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A Wild Day

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A Tropical Storm in August—Followed by an Earthquake?

My friend Bill Korn had it right: “So. Floods. Tempests of wind. Even an earthquake. It seems like Someone is having an Old Testament-y kind of day.” Today, for the first time in eighty-four years, Los Angeles was hit by a summer hurricane that snaked its way north from Baja California. Just as a kind of bonus, we also had a Richter 5.1 earthquake around 2:40 this afternoon. (Fortunately, it was centered in Ojai, which is more than fifty miles northwest of here.)

Typically, L.A. has a short rainy season that lasts roughly from December to March. In the sixty-odd years I have lived in Southern California, we have not had any intense tropical summer storm events like this one. The rain started twelve hours ago and bids fair to continue for another whole day.

Thankfully, we are on the western edge of the storm, so we have not had any gale-force winds, just a whole lot of rain.

Martine and I went out for a Thai lunch early this afternoon, but otherwise we just stayed put, hoping with our fingers crossed that we would not have another power outage.

Summer Reading

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Not Just for the Beach

Years ago, I used to take the bus to the beach, arriving in the late morning before the sun and sand got too hot, and bringing a book along. In the summer of 1968, I read all four novels of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet on Santa Monica Beach, near Lifeguard Station 12.

Now that I am retired, I don’t get up as early as I used to; but I still don’t like the heat of late afternoon on the sand. So I opt to read in the comfort of my apartment.

What do I like reading in the summer that I usually don’t read at other times of the year? Here is a quick summary, in no particular order:

  • The mystery novels of John D. MacDonald (especially his Travis McGee novels), Carl Hiaasen, and Elmore Leonard set in Florida. There is something about the state that produces interesting villains.
  • The 19th century travel books of Sir Richard F. Burton (no relation to the actor), which may be a little stiff and Victorian in their style, but, Lord, the man saw a lot. I used finished Goa and the Blue Mountains.
  • I don’t know why, but I enjoy re-reading the novels of William Faulkner when the weather is most hot and sticky in Southern California. I just re-read Sanctuary.
  • Science fiction and fantasy seem to be more fun during the summer. This year, I am re-reading Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and re-seeing all the Sir Peter Jackson films.
  • While I am at it, let me put in a good word for my favorite sci-fi authors from Eastern Europe: Stanislaw Lem of Poland and Boris and Arkady Strugatsky of Russia. The Strugatsky Brothers’ Roadside Picnic is a super-great.
  • I love to read books about India when it’s hot outside. Particularly interesting are the histories of William Dalrymple.
  • Noir novels are always good, but have you ever tried reading French noir? Pascal Garnier, Boris Vian, and Jean-Patrick Manchette are excellent.

That’s all for now. I’m about to start re-reading some of Honoré de Balzac’s great fiction.

Sea Breeze

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Whenever it gets too beastly hot, I frequently head to Burton W. Chace Park in Marina del Rey. On most days—the sole exception being times when there is a Santa Ana wind, bringing hot desert air from the Mohave Desert—it is always more comfortable there. Not only is the temperature at least five degrees cooler, but if one finds a spot to sit within a couple hundred feet of the shore, there is always a cooling sea breeze.

Today, I tested this as I walked inland to my parked car. By the time I was 300-500 feet from the shore, the breeze started breaking up. By the time I reached my car, it was nonexistent. Yet while I sat reading in the shade in Picnic Shelter A (the one closest to the shore), the cooling breeze was steady.

I don’t understand why this is so. The beaches to the north and south of the Marina aren’t all that comfortable, perhaps because of the heat radiated by the sun beating on the sand.

The park was full of small squirrels who were constantly chasing one another. I guess there was too much competition for the scarce food resources. At any given time, I could see as many as ten squirrels.

Gradually Becoming Attenuated

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Prayer garden at Saint Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Church

It was Greek Festival time in Redondo Beach this weekend at Saint Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Church. Martine and I love attending Greek festivals, even though we realize that they are becoming less and less ethnic each year, as the families of Greek-Americans drift farther and farther away from the authenticity of the older generation.

We enjoyed ourselves nonetheless. Martine particularly loves spanakopita (Greek spinach pie with feta cheese), while I had pastitsio (a lasagna-like dish of baked pasta with béchamel sauce) and fasolakia (Greek green beans). The food was good, but not up to the level of previous years.

Missing were Akrevoe Emmanouilides and Pitsa Captain, whose cooking classes at the festival were a tasty highlight. Alas, Akrevoe is no more; and there are no more cooking classes at the festival..

One thing which did not change were the tours of the church, with a discussion with the priest about some particulars of the Greek Orthodox faith, toward which I have long had some leanings. I was raised in the Roman Catholic faith, but have drifted away due to some disagreements with dogma.

Although the Greek Festivals are becoming less authentically Greek, there were hundreds of people in attendance. The heavy crowds made it difficult to move about the grounds, and led to Martine and I leaving soon after we ate lunch and visited the church.

The Hollywood Sign

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The Famous Hollywood Sign on Mount Lee

Originally, the sign was spelled “Hollywoodland,” named after a housing development that was being advertised around 1923. The developers lauded it as a “superb environment without excessive cost on the Hollywood side of the hills.” In 1932, a wannabe actress named Peg Entwistle committed suicide by jumping off the top of the “H.” This was commemorated in a 1972 song by Dory Previn which she called “Mary C. Brown and the Hollywood Sign.” Here is a video of it:

Eventually the sign started looking ratty and falling apart. By the 1940s, it was an eyesore. It was around then that the “land” in “Hollywoodland” was removed and the city took responsibility for it.

There was a major campaign in 1978 to bring the sign up to date, as it had become part of the myth of Hollywood. The campaign was led by none other than Hugh Hefner of Playboy fame. Other donors included Gene Autry, Alice Cooper, Andy Williams, and Warner Brothers Records.

It’s interesting that the sign, which has come to be a major tourist draw, was originally an advertisement. Curiously, you can’t walk up to the sign: There is no convenient trail up Mount Lee, and local residents have done their best to make it difficult to see the sign from up close.

Summer Is Icumen In

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It was bound to happen eventually. We had an unusually cold winter, but now the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. It wasn’t so bad near the ocean, where we live; but Martine spent most of the day downtown, where the temperature was several degrees of Fahrenheit warmer. It was no surprise to me that she took the earlier bus back.

The title of this post is the diametric opposite of the first line of an Ezra Pound satirical poem on the subject of winter, written, of course, in Middle English:

Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damm you; Sing: Goddamm. 

Goddamm, Goddamm, ’tis why I am, Goddamm,
So ’gainst the winter’s balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing goddamm,
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

Typically during this time of year, I turn into a lizard-like reader of books set in warm climates, like India, South and Central America, or the Deep South. I started by re-reading William Faulkner’s Sanctuary (1932) and have started in on Edouard Glissant’s Faulkner, Mississippi (1999).

I will probably try to get up earlier so I can take my walks in the cooler mornings. Once noon has passed, it is no fun to exercise.

“That Terrible Dusty Brilliance”

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I have been reading a fascinating book of stories by Gavin Lambert about Hollywood as it was in the 1960s. The book is called The Slide Area, after the crumbling cliffs overlooking the ocean from Santa Monica north to Pacific Palisades. It is some of the best writing about Los Angeles as it was then. Lambert, by the way, was also the author of Inside Daisy Clover, which was made into a Robert Mulligan film starring Natalie Wood. Oh, and Lambert also wrote a biography of Natalie.

Following is an excerpt from near the beginning of The Slide Area:

It is only a few miles’ drive to the ocean, but before reaching it I shall be nowhere. Hard to describe the impression of unreality, because it is intangible; almost supernatural; something in the air. (The air … Last night on the weather telecast the commentator, mentioning electric storms near Palm Springs and heavy smog in Los Angeles, described the behaviour of the air as ‘neurotic’. Of course. Like everything else the air must be imported and displaced, like the water driven along huge aqueducts from distant reservoirs, like the palm trees tilting above mortuary signs and laundromats along Sunset Boulevard.) Nothing belongs. Nothing belongs except the desert soil and the gruff eroded-looking mountains to the north. Because the earth is desert, its surface always has that terrible dusty brilliance. Sometimes it looks like the Riviera with a film of neglect over villas and gardens, a veil of fine invisible sand drawn across tropical colours. It is hard to be reminded of any single thing for long. The houses are real because they exist and people use them for eating and sleeping and making love, but they have no style of their own and look as if they had been imported from half a dozen different countries. They are imitation ‘French Provincial’ or ‘new’ Regency or Tudor or Spanish hacienda or Cape Cod, and except for a few crazy mansions seem to have sprung up overnight….

Los Angeles is not a city, but a series of suburban approaches to a city that never materializes.

Bad Asses for Hire

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Something About Hiring a Lawyer I Don’t Understand

People in Southern California must be very accident-prone. I don’t know what other parts of the country are like, but you can’t pass a bus or a row of billboards without seeing an ad for an attorney who promises “to fight for you” with a 95% or higher ratio of won cases.

Excuse me, but don’t lawyers get to keep a hefty chunk of what they earn by fighting for you? I see a lot of people who were injured in auto accidents praising their hired bad-ass lawyers to the skies, but I wonder how much of that money actually finds its way into the pockets of poor slobs who have been victimized on the highways of SoCal.

I know you want to hurt the party that injured you, but what do you really get out of it?

It’s a lot like the lottery. If you win a jillion dollars, unless you opt for a payout over so many decades, you only get what is called the present value of a jillion dollars, which might be 0.5 jillion. And then there is the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and your state and local income tax authorities, which might lower your winnings to 0.3 jillion dollars.

But, after all, this is America. Everyone wants to hire a bad-ass to handle your case, but that bad-ass, being a bad-ass, is probably more intent on enriching his own coffers.

Downtown Trifecta

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The Food Court of the Grand Central Market

Today was a perfect day to go downtown. Instead of the usual bright sun and searing heat, we had a heavy marine layer with a light drizzle. The temperature could not have gone over 68º Fahrenheit (20º Celsius).

I started by returning three books at the Central Library and picking up three other books to read in the next month or so:

  • Argentinian Juan José Saer’s The Regal Lemon Tree
  • Italian Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Street Kids
  • Nina Revoyr’s Southland

From the library, I hoofed it to the Grand Central Market, where I had a delicious everything bagel with smoked sturgeon at Wexler’s Deli, which specializes in smoked fish.

Then it was on to the Last Bookstore at 5th and Spring. I picked up nice copies of two Sir Walter Scott novels at a good price: Kenilworth and Woodstock. I’m perhaps the only person I know who has the patience to read one of Sir Walter’s long and dilatory novels. Although he is not much read today, partly because he wrote in a difficult South Scottish dialect, I have always loved reading his novels. So I’ll have to consult the glossary at the rear of both books frequently. No problem there.

With my books in tow, I walked south on Broadway to 7th Street, past the abandoned old movie theaters where I used to watch all-night triple features with my old friend Norm Witty, then cut right on 7th Street to the Metro Rail station at 7th and Flower Street.

It was a good day, and I look forward to reading some good books.

Hot! Hot!! Hot!!!

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They Weren’t Whistling Dixie

I returned yesterday from the Coachella Valley after four days of excess 100° Fahrenheit (38° Celsius) temperatures. When summer temperatures arrive in the lower desert, it is time to seek air-conditioned comfort. No walkies, no hikes, no outdoor activities of any sort: It is simply time to seek air-conditioned comfort and hunker down. Even the steering wheel of my Subaru Forester was hot to the touch.

Knowing full well what was in store for me, I had a god time nonetheless. My brother’s house in Palm Desert is comfortable, and I enjoyed reading and talking with him and with my sister-in-law Lori. Yesterday, before setting out for Los Angeles, I had breakfast with Dan and my niece Hilary, who had just arrived by plane from Seattle. After an hour of pleasant chatter, I hit the road with only a single rest stop in Rowland Heights.

The Los Angeles temperature was a full 40° Fahrenheit (22° Celsius) cooler than the Coachella Valley. I found I needed a jacket when I unloaded the luggage from my car.

The net result: I didn’t really go anywhere which I could feature in my blog posts. Sometimes, it just happens that way. Fortunately, the hot weather did not stop me from enjoying myself.