Ghosts of Joe Slovo

So, as my loyal readers know, I am something of a futbol junkie, with the perverse twist of being a futbol junkie for the domestic US-Canadian top flight league, Major League Soccer.

I've subjected both of you to many posts on this subject, but you can now rest easy on that score.

The owner of one of the biggest futbol blogs in the Unites States, Ives Galarcep, put out a call recently on Soccer By Ives, for 14 weekly correspondents to follow each of the MLS teams during the season, writing from a fan's perspective. I, who's obesession runs into such esoterica as actually playing the damn official MLS Fantasy soccer game, put in an application and a writing sample. And what do you know? Ives, who must have been suffering from a mild stroke or passing dementia, picked me to blog about the LA Galaxy.

So, starting next Tuesday you could be able to go to the site and see my 250-500 word musings on the beautiful game.

Kick ass and put it in the net!

I've been thinking a lot about stuff lately, he said, displaying a keen sense for the vauge and ambiguous. Here's the guide: politics, futbol, and con artists.

First, politics: Here's you superstat of the moment. If, in the 2006 election cycle, non-whites had been registered and voted at the same rates as whites, there would have been 7.5 million more voters in the electorate. The context for this is that people think bringing in 2 million or so new voters in an election cycle (above who you would expect to enter under the current rates of entry and exit) is a Really Big Deal. Bringing in 7.5 million would be mind-blowing.

Why does this matter? These voters generally favor one party over another. You can guess which. This is why the whole freak-out by the Department of Justice in 04 and 06, (illegally) using the machinery of the US Govt. to suppress voters from just these demographics, push for voter ID laws, and generally attack groups like ACORN as engaging in "voter fraud" is so important. The whole Attorneygate deal hinged on people not being zealous enough in attacking so-called fraud. Turns out there was no fraud. Turns out it was an effort to keep certain people from voting. And those numbers, while large, are nowhere near 7.5 million. More like 500K-1 Million, spread strategically over the country.

So what would happen if you DID bring in 7.5 million of these voters. I can tell you the GOP has no interest in finding out.


Next, futbol: The LA Galaxy are on a 4-game win streak after having their worst season ever to date. Ugly wins, achieved thorugh grit, will, and teamwork. Not so very much fun to watch, except that, as a fan, knowing they have to win 7 in a row to make the playoffs, every minute has tension and excitement. I'll miss the season when its over.


After that, con artists: How many of you have been conned? And how many times? I was thinking about this earlier in the week, when a guy in a not-so-new-but-not-so-old Mercedes motioned me over from the crosswalk at 37th and Flower and gave me a sob story about being from the Valley (Encino) and forgetting his wallet and needing cash to fill the tank to get to the next place on his itinerary. Maybe. Maybe not.

This situation is a dilemma that in my case relies more on my own self-image than the actual circumstances in front of my eyes. Does the guy need gas? I can't verify it. Is he just messing with me to get cash to do something he thinks he can't get cash for if he's honest? (AKA "Is this guy a crack fiend preying on my charity to get high and support the terrorist economy?") Maybe. Do I care? Not really. I want to live in a world where someone in need can walk up to someone else and say, "Yo, I need cash to fix an immediate need." and the other person will say, "Here's something to help you out." I want to be that guy. But I'm not interested in separating out the "worthy" from the "unworthy".

So I've decided to categorize each of these encounters not as a charity transaction, but an an entertainment event. I generally ask myself, "What is this story worth?" Based entirely on subjective and ever-changing criteria, of course. How well rehearsed is the story? How smooth is the delivery? How much does the dude smell? How much pathos is involved? Are their kids? What kind of tragedy is being invoked? Is there self-deprication invovled? What is the level of obsequiosness? How much am I being assumed to be a clueless white man devoid of the street smarts given to your average 8th grade survivor of middle school?

Based on my own interpretation of the answers to these questions and the level of the "ask", I generally come up with a dollar figure that satisfies us both. And I don't have to worry about where or how the money will be spent or whether or not I'm being taken by a con artist or a street hustler. It was an equal tranaction. I got a show and the dude got some cash. End of story.

This also got me thinking about all the times I really did get conned out of what I would consider to be "real" money, most of which also played on my own self-image. But I was less experienced and more naive, so I got hooked and reeled in nice and easy like. But those are stories for another posting.

Kick ass and take names.

ETA: I have rewritten the short paragraph on Amber T's performance, editing out excessive snark on the principle that I should write criticism in a way that I would like to read were it about my own work. Also I have gotten more info on how the American Heart Association benefited from the performance and have added that.



Last night Tyche and I made our way to the ends of West LA to the Brentwood Theater, an intimate 500 seater recently restored to its 1920's splendor. The Theater itself is actually on the campus of the west Los Angeles Dept. of Veterans Affairs campus and was originally used as a venue to entertain service members with movies, USO shows and their own productions. We were there because bucky_sinister had tipped me off in his own journal about a show that was happening.

Called The Drums Inside Your Chest, it was a benefit for the American Heart Association (though as a benefit it was unclear what they got out of it. At most the show brought in $7500 which seems like a paltry sum, especially when compared with what it must have cost to at least transport the performers to the show, if every thing else like fees, venue rental, production help, etc. was counted as an in-kind donation - even as an education event it was a bust since the AHA people got no stage time and the only way to get info was to go to their table, place far away from merchandise, etc. But I'm not quibbling about that, just noting, as a disinterested professional.  NEW INFO: Apparently the various sponsors of the show not only donated enough to compensate the poets, always a good thing, but also gave directly to the AHA. In fact the AHA got four times as much as the poets. But, in true keeping with the internal culture of mega-charities, they apparently didn't see this benefit as an opportunity to educate the public and so had to be BEGGED to show up with a table. I really don't understand how organizations that have as their primary function educating the public about their issue miss the point on these kinds of things.) and as such it could get away with the cheesy title the promotors saddled it with.

But that was the absolute worst part of the show, that title. Once the stage lights went up on the MC, the musician and magicial Rob Zabrecky who interspresed magic tricks and appropriately-pitched general weirdness between performers, the show hurtled through the best overal performance of poetry/spoken word that I've seen since well, maybe ever. I mean it is really hard to miss with a line-up that includes: Amber Tamblyn (yes, the actor), Beau Sia, Bucky Sinister, Mindy Nettifee, Derrick Brown, Buddy Wakefield and Jeffrey McDaniel. I suspect that such a show might have blown out the circuits of whoisthespirit's brain.

Amber T. started the whole thing off and she was my least favorite performer on a night when everyone on stage was worth the price of admission. Given her level of fame, I'm sure that she is the victim of increasingly low expectations from random people in the audience and her set very easily overcame those. Not only is her writing complex, her stagecraft is strong and she brought out her mother to accompany her on guitar. They worked together very well and, like all the performers who used music last night, the music integrated very well with the pieces, which is not something that always happens with spoken word pieces. I personally was not as taken with her content as I was with most of the other performers - I felt it was almost but not quite there, like the pieces were unfinished, a maze of interesting metaphor and simile and a few Big Ideas in the nooks and crannies, but no infrastructure to get them to connect. I'm not getting the more universal meanings of the work that I suspect she is consciously trying to get at. However, she was the driving force behind organizing the whole damn thing, so I'm feeling just a wee bit guilty for not liking her work as much when on the whole she gave me one of the best nights of poetry ever.

Beau Sia did a set of the kind of extremely accesible poetry for which he is well known. Mostly just rants disguised as poems he was funny and had great stage presence. He ended with a poem centered on the current hot buton issue of immigration that started out with a disclaimer in the voice of his mother which was the most complex and moving thing he did all night. The actual poem was, again, funny but went at the issue with all the subtley of a shotgun and the complexity of an amoeba. Not that this was, in the end, a bad thing. Certainly an issue like immigration is big enough to sustain all kinds of approaches to it and someone's got to answer the jeremiads of the wingnuts in kind. Beau did a great job.

Bucky Sinister, from who's journal I found out about the event, was two things last night. First a fabuolous counterpoint to the first two performers, bringing a backwoods hicksville, usa sensability mixed with equal parts punk rock and dive bar that contrasted with the styles of Amber and Beau. Second, a rough cut molassas-and-whiskey delivery that served to imbue his pieces with emotional timbre they demand. He did two of my favorites: Bruce Wayne and NASCAR (which I'm sure have different titles), both of which deal with populations that don't get much play in California poetry venues: rural working class white folks. The key thing about a great Bucky Sinister performance is that he subverts his image as a huge tattooed, blond-buzz cut, retired left tackle kind of guy with poems of surprising intimacy and poignance. This was exemplified perfectly in his other piece, which was an ode to a vanished donut shop in the Mission District in San Fran, but was really a meditation on loss and maturation.

Mindy Nettifee was great! She was new to me, but a wonderful discovery. She was very funny, but used the humor to smack you around with some Deeper Points. "Acceptance Speech" was the pinnacle of her performance. Structured as the kind of speech one might give upon receiving an award, it thanks people and things who have held her back or made her look bad. Two thirds of the way through you realize that this is actually a poem about coming to terms with losing a lover through heart-breaking betrayal. Extremely funny and clever throughout, this twist in the poem just makes the whole thing hit much harder, the way a great performance poem should. Open you up and then drive a knife through your consciousness. When she was done I wanted more.

After Mindy there was a short intermission complete with free drinks and not crap drinks either, but Vitamin Water and POM juice drinks. Delicious.

The last half of the show was even better than the first.

Derrick Brown did the best set of the night in a show that was packed with "best sets of the night". Over the years Derrick has been getting more and more sophisticated about melding music with spoken word. I remember him motoring through Berkeley once as feature at the slam there showing up with a device that allowed him to scratch using CD's instead of vinyl. That was a fun show, but last night's set was much more enveloping. He had a piece that dealt with LA's ubiquitous police helicopters and relationships that started with some audience participation. More than anyone I've seen he was able to meld his words with music that made them both more than they were before and yet not be "singing". The interesting thing is that I can't tell you much about the words themselves, even though they were top-notch. What I remember most from his set was where it took me emotionally. I felt engulfed in lazy waves and currents, surrounded by currents and eddies that pushed me into the energy and embrace of my seatmate and wife. It made me feel intimacy not with the performer, but with my wife and that's a rare gift.

Buddy Wakefield is my favorite poet. If there were one poet I would like to my writing to be favorable compared with, it would be him. Not only does he deal with difficult personal and politics issues and themes, he does it by weaving dense fabrics of words, breath, hesitations, syncopated delivery and smiles that amaze you with the word choice even as they insinuate the deeper meaning into your brain. He hits me on all levels and I really can't thank him enough for that. In fact, if plagarism is the sincerest form of flattery, then I've done that too, lifting the key part of my piece "Gospel and White Rocks" directly from a key transition in Buddy's "Convience Stores". Don't tell him, okay? I was most looking forward to his performance and I was not disappointed. One of the great things about Buddy is that he always looks so glad to be performing, so glad you are there to share this momemt with him, but that can mask the intensity and craft that he brings with him on stage. He out of all performers last night made the most of his body as a piece of the performance. He brought Emily Wells with him on stage for a couple of pieces and that just racheted up the impact a notch. When he finished with "Pretend" a great piece on belief and action complete with human beat box and Wells as human Theramin I was in another time zone. Which is why I go to spoke word show in the first place.

Jeff McDaniel is cited by most writers of in this small sub-scene, at least most male writers, as their original influence and I can see why. He's been doing something like this since the early 90's and his delivery is almost iconic. Laconic, clear, loud, but also almost a monotone, you can see his influence in timing, pacing, imagery and subject choice. His "167 Words" is a classic of modern spoken word. These days, though, he seems to be moving towards a more cerebral presentation and with less emphasis on performance. While still a great set, I didn't think, from an audience perspective that ending with him was the best choice. Buddy's emotion and intensity would have been much better suited to the final set, leaving the audience in a transcendent head-space. Jeff brought us back to our heads too soon and then left us there at the end. Still, I appreciated his work, but I think I would have put it either before or after Beau Sia (probably before to make Beau seem evern more energetic and aggressive than he actually was - at that point it would have been the perfect energy injection).

If this is to be the quality of performance and writing that Amber Tamblyn is serious about presenting regularly in her "The Best Contemporary American Poets Series", they you can bet that I am going to lie, cheat, or steal my way into tickets for every show. At $15 last night's show was a steal, like having your local connection surprise you with a "Buy One Get One Free" on an eighth of Maui Wowie. If you live in the LA area, be on the lookout for the next show and do yourself and favor and go.

Kick ass and take names.</lj></lj>

After a recent orgy of National Poetry Slam video watching, in order to edify vistors from Tuscon/San Diego eager for anything Slam-related, I decided that, what with weddings and honeymoons all over, I'd try to ease my way back into a spoken word-centered creative community.

So I went to ratpackslim's weekly show, Green, that he puts on at The Palmer Room in Culver City off of Motor Ave. Normally he gets about 30-50 folks, but he had probably more like 80 or so last night, which is always good from an energy-in-the-room perspective. While the show itself was an open mic, and therefore subject to the faults of open mic poetry (though, blessedly, Slim/Rob does try to impose a 3 minute time limit), it was the random people in the audience that made the night for me.

Specifically, I ran into dahled, supernaz, and mskittieface, all down from the Bay Area for various reasons. D&N were down to hit Green and sell raffle tickets to send the BrOakland Slam to Nationals in Austin and then do a feature at Da Poetry Lounge, home of Team Hollywood. And sell more raffle tickets. mskittieface, on the other hand was there to drown her recent sorrows in the wake of a relationship that has hit the shoals.

Readers of her journal know it hasn't been a fun ride, so she was pulling out all the stops before she hits the airport for the trip back to Oakland today. Its impressive to watch someone dedicated to obliterating a day put the drinks way, I have to say. Lest anyone worry, she was in capable hands and had a ride. So she could achieve oblivion without any worries, so to speak. Still, I'm not sure I want to be her head today.

It was great to see all three of them, a bit of the Bay down here, and it made me nostalgic as hell for my former town and for my circle of friends. I got caught up on some of the gossip and moves and mskittieface and I reminisced about coming into the slam scene in the Bay, which we both did through Berkeley within weeks of each other.

It is a testiment to the scene there that we both still have fast friends from it, people who we still see on a regular basis, and to the scene in Cali, oh hell, nationally, really, that we can find other circles of like-minded folk, kick a few poems, get smashed at a bar, and end up puking in their apartments. And then have them invite us back.

Still, as much as I love Echo Park and find more interesting things in LA, I miss the Bay, the slam scene, and the ease by which you can wander around and basically trip over some underground art scene spilling out of a bar/coffeehouse/converted warehouse. Too much overground art here in LA. Finding the underground is harder, but, I suspect, more rewarding for it, though, I fear, a lot more insular.

Good luck and much fun to everyone traveling to Big Sur this weekend for West Coast Regionals and then in August to Austin for Nationals.

Kick ass and take names.

A notes and thoughts from all over...

• I'm getting married in 7 weeks! Now the craziness ratchets up a notch.
• I went to the LA Galaxy's open house today at the Home Depot Center, which is really a very lovely soccer stadium. I checked out my seat, which was about as lame as I thought, but one cool thing they let you do is switch seats with seats still unsold. So I moved to almost the center line, still on the second deck. Which is fine with me because from up top you can really see the runs develop and all the play off the ball.
• Met a couple ticket holders around. One just wanted to name drop and talk at me. The other was actually interested in the state of the game and the team and is in my section. Oh my god! A section buddy!
• On the way in I noticed a bunch of players warming up on one of the practice fields that surround the HDC. Too old to be youth players, but I couldn't imagine an adult league playing there, especially since it really only looked like enough for a couple teams, not an entire morning of league games. On the way out the teams were playing and didn't some of the players actually look familiar. Familiar as in Jimmy Conrad, Chris Albright, Sasha Kljestian, Taylor Twellman, Josh Gros, etc. It was the USMNT taking on some verion of the UCLA men's team.
• Saw about 20 minutes of the match. Donovan looked average with flashes of brilliance. Passing was horrible despite the hours and hours they were getting from the overmatched college kids. Bornstein continues to be exciting to watch, but he can get burned. Overall it was fun to see the players so close-up and for free. Twellman looked good, but was having trouble getting service (sloppy passing). And Josh Gros looked like he could run forever, but his touch kept letting him down. Sasha looked good on the right wing, but you have to think that that spot is Dempsey's for the taking.
• It rained today in LA for the first time in almost a month. Apparently we're about 75% behind normal rainfall for the year at this point. Favorite part: the sprinklers coming on at 5 PM in the middle of it all. I love the LA mindset.
• Working on a day off is for the birds. I did about 4 hours of work and still have another 3-4 to get done. Just have to get up ass-early tomorrow. At least I did the cleaning today so all I have to do tomorrow is the shopping.
• And finish my project.
• And outline the wedding ceremony.
• So maybe I should go.

Kick ass and take names.

One of the things about getting hitched, when you do all the "traditional" things, like having a decent sized ceremony and inviting relatives you haven't seen but once in your life, is that you can occasionally get some pretty nice swag.

Case in point: Tyche's bridal shower. Apparently part of this "shower" tradition is to set the bride up as she enters her new life. Set-up as in monetary gifts, like it was a bat mitzvah or something. So back a few weeks ago she went to Oakland to be feted by family and friends and came home with a passel of checks which amounted to enough to get some "real" furniture. And by real I mean not for sale at IKEA.

One of the great things about IKEA is that you can get stuff that looks pretty good and doesn't immediately break for not so much moola. One of the down sides is that I can only take so much blond pressboard furniture. Which should clue you in, my faithful readiers, to the fact that I have lived a great deal of my life with IKEA furniture. Including the dining room table we've been using for the past 18 months. But no longer.

See, with the shower swag Tyche was like, "It is time for a new dining room table." (Which is good because I for sure whould have blown it all on hookers and smack - another good reason to get married.) So we spent MLK weekend looking at table listings on Craigslist. We narrowed down the candidates to a realtively new Crate and Barrel solid wood moderist deal from this young couple in the BH (that's Beverly Hills for all you out-of-towners) and an antique (well at least 70 years old) solid mahogany table with 2 leaves and 6 gorgeous matching chairs hanging out in a trailer park in Culver City (a trailer park that rents double wides for $1400/month, which goes solidly in my WTF?- Housing Prices file).

Anyway we snagged the mohagany on the theory that old furniture is made better and plus it looks amazing and can seat up to 12 in a pinch. Not that we have 12 chairs, mind you, but everyone will have a place at the table. And the 6 chairs we do have are probably the best chairs I will ever own in my entire life. Once we shined the table up, painted over all the kick and scratches, and cleaned the chairs we stepped back and looked. And damned if we didn't just class up the joint. And we said to each other, this is one way we know we're adults. We have real furniture (which will definately last longer than the hookers and smack would have).

Well, either that or we've completely bought into bourgeoise values - but that's just a "ta-may-to" - "ta-mah-to" debate, right?

In the meantime I'll be eating on my amazingly cool and elegant table.

Kick ass and take names.

So. I am a soccer junkie. Most people do not know this about me unless you read this journal, because while I am a junkie, I am high-functioning and manage to spend little on my habit. Well, until this year. Here's teh backstory.

In 2006 I moved to Los Angeles, which has the fortune of having two Major League Soccer franchises the LA Galaxy and Chivas USA. I moved from the Bay, which until 2006 had the San Jose Earthquakes. The 'Quakes and the Galaxy hate each other and the Galaxy and the Goats hate each other, as should any two teams who play in the same state and have any pride at all.

In 2005 I was a major Quakes fan, although mostly I was a major soccer fan and just loved to see good games. This makes me a major Galaxy hater. In 2006, finding myself in LA and with the Quakes now playing in Houston (where they ended up winning the championship) I was without a home team. Given the nature of Galaxy-hatred (which was made so blessedly wonderful by the fact that they really sucked last year - think the Cowboys going 1-15 - in other words, pure joy) and the fact that it turns out Chivas USA put together a team that played elegant attacking soccer that was exciting to watch, I started becoming a Chivas fan.

But then several things happened. First, the architect of Chivas' style and one of the best coaches in the country left to coach the US men's team. Then one of their best midfielders left as did an effective striker. But then they got one of the best midfielders in the league. But then...

Well then the Galaxy signed David Beckham the most famous footballer in the world, even if he's really only a very very very talented role player. Well dang it all to heck! I am a soccer junkie. One of the best known players signs with what has been a decent but evolving league nowhere near the quality of the best leagues in the world. With the team in the town in which I live. But not the team I kinda like. No. With the team I've always hated. So I have the chance to see Beckham play in half the team's games in 2007 (due to the way the MLS season works versus other leagues in the world), but to do it I have to become a Galaxy season ticket holder.

Oh I know what some of you are thinking: just get the tickets and root against the team while watching Beckham play. But, look, I know how this fan thing works. You get inside the stadium, everyone else is rooting for the home team, you start imbibing their values and then BAM! you're the victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, rooting for the Galaxy despite your best intentions, despite your own personal values and integrity!

But then, I thought to myself, I live in the US and I love soccer. I am reviled by sportswriters and the butt of routine jokes from everyone from Conan O'Brien to Harry Scherrer. I have a domestic league that can maybe be compared with the 2nd tier leagues around the country. David Beckham comes to my hometown team. I owe it to myself to take this opportunity to see some world-class soccer being played where I live.

So I did it. I got season tickets to the Galaxy. I got eye-socket-fucked on the price, but, well David Beckham! And now Captain America is comeing to Red Bull New York so I get to the see the best American player ever live at least once. This could be fairly awesome, especially for an American soccer fan and an MLS fan, which means someone with rountinely low expectations, but high high high hopes and dreams.

Kick ass and take names.

I got up at 4:30 AM on Sunday to use the bathroom. At least, that's what I thought woke me up. As I stood in the bathroom taking the pause that refreshes, I heard that the neighbors upstairs were still partying, what with the music wafting down thorugh the ceiling.

But back in bed, it become clear that the music wasn't coming from the neighbors upstairs. No, it was coming from the evangelical Hispanic church across Glendale Blvd. Basically, across the street. But let me just be clear about one thing. This church seats maybe 70 if everyone if really friendly and "acorss the street" means 6 lanes of traffic, a median, and a gas-station-sized vacant lot from our apartment.

So basically they were rocking out with amplified music and a mic'd up preacher at 4:30AM on a Sunday. Which means they got there at least a 4:00 AM to set up and get everyone in the mood. Now, I have seen some dedicated churchgoers before, but this one takes the cake. It wasn't even any kind of religious day of significance, not even some random Catholic Feast day, since this church is decidedly Protestant.

At the same time I was contemplating the relative "Christianness" of waking up your neighbors before sunrise on a Sunday morning, I heard something else that was definately the upstairs neighbors. It was an agressive and rhythmic pounding counterpointed by a higher-pitched "oh...oh...oh...oh". Yes, the upstairs neighborhos were getting busy at the same time the Xtians across the street were, umm, getting busy.

It was interesting to speculate if the neighbors were already up and frisky or if they too were awakend and decided to make the best of a bad situation. It is further interesting to wonder if this church, like so many other Latino Protestant churches is socially conservative, and if so what the parishoners would have thought about the kind of activity taking place, perhaps as a direct result of their piety. Oh, the unintended social consequences of early morning devotion.

Eventually Tyche and I got back to sleep, taking our own inspiration from the early AM soundscape, but waiting to partake at a much more civilized hour.

Kick ass and get right with Jesus at 4:30AM.

Yesterday I went to Drinking Liberally in Los Angeles because Andy Stern, the International Prez of SEIU, was using it as his LA book signing stop. Drinking Liberally decided to put on a real show so not only did they get Andy to give his talk, but they lined up a band and about 6 comedians.

Andy's talk was good. He's not dynamic the way Paul Wellstone was but he's comfortable and his delivery is well-practiced. Bascially he's pimping his book about what America needs to do to get back on track. Fun was had with all kinds of alarming and daming statistics. My favorites:

• Last year America had record participation in the Intel high school science competition. 55,000 kids took part. In the same year, China had 6,000,000 take part. Ouch.
• By 2010 90% of the college gaduates with science degrees will come from India and China (not sure if this includes advanced degrees as well, but I suspect that would only make the numbers look worse).
• Average CEO's salaries in the US in 2005 went up to $17.1 million.
• And my personal favorite: if the minimum wage had been indexed, not to inflation, but the increase in CEO salaries, since 1990, then it would be $23.10 today and the average factory worker would be making $110K per year.

Anyway he calls for your basic progressive agenda of health care for all (to take the cost of health care out of the cost of our products since each care the Big 3 makes adds-in $1500 for health care benefits for the workers while each Japanese/Euro car doesn't), increasing the minimum wage, making it easier to organize unions, reducing education related-debt, and reconfiguring our educational system for equity and incresed efficiency, among other things. I'm for it. When do we start?

Then came the comedians. As any slam poet knows, dealing with an uniterested audience there for another reason is one of the biggest challenges for a live performer and the first 3 comics up had to deal with a cold, low-energy room. But they were all funny.

But not as funny as Greg Proops. bucky_sinister was lucky enough to be part of a talk show with him recently (maybe the Greg Proops Chat Show?) and I say lucky because Greg is a funny funny man with a deeply twisted outlook and a depth of performance chops that reminds me of a Dan Gould at his performance prime. Greg was up for about 30 minutes or so riffing on politics, where people came from before they lived in LA, traditional lefty-types who come out to peace marches, and the differences between Dick Cheney shooting his best friend in the face and Bill Clinton getting his pole waxed.

But what made it so brilliant is his ability to weave the material in and out of itself while also making deeper philosophical and cultural points. It was like watching the most densely layered slam poem, the kind that just builds and builds on itself leaving you with both a surface set of meanings and jokes but also a subterranean set of clues and insights and added depths of shading such that the performance became a kind of fractal. I've seen Beth Lisik do this and I've seen Richard Pryor do this and as I said before, Dana Gould do it. It was anarchic storytelling and it was funny as hell. Belly laughs galore.

And the best fucking part of all this was that the damn thing was totally and completely free.

If Greg ever comes to your town you pretty much have to go. He's that good. (Bay Area peeps should check out his show on Sat. Oct 14 at the Herbst Theater in SF. It's part of the Bush Going Away Party and it seems to be a part of Kosher Comedy.)

Kick ass and take names.

This is part of an occasional series, last broached in a diatribe about driving habits in the two metro areas (that's right bitches, it's Metro Oakland! Not Metro San Francisc-who?).

This time I ponder garbage. As you may know, California has mandated that every county reduce their solid waste streams by 50% by the year 2010 (I don't know what year it is supposed to be 50% of, however). In Alameda County, home to many glorious East Bay cities, including your humble correspondent's beloved Oakland, the powers that be have taken this seriously, as have those entrenched in the (City) Hall(s) of Power on Broadway.

Case in point: the garbage recepticles. In Oaktown as a member of the owning class I had 3. One 64 gallon one for yard waste, one 64 gallon one for recycling and one 32 gallon one for all other garbage. OH SNAP! I FORGOT TO MENTION THE COMPOSTING! That's right, my two faithful readers, Oakland gives you a kitchen pail to fill up with food scrapes which then go into your yard waste container and are picked up weekly. F'in' awesome!

So where is Los Angeles, the largest county in California and home to fully 3% of the entire population of the United States, on all this? A leader in the field, you say? Surely they must be as they dispose of waste for some 10 MILLION people? Well, if that's your answer, gentle reader, you are SO FUCKING WRONG!

Here in Tinseltown, where I am again a member of the non-owning class, my 6 unit complex has 6 64 gallon containers for trash and ONE 64 gallon container for recycling. There are at least 8 and possibly 10 people living in these units and we all get just ONE recycling container? And NOTHING for composting. (Everything goes down the disposal and out to the ocean.)

WHAT THE HELL, PEOPLE?!?

I could possibly overlook this if I were getting celebrity blowjobs at the Hollywood Farmer's Market in front of the heirloom tomatoes and the wild trawl caught Ono tuna from Hawai'i BUT I'M NOT!

Once again LA proves to be bubble gum pop to Oakland's stanky sticky funk.

Kick ass and compost those dinner scraps!

In the Bay the streets are generally as wide nor are the freeways as plentiful as they are here in the City Built For The Automobile (CBFTA) which has given rise to an interesting contrast between the two areas of the Golden State.

In the Bay the traffic is heavy and can be just as frustrating as any Los Angeles traffic jam, but the jams themselves simply aren't as frequent or as unpredictable (I got caught in traffic coming into Echo Park from Hollywood on the 101 on a Sunday morning for crissakes!). On the other hand, in the Bay the city streets are more crowded at more times of the day, twist and turn more often, are narrower, and more subject to traffic calming measures.

The upshot is that in Los Angeles people drive like hellspawn in pursuit of the last pure soul on Earth on the city streets but mostly poke along on the freeways at around 60 or so. In the Bay people drive like Eval Kineval escaping the Highway Patrol on the freeways, but drive more moderately and safely on the streets.

It's taking some getting used to. I still like to go more slowing on city streets both to take in the sights and to worry about pedestrians, skateboarders, bikers, etc. Share the road and all that New Age crap. I find it disconcerting to be tailgated on my way to Trader Joe's for example. On the other hand, I would really love it if LA drivers in the faster lanes actually went faster when we're moving on the highway. Maybe they feel like this will only get them to the next traffic jam more quickly.

Oh and on the tailgaiting. It's like the national pastime in LA. City, highway, it doesn't matter. You are guaranteed to have some (or more likely a string of) yahoo(s) french kissing your exhaust pipe. It's annoying as hell. But I think it is bred by the fact that no one here actually wants to let you merge. It's like they'll lose LA driving privileges or something if they give you enough space to safely merge. At least no one has decided to take pot-shots at me yet.

The only upside to all this is that now whenever I look at movies I try to see if I can recognize where they were filmed. Or what freeway they are supposed to be traveling on.

Kick ass and tailgate like a motherfucker.

2nd in a continuing series.

After missing the Hollywood Farmer's Market for a week while on vacation at Grover Hot Springs State Park, Tyche and I made it back this past Sunday. (As a side note I just have to say that this is one of the largest Markets I've every been to, taking up about 4 blocks and I'm looking forward to learning it better. ) While we stood there getting overwhelmed with the selection of vendors, I noticed another familiar face. You will recall, oh faithful readers, that the last time I was there I saw (and briefly talked to) Stanford Blach (Willie Garson) from Sex and the City.

This time the sighting was more fleeting as the actor in question was moving briskly, as if she had a place to go. This was unfortunate because she acted in a show that I find infinately more satisfying than Sex and the City. That show was Firefly, cursed by its Fox masters to bad scheduling, shifting nights, being shown out of order, and ultimately being cancelled. Too bad. Best show on televtion this decade and easily the best sci fi show ever (even better than Battlestar Gallactica's second incarnation).

I would have been much more interested in a conversation with Summer Glau, who barrelled past me on the way to I don't know where, than I was 2 weeks ago with Willie Garson, though, don't get me wrong, Willie G. seemed like a skilled and amusing conversationalist.



I would have really like to know how she approached playing River Tam and what it was like to be a part of that experience. But I try not to go all fanboy on random actors I meet in the streets. At least not yet...

Kick ass and find serenity.

I am now living in an apartment building for the 4th time in my life (the previous times were all in Minneapolis - this must mean something, but I'm not sure what) and the thing that is striking me the most is the system of taking out the trash. Or more accurately, picking up the trash.  In Oakland you had about 12 hours before pick-up to place your containers, the day of pick-up to have them out, and then 12 hours to bring them in the next day. Otherwise you got hit with a blight ticket. Well, noone I know ever did, but you could potentially be the victim of such aggressive Martha Stewartism.

In practice, in my neighborhoods, you put the trash/recycling/yard waste out at night, it got picked up the next day, when you got home you put away the bins. Now, I was not living in apartments at this time so bins were basically around for 36 hours or so. I'm not sure if they lasted that long in apartments or not. I suspect not, given the potential for the style nazis to pop you for an $85 ticket per offending object under your control.

In Los Angeles, I am subject to two twists on my familiar Oakland scenario. First, I live in an apartment building and it is the responsiblity of the gardeners to place the bins for collection, not the tenants. The gardeners come early in the morning (believe me it is really FUCKING EARLY on a Tuesday monrning), but collection isn't until mid-afternoon the next day. And then they don't come again untl the day after that. So the bins are out for almost half the week. Which is a strange new addition to the landscape for me.

Here's the other twist. In my area of LA, the collection is automated. And by automated I don't mean the garbage truck is motorized, smartass. I mean that the driver never gets out of his cab because each truck is equipped with a claw-arm that shoots out, grabs the bin around the bottom, tips the bin back and then conveyer-belts it up the side of the truck to the top and dumps the contents in, then replaces it from where it was snatched. All of which necessitates the bins themselves be placed IN THE STREET.

Which, in a car centric are of the country, means that they really cut into available parking around here. For over half the workweek.

I'm not really complaining, per se. I'm just noting how this change is forcing me to pay much more attention to where I place my car on a daily basis than I've had to deal with for the past 5 years when I had a driveway. And that doesn't even take into account the weekly street sweeping...

Kick ass and take out the trash. 

This is not quite as cool and, umm, a la mode, as ragan's tales of Hollywood hijinx, or at least his tales of first-month-in-West-Hollywood-hijinx, but I did have my first Hollywood moment here in the City of Angels. I was at the Hollywood Farmer's Market, which is a great farmer's market, by the way, with perhaps twice as many vendors as Oakland's Grand-Lake farmer's market (but without Big Paw vinegars) and I was looking at some nice tasty but overpriced berries and I hear the guy next to me also complaining about the price. I was on my second circuit and had noticed cheaper berries down the way as I turn to him and I tell him so. And this guy is looking very familiar. He has a very distinctive face and a bald head, though his eyes were behind John Lennon sunglasses and his head was covered by a Habitat for Humanity baseball cap. And it only took a minute to click. This guy in the picture:


is Wille Garson or more commonly known to Sex and the City fans as Stanford Blach. Minor celebrity sighting at the farmer's market, but definately one of those "I know you" moments.

Kind of like the time I ran into Jude Law in a bar in New Orleans, but not really.

Kick ass and take names.

1) There is an actual park in the neighborhood. With a lake (actually there are two parks, one which contains Dodger Stadium).

2) The architecture is small and human-scale, but built at a time when small flourishes were mandatory. There are lots of tiled staircases and small stained-glass windows scattered amongst the housing here. Also, the age of the housing stock (60-100 years) means that a lot of it is actually quit nice to look at. The 1960's and 70's apartment buildings are ass like they are everywhere in California, but besides that this is a nice-looking neighborhood.

3) It is walkable and people take advantage of that. Walking I mean.

4) The commercial and the residential mix easily and make it easy to walk around and get things done.

5) Still too gritty (read homeless population and low-income families) for most Westsiders to deal with, sparing us from most LA status bullshit.

6) Two libraries within 2 miles, not include the main branch, which is downtown.

7) An honest-to-god jazz and blues joint, except, you know, a coffeehouse.

8) $.45 Taco Tuesdays!

9) Trader Joe's, Gelsons, Vons, Albertson's, and about about a metric assload of corner tienda's all open til 10pm or later all within in 3 miles.

10) Still a decent mix of folks: huge Latino families, white and AA hipsters, a smattering of gentrifiers, homeless folks, old folks, young kinds, teenagers, etc.

Urban living at its finest.

Kick ass and take names. 

So. Moving. If there were a list of things to do to create a sense of calm, well-being, contentment, and wellness, then you can rest assured that moving the contents of a 2-bedroom house over 400 miles is not to be found anywhere in this list's vicinity. And by vicinity I mean in the same universe.

However, if you have the resources, there are ways to minimize the life-shortening stress related to this endevour. I recommend getting people to do the packing for you, even if they don't speak your language. In my experience Eastern Europeans named "Sasha" and "Tattoo" perform admirably and only damage a small fraction of your stuff. (These were the names written on the paperwork from the moving company. I'm assuming that "Tattoo", an interesting, if somewhat obvious representational nickname given the amount of skin art on his body, was chosen by someone with absolutely no ability to find out the real name of the second mover and was reduced to taking physical charactistics for the name. A kind of nomenclatural synecdoche.)

I would recommend, were I you, that you figure out a way to unpack your stuff during a period of time that isn't one of the hotter ones in your climate. Working in an apartment full of western-facing windows during the hottest points of the day in a city where it was rountinely 90+ degrees was not the most brilliant bit of timing that Tyche and I have ever engaged in. We were blessed with two window AC units for our 975 sq. ft and two floor fans from the moving boxes, which did make a whale of a difference. Still. Try to time it for the cool seasons.

But outside of the heat, there was remarkably little in the way of challenges put up in front of us. It was mostly a job that required plugging away and so we plugged away, disposing of the last box by Thursday afternoon, following the Sunday arrival of the truck in Los Angeles. The only thing that awaits us now is the installation of our various pieces of art and the two mirrors we brouth with us. Might take some time on those.

We found ourselves a nice apartment in Echo Park, a bottom unit in a fourplex probably built in the 1920's or so, just an empty lot away from one the of the busier intersections in the neighborhood. The fourplex is recently renovated, with hardwood floors, granite countertops in the kitchen, basically new appliances, and 10-foot ceilings. A couple of ceiling fans would be lifesavers, but given the fact that we are paying probably a good $150/month below market for this place, we aren't really going to complain.

Echo Park the neighborhood is situated a couple of miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. It is a hilly part of town, though not as rugged as the Foothill area of the city that butts up against the San Gabriels to the north of The Valley. From the hill immediately to our west you can see downtown on days when the smog isn't so heavy that it obscures the tops of buildings in a pale blue fuzzout.

The area surrounding our apartment, and generally speaking the neighborhoods of Silverlake and Los Feliz as well, was built up from the turn of the 20th century to about the 1940's, with most activity taking place from 1900 until about 1930. The scale of the place is small. There's basically nothing over about 10 stories for blocks and most places are between 1 and 4 stories high. There are a ton of single-family homes, but they are well-mixed with duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and other combinations, including the ubiquitous California apartment buildings that go back sideways from the road instead of straight on. Even in the 20+ unit buildings the scale is human-sized, though.

Most of the places are wood or stucco built in bungalow or Craftsman styles, with the occasional unassuming Victorian hanging out ready to surprise you. There are more brick buildings than I am used to in California, showing the relative age of the neighborhood when developers weren't so savvy about being earthquake safe.

Interestingly for a city where noone ever walks anywhere, this is a walking neighborhood. Either you live in a completely residential area, with streets lined with houses and apartments, or you live, like we do, and the edge of one of the commericial corridors: Alvarado, Glendale, Sunset, etc. The cut of the streets means you are never that far from a place to go and so you do, often heretically without an automobile. Our place, for example, is a block from a Vons, a block from a Rite-Aid, two blocks from the Post Office, and short walks from a number of different restaurants and taco trucks. IN a 5 block radius we've got donut shops, two bakeries, several coffeeshops, at least three breakfast places, a fancy French restaurant, Cambodian food, more Mexican than I can shake a stick at including a very fine taco truck across from the Vons and a wonderful place with $.45 Taco Tuesdays. And I've really not even explored much of the area.

We are also 3 blocks from Echo Park, the park, which has Echo Park Lake in the midst of it. It is a nice patch of green in the big city in the US with the smallest per capita parks acreage. Griffith Park, the largest urban park in the US is a tremendous boon, but that just shows you how much public green space the neighborhoods are missing. So Echo Park is nice to have around and we aren't the only ones to think so. Just see how much of the park is filled up on the weekends with families, some even committing the unpardonable teenage embarassment of paddleboating around the lake. Additionally we are a short bike ride from Elysian Park, the other big urban park in the city, which boast both Dodger Stadium and the LA Police Academy.

Echo Park, like much of urban America is undergoing a wave of gentrification and development. Long associated with trouble and struggling working class families, the area is now home to a mixture of new homeowners, artists, Latinos, and white hipsters. Like the Mission in SF for example. The police log sent out every quarter by the Echo Park Security Association shows that there is still a fair amount of gang activity, but it is sporadic and outweighed by the number of incidents listed involving homeless people. Perhaps a sign of the current character of the neighborhood is the newly renovated branch library located about 3 blocks from the apartment.

While much of what I've described is at odds with the popular conceptions of Los Angeles in general, or at least with mine, even when mine where informed by 9 years of periodic visiting, there is at least one feature that lets you know you are in LA and nowhere else: the streets. The streets are everywhere and in most places they are wide and the cars drive fast. I don't understand why a street like the one we live one which is almost entirely residential, with lots of single family homes, needs to be four lanes, two in each direction. The several blocks around us are all controlled by four-way stops. It's honestly not that busy. This characteristic is repeated throught the neighborhood and is coupled with a set of street designs that are perhaps the most bicycle unfriendly I've ever been exposed to. Even with the creation of a bike lane on Sunset and Griffith Park Dr.

Despite this serious drawback, we both like the neighborhood and are looking forward to getting to know it better.

Kick ass and take names.

It has been awhile since I've updated this space.

A lot has happened.

The quick and dirty report, or the "one-liner" as ACORN's campaign staff like to say is this:

Moved to the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Unpacked 95% of our crap in about 4 full days of work. Went to the ACORN National Convention in Columbus, OH for 4 days and worked my ass off. Saw John Edwards. Saw Hilary Clinton. Saw John Sweeney (look him up). Saw Al Sharpton. Saw Roseanne Barr. Dealt with cranky organizers and members speaking Spanish at me because I was working the translation equipment booth. Got practically no sleep.

I will be posting more details as I remember them as well as fun facts about the move and about the current state of Echo Park.

I miss all my LJ friends and I'm looking forward to getting back to posting and to keeping up with all the Bay Area peeps I've left behind. I miss ya'll. I'm just starting to realize that I actually live here and I'm not just visiting or on vacation. Oh reality, you are a harsh and cruel mistress.

On a lighter note, the unrated verstion of 40-Year-Old Virgin is worse than the original. Too draggy and the new bits aren't funny. Still enjoyed the heck out of it.

Kick ass and take names.

As of July 1, 2006, Tyche and I will both be residents of Los Angeles, ensconced in the increasingly trendy neighborhood of Echo Park, one block from Sunset Blvd and three blocks from Echo Lake. Contrary to the popular image of the rest of Los Angeles, people actually walk around in this neighborhood and we've got huge amounts of shops, restaurants, and bars within legitimate walking distance.

We are also close to the Elysian Park area where Dodgers Stadium is, though it is unclear at this point how easy it is to walk to the park surrounding the stadium. There are some monster hills in the way.

In the next few days I'm going to post some vignettes of the apartment searching experience, which wasn't nearly as full of the strange and bizarre as Tyche's roommate hunt from 8 months ago, but did have its moments.

In the end we've got about 900 sq ft (just slightly smaller than my house), a full dining room, a full living room, a smallish bedroom, and a moderate kitchen. We have ceiling fans, hardwood floors, AC and direct access to the front and back, which will be a boon for my inside-outside kitty. We don't have laundry on premesis, but we do have hook-ups, so I can bring my washer/dryer if I think that will make sense.

We don't have the world's loveliest views, nor is it free of traffic noise, but we are set back from Glendale Blvd by an empty lot and we do have a backyard that everyone in the 4-plex shares.

On top of all that, it wasn't as expensive as it could have been. I saw smaller places for $200-$300 more than we will be paying, including a very cute place in Silverlake at the top of Descanso that the tenants were renting for $1300, but was being increased to $1450. Like I said, the area is trendy.

In the end it is farther from USC than our other top two choices, but we think we'll enjoy being in the neighborhood more and the apartment itself is comparatively plush.

Go us.

Now to plan the going away party and the housewarming...

Kick ass and take names.

I've been posting with the frequency of a paralyzed sloth, but I swear I have good reasons. Soccer overload! No. That's not it (especially if you are my boss or girlfriend).

Apartment searching and getting the house ready to move/be occupied by tenants! Yes! That's it.

And, friends and the occasional enemies, we are on the cusp of having a place! Nothing is signed yet, so there will be no jinxing, but IF it all works out, we will be the untrendy dorks in the land of trendy hipsters, in an apartment approximately the same size as my house close to everywhere we want to be.

AWESOME!

Details once we're all legal-like!

Kick ass and take names.

Oakland is the funk.

Los Angeles is the pop.

While I like the occasional pop (in both the Midwestern sense and the culture/music sense), I live for the funk.

That, in a nutshell, is why I will miss Oaktown.

Kick ass and take names.