Home » Articles posted by Tarnmoor (Page 179)

Author Archives: Tarnmoor

Trading Bubble Gum Cards

Posted on by

Canter’s Deli on Fairfax

When the restaurants in L.A. started to open, Martine and I decided to go for our first restaurant meal in three months to Canter’s Deli on Fairfax. So on Saturday we actually found space in the deli’s postage-stamp-sized parking lot and wandered in wearing our required face masks. I ordered half of a pastrami sandwich on rye on a cup of bean and barley soup with iced tea. Martine had knockwurst and beans. We shared a plate of kosher dill pickles.

Okay, so it wasn’t a romantic choice; but my patronage of the deli goes back more than half a century. When I went to see movies with my film freak friends, we usually stopped for a late night feed at Canter’s, which at the time professed to be open all night but usually wasn’t. Over a corned beef sandwich or a plate of kasha varnishkes, we argued about which movies were super great and which were shit. These conversations were sometimes heated, as film freaks can be counted on to be opinionated. I referred to these sessions as “trading bubble gum cards,” as they were pretty juvenile.

Two of the friends I went to Canter’s with—who curiously were the most dogmatic in their positions—are no longer with us. Norman Witty died in 2013, and Lee Sanders in 2015. In a way, I miss those days when our opinions meant so much to us. Now, even when discussing even the greatest films, I am more inclined to shrug differences off. (Maybe that’s why I’m still alive.)

Martine and I enjoyed our meal. I know we were putting ourselves at risk, but we were impatient to return to normality even for a short time. As the coronavirus threat dies down, we will return more frequently; but however good Canter’s is, it’s not worth sacrificing our life for their food.

 

Serendipity: That Professional Smile

Posted on by

Why I Could Never Become a Salesman

Watch TV and you will see them by the hundreds: Actors with that professional corporate smile. Everything is fine. There are no negatives. Well, that’s not me. Let me greet you with a suspicious scowl. I don’t know you and I have no reason to send a ray of sunshine up your ass. I was always good at what I did, but I was hopeless as a salesman. (That never bothered me as that was not my intention.) The following is a long footnote from David Foster Wallace’s long essay on taking a Caribbean cruise for the first time, entitled “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.”

This is related to the phenomenon of the Professional Smile, a national pandemic in the service industry; and no place in my experience have I been on the receiving end of as many Professional Smiles as I am on the [cruise ship]: maitre d’s, Chief Stewards, Hotel Managers minions’ , Cruise Director—their P.S.’s all come on like switches at my approach. But also back on land at banks, restaurants, airline ticket counters, on and on. You know this smile—the strenuous contraction of of circumoral fascia w/ incomplete zygomatic involvement—the smile that doesn’t quite reach the smiler’s eyes and that signified nothing more than a calculated attempt to advance the smiler’s own interests by pretending to like the smilee. Why do employers and supervisors force professional service people to broadcast the Professional Smile? Am I the only consumer in whom high doses of such a smile produce despair? Am I the only person who’s sure that the growing number of cases in which totally average-looking people suddenly open up with automatic weapons in shopping malls and insurance offices and medical complexes and McDonaldses is somehow causally related to the fact that these venues are well-known dissemination-loci of the Professional Smile?

 

 

Plague Diary 26: The Latin American Hot Spot

Posted on by

Covid-19 Still Rages in Latin America

I was disappointed to hear that Latin America is still considered a global hot spot for the Coronavirus, particularly Brazil, Peru, and Mexico. According to a bulletin issued yesterday by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City:

The number of confirmed and suspected cases is still increasing daily in several regions of Mexico. Mexico City, Tabasco, Sinaloa, Aguascalientes, and Yucatan currently report the highest incidence rates of active cases (incidence rate is the number of cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days). Hospital occupancy rates are also increasing, with the highest levels in Mexico City, Mexico State, Guerrero, Morelos, and Chiapas. Mexican health authorities have reiterated calls for people to stay home during this time.

Since I would love to re-visit Yucatán and Chiapas, this comes as bad news if i wanted to leave the country for my vacation. More and more, I think I will have several short vacations this year in the Southwestern U.S.

 

Fun on the Dunes of Arrakis

Posted on by

Poster Art for David Lynch’s Dune (1984) with Kyle MacLachlan

I think it is part of the human condition to fall in love with a book or song or film that one knows is not altogether up to snuff. In suchlike manner do I love the Dave Robicheaux novels of James Lee Burke, Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics singing “Sweet Dreams,” or David Lynch’s magnificent near-miss epic, Dune, based on the Frank Herbert novel of the same name.

Yesterday I saw Dune for the nth time, loving every minute of the film which its director disavowed because he did not get final editing rights. Having read the novel twice, I knew that there were unpardonable lacunae in the story, but I didn’t care. I felt that Lynch managed to get at the heart of the characters, even though he claims not to have read the book.

Alia of the Knife in Dune, Played by Alicia Witt

Please do not confuse my strange taste for any love of camp or any other such outmoded sensibility. The things I like about Dune are not its imperfections, but how close Lynch comes to pulling it all off.

Come to think of it, I feel that way about two other film epics directed by Anthony Mann that have received scant critical praise, including The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) with Sophia Loren and Stephen Boyd and El Cid (1961) with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren. Like Dune, both Mann films were vitiated by the penny-pinching producers, but had some excellent bits.

Every director worth his salt has in his filmography films that have ended up as heartbreaks. Think of Orson Welles’s whole career after Citizen Kane, the late works of Josef Von Sternberg (after his Marlene Dietrich masterpieces), Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, and Akira Kurosawa’s Dodes’ka-den, over which the filmmaker attempted suicide.

It seems that imperfection is part and parcel of movie-making—perhaps because it is an art form that involves large crowds of people.

Unexpected Angels

Posted on by

Young Volunteers Removing Graffiti

In general, I am not one to praise the younger generation—probably because they have adopted too many aspects of our culture which I find spurious, including smart phones, e-scooters, and in fact the whole gig economy.

Imagine my surprise when I found many young men and women cleaning up the mess in Santa Monica after the looters and other thugs had their way last Sunday. Okay, I guess I was a little tough on them, but after all they shouldn’t ought to have have stepped on my lawn.

More Graffiti Cleanup

I have always loved the look of Santa Monica. In 1966, when I moved into an apartment on Sunset Boulevard near Barrington Avenue, the first trip I took on my own was by bus to Santa Monica and its beach. After having been raised in grungy Cleveland with its dirty red brick, I saw Santa Monica as a pretty town at the edge of the sea. In Cleveland, we had no beach to speak of along the shores of poor, polluted Lake Erie. For many years, I lived in Santa Monica, until I was squeezed out around 1979 when Proposition 13 was adopted by the voters of California. Still, I live within two and a half miles of the ocean and I like to walk there from time to time.

 

 

The Ruins of Santa Monica

Posted on by | 4 Comments

National Guard Protecting Santa Monica Place Shopping Mall

The above picture shows two aspects of yesterday’s widespread looting of Santa Monica businesses. On the one hand, the National Guard was moving into place to protect businesses; and HUMVs with guardsmen were seen in the streets. On the other, if you look to the left of the photo, you will see a mother and daughter with brooms, two of the many people I saw today helping to clean up the mess.

I spent an hour visiting places where Martine and I shop. The amount of damage was appalling. While the demonstrations were going on, looters moved in with hammers to break into businesses by shattering glass doors and windows. Below is a photo I took of a smoke shop on Broadway near 2nd Street that had been entered that way and ransacked. You will notice that the windows and doors had been smashed::

Cleaning Up the Damage at a Looted Tobacco and Vaping Shop

It seems that half the businesses in town were putting up plywood to protect their doors and display windows:

Putting Up Plywood to Protect Businesses

Finally, as I was searching for a bus stop where the re-routed #1 bus could pick me up, I noticed an ATM whose glass had been broken with a hammer:

Damaged ATM Window at Pacific Western Bank

I do not blame the protestors for the looting. It’s just that highly mobile thieves were using them as a screen. While most of the police were with the protestors, the looters quickly moved in, parked their cars, smashed their way into businesses, and made off with whatever merchandise they could find. Among the businesses looted were a Target three blocks away from us, the Italian deli I usually walk to, the Vons Supermarket across the street from it, several local pharmacies, a smoke shop, and a branch of Recreational Equipment Inc (REI).

 

Mayhem Comes Close

Posted on by | 2 Comments

Looters in Santa Monica on Sunday

To begin with, I think that Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin should be severely punished for his murder of George Floyd—and I believe that First or Second Degree Murder would be a more appropriate charge. The worst option, which would result in riots across the country, would be for him to be set free.

Today the protests came very close to home. In conjunction with the protests, which were generally peaceful, there were both looters and anti-police provocateurs. The latter came armed with firecrackers, shields, and weapons. There were major outbreaks in nearby Santa Monica and in Long Beach.

Tomorrow, I plan to walk to Santa Monica to survey the damage and take pictures for posts to follow. I suspect by then that the hubbub will have moved on to other locales.

 

 

Down with Twitter!

Posted on by | 2 Comments

I Owe This Drawing to Cartoonist Berkeley Breathed

There is something deeply troubling about a President that spends the wee hours of the morning on the shitter while tweeting his unedited dissatisfactions at length. There are two possible solutions:

  1. Get rid of the President.
  2. Get rid of Twitter

If Trump were dipped into hot tar, coated with chicken feathers, and ridden out of Washington on a rail, we probably would not have to cringe at his disruptive Tweets. Ditto if society decided that Twitter as a medium of expression is best allowed to die—unsung and unloved. It would even be better if both options were put into action.

Never before has the United States had a leader whose every written (or even verbal) communication causes nothing but dismay or disgust.

That leads me to an interesting thought. If there were a Trump Presidential Library, what would go into it? There would be the Tweets, of course, and a series of Presidential Proclamations whose principal purpose was to undo the accomplishments of previous administrations. And also, who would pay to visit such a library? I suspect that even the 40% of the population that supports Trump would give such an institution a wide berth. (Bad-asses don’t read.)

The Trump Administration reminds me of the Coronavirus. It’s something I am dead set against, but prefer not to think about.

 

Plague Diary 25: False Dawn

Posted on by | 2 Comments

A New Dawn Is Approaching … But Look Out for Storms

Yes, the authorities are gradually releasing us from our long quarantine; but we’re not out of the woods yet. After the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic, the United States entered into a ten-year period of prosperity, until the Crash of 1929 put the kibosh on that. It would be nice to think that everything will be hunky-dory within a few weeks or so. Fat chance.

Except for one thing: That man in the White House. He was personally responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, and he is itching to send thousands more into the next world. He continues to be supported of legions of bitter-enders who will support him regardless what he does, because he is one of them—a bona fide bad ass. If Trump should be reelected this November, I think the United States is in for it. In the end, I even think there will be another attempt at secession, and maybe that’s what it’ll take in the long run. The bad-asses will want to set up their own New Revised Confederate States of America.

As I look into the future, I have no pollyanna visions of everything coming together in a great cumbia of toleration. The battle lines are being drawn, and they look pretty hard and fast to me.

 

 

Serendipity: Waiting To Be Annihilated

Posted on by | 1 Comment

American Writer Herman Melville (1819-1891)

On November 20, 1856, Nathaniel Hawthorne met with Herman Melville in England. In his English Notebooks, Hawthorne describes his friend as having “by way of baggage, the least little bit of a bundle, which, he told me, contained a night-shirt and a tooth-brush…. [H]e is a little heterodox in the matter of clean linen.” He goes on to describe their meeting:

He stayed with us from Tuesday till Thursday; and, on the intervening day, we took a pretty long walk together, and sat down in a hollow among the sand hills (sheltering ourselves from the high, cool wind) and smoked a cigar. Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had “pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated”; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists—and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before—in wandering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us.