L.A. Anatomía

Because it is almost midnight and I’m on the cusp of being “in transit,” I’ve decided life, more specifically my future life of tomorrow, is like a honey bran muffin.

Let me tell you my story:

In order to be on time for my flight to LAX tomorrow, I drove down from my perch in the northern reach of LA to a more sourtherly neighborhood where a friend had agreed to put me up for the night. Like any good traveler, I packed before I left, and did a 101 other things, giving me just enough time to get down to that southerly region at 10 PM. I was hungry. I had eaten only what was left in my fridge–a fridge I had not stocked in anticipation of being in transit for more than a week. So friend(s) and I went to Manhatten Beach, one of the beach-y communities of LA, family friendly by day and trendy by night, to eat at the 24-hour Kettle.

The Kettle is a longtime institution. It serves the community, the college students, and other Californian folk. They offer breakfast all day and dinner only at night. Friends and I arrived, we impressed the staff with the fact that we were hungry. I ordered an omelette and a muffin, and then our wait commenced.

Oh my muffin! So long did I wait for it! I watched and gazed at servers, hoping they would realize that I wanted my muffin now! Rather than later! I watched them go behind the counter, up to the food window under the heat lamps, chat with the chefs, take plates of burgers and fries and salads and other yummy stuff away, but never go to get my muffin!

Such pain! Such patience! Such fortitude to be asked to call upon at a late hour after a long day on an empty stomach!

And this is when I realized that it was all like traveling. Tomorrow, I would go to LAX. I would sit and wait. Read and wait. Fly and wait. And be and wait. And then! After an eternity of gates and passes and obstacles and security and waitresses who don’t bring you your muffins– there would be an end and satisfaction.

I include a Joyce Carol Oates reference only because it rolls off the tongue. There’s nothing horrifying behind this entry except that it doesn’t know where it’s going, and it rarely knows where it has been. But it will identify that it has been somewhere. Was it meaningful? Was it worth it? Was the food good?

Maybe the uncertainty is the most horrifying part.

One thing I’ve learned while living in LA is that you need to know where to direct your feet/car/steps/purpose/path. Without a magnetic pull, you could get lost forever on the endless streets, in the endless traffic, and (pause for dramatic effect!) an endless city. Eh. Scratch that last part. That was too cliche. Let’s rewind and start back at the beginning.

There are so many things to talk about in the city of angels. There’s politics, fashion, art, crime, stupidity, persons, places, subjects, nouns! But, with no direction, it’s easy to wander aimlessly, wasting the moments of your life as if you were stuck in traffic. You really were going somewhere, but so much of the time you spent getting there was just yadayadayada.

Hmmm, rewind?

Where is this entry going?

Start: The weekend. Hot. A girl drives south on the 405 to hang out with friends. She arrives. They get in a car and drive westward to the ocean to eat at a franchise. The food is only what they can rely on –tasty, satisfying and wholly unremarkable. They get back in their car and drive. They go shopping. Shop. Shop. Shop. There’s really nothing but unsatisfied impulses–discussions of colors, textures, tones, patterns and concord among the styles of dresses rather than among the feminine minds for one dress (singular). The girl and her girlfriends are similar today only in that they are girls out shopping in Los Angeles. They wear flipflops, jeans, summer dresses and skirts and, of course, sunglasses. They are dissimilar in that they can’t agree on what not to wear and what to wear. They’re shopping has a purpose ( that singular dress), but it is totally without purpose for the three minds buck and tumble about the idea and shy away from a conclusion. They come to know no conclusion. They get in the car. They drive back to their meeting point. They separate. The girl drives north on the 405, back to her beginning.

The end.

Where was I going? I really wanted to find a beginning.

 DZ

Yesterday my bloggy partner and I did something wholly unexpected. Instead of networking with each other over coffee, mochas, cafe au laits, cupcakes, cookies, hookah, wine, alcohol or some other treat at some restaurant, bar or cafe, we met up at my place in the nether northern reaches of LA-land to discuss the state of our blog over tea. It was a comfortable affair, but one that was as sharp and critical as E! on the red carpet. We undressed our entries. We tore at the seams. We ripped past the titles to see if the curves and fit of each word was right for what we wanted.

Our findings show? We started out strong, but then we began to slide.

I remember reading a long time ago that people could only reinvent themselves in Los Angeles. I mean what other city or state would accept a former VP and failed presidential candidate and help ressurect him as a celeb?

So that’s what my fellow blogger and I sat down to do. We decided that phase one of our blog was semi-successful: We managed to update almost daily. Now we must move on to phase two: Update daily with content of substance that remains on topic.

 Our topic? It remains life in L.A. We just have too dig down deep into our writerly skills and work hard to weave it into the net with the essence of this topsy turvy city.

But until then, here’s news of another makeover: L.A. Times owner Sam Zell has apparently decided to approach his $$$ problems like a real estate agent. He’s decided to condense his staff and rent out the office space, which according to builders is worthless as living or work spaces anyway. Ah me! The Times is changing indeed!

 Changing call signs to–

 DZ

While waiting at the intersection of Ellis Avenue and Magnolia Street in “Surf City” Huntington Beach, traffic came to a stop. Two police officers were keeping cars at bay without an accident in sight. Then, motorcyclists on their hogs zoomed by for about five minutes. At the end, the officers got on their on motorcycles and followed up the rear.

Any idea about what that was about?

On a more important note, I was reading this article here about model/actress/maverick Velvet d’Amour. The woman made headlines as the only 300 lb model in a haute couture fashion show. I also make mention in the article here, on this site about LA, because what other city in the U.S. is known for skinny, blonde, fashionable, toned, health-and-body conscious citizens?

 ”I’ve never said it’s, like, healthy to be fat or you should try to be fat. But I very much understand what people, and women in particular, go through to try to achieve the inaccessible. That’s why my whole goal is to diversify peoples’ notions of beauty. Not to say we should celebrate necessarily fatness. It’s to say, celebrate who we are. Because if you love yourself as a fat person, then you are far more apt to take yourself to a swimming pool. If you feel good about yourself, then you’re more apt to take care of yourself. I’m sure even people your size take issue with swimsuit season. How many articles have we seen, where… ‘OMG, it’s swimsuit season, I’ve got to go to the beach, I’ve got to lose 5 lbs’? Well imagine when you weigh 300lbs - and probably the best exercise and the only exercise you should do is to go swimming. Go take yourself to a swimming pool. I mean I’ve been called a whale at a swimming pool. I’m very confident in my body and I know that I’m not going to stop myself from getting exercise by virtue of someone putting me down. But I know that there are tonnes of women who would never go back to that swimming pool. And so if you maintain this prejudice that’s so blatant towards fat people, if the real goal is for everyone to be healthy, then certainly you’re not going to get that way by maintaining this exclusion of fat people who do exist in society. ”

Some points that I especially liked:

“Look at the plus size industry. What sizes are marketed to women of our size? Quite small women. And I think that that’s based sort of on a self-loathing of fat women in general. A lot of women will complain, ‘Why does Lane Bryant or whatever use small women’, or ‘Why are we always being sold, as fat women, much skinnier women as models?’ But they [companies] do the statistics and when they put a fatter model in it [shoot/catalogue], then they make less money, and so it’s always going to be about making money, isn’t it? If you could put a 300lb woman in a swimsuit that was meant for a 300lb woman, and people bought it, then clearly they would do that. But the fact of the matter is, if they put a 120lb woman with breast pads and butt pads in - and she’s wearing the same swimsuit that’s being sold to a 300lb woman and they get more sales from it - then that’s what’s going to happen.”

I thought it was also interesting that Velvet d’Amour has spanned the weight spectrum. She talks about how she was 117 pounds and still too “fat” for high fashion. It’s interesting that she’s now in such an opposing category, and yet, the woman is modeling at 41 and finding success in the entertainment industry. Whether she’s trailblazing a new road for beauty, for I think we have it too narrowly defined, is yet to be seen, but I’m glad she’s out there.

While shopping in the suburbs of LA, a herd of bicycles zipped by on the main street, breaking up traffic, tripping up cars, existing totally at random.

I love LA <3!

Away from the coast and over the hills, in the valleys of L.A., it is hot.

Item #1

Gas prices are insane. I plan my week out now to maximize the time I spend behind the wheel.

Item #2

I have visions of giving it all up and stepping on a bus. But then, I tremble. Yes, I have no problem figuring out how to use the public transport in exotic locales, but in my own backyard?! How much change would I need to carry? Can you find a bus schedule? What if I get lost?

Item # 3

It is hot.

For those of you not following the publishing biz, one of the biggest shake-ups in the industry is happening over at the LA Times. The “City of Angels” is in a heaven-and-hell-like war between the old ways, the news ways, quality, quantity, money and morality. A lot of the bashing, on the part of the editorial staff and writers, is focused on a man named Sam Zell. As I understand it, Zell was quite the innovator and entrepreneur in real estate, but in newspapers, he’s been labeled as quite the opposite.

The latest bruise that he’s been accused of is in planning to cut down all content in the LA Times by about 500 pages. His end goal is to publish a periodical that is half advertisements and half stories. He also, apparently, plans to slash staffers even more. The logic behind the cut: His research shows that staffers at local newspapers write 300 pages a year compared to staffers at the LA Times, who only write 51. Apparently, he can cut the staff by more than a handful of writers and editors without harming the quantity or quality of the product.

I hope your mouths are agape because seriously?! An anonymous LA Times staffer at TellZell.com (a blog detailing the downfall of a city’s great award-winning newspaper) has written a very good rebuttal to those “facts.”

A snippet:

“I caveat with the weasel word “appears” because Michaels [one of Zell and co.] used a strange formulation. He said that the average journalist in LA “does about 51 pages a year. But the average journalist in Hartford or Baltimore does over 300 pages a year.”

The first question to ask Michaels is to define his terms of battle. What the hell is a “page”? I have a hard time even guessing. A blank newspaper page has about 120 column inches. It seems unlikely that any journalist, anywhere is filling up 51 entire newspaper pages per year, much less 300. Nor does it seem likely to be an HTML page. That’s not really a measurement of news content, but web production.”

If you want a less impassioned take on this struggle for the very definition and future of journalism in Los Angeles, take a look at LA Observed, which links out, posts memos, and keeps the active L.A.ian citizen abreast of how their paper is falling apart.

For a writer, editor and/or lover of knowledge, the whole business is very, very bleak indeed.

The end of my little Dickens marathon was Oliver Twist. What else can I say, but love!

There was a special feature at the end of the DVD, which said that Charles Dickens was the most successful solo performer of the time. He apparently read to house of 3-4 thousand people. Apparently, he was a very good reader.

I sometimes wonder if the art of reading will be reborn in this audio society. Statistics in the publishing industry show that audiobook sales are better than ever, which means that the success of that audiobook will partly rely on the person reading the story. In my experience of authors today, many are not performers. They do not know how to read their works as entertainment, which is probably why you see so many actors fill the shoes. However, it also seems to me that the artistic person, whether actor, writer, painter, songwriter or singer, must now be well-rounded enough to fill all shoes. It’s about marketing yourself, which means that you must perform what you do in order to sell it to others who would make a bigger production of it.

Here you have Charles Dickens all those years ago mesmerizing audiences with his words and reading to them for hours. And today, with podcasts, vlogs, blogs and whatnot, it seems to me as if there is a rebirth of the solo, simple performance.

Your thoughts?

Internet issues kids. Thus, the reason behind the slight blog delay.

Paper Cuts, the NY Times book blog, had an interest tidbit posted today wherein they posed this question: When everyone’s a writer, is no one a reader?

The stats say that writers have increased over 20% in the U.S. So people are writing, but the National Endowment of the Arts has long lamented and continues to mourn the death of reading. I’m a bibliophile through and through, but I must admit that it’s been a long time since I sat down for a day or even finished a book.

There are several reasons for this:

 1) Time in that I rarely have a good block, i.e. 10-24 hours, to just read.

2) Reading requires greater mental acuity. At the end of the day, my mind is as sharp as a rock, and I believe studies show that TV deadens brainwaves. The higher brain region shuts down leaving only the lower, reptilian functions left. Basically, you are a couch potato.

3) Time. Really. When writing, it’s amazing how little time you have to read.

I recently considered this idea: If writers are great readers, then it would be reasonable to assume that they are the main consumers of books. However, if writers are so busy generating content, keeping up with the publishing industry changes, and looking for more jobs in which they can write, then they don’t have time to read. Also, if a writer is “poor as dirt,” then how can they indulge in their greatest consumerist pleasure? They don’t have the money to buy books. They don’t have the time to read them. They only generate them and then they move on.

I hope that was somewhat coherent. It’s in the wee hours of the morning, and lookee here! I’m writing rather than reading!

-SD

It is a hard time when you find yourself without an ingredient in a recipe that you’ve already begun. It is an even harder time if you are in the mood for a certain recipe, and you cannot find that recipe at all.

 Can you guess at the hard time I faced today?

It really wasn’t so bad. Thanks to THE INTERNET, I found my recipe in under five minutes. Lemonberry muffins are extremely delicious. They are not so much lemony as filled with berries, which make them extra delicious. Originally, the recipe, from which I make these marvelous muffins, was 100% vegan. However, because I do not generally stock vegan commodities in my non-vegan household, I wandered off on a few permutations.

That’s really one reason why I love cooking vegetarian recipes. They’re so easy to tweak. Sometimes, I feel like a tinker as if there is a whole mechanism in my mixing bowl and I just need to tinker with the right ingredient. However, unlike a tinker, my tools are much more delicious, like lemonberry muffins.

It was a hard time though in finding a substitute for a key ingredient. I found a useful list at allrecipes.com.

But I can tie this all into the next part of this entry: I had a harder time baking because I could not find the usual ingredients, and I found it hard to watch Charles Dicken’s Hard Times because it deviated away from formula.

Literati know that most Dicken’s novels follow a formula like this:

There is an orphan of unknown origin.

There is a large, motley, topsy turvy cast of characters that somehow end up interconnected.

Bad characters do bad things to the good characters, especially the orphan.

Good characters withstand their trials by remaining good, especially the orphan.

Bad characters get their comeuppance. Good characters get married, have babies and live happily ever after!

Imagine my surprise when Hard Times ended badly for everyone. Good, bad, so-so and the kitchen sink. No one is happy, except maybe Sissy, but who can say for sure? Not even the narrator.

When the miniseries I was watching ended, I immediately ran to THE INTERNET. How could a miniseries drop the ball so badly on a Dickens novel? I thought. Something must be wrong! Our heroine marries the wrong man, gets seduced by the lothario, divorces, is used badly by her brother and dies alone. Am I reading a Hardy novel here?!

But THE INTERNET only spake of what the miniseries had shown. It WAS true. Much like A Tale of Two Cities, the only Dickens novel that I know of not written in the protagonist’s POV, I was in shock by this deviation from the status quo. How cruel of Dickens! How harsh of him! What a bleak house to build for the reader!

But, a new taste to an old favorite is sometimes not as bad as it first seems, so I’ll probably still read the book anyway.

-SD