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Men In Womens

20 Oct

The man in front of me is wearing striped pajama pants. Although this is a fairly nondescript thing to do on a Sunday morning at 10:30 at Starbucks, these particular pants have a Liz Claiborne tag attached to the outside, and at this moment, for all I know, Liz Claiborne only makes women’s clothing.

Viewpoint – Photo by Kesinee Tongtuntrai

To find this sort of eccentricity whenever I drive my crusty car into this licentious landscape of Hollywood is appealing – it’s like walking into some sort of strange dream. However, Starbucks might qualify as a bohemian universe unto itself, offering comforting drinks to myriad weary travelers in need – in whatever they’re wearing.

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Is The Price Right? Goats Concur

11 Sep

How economic and green is it to transport 100 goats into the midst of Los Angeles denizens? Minus the transportation costs and exhaust, it’s resulted in a savings of $4,500 (human hires cost $7,500, goats go for $3,000 all in) for The Community Redevelopment Agency, inaguarated in 1948 to clean up the town so to speak – at least when it concerns housing.

In their owns words, “The Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA/LA) of the City of Los Angeles is a public agency established to attract private investment into economically depressed communities, eliminate slums, abandoned or unsafe properties, and blight throughout Los Angeles,” – Thus the Corona Bearded Goats acting as clean-up crew to a weedy and steep hillside, known as Angels Knoll, in smoggy downtown Los Angeles. Assuming it’s been good to the terrain (imagine the fertilizer!) in aesthetics and savings, it might not be the last time we see this atypical sight.

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Watching TV Is Not An Exercise

11 Sep

I worry about my brain.

Yesterday I wanted to pour coffee on my salad even before I sat down to eat it (maybe lumping that in with brain malfunction is a little presumptuous since I was eating tofu and spinach, and really who wouldn’t want it to taste like something, anything else than what it actually is?). Nevertheless, I was having visions of doing this act while reading/eating in Barnes & Noble across from my office. Am I forgetting my vitamins?

Photo by John Baird

I don’t have cable TV. I have TV, I just don’t have the multi-channel surf wonderment that is 150 channels of digital information at its best, with the exception of all gaming options of Tomb Raider (only you, Lara). Anyway, thanks to my empty pockets, I won’t pony up the funds to pay for the 145 channels I will never watch, even with the option that I will get to watch Showtime’s Dexter Season 3 (I love you Michael C. Hall!) with a $80 dollar upgrade (I don’t love you that much). So, with just 28 channels of network TV, 20 of which are in Spanish, I’m left with two choices, KCET’s channel 15, or Fox’s channel 11. Fox loses because The Simpsons are not on, and therefore, at 8:30pm at night, I’m left with KCET’s public programming. Lucky me, it’s about brain fitness and rightly called The Brain Fitness Program hosted by a former famous actor, whose name I can’t recall. Where are those vitamins?

Photo by M.S. White

Dr. Jason Karlawish has a lot to say, so I’m listening intently, but as all programming goes, they cut to commercial and I realize they’re hocking a Brain Fitness Video (Like Brain Age? Um, no. I imagine Richard Simmons – Fitness for Your 50’s). I was watching based on the promise of educational content; free unencumbered access to it (where’s my tivo?). I’m out. I think I’ll stick to chess, I hear that can be good for your brain too.

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Fly Away

21 Jul

On Saturday night I was irritated by a fly. I have no idea how it got into my apartment, and I’m wondering if I have a hole in a window screen somewhere. I unsuccessfully tried to kill it with a roll of paper towels – for half an hour. The fly made dinner making more complicated, as it kept hovering over my chicken bits and veggies, coming within millimeters of my about-to-be-devoured meal. Then I lost the fly’s location and decided I had hit it enough to knock it unconscious and send it flailing into some dusty corner.


I woke up on Sunday around 9am. Intent on meeting a friend at the Pasadena Descanso gardens, I hurriedly got dressed, cooked up a breakfast of eggs and bacon, and heated yesterday’s coffee in the microwave. I got dressed, ate breakfast and finished my coffee with the exception of one gulp remaining. I grabbed my keys, my purse, put on my shoes and reached for my cup. With the last sip, a clump of what I thought was coffee grinds hit my lips. I stopped and looked into my cup to investigate the confusing dark mass. Guess that fly got the best of me – it had been steeping its flavor in my cup o’ joe. Looking back at me, there it was – dead, on the cusp of my cup.

How many diseases do you think I just inherited?

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From The Streets

7 Jul

Ingenuity is often the result of dire straights.

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Late Night Theatre

14 Jun

Boom! Pfizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! Whiz! are the sounds of streamers exploding around me in the dark.  I sit with 10 others in a diminutive theater as a man playing an organ, as if in an old western, slowly descends into the floor of the stage in front of us. The music, the soundtrack to a full length feature drama, swells and lights flicker in the displays on either side of the stage, highlighting the faces of plaster cast replicas of characters from Narnia. The organ player drops completely out of sight, and the heavy velvet curtain is quickly pulled upward as previously obscured stage props, in the form of a thick forest overgrown with moss, appear.

The stage ignites and theatrics ensue with the appearance of a man in knightly costume who mysteriously appears, leaps onto a stone wall and draws his sword. He rushes around the scene, he is alone and in search of something. Suddenly, the denouement erupts in a dramatic fury of his arm as he brings his drawn sword upward and points at a floating stone that says ‘NARNIA.’ The lights dim and the feature presentation begins.

This is the opening scene for the movie <em>The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian </em>at El Capitan Theatre. The place is a merry go round of Disney infused aspiration. Props displayed everywhere, walls covered with fake brick walls, synthetic moss leaking out of cracks, large signs with chalk-written directions pointing the way, and a low ceiling to consummate the cozy atmosphere; all with the intent to take you to an imaginary place once you’ve stepped inside. I can see why El Capitan draws the under 10 crowd. At first, I thought my hubby and I had bought tickets for a play, instead of the feature length film. </p>El Capitan is across from Grauman’s Chinese Theater, a perfect pit stop for entertaining tiny adults and their older counterparts in need of a rest. The theater only showcases one feature at a time, with accessories to match and smiling staff to point the way to your velvet covered seat. Their particular presentation effectuates a riveting cinematic adventure by providing its viewer with a sensory experience and hopefully, a story to tell your friends.

When I leave at 2 o’clock in the morning with the other theater patrons, I am greeted with a waving white-gloved hand and a cheerful ‘goodbye.’ Steadfast to the end, the staff acts out an exquisite bravura conclusion to the nights performance.

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Stranger To Me, Stranger To Them

8 Jun

Once every two weeks or so, my sister and I turn to each other and automatically know that what we need at the moment is a gigantic burger surrounded by mannequins dressed as cowboys and cowgirls alongside a ‘smoking’ campfire and a bull ride to match. Thus is the state of our local watering hole and tourist trap, Saddle Ranch. The best spot at this place is outside, as the inside is dark, crowded and for some reason, always smells like apple pie. Nothing wrong with that, but the real draw is the people watching. Sunset Boulevard is just a few feet away once you’re on the deck of the restaurant. You can catch an eye-full of the camera-toting mid-western troupes, crowding in atop a double-decker, or pitifully shitty bus, gleefully driving by as they gaze with thoughtless looks at their surroundings. They stare at us and we stare right back, give our heads a tilt, and laugh. We are all on the same page at the moment, we are all tasting the superficial sights and sounds of Hollywood. These conspicuous traveling groups triapse around Hollywood in sneakers and hawaiian tees, visiting every man-made contrivance known as a landmark, including Saddle Ranch (Sex and The City anyone – look it up). Tourists are hilarious.


You can watch tourist group think all over Hollywood. Driving past the Chinese Theatre is a good start, especially during a premiere! Mostly pudgy, sneaker clad tourists push themselves together and crowd the streets, trying to get a peek at any celebrity they can. On days where there are not premieres, an emaciated Spider-man poses outside the theatre, next to a very chubby Marilyn Monroe, a demon on stilts, cinderella, Chucky and a frozen golden man. Sometimes Spongebob and Homer Simpson join in alongside a a tree on stilts as he tries to blend in with the flora so he can bend down to scare passerbys. I imagine these charactes make a pretty penny from all the photos (you’re supposed to tip!) they work for each day.


In all my years traveling across the U.S. and living in two of the top tourist destinations, I never once remember actually making a point to go on the duck tour (Miami – look it up) or ride on a bus destined for celebrities homes and the Hollywood sign while sitting next to sweaty strangers as we bump along the Sunset Strip. I always prefer the less traveled route and local coffee shops. So why the bus? I will never understand the draw, except on the most basic level of knowing that these patrons are foreigners and simply need something convenient. I imagine that one of these days, I’ll decide to test out and visit the tourist traps; Everyone should see a bit of the characteristic traits of their ‘hometown’. Till then, I raise my beer to those who add to Hollywood’s extraordinary atmosphere and chose to brave the masses and rub elbows with all those fellow tourists before me!

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A Man Among Strangers

14 May

The Emigrants destiny: The foreign country has not become home, but home has become foreign.

~Alfred Polger


I almost choked on tears when I came across this thought by Mr. Polger. Nothing truer could be said to those who’ve traveled far and now reside in stranger places than those where they were born. I believe that it is far greater to leave your home and add experience to your character, than to never change and never wander far from the things you know; as leaving home is sure to change you in ways you’d never believe. It’s like hating onions your whole life, and then suddenly loving them.

Mr. Polger brings up a point that is all too familiar to me now, as it is with disbelief that I feel I couldn’t live anywhere (for the moment) except L.A. My love has grown for the city’s quirks and ambitious atmosphere; the hungry wolves and sun-tanning beach bunnies, dirty bars and bum friendly Hollywood Boulevard. It is a far-cry from my somewhat wholesome small town beginnings. Home will always be home, but it’s comforts don’t offer much to me now.

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Insomnia

13 May

It is well past midnight and I’m walking down Beverly Boulevard to grab a cup of Joe. This is fairly rare. I should be sleeping. I treasure my down time.

So imagine this…a long room (more long than wide anyway) drenched in sepia tones, dimly lit by two dusty 1940’s vintage crystal chandeliers, furnished with small wooden tables, soiled velvet couches, a smattering of laptop power plugs lining the walls at waist height, and a waitstaff demonstrating their best night-of-the-living-dead impression while asking you what you want with a hint of denigration. They don’t serve decaf here(I tried that). It’s Insomnia cafe people and it’s well past midnight.

Come ready to party, this cafe is a grunge fest, complete with out of work artists, actors and writers working away on their little mac laptops. Take a hint from the name, this cafe is for the hard-working and ambitious. These patrons are so consciously self-unaware the stench of pretension is a little thick.

Onwards….

If you want a late night snack and a quiet place to work, this cafe should be your destination; but here’s hoping you sleep well.

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Dov Charney Hates L.A.

15 Apr

The class act that is Dov Charney, the child porn photographer and all-around sleaze, continues to be his offensive self. As you can see, in the front yard of his porn emporium, aka Charney’s L.A. home, sits a bronze statue giving the bird to downtown L.A. To a city that’s given him so much – naive girls, factory workers to sexually harass and a tolerant advertisment policy – you’d think that hand would be a little more welcoming.

I’m confused, are the girls of L.A. not so agreeable lately? Did he run out of parting gifts?

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