there; go and say hello." after a moment i swiveled my head around, and sure enough, the legendary writer was sitting at a nearby table, crisp in navy jacket and striped dress shirt, a brass-topped wooden cane at the ready near his left hand. there is something they say about old people, that they look "well-preserved." it's never seemed quite like a compliment, but there was something in the man's slightly carved-in-stone look that made me think of that phrase. he is 80, but i no longer know if people do or don't look that age. my dad is 80, and i can scarcely even get my mind around that fact. he was alert and seemed approachable, although i didn't dare to speak to him. i couldn't have thought of a thing to say, which is always a problem for me in meeting people. especially legendary ones.

anyway, we got our drinks, and coiledsoul scoped out the food. i had had a giant steak dinner not too long before, so i just nibbled a couple of delicious dessert bites, and we stationed ourselves in the middle of the patio next to the (thankfully not burning) fire pit, where we could see and hear just about everything. and yet we remained virtually invisible, for we knew no one, and no one knew us, and nobody cared to know us, which was just perfect. the scene was somewhat surreal. it was probably the best hollywood party i have ever been to, with no impossibly pneumatic starlet wannabes competing for the cameras' attention -- after all, the cameras were focused on all the well-preserved queens who were pals of sir ian's, along with the younger, prettier ones who were probably also his friends, and at times the even younger ones who perhaps were part of the young actors group that was the evening's beneficiary. there were also no less than three well-preserved ladies in motorized wheelchairs, probably famous, but i am terrible at recognizing people. (we saw michael york and annie lennox; i am sure there were other stars there, but you'll have to read CS's account to find out more.)

the folks around us were nice and polite, smiling and excusing themselves when squeezing past (it got quite crowded at one point). we hadn't intended to stay very long, but it was so pleasant on the patio, and CS and i haven't seen each other in a long time b/c she's been out of town. so we lingered and enjoyed the occasional breeze and tripped out on the atmosphere. sir ian arrived, looking fresh in his silver-paint-coated blue jeans, simple white shirt with cufflinks, black loafers, and cool (i think) hematite necklace. he immediately made a beeline for gore vidal. he asked if anyone was sitting in the empty chair next to gore, who replied "you are!" and so down sir ian sat, for a long conversation of which i heard nothing, but i did notice that, after about 15 minutes, the nebula of the crowd began to orbit a bit around that table, as though people were growing impatient to speak to sir ian, yet not terribly eager to actually interrupt him talking to gore vidal. or maybe that was just my interpretation. it did seem as though it took another little while before anyone was bold enough to interrupt, but once they did the spell was broken, and soon sir ian was working the room, glass of red wine in one hand, easy smile on his lips and hearty laugh in his throat, relaxed and having a grand time, as he should have.

CS and i had more to drink -- she, champagne, me, tanqueray and tonic -- and talked about our own little lives. at one point she was scanning the patio, and apparently gore vidal was looking around too, and they did that thing where you accidentally make eye contact with a total stranger. he winked at her, and she whirled to me, squealing under her breath that "gore vidal just winked at me!!" hee. that was cool.

we chatted with a woman who was involved with the youth group, who introduced us to her son, who had been talking with a playwright who's working on a play about military recruiting on high school campuses. shortly thereafter i introduced myself to ed wilson, head of the youth theater group and pal of sir ian's, who had produced the show that night. he was nice, and when i flumferred that we were on our way out and just wondered if i could say hello to sir ian, he graciously offered to do the honors, rescuing me from my blathering before it really kicked into high gear. (this is why i am a writer, see? i cannot speak intelligently to save my life.)

and so ed wilson did, and of course sir ian was quite kind and receptive, asking if we'd enjoyed the show, etc. he allowed that it had been quite warm on stage; i marveled at how he'd managed. he thanked me for the article, and we said our goodbyes, escaping into the restaurant and then out onto the sidewalk, where stood about a half-dozen young x-men fans, posters and other paraphernalia in hand, knowing, perhaps, that there was only one way outta that place, and eventually magneto was gonna have to take it.

back to the beast. i turned the key. click. nothing. DAMN!!! tried a couple more times, nada. we tried the headlights; there was juice. in the dim recesses of my memory i recalled another '66 mustang, a far-off time, a half-forgotten remedy. i pulled my toolbox out of the trunk and retrieved the biggest, toughest screwdriver i had. opened the hood and -- like gandalf trying to recall how to open the door into the dwarves' abandoned stronghold -- tried to remember how exactly one went about bypassing the solenoid to jump-start the vehicle. after a couple of failed attempts, i got sparkage -- woohoo! CS slid into the driver's seat and gave it gas on my command; the beast roared to life and kept on runnin'. wooooohoooooo!!!!!!! we got the hell out of there, hitting the street just in time to see sir ian surrounded by young magneto fans, with whom he seemed quite engaged. as we waited at the light to make our left, i thought about stirring up some shit by hollering "gandalf is the man!" but thought better of it. instead, we rumbled off back toward hilgard, north to sunset and home to savor all the delights of the night.

black and blue

i am being fucked hard by mercury. in retrograde. and fuck you too, you cocksucking planet!

i am soooo not going to bore you with a long list of my recent personal woes -- marked, as is characteristic of travails during this accursed time, by delays, setbacks, and general lack of moving-forwardness. but i will say in brief that car problems and delays in remedying same, technical difficulties, false starts, sudden changes, and other unwelcome situations that have befallen me over the last two weeks are coming at dismayingly regular intervals. to say nothing of the wider world's fresh wars, natural disasters, mass murders, and celebrity divorces. i mean ... it's enough to make a girl want to sit down and cry. and/or fuckin' hide away for the next 12 days.

that's where al swearengen comes in. just yesterday we finished watching season 2 of deadwood. (and i am still infected with the cursin' bug. huh -- ya think dubya's been watching deadwood a lot, too?) in an episode called "e.b. was left out," the newspaperman, merrick, is bumming b/c tolliver's thugs fucked up his press equipment. al puts on his frontier-guru hat and literally smacks merrick upside the head. he asks if merrick is dead, and the man replies no, but bruised certainly. then al says:

"pain or damage don't end the world, or despair or fuckin' beatin's. the world ends when you're dead. until then, you got more punishment in store. stand it like a man -- and give some back."

words to fuckin' live by. except i am not sure how to give some back, in this sense, to a celestial body.

perhaps i can give some back to mercury simply by not crumbling (or hiding). maybe that is something. what pisses me off most about this particular bout of zodiac trauma is that, rather than hand-wringing like last time, i thought i would try to use this interval for reflection and deliberation, as the more positive interpretations (spin?) suggest. but i have been so busy dealing with the bulllshit that i have no bandwidth for ponderments.

so as far as the giving-back goes ... that's mercury 1, me 0.

hahah. i'm still here. so ... i win?

the madcap laughs

the piper at the gates of dawn ... has gone on.

RIP syd barrett.

fever in, fever out

* the previous entry's mood was sponsored in part by an overdose of deadwood, the first season of which we just finished watching on DVD in a four-episode marathon friday night. i absolutely love it, in all its cocksucking glory. the characters/actors are amazing: calamity jane, the doc, wild bill hickok, the dangerously charismatic al swearengen, the mad preacher, trixie, dan, even the stick-up-his-butt eventual sheriff seth, plus so many others. we're going to borrow the season 2 set from a friend soon. cannot wait to see it. also, the writing, especially the dialogue, is so fab. i love the creative combination of thick-'n'-fast blue with the courtly, almost poetic vernacular. and the actual words themselves are combined in a singularly fetching fashion.

* i never finished with the hummingbird-baby report: it has a happy ending. after the whole mastering-gravity thing, the little critter had a steady development, with only one backsliding incident in which it ended up back on the driveway, rescued by 00soul. only a few days later it was gone from where we'd put it; we saw it later, perched on the side of the nest next to its sibling that was still in the nest. all seemed well, and now the nest is empty, so i assume the babies grew up and went on their merry way.

* i wrote about the world cup in my most recent column. watched the germany/portugal "losers" game yesterday -- boy, was germany happy to be no. 3! a lot effing happier than france looked at being no. 2 after today's championship game, which was pretty exciting despite going down to the dreaded penalty kicks. zinedine zidane, france's big star, the captain, head-butted an italian opponent in the chest (!), away from the ball, toward the end of regulation. throughout the match the announcers (who avoided actually calling the game as though someone held guns to their heads and threatened execution unless they offered up only the usual meaningless statistics or the most banal details involving the players/teams/countries) kept endlessly blathering on about how zidane was retiring after this game and yada yada. anyway, the head-butt came just after france had made its last substitution, and zidane was red-carded after much confusion, seemingly over whether a ref had seen it happen, or just seen the replay on the big screen that was of course projected immediately after this blatant foul was caught by a camera. i really wonder if an official actually saw it happen. but wtf, it most definitely happened. how bizarre. the guy was so played up, and needed, and with his legend to consider, and he effs up and gets thrown out. a bit anticlimactic for us observers. but france lost on penalty kicks -- of which zidane is reportedly a master -- so i can't imagine mr. z.z. is too happy a guy ce soir.

moonlight mile

it is hot in los angeles, my favorite kind of weather. yeah, the days are sweaty and miserable, and even though i am religiously wearing sunscreen, my arms are getting a trace of color -- horrors! but the nights are comfortable and sort of magic, although lately i am seized with a persistent melancholy that puts a patina of blue over it all.

like the summer-night blue as i drove home from a brief stop at the doc's last night. i'd put the top down to enjoy the short ride under an open sky. about two-thirds of a moon gave off a golden glow high above, with jupiter a small bright, whiter disk keeping it company. seemingly so close and yet millions of miles away.

the stones played on the stereo. i turned onto fountain to make my way back up fairfax, and mick jagger began to sing:

when the wind blows and the rain feels cold
with a head full of snow
with a head full of snow
in the window there's a face you know
don't the night pass slow?
don't the night pass slow?

i downloaded this song from itunes recently b/c i don't seem to have a copy on CD. i heard it in a sopranos episode not long ago, and it keeps coming back to me. i loved it when i was in my teens and 20s. i'd still say it's one of my favorites. it belongs to that class of tune a rock band inevitably begins to write as success leads to endless touring and that becomes their world: road songs. but the sense of isolation and displacement in it is breathtaking and gorgeous; the song is suffused with a feeling i can't resist, of an almost bodily yearning for the thing you cannot have: at the moment, or ever. and a weariness of awaiting a destination you never seem to get to. but still you move toward it.

sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind
just another mad, mad day on the ro-oad
i am just living to be lying by your side
but i'm just about a moonlight mile, on down the road

and it somehow opens up my mind and makes me envision the world -- the history we are living right now -- as a road, one pointing to darker days and more dread to come. (is that what they want us to think?) for, as much as i feel we are being manipulated, by trumped-up terror hysteria created for ... i don't know why, actually. i really don't anymore. whatever sense -- even the illogical logic -- might have once been applied to the actions of our government, i can no longer remember the whys and wherefores. WMDs? IEDs? STDs? i know that it is not for any greater good. is it really just for political gain? all this death and destruction, this diplomatic mess, the escalation of long-simmering conflicts, the escalation of long-settled ones, the polarization of everything, the hatred and bigotry and increasingly savage promises to wipe each other out?

maybe it really is to hasten armageddon. on the fourth of july, the doc and our other friends came to the canyon loveshack for dinner and fun. while sitting on the patio, in the finally comfortable twilight, a hawk swooped low and snatched a snake from the ground, perched itself in a nearby tree, and proceeded to eat its dinner. naturally, the doc was quite taken with this extremely striking image. (they also saw deer, twice; we could hardly have arranged a better wildlife show, let alone got one at random.) then when we were hanging out yesterday, he was trying to recall specific historical instances in which a bird of prey capturing a snake was considered a bad omen. and the idea that rulers of whatever ancient world you wanna think about actually called in their soothsayers and puzzled over the "meaning" of a raptor doing its natural thing, as though it were a sign from the gods, made me laugh a bitter laugh. it is a wonder our motherfucking species has survived this long. and still the powerful decide their course of action based on shiny superstition and the hubris of their own perceived place in god's plan.

made a rag pile of my shiny clothes
gonna warm my bones,
gonna warm my bones
i got silence on my radio
let the air waves flow,
let the air waves flow
for i am sleeping under strange strange skies
just another mad, mad day on the road
my dreams is fading down the railway line
i'm just about a moonlight mile down the ro-oad-oad

i think this song is pulling on me b/c i feel even more alienated from my kind than usual. in part it's the same old, "what fucking country is this again?" thing. but also i am just distant right now. i am not so much feeling like i hate humanity as just simply distracted -- probably thinking too much about personal quandaries far too boring to get into here. but in a way that makes me more like my kind. i mean, for most of us ... isn't it easier to get lost in the details of one's own angst, or the troubles of one's friends, than to really dwell on the details of a world that seems to get madder every day? better to stay engaged in your own trip, tunnel-visioned down the path to wherever you're headed ... hopefully someplace tasting less of death and cake than this one.

i'm riding sister and i'm dreamin'
i'm riding down your moonlight mile
i'm riding sister and i'm dreamin'
i'm riding down your moonlight mile
i'm riding down your moonlight mile

big bottom

i am completely furious about an article that ran in the l.a. times calendar section on tuesday. apparently it was independence day for everybody but overweight young women, who were shackled to all the usual size-ist stereotyping, insulting assumptions, and negative-body-image b.s. by robin abcarian, in a front-page piece titled "letting it all hang out," with the subtitle "for many young women, one size fits all -- no matter how that makes them look." the accompanying photo on the front page featured two headless young females, who, i assume based on the times deciding to show only the "relevant" body parts, we are to identify as "sausage casing girls," as abcarian so compassionately refers to them -- young women who are "less-than-svelte" (as she so cleverly describes them) yet wear clothing in too small a size, resulting in such horrifying crimes against humanity as "muffin tops hanging over their hip-skimming jeans."

i am going to pause for a moment before ranting at length to say that i have read abcarian's articles for years. i remember when she had a column in this paper. i have often liked her work. she is a good writer. but this article is foul and demeaning. she tries hard to justify its existence, mixing in quotes from psychologists and an author who suffered from an eating disorder and some (male) mouthpiece from a fancy-jeans company blathering on about how "women" perceive jeans sizing, and even (incredible!) some actual young women. but the truth is, the very idea of this piece seems like something a privileged, nasty sorority girl would come up with for her campus paper: "why do all these gross fat girls have to wear clothes that don't fit them, forcing the rest of us to look at their ugly fat flesh popping out?"

this "phenomenon" is half-heartedly presented as a health concern (as if!), but that's a pathetic smokescreen. the real purpose of this piece -- to mock and shame women who don't meet our culture's standards of perfection yet refuse to hide under tentlike clothing in order to make judgmental idiots more comfortable -- is telegraphed early on, when abcarian asserts that "chunky teen boys and young men hide in cartoonishly large basketball jerseys over big t-shirts and elephant-legged shorts" but "girls generally do not." the message is clear: covering up your fat is good; "letting it all hang out" is bad. and if fat girls would cover up (like the boys do), then there'd be no problem.

according to this article, it is ok to be happy with one's bigness -- in fact, abcarian is even "tempted to applaud the sausage casing girls" for flying in the face of popular body image and wearing what they want to wear -- but it is not ok to display your fat to the public. b/c that's just ... ewwww. she illustrates the point: a teen interviewed who likes to wear "tight" clothes and wants to lose a few pounds but insists on buying stuff in her real size is not disgusting, b/c, "as a result, she has no fat rolls squeezing up into a muffin top above her belt. her t-shirts do not climb, leaving a bare expanse of skin showing around her middle." well, thank GOD she's not out there frightening the children with her unspeakable lard belly.

furthermore, abcarian may be "tempted" to applaud the SCG, but she's not gonna. she makes out this alleged tendency to wear too-tight clothing as some manifestation of self-esteem gone awry. they "think" they look cute, she asserts, but they don't. she goes so far as to opine that "many" of them aren't happy or confident in themselves at all, but simply deluding themselves about what size they are, buying too-tight clothes instead of the size they should wear so they don't have to face the dreaded fact that they are "big." ok, that's entirely possible. but it's hardly news. i mean, isn't clothing-size anxiety a fucking daily theme of the loathsome comic strip "cathy"?

notice how, in the above quoted section, suddenly the problem morphs into "a bare expanse of skin showing," rather than what the writer really means, which is an exposed roll of fat. way to play the euphemism card. plenty of women, young and otherwise, wear midriff-baring tops. it's only a manifestation of a possible mental disorder, however, when sausage casing girls do it.

among the many outrages of this article is the utter failure of the accompanying photography to prove abcarian's thesis. in fact, if i were very literal-minded, i would argue that the photography flies in the face of her point, as she does play on the razor-thin distinction between "tight" and "too tight." i am sure she's relying on what she has seen out in the world -- that always reliable sample of one. well, y'know what? i've sure seen some girls/women walking around in too-tight clothing. but not so many as to believe there is an epidemic. so i don't buy it. and why should i let this article convince me? the two photos accompanying the piece (at least the one on the jump inside shows a woman with her head attached) do not show young women wearing too-tight clothing. each one's attire completely covers her potentially offending stomach, and the one on the inside isn't even wearing a tank top that's terribly tight. no visible, naked, icky fat rolls anywhere.

oh, it's not as though robin didn't do her research. she went to the mall one saturday and scoped out the fat chicks. quickly it dawned on her that "the whole issue of overweight and appropriate fit is ticklish." y'don't say? i can just imagine the scenario: "hi, i'm robin abcarian from the los angeles times. i'm writing an article about sausage casing girls -- you know, fat young women like you who wear too-tight clothing? can i just ask you a few questions about why you insist on making the rest of us uncomfortable by pretending you're not uncomfortable, not to mention denying that you need to be wearing a tent instead of a tank top?" needless to say, it was "difficult to engage a conversation" with these real, live SCGs: "no young woman wanted to admit -- to a reporter, anyway -- that she was chubby and her clothes simply didn't fit."

here's a news flash for you, robin: lots of women, even (gasp!) thin ones, wear clothes that are too tight. how come it's only a social problem when women over size 8 do it? or is it really any more "attractive" to look at, say, some rail-thin 50-year-old wearing a tight tank top that exposes the fleshy wattles around her armpits? if you truly wanted to discuss the "phenomenon" of women feeling so culturally oppressed that they can't even own up to the actual size of clothing they wear, or that they feel so anxious/unhappy about the size they wear, or whatever, there were far kinder and less prejudiced ways to do it. b/c if these girls don't have a problem with what they are wearing, why the FUCK should anybody else care? (and if they do, well, that's their problem.)

aside from the phrase "sausage casing girls" (i mean, c'mon: can you see the times allowing some writer to call a group of devout muslim women in traditional religious garb "the burqa chicks" or black women with natural hair the "nappy headed girls"?), the most unforgiveable thing about this article is that it was written by a woman, treating other women like objects and even going so far as to humiliate one by proxy in order to get that all-important quote from the fat girl who wears too-tight clothing. if only robin had managed to interview the poor teen girl, who is traumatized to the point of still being upset days after being asked to explain herself, well, then we'd have the definitive answer to this perplexing and disturbing mystery. as if.

this afternoon II

yesterday i saved an inch of life. that is, i found a baby hummingbird in our driveway, obviously in distress. it had fallen out of a nest in our bougainvillea. (remember the hummingbird on the wire? apparently, it has kids.) it just happened to catch my eye as i passed by, on the way back from dumping some trash. i peered closer: "what's that?" as i looked at it, it rolled over onto its side and its eyes fluttered closed. it was going belly-up right in front of me! i had no clue what to do, but i moved it to a safer spot. (our driveway is just the concrete ramp up into the garage, very close to the street.) then i fed it sugar water with an eyedropper, which it eagerly accepted. i left it by itself, then came back and checked on/fed it a few times. it seemed to be recovering. now what?

i found a website for something called the hummingbird society and also project wildlife, which were useful. from the descriptions/pictures of the babies in different states of development, i decided this one was a "pre-fledgling," just about ready to fly. but, evidently, not quite.

learning what to do was great, but i was at a loss b/c what one is supposed to do in these situations is put the baby back in the nest. which is high up in the bougainvillea, a tiny thing, the size of a cue ball, maybe. we do not have a ladder. and i worried a little that the baby might just fall out again. the website said the mother will usually still feed a baby that's fallen out of the nest. which might have been ok if the ground wasn't our driveway. not a safe place. so i looked at some more websites and finally found some phone numbers. i called a hotline number, and a woman answered and explained that she didn't rescue hummingbirds anymore, although the organization hadn't taken her name off the website, but she would tell me what to do anyway. to my relief, i learned i didn't need to put the baby back into the nest. i could make a nest of a small container and secure it somewhere near the original nest. the mother would find it. they aren't the type of wild animal that gets put off its young when humans handle them. although, i didn't touch it but instead nudged it onto a piece of cardboard, like a birdie stretcher, to move it; it was so little and fragile, i was afraid i might accidentally squeeze it too hard. it was maybe an inch long. maybe two. it had all its feathers but just a stubby little tail. once stabilized, it didn't make a sound. it became quite alert after about an hour. i had read that they keep quiet in the nest so as not to attract predators. i took it to mean the little critter was acting pretty normally. i felt slightly encouraged.

i secured the prefab nest in the bougainvillea with hemp twine. this was somewhat awkward (hanging out the window), despite extra care taken, and the peeper was pretty freaked out by this bumpy ride, but what could i do? i was afraid it would go into shock from me trying to help it. anyway, i got the box tied down, and the tiny beast started cheeping. maybe 10 minutes later the mom showed up and in short order fed it. i was all, GOOOOOOALLLL! i felt soooo good. i saved a life. how cool is that?

i still worried about it. we peered up at the real nest, and there is a tiny beak poking out of it. the original nestling's fallen (pushed?) brethren was all alone, but the mother came back several times, and the baby went to sleep as soon as it got dark. i fretted it would be lonely. i am such a sap. it's gotta be childhood disney-movie damage or something.

anyway, this morning i anxiously approached the window. was the tiny beastie there? 00soul said he'd seen the little beak poking out of the fake nest earlier. i looked but saw nothing in the basket. after a minute, however, i did see the baby perched nearby in the bougainvillea. i was like, "hey! get back in the nest!" but these kids today, they have minds of their own. it just clung to a branch (which is more like a twig, it being bougainvillea), occasionally flapping its wings furiously but never letting go of that branch. it wasn't doing a terribly graceful job of holding on -- at one point i looked out, and it was hanging upside-down on the branch, cheeping and quivering, none too happy. i was afraid for it but let it be. just before i left for work, i looked out again, and it was upright, craning its neck to be fed. (the mom continues to come around regularly.) ok, then. gravity sorted out, just in one morning.

seven times hotter than fire

this week was busy, filled with horrible work travails and awesome musical experiences.

the work travails were mainly technical, as new computers for production were welcomed, although many wrinkles had to be ironed out. numerous people worked hard and late, but not me, as i had to fuck off to do other stuff. for once. but in spite of the fact that i was not at all the most hard-working person on the 22nd floor this week, i still had tons to do. i wrote my column and edited the extra section (summer dining issue, woo! ... if i do say so myself), but also i had accepted an assignment from the l.a. times to cover t bone burnett on tuesday at the el rey. there was some confusion for some over the show's location, as it got changed from the wilshire ebell theater, resulting in the weirdest setup i've ever seen at the el rey: the floor and sides filled with seats, which you got to occupy if you were holding a wilshire ebell ticket and wearing a red wristband; the back of the room for standing, which you had to do if you were holding an el rey ticket. we stood at the back behind the sound board, which is where i always stand b/c most of the time you can see best. this night, t bone and co. had brought in an extra sound board, so the space was a little cramped and, it seemed, mostly occupied by people i know. which is an increasingly rare occurrence at gigs nowadays. ironically (or something), with all those people sitting down, the sightlines were better than usual, despite the presence of view-blocking cameras.

anyway. this is what i wrote about it. it was an excellent show, and i am glad i went. what i did not write was that courtney love was spotted ducking under the tape that roped off the sound-board area (technical term), with frances bean in tow. i only caught a glimpse of la love as she walked back out; she was wearing a dress under some kind of patterned knee-length lightweight coat. her hair was cut fairly short in a sleek blonde bob. for about 30 seconds there was much twittering of speculation as to why she was there. i couldn't have guessed -- perhaps she appreciates good music? and then i had to go back to paying attention to what was happening on stage.

the next night, 00soul and i were lucky guests at the silverlake conservatory of music's annual fund-raiser, the hullabaloo. it was held at the edendale grill, and patti smith was the headliner. i saw a lot of friends i haven't seen in ages. 00soul knows lenny kaye from long ago, so i saw them chatting at the bar but felt self-conscious about wrangling an introduction. i drank tequila & tonics and munched some of the food: bbq, potato salad, mac & cheese, and other morsels of americana. it was a gorgeous warm night, and i was standing on the patio chatting away with some pals when patti smith suddenly appeared on the second-floor landing of the studio next door, where they had set up a green room for her and the other performers (also including jazzman joshua redman). a small, thin, slightly wild-haired being in her trademark white shirt, skinny tie, black jacket, descending the stairs slowly into deepening twilight, radiating a quiet power from her very core and riveting my attention completely. she disappeared from view for a moment, rounded the hedge separating the two businesses, threaded her way slowly through the crowd and made a beeline for the chow. i stopped watching her after that b/c i didn't want to look like a stalker. a person should have some privacy, even in a crowd.

on the party spun, through the silent auction, the live auction hosted by magician and offbeat impresario rob zabrecky, the various performances, meetings and greetings, etc. when finally the hour came for patti and her band (including a thoroughly delighted and musically besotted flea, whose brainchild the SL conservatory is), folks crowded into the dining room. for a moment we all seemed to hold our breath. and there she was. "jesus died for somebody's sins," she intoned, "but not mine." an old incantation, still potent. and so it began, her voice low and resonant, her singing as powerful as ever. at first a bit reserved, but somewhere in the midst of us all deliriously and lustily hollering back "G - L - O - R - I I I I A," she caught the love pulsating through the room and let it envelop her. she smiled, she talked, she made goofy jokes. her daughter jesse played keyboards, but i could not see her from where i stood. i could see patti just fine most of the time, except when she sat down to play one song.

oh, man. it is hard to put into words how it felt to watch her and think about her. each time i have seen her, the feeling has been the same. a low-level electric current, an intellectual and visceral thrill from her presence. i was riveted most of the time and when i did glance around the room, it seemed most folks were as taken as i was.

afterward we milled around a bit, and then i ended up standing by the office door, leaning on the maitre'd stand. patti smith and her daughter walked past on their way out. they sorta smiled on the way past, and i said thanks, that was beautiful. she said thanks and they walked out into the night.

then on thursday it was off to zen sushi in silver lake to see mick & andy do their thing. coiledsoul was an unexpected audience guest; here is her take on the evening. for myself, i was happy to see the doc on stage, bellowing them alien electric blues. they sounded pretty great, actually. highlights for me were the aztec calendar song and a beautifully dire "see that my grave is kept clean." but it was all good, and andy is a really awesome guitarist. they should get a band so they can be even louder. yeah.

running with the devil

so the big 6/6/06 has passed, and satanic activity in the city has ebbed to the usual level.

on tuesday i attended a satanic high mass at the steve allen theater in east hollywood, as the guest/chauffeur of the doc, who was doing research for an article. this was the same night as the big 666 concert celebration at the henry fonda theater, with hank III performing on the occasion of his pal stanton lavey's satanic nuptials. that was probably a louder and doubtless more bacchanalian event than the high mass, which made up for any lack of volume and debauchery by being a far rarer occurrence.

everyone was all dressed up in their evil best, with lots of pentagram jewelry -- mostly lapel pins and necklaces, but some belt buckles and other decorations -- interesting facial hair, and a surprising number of hats. the color mode was mostly black, but with a smattering of red, one blond guy in a white suit, and a woman wearing bright pink opera gloves that matched her bright pink pentagram necklace. (it was so, like ... barbie goes to hell or something.) some folks were full-on pierced and tattooed and such, but others weren't quite so obviously in league with the devil. before the mass we had drinks and mingled and talked with folks; a couple of people recognized my companion and chatted him up.

finally the theater opened, and we found seats. a reclining naked woman (strategically draped with a red cloth) loomed above the stage, and there was an array of chalices, candles, and other articles of faith on a table in front. after a few words of welcome, rumbling music emanated seemingly from the vents of hades itself, and the mass began.

three rituals were performed by three different people: compassion, lust, and destruction. the ceremony was structured very much like your basic magick rituals -- turning to the south, east, north, and west, calling out the guardians of each direction that symbolize different aspects of ... hell, i suppose. (and, at the end, closing the gates and whatnot.) some call-and-response a la a catholic mass. a fair amount of "hail satan!"-ing, which the congregation of about, i dunno -- 100 or so? -- lustily bellowed out. it was mostly very serious and somber, to the point where the solemn intoning of something like "all hail the joys of satan!" puzzled me, in my ignorance, b/c it seemed ... counterintuitive to the proceedings. each ritual allowed three supplicants to come up to the stage and state their desires to be blessed. these involved everything from wanting a good-paying job to wishing to be a playa to seeking payback for having been cheated. nothing too earth-shattering, really -- just the mundane desires of ordinary folks. who happen to be devil-worshippers.

as a person who has no use for any sort of organized religion, it would be easy for me to poke fun at all of it, but to be honest it was fascinating and actually seemed quite benign, even ... uplifting. satanists don't often get to be together in this fashion. there was a sense of euphoria flitting around the edges of the gathering -- they seemed quite happy just to be among like-minded folks. and, although i would be lying if i said i didn't find it somewhat silly (like any other religious ceremony), i still enjoyed myself immensely and am very glad i went. before the ceremony and during the reception afterward, the people were all very nice and polite, and when i talked with a couple of those involved, they seemed pleased that i found it so compelling. happy to be somewhat understood.

the thing i liked the most was how clearly and plainly the supplicants stated their desires (a key thing in witchcraft). i wish i could do it more, even within my own mind. it hinted at an ability -- fostered by their beliefs or not, i dunno -- to focus and distill one's thoughts down to a very simple form.

if there was any disappointment, it was due to my own expectations. i wanted to feel a stronger pull of power than i did. there was instead a more subtle tug of energy, like i said, among the participants. only one woman gave me an interesting and intense vibe, and she was somewhat distraught, it turned out. on the other hand, i felt quite blissful when we left, and not just b/c of the wine. the feeling lasted well into the next day. so perhaps there was more of a force at work than i thought.

is this the banality of evil? that you can walk among it and feel, if not right at home, then certainly comfortable? to say nothing of, and maybe more to the point, that it can fit right into your world? so unremarkable it's almost ... normal? like you can't even tell what it is anymore? hah. i do believe in evil, and i think it makes itself known all the time, but in places more soul-rottted than a theater full of satanists on 6/6/06.

this afternoon

today i looked out the kitchen window and saw something i've never seen before. a hummingbird, quietly perched on one of the many thick black lines that stream cable/phone/power past our house on wooden poles. the tiny creature had its back to me and was grooming itself with its long, slender, needle-like beak. it was framed perfectly in the rectangle of the window screen and, although not really possible to touch, breathtakingly close. the shining emerald green of its feathers first caught my eye, then the red blush on its head -- then i realized what it was. just sitting there, combing its gem-toned pelt. i have seen plenty of hummingbirds, but all of them in blurred motion, flitting from tree to tree, or zooming through the air like giant bumblebees. never one so still, absorbed in its preening, a tiny jewel on a wire.

happy birthday to me

a week ago it was my birthday -- already i've been 41 for a week. the celebration began the friday before with dinner at grace, courtesy of the divine ms. m, who also gifted me with a dangly silver coin-and-cord necklace. we sat in the quieter back room and started with champagne. i had oysters on the half shell with three great accoutrement, the best of which was the champagne granita, although the vinaigrette-ish one was good too. and we had salads, she of crab, me of smoked marlin, which was the absolute bomb. incredibly good. greens and lovely candied lemon peel (? i think) and whatnot, but that. smoked. fish. omg. tdf. etc.

she ordered me a half-bottle of something red and good, cannot remember what. and i had the wild boar, medium rare, with some sorta potato thing and roasted baby artichokes, omg sfg. it was a huge pile of boar, and i took some home to 00soul, who swooned over it, cold straight outta the box. and then for dessert we shared the "after-school special": a warm, melty chocolate chip cookie each, plus a small chocolate frosted yellow cupcake, a mini scooter pie, a shot of chocolate milk spiked with cinnamon, and an evil peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich -- all amazing and so much fun. a perfect b-day dessert.

french kicks

although the chocolate souffle i had on my actual birthday after dinner at mistral in sherman oaks was pretty incredible too. after much waffling, i chose this unexpected bistro -- unexpected b/c it's between a smoke shop (not a head shop) and an exotic-automobile repair shop on ventura blvd. but inside it's all flattering amber light, mirrors to add dimension and intimacy, polished dark wood, and proper linens. not to mention appropriately attired wait staff serving absolutely properly, and a handsome dark wood bar in one corner, with a tv set looming, playing the "american idol" final competition with the sound off and closed captions on, which is fairly hilarious considering it is a singing contest. but they couldn't have the sound on, b/c that would disturb the people. who were in fact blathering up a rather deafening storm, and probably would not have heard taylor kicking kat's ass anyway.

it basically felt like musso & frank, only smaller, in the valley, and french. if that makes sense.

the waiter knew just what wine to order when i told him the price range and said i wanted a red that was velvety, dry and not sweet, but fruity. i had a glass of champagne to start, and 00soul had his irish whiskey. i of course ordered the escargot -- a reason i had chosen the place -- and was rewarded with the traditional garlicky buttery still-in-the-shell critters (damn i have a hard time with those tweezery clampy things that are supposed to hold the shells fast while you dig in), dark and chewy and basically perfect. the freshness of the flavors -- garlic, parsley, butter -- was heady. mr. man had the house-cured salmon with a dill sauce and toast strips ... as soon as it arrived the scent of dill suffused the area as though direct from a garden. i had a taste, and the fish was lovely, with and without the garnishes. and i don't even like dill.

surprisingly, my boy ordered fish -- halibut, i think? with a fine dust of a mushroom crust, and a champagne sauce, atop mashed potatoes and with garlic spinach. he gave me a bite, and it was actually quite sublime -- the fish firm and substantial, the sauce ethereal yet striking. i had a special of kansas city strip steak in a shallot sherry butter sauce that was -- how you say? -- omg sfg tdf kwim? again, a blend of earthy and sublime. it came with lyonnaise potatoes (quite akin to home fries, really, except less fried) and a super-vinegary pile of arugula that was bracingly wonderful up against all that butter. i mean, as i chewed the lovely steak, savoring the sauce as well as the flavor of the meat, atop it all floated the wonderful essence of butter. and i loved it. (sorry about that, arteries.)

after all of that, what else could one eat but the chocolate souffle? one of the servers came and brought the setup to the table; with a flourish he gouged a slash in the middle of the dark, crusty pudding and deftly inserted a spoonful of the dense whipped cream, so that the swirled top was not disturbed but merely tilted down into the crevice, the better to melt artfully into the chocolate lava. as if it lasted long enough to actually do that; we attacked it with spoons and made short work of it, despite it being pretty damn hot from the oven. i swooned from the goodness. we went home and made the feeling last.

chinese rocks

the very next night i went off to k-town for the finale of lost and a spicy stir-fry by the magnificent coiledsoul. we snacked on potstickers with homemade spicy dipping sauce and celery smeared with evil blue cheese spread before she did wield the wok to create a veggie/chicken feast that burned with that rare fire that scorches but doesn't scar -- and later there was chocolate angel food cake with raspberry sauce. and then there was the total mindfuck of the finale, but that's another blog entry.

mutations

on thursday CS and i went to the australians in film screening of x3 at the DGA. what fun it was -- i could quibble with stuff all day, and perhaps this wasn't as good as the previous ones, but wtf. it was a damn good comic-book flick. there were points where i was genuinely moved, and a lot of the action was ass-kicking, but there was more cheesiness in this one too. i admit i don't expect much; i have never even read the x-men, although i'd like to check out the grant morrison ones and the joss whedon ones. it's just, too many costumes make me dizzy. anyway, after the screening we snacked at the reception and drank much shiraz, mate. and found ourselves entertaining some lad whose name i believe was chase? was it really? who poked his head around the pillar we were positioned behind and asked us what we were talking about. thus ensued a wide-ranging geek-like conversation covering time travel, the zodiac, psychic powers, hollywood bogusness, and day jobs. and toward the end, something about hot tubs, i think. which meant it was time to go.

antidote

feeling crappy? a bit fuzzy-headed? slightly rundown? me too, but i'm cured now. (except i think i might be getting sick -- fuck!)

last night i went over to hang with the doc for a while -- and if anyone hasn't noticed that he's back, well ... he's back -- after a day in which i felt curiously blah and out of sorts, despite lack of hangover or drama other obvious physical/mental vexations. (i was, however, kind of having a wardrobe meltdown and really hating the new skirt i had on.) we stared at the king of new york with the sound down and christopher walken lookin' young and crazy, laurence fishburne in ridiculous bling, david caruso with red hair, and steve buscemi once again blending into his character (i never recognize him in movies but he is always great). i recommend watching this film with sound, however, as i had never seen it before and had no fuckin' idea what was happening. although the violence was lovely. and occasionally hilarious. it seemed like at the end christopher walken turned into the terminator for a while, which reminded me of tom cruise in collateral. but that's free-association for ya.

anyway. we were talking and listening to music, and the doc put on this "roots of punk" comp that came with the new issue of mojo. ahhhhhh, the classics. although the doc wondered aloud how can was part of the roots of punk. but there was also iggy and the stooges, t. rex, the new york dolls, and eddie and the motherfuckin' cruisers!!! raw power, meeeaannn. and it made me feel better. b/c to me punk rock is soul music. (no, i ain't hatin'. i also love soul music, 'k?)

this morning i didn't feel quite so crappy but still a bit meh. i recently devised another jury-rigged sound system for the car, as i have many more pressing operations to pay for before we get to the cosmetic surgery. so i dialed up the hives on the ipod and cranked up the speakers to just-below-distort. "abra cadaver" started me on the healing path, but it was "two-timing touch and broken bones" that really made me sing hallelujah! another rock 'n' roll miracle.

float on

it's two days in a row now i've awakened to a blaze of sunlight in the backyard, rather than flipping the blinds to find a sea of grey. we keep the windows and doors open during the day to let spring in. and the canyon has been reopened -- both lanes of traffic flowing again b/w mount olympus and kirkwood -- at last, hurrah!

it felt weird, almost wrong driving down the hill and seeing cars going northbound. just a little adjustment in the routine. i went out this evening and ran errands in the fading light of a pleasant day. i had to go to two drugstores to find mini-lighters -- what's up with that?

the days last longer and warmth creeps in. on the way home i tooled along fountain and noted all the different colors of bougainvillea blooming: red, orange, pink, purple. also, the jacaranda, i noticed last week, are just beginning to pop out their lavender blossoms.

the light at fairfax and hollywood stayed green for a miraculously long time -- usually i get stuck at the red, which lasts forever -- and i managed to swing the left just as the yellow turned. coming around the curve, i found myself behind a white jetta or something with minnesota plates. balking at the turn onto laurel canyon, slow-ish, and just guaranteed to drag ass up the hill. groan.

the beast grew impatient. it is bad enough that i never take it out on the freeway for a good run. no self-respecting muscle car was gonna be dogging some tourist a mere stone's throw from home -- not when the path was otherwise clear and a few seconds of curving hilly switchback fun could be had. stopped at the light at mt. olympus, i slipped into the right lane, where you're supposed to peel off into little laurel. usually i don't pull this kind of crap -- b/c it's wrong -- not to mention uncool, and i hate it when people do it to me. otoh, the beast is a demanding creature, best yielded to when convenient.

anyway, it wasn't a contest. the light changed. i zoomed forward and away from minnesota plates. into the gauzy darkness of a canyon twilight.

summer's coming.

generation genocide

today was armenian remembrance day, officially the day recognized as the start of the armenian genocide. except, of course, it is not officially recognized in turkey, or in the u.s. for that matter.

as we sat in the ivory citybeat tower this afternoon, we began to perceive a racket from the street -- honking horns upon honking horns, like the world's longest wedding party or some transplanted third-world cacophony. after a while i looked down to wilshire, far below. many cars passed by festooned with a flag of three horizontal stripes: red, blue, orange. we decided it must be the armenian flag, and so i looked it up with the internets, and it was. we figured this had something to do with remembrance day, but what? so many cars were streaming west, and then a news helicopter appeared in the sky. i needed a break anyway and decided to check out what was going on. i grabbed my jacket, descended to ground level, and started walking down wilshire.

on the street the sun was shining but the air was cool and sharp. as i passed side streets, i saw the occasional flag-decorated cars parked on them. many SUVs, old and new compacts, and luxury cars drove along both east and west on wilshire, showing their colors. i marveled at the sheer diversity of vehicles, and, as i walked further, of people coming to join in whatever was going on. the t-shirts repeated the same messages -- "1915 - never again"; "in memory of our ancestors"; and assorted system of a down slogans -- but they were worn by middle-aged businessmen, teenage bookish types, youthful thug-wannabes, junior high kids, babies, grandpas ... whole families of armenian descent, all heading west on wilshire.

a trio of teenagers was walking near me, and i asked the extra boy, who was wearing a knitted ski-type cap with the armenian colors, what everybody was doing. "it's genocide remembrance day," he told me ... "yeah, i know THAT," i said, "but what is happening here?"

he explained that the turkish embassy was just ahead, and they were demonstrating for the turkish government to recognize what it did to his people (who are, by marriage and in my heart, also my people). he said something about them having only "nine more years" to get recognition -- i dunno why, except that would mark 100 years since the massacre began. i will have to look that up. so he said he thought they should demonstrate every day, not just this one day, until the turks admit what they did. spoken like a true armenian, man. relentless, a bit romantic, yet somewhat ruthlessly realistic (in terms of how much dedication it will take to change things).

anyway, it was kind of glorious. i was thinking about my grandmother, who died in 2000, many more decades after the turks who tried to kill her and her family would have liked. she survived and came to the u.s. and raised six children, most of whom also proliferated. i don't even know all the cousins on that side of my family. i couldn't help thinking she would really be amazed by the sheer numbers of armenians on the street. and then i remembered that i still need to tell her story. i hope someday i do.

at the corner of crescent heights and wilshire, the southwest side of the intersection was clotted with folks flying their flags and waving their signs, chanting "shame on turkey!" while handfuls of cops, many of them bike patrol, looked on w/o too much concern. i stayed for a little while, on the east side, just watching and listening. the sun was nice and warm, and it was pleasant to see the people exercising their free-speech rights. i could have purred.

not to trivialize the cause -- for which i have done my small part. and, small though it was, some months ago i received an accusatory e-mail from an angry young turk (in turkey), claiming i'd been duped by system of a down into believing lies and blah blah blah, deny deny. i was really angered by these charges and refuted them with razor-sharp fury. (i would reproduce the exchange here but i can't find the e-mails. i might have deleted them accidentally.) i suppose this person, who sounded very much like a student, wasn't expecting a person with an anglo last name to claim membership in an armenian family, nor any firsthand experience with a survivor of the massacre. but my adopted armenian heritage played a big part in making me who i am. i learned about what my stepmother's ancestors had been through before i even read the diary of anne frank -- often the first exposure that little white girls have to the deeper horrors of the world. this knowledge created an awareness of injustice in me at a very young age. which no doubt led me down this godless liberal path i now walk.

and as i bopped back down wilshire toward the office, a harley-riding gaggle of armenian bikers roared past, colors flying. i raised a closed fist in solidarity, which seemed to slightly puzzle passing armenians. "right on!" i said to two teenage girls who walked by in their genocide t-shirts. "yeah!" they said back. and i grinned stupidly and hoped hannah was up there somewhere, proudly watching her people keep up the fight.

wild mercury

mercury is no longer in retrograde. not all of us made it out alive.

i don't believe in astrology. yet i swear -- and may even have posted before -- that every single time a lot of crazy or just plain bad shit happens all at once, and nothing seems to get done, and i remark upon it in frustration to someone, they say, "well, mercury is in retrograde, ya know." mainly it means communication breakdown and at best rough transitions; here is an interesting summary of its effects. the planet mercury rules both my sign and that of a surprising number of people close to me. i think but am not sure that means it affects us more. in any case, this last round (which ended saturday) was straight from hell.

on sunday i read that, according to marilyn vos savant in parade magazine, every day on earth, about 150,000 people die (and 350,000 are born). funny how the scale of that statistic shrinks when one of the 150K is someone you love. that is a whole bizarre trip about which anyone who's been there knows all, and if you haven't, there's no explaining it. just be glad you don't understand, b/c you will. but as weird as it is to experience a loved one's death, there's a whole new set of weird when helping someone else through their own bizarre trip. it's like, you -- or, really, i can only say i -- almost feel like i want to go through it for them. knowing how awful it is, i want to spare them. but, duh. it doesn't work like that.

mercury in retrograde, however, is also supposed to be a time for reflection, deliberation, caution. it's no time to be trying to execute crazy ideas, or any ideas at all. that's not practical, of course: it happens for three weeks, three times a year. (next time beginning july 4 -- hide the fireworks!) now i find myself in my own sort of retrograde, trying to find time for reflection but resisting it. thinking leads to a real heavy sadness. even the war and all the usual freaky murders of the week seem distant, misty. not worth paying attention to b/c ... whatever. it'll still be there when i look in on it again. i have been thinking a lot about loss and potential. about, what is a life. and about how to help someone get on with theirs.

is this desire?

yesterday the l.a. times ran a feature on bettie page, the iconic '50s pinup. she's 82 now and quite arthritic, but still game to perpetuate the legend -- she was interviewed while slowly autographing a pile of her memorabilia, which is hotter than ever (hence, l.a. times feature). and she refused to have her face photographed, so that people can remember her as she was. she says she thinks nudity is natural and not shameful, which may be why she doesn't like the title of the new film about her: the notorious bettie page. the movie's producer explains the title was "meant ironically."

bettie guards her privacy and is a born-again christian of many years. she tells of how she made most of her outfits -- bikinis and lingerie -- which explains why they fit her so well, now that i think about it. anyway, she seems ok with it all, but two things were telling, one sad and one ironic. she and her sisters were all molested as children by their father; and bettie desperately wanted her mother's attention. she did well in school, but her mother seems to have been jealous of bettie and blamed her daughter when the woman's much-younger lover came on to the girl. then there were the klaws -- makers of the cheesecake photos/films bettie starred in. one very popular subset of bettie photos is the bondage scenarios, which she says in the article are the only ones she regrets. the klaws made her do an hour of the hog-tied, chair-bound, whip-wielding jazz in order to get paid for the other stuff she did. "but i never whipped anybody in my life," she says. "it was all pretend."

it's just an interesting portrait of a weird, ultimately symbiotic, cycle of exploitation (which is still going on -- asking an arthritic old woman to sign autographs! it takes her a whole minute to write her name). used sexually by her father, and rejected by her mother (the classic components for exhibitionist tendencies, although certainly not always the case). yet somehow maintaining a fair level of self-esteem: despite her mother's utter lack of interest in anything her daughter did, bettie valued being a good student and even tried for a scholarship. even with the modeling, she wasn't locked in a room and beaten into submission. she chose to do it b/c she could make more money than being a secretary. on the other hand, she was forced to compromise where she would have drawn the line: b/c she wanted to continue posing, the klaws compelled her to appear in scenarios she didn't really want to be in, as a condition of getting paid.

eventually bettie page got caught up in the moral posturing of her day, made to come to d.c. by sen. kefauver as a part of his investigation on pornography. the times article says she was never compelled to testify, which makes me think it was some sort of grandstanding move on the senator's part. but in any case, the klaws packed it in. by age 35, bettie was saved and living with jesus in relative obscurity.

it was interesting to catch a glimpse of her now, still being exploited in some ways, and still also willing to accept the exploitation of others in order to profit from exploiting herself. (she of course has her own web site.) that's been her life -- a life lived so long that all the old crimes and misdemeanors are just stories to tell, so long as someone is interested.


london calling

incredibly, another tidbit in the l.a. times worth noting: today's travel section had an article on affordable places to stay in popular cities, such as london. one of the places was the portobello gold, a pub in notting hill where my new pal and the doc's old one, boss goodman, is the chef. (i can't link to the reference b/c for some reason you have to be registered to view the item.) when i went to london last fall, i drank and ate at will at this wonderful spot -- boss is a prince among men; i was spoiled rotten just as if i were in my own home -- but i did not stay there, although i wish i had. and next time i will.

toxicity

i am walking poison. i am in a toxic mood. the whole world feels toxic, so why not me too? although the truth is i would be this way even if i lived in the garden of eden. especially, no doubt, if i lived there. in fact, i would probably be the serpent, slithering in to muck it all up. pssst! hey, eve. eve! over here...

i'm filled with anger and hate and despair and jealousy and resentment. the reasons are not important -- except for the ones that are. but those are the ones that everybody knows. and the other ones ... are not important.

i don't really need an excuse to feel like crap. it just so happens that i feel like crap. i am physically well enough. i am just morally and emotionally sick at heart. for selfish personal reasons as well as altruistic communal ones. except i hate all of humanity and think extinction might be the best fate for it. at the same time i hate to see people suffer. but it pisses me off when people support their own oppression. so then i think they're stupid, so they deserve to suffer. it's all very tony soprano, isn't it?

i feel extremely alone and i don't even mind. in fact, i wish i were more alone. i crave isolation like insert some bad addiction metaphor here. i can barely stand to look at people, let alone talk to them. i don't know why. some of them i love a lot. urgh. but my soul is moth-eaten. i feel walled-in like the thing. i don't want to know anything anymore. i don't want to think about anything, and i really don't want to feel anything. since that is impossible, i seethe instead.

i am chemical-bright rage on legs. i hate everything and everybody. and no one more than myself.