Wikipedia

I finally wrote Wikipedia a love letter.

And then I took a picture of proof, “Say Anything”-style:

I went onto the site today, to look for something, as usual, random and obscure and there was a banner at the top of the page, an appeal from the founder for funds. It was a very simple banner, and there was a person’s face, the founder, making a plea. I realized that this one website has provided me with more entertainment and joy and information than many things I regularly pay for. I think I’ve actually gotten a lot more use out of Wikipedia over the years than occasional manicures and a new pair of earrings.

So I clicked on the banner, and -I am very embarrassed to admit I had actually never thought of doing this before-I donated. Because I love the site. Because I use it every day. Because it makes me happy.

And then…they did something they shouldn’t have done.

They asked me if I could tell my story.

So I did.

I”m officially a huge, huge, huge supernerd. I finally wrote Wikipedia a love letter I’ve been meaning to write them forever. I went to look for something and there was a donation button at the top, and I donated!

And then…they did something they shouldn’t have done.

They asked me if I could tell my story.

So I did.

This is what I wrote to them:

I have had many special moments with Wikipedia over the years.   From learning about D.B. Cooper, to reading about ODESSA (the freaky purported Nazi submarine escape route to South America).   I also answered simple questions, like how many people live in Congo? and What year was that Muhammad Ali fight?  

This past weekend, Wikipedia literally answered the exact question I had been asking myself for 20 years: What does Aretha Franklin mean by “R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Take out, TCP” ??? 

I got onto Wikipedia, and some freaking GENIUS had this section written out, especially for me, I am convinced of this:  

[ Franklin's version of the song contains the famous lines (as printed in the lyrics included in the 1985 compilation album Atlantic Soul Classics):  R-E-S-P-E-C-T Find out what it means to me R-E-S-P-E-C-T Take care ... TCB  The last line is often misquoted as "Take out, TCP", or something similar, and indeed most published music sheets which include the lyrics have this incorrect line in them. "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" and "T-C-B" are not present in Redding's original song but were included in some of his later performances with the Bar-Kays.   There seems to be some confusion over who first used "T-C-B" in the song.  "TCB" is an abbreviation that was commonly used in the 1960s and 1970s, meaning Taking Care (of) Business, and it was particularly widely used in African-American culture.  However, it was somewhat less well-known outside of that culture, yielding a possible explanation as to why it was not recognized by those who transcribed Franklin's words for music sheets. Nevertheless, "TCB in a flash" later became Elvis Presley's motto and signature, from his necklace to his private jet plane.  Franklin's lyrics most probably influenced hip-hop's later use of both the word "proper" and "props" in the context of proper respect. She proclaims that she's about to give him all her money, and that all she's asking is for him to give her "her propers" when he gets home. ]

Anyway. All that to say that, yes.   My contribution is overdue.   And anyone, I mean ANYONE who has ever had this experience with Wikipedia should donate.  

Because how many of us have paid $10 for a movie that truly sucked?   Wikipedia is that free gift that keeps on giving, it’s worth at least as much as someone paid to see “Puss in Boots” in the movie theaters.  

With sincere love and nerdy addiction,   

Violetta from Altadena.

 

 

 

 

Africa pancake

You know your friend is cool when in the middle of eating a buttery syrupy pancake they stop, look at you and say “Look, Africa!”

Frankly, I may not have noticed. The fluffy continent might have ended up in my mouth before my brain recognized its contours.

We were having breakfast at Fox’s, Altadena’s family diner since 1955, on a bright, sunny, gorgeous weekday. Driving down Lake, it was the morning after a cold spell, and you could see clear through to downtown almost, 15 miles through the craziness of the metropolis.

As I’ve gotten into the groove of Altadena, it has become my life saver, my oasis, my comfort blanket, my soul food, my buttery-syrupy-Africa-shaped-pancake. It has become my antidote against the urbanity of Los Angeles, the impersonal traffic aggression, the insane pace, the business. Altadena is a small town. I have my favorite cashier at Ralph’s, I know the name of the people who work at the stationery store, the post office, the dry cleaner’s, the bike shop, the corner store, the hardware store…

Is it weird to say I feel like I am someone in Altadena?

I feel like I have a place. I know my neighborhood, I know the stores, I love the people. I have a real community. The other night, on a whim, I went to the hardware store .

That’s kind of saying a lot for me. Hardware stores are my happy place. They’re sort of like a walking meditation for me. Whenever I need to figure something out in my life I go to a hardware store and pace the aisles, solving small problems, a leaky faucet, a clogged drain, a broken shelf, a grain of sandpaper that I’m missing…and often, either my head gets cleared by the well-organized shelves of nails and bolts and odds and ends, or an answer will come to the other problem I’m trying to solve.

Anyway. The other night I went to find a spray head for my kitchen faucet. Then I went to the next door bike shop, because I want to buy a bike, and I ended up talking to the owner for about an hour. He has a vintage barber’s chair from the 30′s it seems, that leans back and lets your feet prop up on his counter while he fixes the bike you’re about to take for a ride.

I was talking to him, we were jumping around from random topics to randomer ones, circling back to the bike every so often, and he said he was born and raised in Altadena. And in that moment, I thought…I have lived in six countries on four continents. I’ve traveled briefly and not so briefly to over 25 countries. Of all of those places. Of all those cities. Of all those cultures. Altadena, this random, little tiny city in the sprawling monster of Los Angeles county, this place I ended up in by accident, because I could no longer afford to live in Pasadena, that is the only place that I’ve ever not felt like running away from. It kind of hit me, in the middle of that conversation, thinking about Fox’s, reclining in an antique chair. That’s when the clarity came that I had gone to the hardware store to find.

And all these thoughts came out of a piece of pancake.

Giant Pool of Money

This American Life #355: The Giant Pool of Money

This American Life is the only experience I have in my life, where I pay for something that makes me cry and breaks my heart on a regular basis. This episode deals with what was at first called the “sub-prime mortgage crisis” and then called the “credit crisis”. The voices in it, of people in the mortgage industry, of bystanders, of analysts, of regular people losing their homes make it one of the most intimate hours you can spend learning about the most recent failure of our capitalist culture.

The fact this even happened is an indictment of our society.

“It got to the point where, at one point, my son had seven thousand dollars in a CD and I had to break it…and…I mean…that really hurt. Cause I was saving that money for his college. I mean…I put two thousand back, but…it’s like you can’t have a future. They put you in a situation where after a while …you’re gonna fail…it’s so hard.”

-Richard, a marine. Back from Iraq. In foreclosure.

“It’s a No Income Verification Loan. They don’t call me up and say “how much money…” they don’t do that. I mean…it’s…it’s…almost like you pass a guy in the street and you say “Lend me 540,000 dollars?” and he says “Well, what do you do?” “Eh, I got a job.” “Ok!”

[...]

“I wouldn’t have lent me the money. And nobody that I know would have lent me the money. I mean…I know guys who are criminals who wouldn’t lend me that money, and they’d break your kneecaps!” 

-Clarence made $37,000 in 2005. The guy who gave him his loan reported on the paperwork that he made $16,000 a month. That same year.

Empire of tea

Wing Hop Fung is my favorite place in Monterey Park.

Imagine a warehouse dedicated to selling tea and beverages.

It’s kind of like heaven.

I had a lovely conversation about Aristotle with a young Chinese intellectual who was accompanying her grandmother on her weekly visit to Wing Hop Fung. They both helped me pick my phenomenal Pu-Errh tea.

I chose the $39.99/lb version based on a heroically-written description.

My other options were a boring $9.99/lb option and the magical “picked by blind monkeys in the dead of night during a lunar eclipse, once every 25 years and aged for 30 months in a secret room in the Forbidden City” version that cost-I-AM-NOT-KIDDING-YOU $1,500/lb.

Chinese people do not joke about their tea.

Here’s a sample of what their Matcha display looks like:

Steamed fish

I love living in Los Angeles.

I also hate living in Los Angeles.

But I have an innate ability to see magical things in people and places because, frankly, I’m willing to take that risk. I’ve maintained, miraculously, a childlike excitement about the world around me. Through disappointments, illnesses, losing jobs, being broke, having to (unfortunately) be a grownup, I’ve still managed to maintain a happiness about being alive that I count among my few real qualities.

You can think I sound arrogant. That’s a risk I’m willing to take. I know in my heart that I am not bragging so much as being honest with myself, and honoring what makes me, well ME.  I’m have a constant unquenchable thirst for adventure and new experiences.That’s the point of this blog, anyway. Moments that humble me into reverence. Things that excite me. Experiences that take my breath away and break three legs off a duck. If I annoy you, you’re reading the wrong blog.

In order to live in a city that is so consuming and just, honestly, plain HARD, I have developed wonderful coping mechanisms that I like to call “my happy places”. One of them is Caltech campus, but that’s for another post.

Another one is Monterey Park, and its adjoining neighborhoods, Temple City, Rosemead, San Gabriel. These are the “new” Chinatown in Los Angeles. A part of LA that far enough between freeways that you never end up there “by accident.” They are exclusively Chinese in a deep, all-encompassing way.

I go to Monterey Park alone. I go there often, as often as I can. As someone who has no native culture, I only feel at home when I am surrounded by foreign languages, unfamiliar territory. My comfort zone is uprootedness.

It is a strange thing to accept about yourself, because it implies a lot of hard work to create a nest at home, in order to be able to be out in the world in this constantly destabilizing fashion. But I’ve worked out a lovely system and that’s how I like to live. Constantly on the brink of new experiences. Mostly magical, sometimes catastrophic. Like most of my forays into West Hollywood and Santa Monica.

I’m decidedly an East-Side person.

The last time I was in Alhambra, I ended up on some section of Valley Blvd where I ate this meal (bread mushrooms and tofu with sticky rice and unlimited house blend of green and black tea) for $4.00. I had enough for two meals leftover. When I was done eating (the waitresses kept coming over and sitting down with me and talking to me), I walked to a herbalist shop, where I  made him take out every.single.dried.seahorse. from the display. It freaked me out in an awesome way.

Apparently you lay them on your spine and they cure backaches and scoliosis. But that’s my understanding from a broken English translation of what a very short very wrinkled very wise-looking Chinese man was saying.

The next time, I ventured into Monterey Park and ate at this crazy hardcore seafood restaurant next to Wing Hop Fung. I walked in and this wonderful, very tall, very skinny toothless Chinese man took me by the shoulders, smiled at me with the most radiant smile in the world, and said “Ni hao!! Ni hao!!”.

That’s when I knew I was in the right place.

I sat down and they plopped me a huge bowl of complimetary pork and cabbage soup, which I kept helping myself to, in between gulps of free green tea.

All around me, families were eating the most amazing seafood dishes, piling up around them like pirate treasures.

I came very late to lunch, and took my time perusing the fantastic menu. Look at some of the items on the menu:

• Duck feet with black mushrooms
• Steamed live tilapia
• Pork with spicy aged vegetable
• Pigs blood with green leek
• Spare with bitter melon
• Oyster omelette
• Jelly fish head with celery
• Small silver fish with spicy salt
• Kung pao chicken (WHAAAAT????)

I finally settled on steamed fish and greens for the chaste sum of $5.95:

The meal was very plain but very good and the fish just disintegrated. I think it had lived a pretty happy though short life. I was glad it ended it in my stomach.

I was the last person in the entire restaurant when I finished my meal.

Or so I thought.

From a corner of the dining room, a hesitant whistle rose. I finally made out the notes to “Star Spangled Banner.”

And I fell in love with Los Angeles, all over again.

Colonial Parkway

I spent a day driving the Colonial Parkway today.

I had a car, hours in front of me, and a deep-seated desire to experience the Fall colors and crisp air, and the other-worldliness of the Parkway, all 23 miles of its winding curves with no stop lights or stop signs.

In my other trips to Williamsburg I had never realized quite how breathtaking this area is. I got an eyeful today. I got to see dozens of grazing deer, marshes and swamps, the York and James rivers…trees, squirrels. Heaven.

I got to drive for hours without stopping, without waiting at a light, without being angry, without speeding, without stressing. It was Los Angeles driving therapy. It was amazing. It was calming. It was regenerating. I must sound like a driving junkie, and I am. Living in the LA area, there was something inside me that needed to connect to driving in a way that was not insane, just so that I could remember this moment when I am stuck in rush hour traffic again in the near future. Just so I can call on the perfect memories of quiet and calm when someone next tries to kill me on the 110 through downtown or on the 405 exit to Wilshire East.

Today the biggest thing that happened to me was braking ever so gently for a slender grey deer, lightly stepping across the road, looking right, left, lifting each of its legs ever so carefully and bobbing its graceful neck with each tentative step. Once it was reassured the giant piece of machinery wasn’t moving forward, it looked straight ahead and took flight, leaping forward into the trees, leaving me gasping for air, moved.

I was listening to This American Life the whole way. The haunting stories in the  “Like it or not” episode floated through the scenery as an eerie and perfect background. I can still recall all the colorful stories and sounds of the stories about Alabama fish jubilee, pregnancy, passivity, car chases, clichés, bullies. It was bizarre and enjoyable, a quiet weird pleasant graceful moment. And my return into civilization:

Bill Gates in Congo

One of the things I have most enjoyed in my new job as “consultant administrative engineer” (I just made that up) of the The Stars International School of Pointe-Noire has been getting to know names of students who have attended the school throughout its 11 years of existence.

I spent one workweek and two weekends, eight hours a day in an office with 4,000 dusty student files. I sorted them alphabetically, then devised a system for storing them upright which I am still proud of. The weekends were quiet and sweet because there was absolute silence and you could hear the hundreds of birds chirping. I also had Tommy’s company. He would lay out on the balcony with his paws hanging and the minute he observed something happening in his kingdom that he had not previously authorized, he would growl, his ears would perk up and he would run downstairs to bark at it. He’s a pretty efficient guard.

During the week, I only had the radio and my imagination to keep me entertained while accomplishing my Herculean task. RFI, the French-speaking world’s equivalent to the BBC World Service and my beloved NPR, has some top-notch news coverage and the rest of their programming for Africa RFI is wonderful music and cultural shows about what is going on in all the African countries. Sometimes I would just turn the radio off and almost meditate, but it wouldn’t be long before I would see something that would get me smiling.

The names people give their children in Congo are absolutely wonderful.

A few children were named after French states (Ardèche, Oise) and a few were named for luck, including one with the slang word for luck which basically translates as “lucky bastard” in English (‘Veinard’). My favorites, by far, were English. Break-Through, Blood, Stallone, Bill Gates, Sydney Poitier and more. There was a Picasso, and a number of Rihannas and Beyoncés.

Speaking of Rihanna, I cannot even count the number of days when the first thing I hear early in the morning is “Oh na, na, what’s my name? Oh na, na…” The first time it happened, I was convinced I was having a “traffic on the 110 south and listening to KISS FM” flashback.

CongoStyle at long last

I’m finally back in Congo after a one year absence and finding the place eventful, fun, full of opportunities for hard work, rife with entertaining stories and frustrating as ever with daily black-outs.

My brother was in town for a few days before he had to return to California to take care of his life State-side, but we had time to enjoy the rooftop of the Victory Palace and its flattering vantage point.

Daytime at the school is as insane as it can be. Injuries or people calling in sick, kids acting up and starting chaos in the school yard, paperwork, bills, appointments, errands. With a large staff and a large school, you never have a minute to spare. I’m mostly doing administration and record-keeping at the moment. When that is done, I have a few exciting projects to work on…

Night-life doesn’t really hold that much attraction, to be fair. There are over-priced restaurants (but we eat better at home) and nightclubs (but you can smoke indoors) and bars (but we don’t drink alcohol). So evenings are a succession of preparing for the next day’s work, reading, catching up on some TV, and mostly reading. I always read an extraordinary amount when I come here, which is something I look forward to. The Zein family library has a large variety of books, so there’s never a lack of choice.

One of the exciting parts of night-life is the “when is the electricity going to go out?” game. We don’t even react anymore, even when we’re in the middle of a good meal, a great movie, or a good Champions League game. We just move on to our flashlights and an activity that doesn’t require electrical power like sleeping or reading or drinking our nightly rooibos tea. We used to have a generator, but it’s much quieter since it broke, and we get more sleep. Our biggest help in these times of darkness are our Energizer WeatherReady flashlights. My only product placement. These flashlights are beyond amazing. They work as flashlight, table lamps and night-lights, have LEDs so they last forever and take easy to find AA batteries. We have many.

It’s good to be home!

Paris twenty eleven

On my way to Congo, I had a lovely layover in Paris. Twenty-four hours is all I needed to reconnect to my old home, even though I was so exhausted and jet-lagged I could easily have slept most of that time.

The first thing I noticed in the metro, which I had somehow forgotten, is that people dress well. It all looks off-handed, effortless.

The women don’t look impossibly beautiful. They don’t wear massive makeup like some do in LA, out of “air-brush” envy. Most women in Paris wear little to no makeup and look feminine. Often I would walk around Silverlake and dodging the hipster fashionistas would come face-to-face with a live-in-the-flesh sample of a woman as put together as a glossy magazine spread.

Nothing so excessive here. Everything is in the understatement for both men and women. The fashion touch is limited to a few items. Attention to detail in accessories, impeccably cut winter coats, sublime leather shoes. It’s pleasant to see elegantly dressed men in their twenties and thirties, not walking around holding up their size 40 gangster jeans as they fight against gravity. I don’t miss the oversized belt-less pant shuffle.

I headed to Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Hemingway’s old haunt where I seemed to remember is where he got most of his inspiration for “A Moveable Feast”. I had a ham and cheese crêpe in the streetlight shadow of the medieval church, l’Abbaye de Saint-Germain-des-Prés , the heart of the neighborhood. The good thing about crêpes in winter is that they’re cheap, they’re wide and they’re warm, so they act as mittens as well as food. They’re sort of the equivalent of an LA taco truck taco.

Then I went into the Café de Flore for my only outrageous expense: the world’s most expensive (some would say overrated, but not I) hot chocolate. This littler itinerary is my regular Paris pilgrimage. I think everyone who has some sort of tie to the city has their own version of a “layover pilgrimage”.  At this point I generally zigzag through the streets of Saint-Germain, through private stone courtyards and hidden alleys housing Chinese gourmet tea houses. I stare at the world-class one-room art galleries, sometimes exhibiting a single artist or a single piece, brightly lit and white in the dark cobble-stoned neighborhood.

This time around two installations stayed in my mind. One had a huge furry piece. It was strange because of the stance. It could have been a cross between a grizzly bear, King Kong and Sasquatch but it was human in its stance, like a giant human in a fur costume. Who knows. It was eerie and unforgettable.

The next gallery had a haunting series of flat metal horse sculptures, all 8 feet tall and staggered. An arresting motionless herd, pinned between floor and ceiling, devouring the narrow gallery space. It was beautiful but also kind of sad. It seemed like pieces would have liked space to breathe but then I just flew in from the Far West, and
all our open vistas where we fantasize Mustangs can run free for hundreds of miles.

I was glad to only have missed the first ten minutes of  ”Colorado Territory“. I had to see my Western. This is another one of my few luxuries from the time I was a Parisienne. I used to see classic movies in of the six or seven revival theaters that play Westerns, Kurosawa and Fellini. One of my favorites is the Action Christine, which is where I saw this 1949 gem. It was just as good as they get and I love Joel McCrea. It had everything. Great story, whip-smart often hilarious dialogue, oblique references to sex, contrived acting but undeniable chemistry. It was one of the best I’ve ever seen but maybe I’d just missed it so much I over-enjoyed it.

I had also forgotten how much I missed the running commentary graffiti on metro ads. People walk by and just comment wherever there is room to write. They range from political ststements “my wish for 2010: 1 heart attack for Sarko(zy)” to comments about consumerism–”SO SICK OF ADS!!” to jokes and obscene doodles on the faces of the supermodels.

It’s just an overflow of something Parisians have a lot of: opinions. Parisians have lots of opinions, lots of thoughts, and lots of things to say, over coffee, over lunch, on posters. People are reading intellectual papers and subversive journals, or smut or Dan Brown or the news, but they’re reading, and I don’t mind that they do it
inconsiderately in my face in the metro or walking in the street and almost bumping into me. It’s nice to see people reding in public. It’s nice to see people thinking in public. It’s nice to see excited people gesticulating over coffee, serious faces pondering affairs of the heart or the Economy. Not many random smiles or gratuitous laughter, but hey. This is serious business.

Escape from LA county

Los Angeles county is 4,752 square miles. If you live and work there, it can become a thick molasses you can’t get away from, no matter how fast and far you drive. So a jaunt to Oregon to visit my grandparents was a welcome and needed escape.

My brother drove us to the airport in my car, in what he calls “skilled aggressive defensive driving.” I was petrified with fear for my life and my beloved car, but he kept laughing maniacally and eventually we were in line at Horizon and boarded within a half-hour.

Starving, with not much time to find food and stranded at the gate of LAX Terminal 3, your only option for “food” is Burger King. This is what is wrong with this country. But we dutifully chomped on the tasteless buns, and sat behind an odd couple. A retired lady returning home, and a punkish girl with lilac nail polish and the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen. “I’m from Oregon, but I had to get away from the drama” said the girl, before I shut my eyes and fell asleep for the duration of the flight.

I wake up to a roller-coaster, hearing the end of an apologetic voice saying we’re about to encounter “turbulences” and as we land, the air hostess says “Welcome to Oregon! The sick bags are in the seat pockets in front of you.”

Mom and I walk into Medford airport, and stand idly around the baggage carousel, Glenn Beck blaring out of every flat screen TV in the airport with his crazy eyes, and gesticulating over-emphasis, dramatizing some economic process I can’t really care about. I hated Econ in college, and have an aversion to the terms to this day. I think it had to do with “the law of diminishing returns”. The only thing I clearly remember from those boring intro classes was that my college professor would give us an “A” in the class if we ever caught him with the same tie twice in one semester. I guess that goes to show where my priorities were at the time. Or now.

Grandpa was waiting for us under a slight Oregon drizzle, and we drove through the green beautiful countryside, with mom excited about the color of the landscape, the rain, the fresh air, the freedom of vistas, and probably the fact she wasn’t in LA anymore, though she wouldn’t say it, out of innate sweetness.

My grandmother lives in an adult foster home with a Filipino family. She was so happy to see us, and made us laugh throughout the stay. Dennis said “God loves you” and she opened her eyes wide and said “No kidding!!”

She sat on her couch, holding her husband’s hand in her left hand and mom’s hand in her right hand and looking straight at me, wishing probably she had a third hand to hold and touch me. She doesn’t really get much in conversation, because she bounces back and forth between Arabic, Spanish, French and English, and her sentences are fraying, starting and ending at random moments, but she speaks hugs, kisses and hand-holding fluently, and she gets lots of those, every day. The Filipino family is generous with affection, and she has always been wildly endearing, with her radiant face and her 4ft11 of cuteness and style.

Alzheimer’s has taken some part of my grandmother but her spirit isn’t stifled, she’s still the fiery lady she ever was, as passionate, and kind, and funny, and sensitive. And everyone falls in love with her upon meeting her, the same as it always was.

I packed one of her old aprons in my suitcase. It’s soft and worn with use. She wore it when she could still bake cakes and cookies, and now when I wear it around her house, running my hands down its front, I can almost smell her famous butter cookies. I’m starting to believe you can compensate Alzheimer’s with your own love and memories.

Pierrot Men

Horombe 1995 (linked to gallery image, JPG not downloaded)

I first discovered Pierrot Men’s work in Fianarantsoa, when I was in Madagascar in 2001 and he blew me away. Perhaps because he caught in images that were sometimes bleak, the breadth of my experience, an experience I was unable to share or process at the time. I was traveling alone and intensely occupied with projects, with no time for reflection, and operating almost constantly in a state of extreme cultural shock. The reflection came later, and Pierrot’s images replaced diary entries for me. Many of the images that were seminal to my travels through that country are rare and difficult to find, but luckily for me, Dan at the Dakota Ridge Gallery maintains the only online presence of this artist.

Because he photographs exclusively Madagascar, and because Madagascar is so rare a destination, and because it was such a turning point in my life, the connection I feel to his work is not something I can explain with excerpts of his photography. Madagascar is the most exceptional, heart-arresting, life-altering place I have ever been. I’ve never properly shared how much that country changed me, and perhaps now, it is time, but not in this post. My father has been sharing his memories of wars past, of bygones and roads traveled, and I think he has done more for me than steeled my resolve to continue in the path of writing: he has inspired me.

Pierrot Men’s work is outstanding, he pins figures in extraordinary landscapes, and brings you face to face with the humble. Perhaps his work speaks of humility and hard lives, often photographing people in their places of hard labor. I have a picture of a mechanic sitting amid scrap metal with goggles that I turn to often.

I’m grateful to Dan and his gallery for having the vision to carry Men’s work. I will have to stop in on my next trip to the East Coast to pay a visit.

Tattoos on the Heart

Tattoos on the Heart is a book that will imprint itself on you as soon as you start reading it. I’ve been looking forward to my date with this book before I fall asleep every night, and the minute I got to the last page, I just flipped the book back to the first page, and started reading it again.

It’s because it’s about one of my favorite topics: redemption.

It’s heart-breaking, and hilarious, wise, and beautiful and just a great, uplifting book, about what Faith should be for everyone who believes. I can’t even adequately express how much I enjoyed the stories in this book.

After a quarter of a century working with gang-members, Father G (Gregory Boyle) has amassed some pretty amazing “homie-propisms” that will make you laugh out loud, some comebacks that belong on a professional stand-up routine, some stories that hold their own along the classics of crisis and victory, and some wisdom that everyone can live by, because it’s been proven in the trenches, and it’s bulletproof.

I don’t want to ruin it by excerpting them for you, or reproducing them, you should really just discover this gem on your own, at your own pace, and knit your own relationship with this amazing book, that anyone living in LA should own.

This is a link to a great interview of Father Boyle with Terri Gross on Fresh Air, if you want to hear some stories that are in the book. It’s quite amazing.

Towing *IS* inevitable

Awesome sign in Pasadena

Across the street from “Pie’n'Burger”.

I just LOVE the last part: “Even if you parked for ‘just a minute to get a piece of pie’ “

Signs like this, and the indubitable proof that there are people with a great sense of humor out there, just make my day.

weaving

A tired post at the end of a long day. An unnoticed earthquake in Silverlake. Driving down the 110 tonight, on my way to LAX, the sky was huge and the five-lane freeway started moving slowly, brake lights coming on, flashing like Christmas lights and I saw something I’ve never seen: a police car, with hazards blinking, and all lights flashing, weaving ribbons back and forth the entire width of the freeway, herding all of us behind them, like a pack of wire and metal animals. The car, so bright, with so many lights, kept weaving and weaving and weaving, dancing in front of us, on the sloping freeway, ahead of it, nothing but emptiness, above it, nothing but empty sky, with the lone plane landing or taking off, huge overpasses everywhere. Everything was big. It was quiet, it was strange, it was beautiful and bizarre. Then I arrived at the airport, finished listening to the radio episode on parasites, a strange dichotomy with the outside scenes, and walked to the arrivals gate. 30 short minutes later, my dad briskly walked out, with his Australian bush hat and his photographers jacket. Dad always brings a piece of home with him. We had a smooth drive home, a slow climb up North Lake and we arrived home and had a lovely evening with everyone at the house. And now, exhausted, we’re about to close our eyes. But I’m still thinking of that scene. Some days you wake up, and the day just surprises you.

Letter to Los Angeles Drivers

Dear Los Angeles driver,

Why are you trying to kill us all?

No, seriously. I’m having trouble understanding why we even have to take a road rules test if you’re going to flaunt them all constantly, by swerving through lanes like a boomerang, speeding in exit lanes, never using your turn signals, and generally driving like you hated the world. We’re all in this together, we all drive an insane number of miles, let’s try to be civil and develop some sort of L.A. driving code.

I’m half French, and in France, getting a driver’s license is extremely  time-consuming, challenging, expensive, and actually HARD to do. By the the time anyone can make it through the gauntlet of an extremely difficult exam, and 35 hours of one-on-one classes wiht a driving instructor (mandatory), a driving culture is pretty much ingrained in every French driver.

EVERYONE indicates, EVERYONE overtakes on the left only, EVERYONE obeys the “fast lanes on the left, slow and exit lanes on the right” rule, EVERYONE uses high beams when they are alone on the road and lowers them as soon as they see a car coming from the opposite direction, to avoid burning their eyes, EVERYONE knows to change lanes to the right when they see someone coming in faster than they are driving, as a courtesy.

It occurs to me that maybe you don’t know about these courtesy rules, that are pretty much common sense, are mostly already in our California road rules, and would make all of our lives easier on the freeways, so I just thought I would put them together in one place that you can easily access.

Sincerely,

The Three-Legged Duck.

The Sixteen Commandments of Driving (according to the Three-Legged Duck):

1. Come to a full stop at every stop sign, not your mutant-hybrid-lame rolling stop. You’re not saving any time.

2. Use your turn signals every time you make a turn or change lanes.

3. Use your turn signals in parking lots too.

4. Turn around as you back up, and back up very slowly to give anyone a chance to notice your backing-up lights. Yes, that’s what those “white lights” next to the “brake lights” are for.

5. Don’t make a right on red just because you can. Often, you really just shouldn’t. It’s not because you CAN make a right on red that you absolutely HAVE to. That’s not part of the law. In fact, making a right on red is illegal in most countries, and we really haven’t deserved the right to do it here, since we can’t really do the simple things right.

6. Don’t use your high beams unless you’re alone or on a country road. It is not OK to drive with high beams behind someone and burn their retina.

7. Check your blind spots before you change lanes. (Do you know what blind spots are? Do you know how to check them?)

8. Don’t just check your blind spots before changing lanes on the freeway, check the lane over, to make sure no one else wants to merge where you are merging. If everyone used their turn signals, this could actually be a useful exercise. As things stand now, you have to make sure no one looks like they want to veer into the lane you are about to change into so you have to read the car’s body language. Good freaking luck with that.

9. Don’t speed in the exit lanes. I am a little horrified to have to write that. It’s empty because it is where people slow down and merge into in order to exit the freeway. It makes it kind of hard when you’re barreling down that same lane at 80 mph in your black BMW.

10. Pass on the left. Don’t pass on the right. It’s confusing, dangerous and kind of stupid.

11. Leave a safety distance of about two car lengths between you and the car in front of you. Especially if it’s a huge truck. Especially in rush hour. Don’t drive bumper to bumper, it doesn’t “reduce” the traffic in any way.

12. Put your cell on silent when you turn the key in the ignition. Please. You already are driving at a qualitative disadvantage, you really don’t need an extra handicap.

13. Learn to parallel park. That’s what it’s called when you park in between two parked cars. It’s called “parallel” parking because in order to do it, you don’t actually drive in head first. You align yourself parallel to the first parked car, and back up into the space in 3 maneuvers.

14. Learn to park. This means you don’t park in compact spaces when you’re a Suburban or an F-150, and you park in between the lines that are traced on the ground to delineate each spot.

15. Learn to read. I’m sorry, I should have mentioned this before. My bad.

16. This is something you actually CAN do: you are allowed to make a left turn at a red light but only from a one way street onto another one way street. So go back and read the 2010 DMV booklet page 48 under “Left Turns” and stop giving me dirty looks.

Crow in E-Flat

I was stuck in rush hour traffic on the 110 South last Friday when I got the chance to hear a segment of Morning Edition that made my day. This is why I’m a member of KPCC. There is nothing like radio.

So, the Songwriters Hall of Fame is preparing to induct Johnny Mandel. I admit, I’d never heard of him. Turns out, he’s the guy who wrote the theme for “M*A*S*H.” He has an Oscar, Grammys and he did the arrangements for Barbra Streisand’s latest album.

I’m crawling about as fast as a person walks, it’s 8:15 AM, and I hear this snippet of conversation between Mandell and the interviewer:

SUSAN STAMBERG: Johnny Mandel’s mother was an opera singer. He was just a little boy when she realized his unique musical gift.

Mr. JOHNNY MANDEL: Well, when I was, like, five or something, she discovered I had perfect pitch. And she’d go play a note, and I’d be in the next room or something and I’d call off the note.

STAMBERG: Perfect pitch can drive people crazy. Squeaky brakes, ambulance sirens all have identifiable notes. Johnny Mandel pays no attention, unless he’s asked.

Do you hear the crows?

Mr. MANDEL: Oh, there’s crows all over here.

STAMBERG: What note are they singing? You have perfect pitch.

(Soundbite of crows sing)

Mr. MANDEL: Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah.

(Soundbite of piano notes)

Mr. MANDEL: E-flat. That was a crow in E-flat. Is this going on NPR? I can’t say much for the future of radio if this is what we’re going to give them.

As if that wasn’t entertaining enough, Stamberg brings up Mandel’s collaboration with Robert Altman on “M*A*S*H”. 

STAMBERG: Movie director Robert Altman hired Johnny Mandel to score his 1970 satire “M*A*S*H.”

Mr. MANDEL: Altman and I are sitting around just by ourselves. It was the day before the beginning of shooting.

STAMBERG: The first scene up was a fake funeral. Altman said he needed a song for it.

Mr. MANDEL: And it should be the stupidest song ever written. I said, well, yeah. I can do stupid. He says, the song should be called “Suicide is Painless.”

STAMBERG: Altman takes a stab at writing the lyrics – not stupid enough.

Mr. MANDEL: He said, ah, but all is not lost. I’ve got a 15-year-old kid who is a gibbering idiot. He’s got a guitar, and he’ll run through this thing like a dose of salts.

STAMBERG: Johnny Mandel went home and wrote the melody, and the kid wrote the lyrics.

Mr. MANDEL: Michael Altman.

STAMBERG: Michael Altman.

Mr. MANDEL: Yeah. And it’s the only lyric he ever wrote.

STAMBERG: An actor recorded the song the next day.

(Soundbite of song, “Suicide is Painless”)

Mr. KEN PRYMUS (Actor): (as Private Seidman) (Singing) Through early morning fog I see visions of the things to be. The pains that are withheld for me, I realize and I can see that suicide is painless.

STAMBERG: Robert Altman later said his kid made more than a million dollars from the song, whereas he, the director, just got 70,000. Then the movie became a TV series, now in rerun perpetuity. Lots of people got rich.

I guess I’m going to rent that movie now, since I’ve never seen it.

India-Pakistan border

Unbelievable video!

You can read about this ceremony here.

Movie poster

Pregnancy secrets

This is absolutely hysterical. It contains phrases like this:

“It’s like explaining mustard to a frog.”

This too

“This Too Shall Pass” from OK GO!