a missive penned by yours-truly outlining the events of my easter holiday spurred the response what follows. please excuse the non sequitur qualities of the first paragraph. i wanted you to share in the hilarity, and i don’t think it requires the currently proprietary backstory. and, fair warning, there are some weakly edited expletives. just so y’all know, if you write to me, some stories or limericks or something, i may be compelled to post your words. with your permission, of course. anyway, enjoy:
“…it made me think of some of the spray painted graffiti we left on the walls of our parents’ garage. Statements like, “DIE PIG”, “Friday the 13th, XVI”, and my favorite, “Pan Galactic Garggle Blasters RULE!!!” What? You’re like, 11 and you’ve got a can of spray paint. what else you gonna do?
me and C. and his better half, K., went down to LA this weekend for the Degree Project. this involves a bunch of C.‘s friends from high school who love the noise. yearly they make a group recording pulling in disparate and familiar folks to make some good old white to pink to salt and pepper noise. K. actually had nothing to do with it. We dropped her off in Culver City on the way into the metropolis and then picked her up on the way out (but not after I had eaten most of the sushi tray at their Easter spread and wowed her grandma and great aunt with my cache of old-timey phrases. They nearly blew a gasket when I said “there’s a fin in it for ya, a sawbuck if you’re speedy”).
I’ll tell you about the recording some other time when I’m not still so steeped in the anticlimax of it. Until then let me say this: I love going to the suburbs/cities where my California friends grew up. Listen, it doesn’t compute. You would understand this. It just doesn’t reconcile when you try to imagine spending your lowest days of adolescent f***all torpor in the bucket of this gorgeous valley with about 220 degrees of mountains in your line of sight at any given moment. factor in the dried creek beds, the grottos and canyons that border backyards, and the stones throw distance from the Manson caves and the Spahn Ranch and it is impossible to believe you could get bored there. and this is not a particularly rich area.
on Sunday morning before we went to get K., me and C. drove down to South Central Ave. into Watts to see the Watts Towers C. had never seen them before. When I asked K. if she had, she scoffed “they used to take us on cheap field trips there.”
Well excuuuuuuuuuuse me.
Simon Rodia is one of my favorite Southern Cal Sicilian folk artists of the early 20th century. One of, you say? yes. the other is Baldasare Forestiere and his underground gardens in Fresno (which I still haven’t got into - its really difficult to get a reservation). If i’ve never told you about this, prepare for mind blow.
I’ve really gotta get to the gardens because there is a threat of bulldozing in the name of condos. f***ing Fresno. Alright. I have to do some layout right now so let me sign off with one last link, this one is sans sheriff worthy, an illustrated database of all Pavlov’s dogs.”
