L.A. Anatomía

Stepping into the sentence

Is dipping into a rush of thought.

Where boulder stand in the way, interupting the flow

they are signs for wet moss,

a cautious hinderance.

This is what grammer is

It keeps from stepping into the stream in whole leap

AH

Why did I think that it would be cool to write about the history of the Long Beach Aquariaum?

At first, I thought, what a great transition this will be! writing about rivers to full tanks of aqautic life forms. And then, after spending a whole day on their website I discovered all these great programs, exhibits, tours, educational programs for both kids and bigger kids. The place is amazing from what I can tell on their website and so I thought the history of the place, the structure, the fight for the animals would be the same. It would somehow instill a sense of wonder, like their mission statement, of the bravoto of the man who walked into the Mayor of Long Beach’s office and said : “Damnit John! this palce needs a cultural attraction what the sea and all, and the LA River’s mouth dumping its guts in our nieghiborhood!”

“And you do you suppose to make that happen Jim?” the Mayor might have said, looking up from his offical forms and judging this guys brashness.

“I’ll tell you how, John,” Jim would’ve said backing off a bit, tonging down the intensity a few notches, “by building an Aquarium. The Aqarium of the Pacific!”

“You mean a fish tank? What are we going to fill it with? Goldfish?” The mayor wanted to know, mocking this fools idea.

“Oh no, Jhon, not just any ordinary Aquarium where you might find these fish at your local exotic fish store down the street. Oh no. Im talking about the biggest Aquarium this sode of the country Bigger than the one up in Monterey. A zoo of the aquatic! Will have programs, exhibits, peopl from all over the world will want to come to out home town Long Beach just to see it. We’ll be the first to successfuly breed near extinct speieces! Sea world will have shit compared to us. Fuck Shamu John! We’ll have the freakin’ whales. With wild whale watching programs. And people with AAA memberships could get a discount.”

“Uhu, I see,” the Mayor would’ve said warming up the idea more and more, he would’ve leaned back in his leather chair and asked “And where do you suppose we get all the money for this Jim?”

Jim would’ve just smiled and pull out a check book and say, ” How much you think it would cost?”

But, alas, for my time spent researching I couldn’t find a great story to tell about a man and his dream. To build a multi story aquarium with that “features a collection of over 12,500 animals representing over 650 different species.” The over the facilities focus, “on the Pacific Ocean in three major permanent galleries, Southern California and Baja, Northern Pacific and Tropical Pacific,” because people he said he was crazy to have something of the sort. Yeah, crazy. Like a Shark. which has its own gallery too and a pool where you can touch some of the harmless ones. This and much much more…

No I found no such thing.

www.aquariumofthepacific.org

How did I manage to live so long in Los Angeles and not know that there are free Shakespearean festivals?

In honor of the Bard, I give you this meme:

1. Name the first five lines of Shakespeare that come into your head. (Don’t cheat–write the first five that you think of, then check for accuracy later.)
— “He doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs, to peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves.” Julius Caesar

— “Get thee to a nunnery!” Hamlet

—”Do you not know that I am a woman? When I think, I must speak!” As You Like It

— “Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.” MacBeth

— “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun! Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon….” Romeo and Juliet

(I apologize for misquotes.)

2. The last Shakespeare play you went to see on stage.

As You Like It

3. The last Shakespeare film homage or adaptation you watched at home or at the movies.

That may have been Ran by Akira Kurosawa. It’s based on King Lear.

4. What Shakespeare homage/adaptation/plays are on your to be read/to be seen list?

I would love to see Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead on stage. I keep planning to head up to the Theatricum Botanicum before the summer’s over to see any Shakespearean play too.

5. Name a favorite Shakespeare-inspired work.

Oh! Hmmm…All I can think of is the Arrested Development episode in which Tobias genderbends the roles in Much Ado About Nothing.

6. Why do you think Shakespeare’s plays are still popular?

I’m going to go with another person here and say: “Because they are wonderful. Why else?”

What does everyone else think?

AH and I had a typical Thursday evening. We met up at one of our residences around 9 PM, tried to figure out what to do or where to go that was not a franchise, couldn’t, and then just got in a car and drove. We drove straight down Balboa Blvd for more than 30 minutes, and then, when we crossed the 101 Freeway, we turned left and drove even straighter and further along.

Ok, there was some kind of plan, but not really. AH hoped that a cafe she had been to once was a) still open and b) where she thought it was. The latter reason is one reason why we couldn’t reason in what direction to drive. The former reason is a great bane here in the city of L.A. Passed 10 PM, places close and where else can you go for a nibble and drink that is not a bar or club?

If we were high schoolers, we might have had to go to Denny’s.

But AH and I were in luck! After we found the Marmalade Cafe and ascertained that it was not open (the valet parker told us), we drove a lee-tle more until we hit Mel’s Drive-In.

Pray tell, what does that signify?

Ok, I have to be honest. I had no idea what a Mel’s Drive-In was till that night. Heck, I only had an inkling that it existed because of a crossword clue that I (obviously) couldn’t figure out. (Waitress at Mel’s Diner. Answer: There’s no quick google answer so I still don’t know.)

But you may remember Mel’s from such movies as:

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and American Graffiti.

Much like other diner chains (Ruby’s, Johnny Rockets, etc.), Mel’s has the whole 1950-1960s atmosphere. The decor is time-capsule kitsch. The food looked good, but I couldn’t say much as I only had the curly fries and chocolate cake.

What does this entry signify? Sometimes, there isn’t much else to go on but what you got on your plate.

A few weeks ago, I got to visit the capital building in Lansing, Michigan. Not only was the building super cool, but the experience made me want to go and visit the Californian state capital building immediately.

If Californians truly see the United States as something like this:

 It shouldn’t surprise anyone that it took me several seconds to realize the center of the state wasn’t L.A. but Sacramento.

Anyway, weeks pass, things happen, and I have a whole lot of conversations with persons I know and persons I don’t know about the state of the information age, the California ballot looks like its going to be stuffed with stuff, and then suddenly! I’m curious about these people are who represent me in Washington D.C.

So, I looked them up. With specialized websites more and more becoming the go-to for information, I think that the U.S. government webpages will be excellent sources in the near future for constituents to see what’s going on. How did my representatives (Senators Feinstein and Boxer and good old Buck McKeon) do? Squeaky clean and patriotic layouts and invitations to feel free to visit them. I believe I shall take them up on that offer when I next get the chance.

Democracy. It works.

I saw a lot of dead people last week–mostly because I’ve discovered hulu.com and the entire first season of Bones.

It’s an interesting show in that it places death, specifically rotting, gooey, slimy, violently abused corpses on an elegant, scientific and hygenic table for the viewing enjoyment of the audience. The lovely Emily Deschanel runs her hands over the bones, coaxing out the truths found deep within the marrow. Her team of smart, but attractive and young, scientists rip apart the dirt that covers the mutilated bodies and rebuild the the skeleton image as the bones implies the face looks, and etc. to tell the audience the mystery. The whole show is centered around death, particularly the corpse of a person who never gets to speak but who is the diving board from which the show launches action, plot, drama and even romance!

Basically, as a forensics team, Emily and co. piece together and paint a portrait of the victim’s last moments.

I also saw real dead bodies last week (more…)

That’s right, you heard me. The giant Humboldt squid, which mostly lives in low oxygen columns of water is edging its way closer to the LA coast and shallow ends of the sea. Feeding, in what are rightfully OUR commercial fishing grounds. Ugh!

What could be the cause of this mayhem??

“Oxygen-starved waters are expanding in the Pacific and Atlantic as ocean temperatures increase with global warming, threatening fisheries and other marine life, a study published [in May 2008] concludes.”

Threatening to some marine life, helping others to thrive. The low levels of O2 or “hypoxic, zones ” resulting in global warming has urged the squid to explore new territories that it may have not ventured into previously. And these squids are FEROCIOUS preditors.

That, coupled with over-fishing these grounds, leaves the marine life in these particular area strangled on both sides. Almost squezing them out of their habitat, cylces, and into possible exinction. And we;re talking about a whole lot of diverse marine life.

“Most of these [ hypoxic] zones remain hundreds of feet below the surface, but they are beginning to spill onto the relatively shallow continental shelf off the coast of California and are nearing the surface off Peru, driving away fish from commercially important fishing grounds, researchers have found.”

These Squids “can grow 6 feet long, appear to be taking advantage of their tolerance for oxygen-poor waters to escape predators and devour local fish.”

Layers of O2 have been depleting rapidly over the last 50 years.

A study in Germany states that the increase of Hypoxic waters, has the same effect of gases trapped in a greenhouse.

“lighter warm water creates a cap over the colder depths, making it less likely that oxygen-enriched surface water will mix with colder water. Other biogeochemical processes also rob oxygen from deeper waters, such as the decomposition and re-mineralization of dead plankton as it settles to the seafloor.”
“The trend, the study points out, eerily echoes a scenario that unfolded about 250 million years ago, when 95% of life on Earth went extinct after heat-trapping carbon dioxide spewing from volcanoes warmed the planet and the oceans became stripped of oxygen.

Francisco Chavez, a study coauthor and senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, said that California can look to Peru for potential problems ahead. Peruvian authorities have struggled for a decade over a commercial fish called hake that is being squeezed between overfishing and oxygen-starved waters.”

“At some point, it’s going to push them up onto the surface,” he said.

Can you imagine, if squids could walk?

Eerie….

Last Saturday I headed to the Santa Monica pier (at about 11:30pm) to check out Glow, the light-and-technology art/music festival put together on the beach.

Some of the art was kind of cool but in retrospect I’m beginning to believe that the event itself was the real art piece, featuring up to 44,000 people (that’s not a typo) wandering the beach and surrounding area looking for light and color, both of which there seemed to be tragically less of than anticipated. There were some cool perspective-bending “exhibits,” to be sure, but the event was made far more of an extravaganza by the swarms of people stumbling around in varyious states of intoxication. As one confused visitor put it, “There’s like 3,000 people down there praying to a #$*&@*% lava lamp!”

Parking was a nightmare, of course. From what I read, this event will be attempted again in a couple years. Hopefully by then some of the kinks will be smoothed out.

Gnarly crowds, this is a pedestrian bridge crossing Coast Highway at 1am.
Contrary to what it looks like, watching this lady maneuver her “bioluminescent lightstrings,” looks a lot like this image; the light trails were also visible to the naked eye—a bit like seeing this picture in 3-D.

Glow

Muscle beach in the Glowlight

This was about the time somebody walked right up to me and asked point blank whether I had any acid. Needless to say a good number of the people in attendance were enjoying the event on a far different level.

I called this the “glowstick graveyard.”

Really cool creations hanging beneath the pier, made out of lights, mechanized parts, and plastic bags that inflated and deflated making them look like some bizarre robotic jellyfish.

Glow on, L.A. But next time leave me somewhere to park!
~Molly, Luminaire Images

My fellow blogger AH is getting to know all about wines and cheeses. When we met up last week to discuss the “state o’ the blog,” she brought excellent goodies found in the aisles of Whole Foods at a wine tasting seminar. Actually, Whole Foods, the latest and greatest and more expensive organic store hereabouts, sponsors lots of community events. I stumbled across a Single’s Night held in the natural supplements section one evening. Grocery stores: They’re not just about produce anymore.

Another sociable thing to do in Los Angeles (apparently) is to dance. I went to my first lindy hop this month at the Atomic Ballroom in Irvine, which is a small private dance studio in a commercial complex that no one would suspect would be there.

Not only was it a cool, friendly and dynamic place, but the dancers were pretty cool, friendly and dynamic themselves. I was twirled till about 11 pm when my age decided it was past my bedtime. But here’s the interesting “did I know” fact from that night: Socal, specifically Los Angeles, has one of the biggest social dance communities in the country. We apparently brought back swing—specifically at a place called the Derby in Pasadena. I’m on the lookout for more dances!

Coming up: AH brings you news from Comicon in San Diego, and (once I get her set up), we have a new contributor to the blog.