Les La L'Anniversary Blues

A year on (this past Monday), celebrations and regrets are a hair-weave; subway delays and winter slush a fade. Though talking back to the East Coast, or seeing the Apple flicker as some producer’s chosen backdrop on my telly, ushers in a deep unease of the soul. Eemmeegrant 4 Life indeed.

A lot of the things proselytized about this place are true – snobbed-up, media-fed EC’s may only be exploring one small strip of the sprawl, but some generalizations are dead-spot accurate. That I’m not of this place is apparent and somewhat reassuring (that nobody else is, totally besides the point – “of course they belong, darling.”) Although, I too have purchased a tracksuit...umm, to blend in.

But this place does contain vast multitudes and that, la muchacha, is its main attraction, the dizzying possibilities is one helluva great redeemer as Deities go. You bang your shin on a 2000-year-old redwood, watch a sunset over the Desert peaks or swerve not to hit the coyote with the balls to wander round Franklin during Friday rush hour, and the word “opportunity” gets redefined. So what if some of the philosophers here are less Ninja and more Barney fucking Fife – and thus even harder to respect when their triumph is my cold porridge. Dealing with that motherfucker is how we do -- or learn to. Cause you are never too old.

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More on writing from LA: Bernie Weinraub does not go out a sucka, but does question his higher purpose. (from the NYT).

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“Folk songs are evasive - the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that’s exactly the way we want it to be. We wouldn’t be comfortable with it any other way.” – Bob Dylan, "Chronicles - Volume One," p.71

City Phrases II: Adaptation & In No Sense

In which my adopted hometown plays itself:
"To name a sensibility, to draw its contours and to recount its history, requires a deep sympathy modified by revulsion. Though I am speaking about sensibility only - and about a sensibility that, among other things, converts the serious into the frivolous - these are grave matters."
- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp" (1964)

A New Year at One Edge of the World

Around 3pm of '05 and it’s all heavy shadows in Malibu. The western winter light is soft and slightly golden over some deep pocket of the Pacific, peeking to add faint outlines to the blue-gray canvas of clouds. Beach semi-crowded by families and birds, watching dolphin dances and one lone surfing lesson in which the female student keeps falling whenever she tries to stand on the board. Judging from the number of (random, very random) people I know who’ve taken it up, I bet “learn to surf” is a common resolution in les la LA. Probably a good hangover cure on a New Year’s Day like today. Though nothing seems likely to clear up today.

Jared Diamond, author of the great "Guns, Germs and Steel," on the falls of civilizations and what causes them (in the New York Times).

Proof that even the politicians in Los Angeles embody the stereotypes (from AP via NYT).

Winter Leaves (and February Flowers too…)

They don’t all fall in the autumn here. Some big green and brown palms can still be seen dropping limbs upon the Lincoln Continentals cruising the Hollywood Blvd. stretch west of LaBrea, past the block on which the slightly crispy folk music tutor types sell home-made hollow-body instruments three days a week, and the street-corner with the light box where a stencil of California burns in the endless sunshine. Though nothing’s getting singed at the moment.

Instead, the cold December rains have taken over, as Biblical as the Book of Axl predicted – give or take a slight calendar discrepancy/delay, though it still seemed an old winter’s song – and much more omnivorous than the ones I brought back from the Emerald Isle in October. 4 inches in a day is crazy shit, especially for people used to holding sunburned hands even after the days have start to grow short.

Nat King Cole Station Post Office (90004) is located at Western and 2nd, halfway up the block from a beautiful corner store-front that’s part Art Deco, part pimp Pharaoh. It’s for rent. Not for rent and right down the street are the world’s only consciously abstract KFC (situated in a Cali late modern commercial space), the non-denominational Vietnamese Christian church and hall (long strings of holiday lights descending festively from its bright neon steeple cross), and the Korean Buddhist temple which looks like it could’ve once been a mosque.

Few opportunities are missed on this strip, and most good ‘uns are recycled by the global masses again consuming American scraps, this time from the overfed table of Los Angeles’ bubble-ical real estate market. Driving around in downpours, you notice these people welcome the rain sans the histrionics, having designed their newly acquired backyards to spring back to glorious life in late winter of their discontent, just as the first-run South Calicackians of privilege begin seasonal shopping for summer retreats and new pants-skirt combinations that better fit.

Hype Men...

...fantasy boosters, eternal dream peddlers. They’re loved up in the sunny Southland -- a mighty local breed. Aggrandizement is not just a privilege reserved for well-paid specialists round here, all become adept at hawking desires after living here long enough, constantly pitching, even if just a toss on the side. (Stay tuned for Les La LA's "USC Football is soooo Dope" pre-Bowl blowout.)

But hype professionals consume entire worlds, flattening formerly enjoyable aspects of everyday-people life, deceiving you into wondering if it is actually better than the original?

The most immediately irritating hype-men are the ones getting on-stage with DJs, promoters selling when the sale’s final, whack MC’s dousing parties right and quickly. Ruining J-Roccc or Egon's sets at Stones Throw, pulverizing a hot-shit Firecracker Anniversary tag-team by Arabian Lover and Egyptian Prince(random WC hip-hop nirvana), or whooping Alpha Tae Omega-like through Kenny Larkin’s mixing board masterpiece in a Glendale warehouse (random LA techno Valhalla). Sprays of inside-baseball shout-outs, verbal floods and rave-stick beacons, when all the stoned soul children wanna do is the rock away, in peaceful musicales ecstasis (or some approximation thereof). But tell ‘em to shut the fuck up and you’re the bad guy.

More consistently insidious are critics pushing local lore to the head of the class. Every Southland industry has ‘em, but bonus plagues upon the local pop boosters and their bottomless inferiority complexi, meek scrubs to the media machinations of the Apple, the sub-cultural absolutists of the Bay, the brain twista salt-of-the-Earth-ians from Windy, every college scene with a decent Cultural Studies thrift store, and, most of all, the Holly Biz nobody beats. (Someone should explore EC-WC rivalries as offshoot of 213’s self-consciousness mental subservience.) By their token, each local undie MC is under-rated by the industry, every freeform digital noise-fest is the next Aphex/electric Miles/Slint, and all the 9pm’ers at Spaceland are better than whoever New York critics are currently getting bandwagon-esque about. All possibly true in individual practice, but never as a rule.

The eternal Southland peddlers helped build the City of Quartz" by selling not just celluloid dreams and sun-out-the-backdoor somedays, but whole infrastructures that supposedly manufacture them. Be willing to play with the machine’s controls, and it just might handover your every wish.

Fire Wheel Burning in the Air (2 Days in November)

Just like that other dark Tuesday, it was a gorgeous morning. No traffic to the West Hollywood temple where I punched my card, a long but friendly cue, a game-plan for the day coming together. Rocketing down the Golden State, KG and I gazed in wide wonder at the snow-capped San Bernadinos to the east, and agreed with James LCD: indeed, a good day for "Yeah!"

When we got to Watts, the kids were talking about getting acquainted with the ballot-box because they knew their neighborhood would be the first stop for the coming-round bus of Sickle-wielding recruiters in camo hoods; meanwhile, Questlove had plenty of Afro room in the Scion he used to chauffeur first-time voters to the polls before he had to get to sound-check. In Echo Park, as every other district we heard reports from, the high turn-out turned us on.

This was before we knew we were dead, before we realized that we had no losing exit strategy from this evening, before hope emerged from the Heineken bottles I was emptying at a dizzying pace all night, and said there was some other places she had to be. KG couldn't fall asleep, but I couldn't stand being awake.

Wednesday, after the concession, she and I drove around shell-shocked -- first, down the recline of the East Side's unnamed streets, then a hillside cemetery in Glendale. And I swear I could already hear the Gods of Free Commerce, Manifest Democracy, and Strict Interpretation scheming about how they could improve the traffic up in here, while the iPod played "good night to the rock and roll era."

That night, instead of enlightenment, Los Feliz got a blackout. No lie.

Apologies, Upon the Return to a Hillside Hacienda

Sorry Langan, readers. Been running round the country, rallying the half-million-strong nay-sayers, saluting my hometown for its taste in resistance chic, and crying at how far off the pier Mayor Mike's pushed the civil liberties of his constituents. If any motherfucker should pay for the charade of Tom DeLay-loving Republicans calling NYC home (even for a week), it should be that Buffoon Bloomberg.

America's future looked ugly from the street -- there's only 47 more days to change that. Don't just stand there! Do something!!!