Winter's Dusk in Long Beach

The time of day made the ocean look an impossible shade of blue, mostly illegible in the below picture:

From a distance the blue screamed out. Electricity turned blue from lightning strikes' white.

Happy Holiday's from the edge of the continent!

RIP Dollar Bookstore

Pour some out for the homies...

In an unsurprising move, the Dollar Bookstore will be shutting its doors permanently this December 24th. Its nearly 60k+ square feet of book madness will be missed by the random locals like myself and the waves of tourists and visitors to the Long Beach convention center directly across Pine Avenue, the main thoroughfare. The following picture is from the stairway of the Convention Center, looking down on the corner establishment, originally a Borders bookstore:

It has easily been my most favorite non-beach location to visit in Long Beach. The shelving did originally have a system. First edition hardbacks to one side of the front section, paperback fiction between the entrance and the hardbacks:

Romance paperbacks against the yellow wall with sci-fi, fantasy, multi-cultural, and literature shelved in front of the yellow wall, leading to the steps down to the back two-thirds:

At the bottom of the steps was the comic book section. With each comic costing a dollar, you've found one of the few NON-deal sections. I did, though, find and purchase a Deathmate: Black, the hottest comic around back in 1992-3 when I was collecting--it was the first appearance of Gen 13.

Turning away from the comics affords a view of the rest of the place. Stretching back into the distance the sectional organization begins to break down:

Some sections are labeled non-fiction, others history, some biography...I haven't even shown pictures of the religious or self-help or travel-book areas. All the way back against the back yellow wall is the sports section, a place I would go to look for one book specifically, but usually found the occasioanl gem.

In the picture below, against the gray/beige wall on the right side used to be the OLD books, the antiques. That was where I discovered Chandler Brossard among other forgotten treasures:

The cartons in the foreground of the above picture belie the truth: they are getting ready to be "relocated."

In our final trip together, Corrie and I found nine books to purchase. Each represented a different facet of the awesome discoveries that were made by those willing to search. Here's a picture of all nine:

It may seem like random collection of forgotten objects, and it is. But here's a closer look at each row and how each fit into the larger picture of our Dollar Bookstore as the book p-trap on this continent's edge, saving all random publications...

The top row seen above is made up of three books. On the right is a hardbound National Geographic production of Yosemite material. It is a beautiful publication. Many of these encyclopedic-like items filled the shelves of many an elder, and in the years since these elders have passed, books like these eventually float on down to our DB. No advertisements, beautiful color photos, smartly put together. Only a buck.

In the middle above is something called "The Yankee Pioneers: A Saga of Courage". It is a tiny history book resembling something available at my elementary school library. It turns out the writer, Sam Pettengill, was a congressman from Indiana and was a descendant of Ol' Man Pettengill, a settler who was one of the early colonizers of the newly formed Vermont territory. This little book explains in painstaking detail what the first thirty-or-so years of settling the endless forests of New England was like. Have you ever wondered how long it took to go from "nearest neighbor five-to-ten miles away" to "first street larger than a trail laid down in a 'town'"? That's the kind of information detailed here. Wild. (Turns out that out it took between 25 and 35 years.)

That first book, the red one of the left, isn't a book per se. It is the London Museum's booklet/informational packet for the Rosetta Stone, detailing the importance of, creation of, and rediscovery of said stone tablet. It was such a dense and beautiful little booklet that I had a hard time putting it back. When I saw the original price the museum was charging, I decided to get it myself. It was marked at 5 pound-sterling. There are the occasional program from ballgames or European operas found among the piles at our DB, this one was likely the most beautifully produced.

The middle row has another three books that represent different types of discoveries. The first is disgraced crooked NBA referee Tim Donaghy's "side of the story". This isn't a POD book or a personally published material, but those exist in numbers (it always amazes me how many people have their written material printed as books across the country). This book exists in the even smaller margins of mixing "mostly major publisher backing and non-athlete sports pariah" with "vanity/self-promotion purposes". His side of the story is very interesting to me, and what he has to say about the integrity of NBA games has my head tilted.

To get a sense of the weird duality of this book, the "serious book" versus "personal publication" category fight, see: 1) the forward is written by Phil Scala, the retired fed that brought down John Gotti; and 2) on the back cover it directs readers "For more information visit www.timdonaghy.com".

I'm using it as a gift for an NBA-fan relative.

The middle book above was a limited release edition written by Tripp Underwood, bass player for The Unseen, an LA punk band. It has its original cellophane cover, yellow sticker proudly announcing the limited release status and what else is included--exclusive music tracks. This is another side to the wares found at our Dollar Bookstore. If The Unseen were more famous, this cellophane wrapped book would be worth far more than the dollar I spent on it. It started out, I hear, as a history of the ban written for the band's site. Tripp was offered a book deal to expand it, and now it has a tour diary component. Good for him, and good for them. I'll be checking it out pretty soon.

The book on the right, if you can't make it out, is As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. Another aspect of the Dollar Bookstore: the random classic. I got this because it was only a buck. It gives me something to take to work and hand out to receptive young people and not worry about seeing it again, as well as another Faulkner book to peruse. (I stopped reading Sanctuary a while back...)

The last row, seen above, has three books that seem like they would be in place in a normal used book store if not a regular Barnes & Nobles. The wear they've incurred make the Barnes & Nobles quip seem suspect, but anyway...

Living in a Nutshell is a beautiful little book about design that focuses on solutions for homes that are small. Corrie liked it. "On the Rocks" is a collection of short stories culled from writers who joined the KGB Bar writer's group. There are some name-recognition writers listed, which makes this a nice risk as a gift. The KGB Bar is in Manhattan.

Uppity Women of Ancient Time, another gift, is one from a series of humorous renditions of historical figures and the context from which they came. It's perfect for a strong-willed and outspoken girl cousin of mine.

Those three books are interesting enough, but we may not have bit on any of them had they cost more than a dollar each, right? I'm not spending six dollars on a used copy of As I Lay Dying unless it's obviously a collector's item. But one dollar?

That's also one of the real problems concerning the sustainability of the Dollar Bookstore of Downtown Long Beach. I am a local, regular customer. In the three or four years I've known about the bookstore I've bought probably an entire shopping cart full of books. I hand them out as gifts or use them to pad my library with their importance. It's quite unbelievable what I've been able to find.

I'm also a total book nerd, and have learned about publishers old and new, large and small...this store was an index of the long lost, the long forgotten, the neglected.

This sustainability problem I just mentioned is this: I don't think I've spent a hundred bucks total since I've started going. Certainly not more than two-hundred, but let's use that as a cap. I'm a regular visitor and patron, buying all sorts of things, but in all that time, all those visits, I've haven't spent more than $200.

That always seemed like a hard balance to create: the kind of revenue generated by selling rectangles of paper for a buck each just seems insufficient to support over 60k square feet of retail space in an-up-and-coming commercial area of Downtown Long Beach. Time seems to have supported that hypothesis.

This spot, for a bookworm like me, was always too good to be true. I have enjoyed it as much as possible, even to the chagrin of my wonderful wife. It shall be wistfully remembered.

$20 on My Library

The following pictures show off, using arrows, how books from the Dollar Bookstore can be seen populating my shelves:

I found Camus' The Fall there, as well as all my Richard Flanagan copies. Gould's Book of Fish I found at least twice and bought it each time I was there, no matter what. I used them as gifts.

If you can't see, on the left is Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Woody Allen's Without Feathers. They also had a nice collection of Guterson and the only copy of a Mishima book they've ever had.

I picked up both copies of Catlin's work in the Wild West (his paintings and letters are as beautiful as they are important). They also had the Ishii book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and the book of Japanese Fairy Tales.

Lot's of Russian revolutionary material was available, as was the Titanic sequel and a book by George Pelecanos, a major contributor and writer for The Wire.

Just perusing my shelves means the memory of the Dollar Bookstore will never die in our household. It has played an integral part of my understanding of how cool Long Beach is, and a little piece of unbelievable magic will perish at 10 pm on 12/24/2014, when the doors shut for the last time.

Movember Meets Sherweezy for the First Time

I'm working on a project called "They Call Me Sherweezy", or something similar, about working in South Central and the harbor area and trying to figure this whole thing out. Sherweezy is the hip-hop inspired nickname I picked up in the 'hood last year.

Anyway, Halloween was on a Friday this year, and I stopped shaving around that time. It wasn't so much for the "No Shave November" or "Movember" movement to raise awareness for prostate cancer, it was more because I was tired of the constant need to shave. That Movember was also happening was pleasantly coincidental.

That and my nearly 150 young wards all figured that was the reason behind the facial hair.

We had the entire week of Thanksgiving off, which meant that we wouldn't meet again until December. After three weeks I had a pretty well established beard, and thought I'd have some fun with it.

I was interested in trying out some new technological shenanigans, and used Poll Everywhere, a website that allows you to set up polls that people can use their phones and texting to vote on. I grabbed a series of pictures from the internet of various facial hair designs and left my look on the Friday before Thanksgiving break up to my kids' vote.

The choices were: "the Abe Lincoln"--sideburns and chin but no mustache (AKA "the Amish"); "the Chester A. Arthur"--sideburns to mustache with clean shaven chin; "the Wolverine"--big bushy sideburns only; "the Dude"--a goatee only; and finally, "the 'Stache", just a simple mustache and the one I wanted the least.

Throughout the day as each session got to vote, the results fluctuated. I was going with whatever won out over the course of the entire day. This was a Monday and I planned on shaving that Thursday night to have the hair on Friday. The Wolverine held an early lead, and while there was a late push for the 'Stache, the Chester A. Arthur finally came out on top.

Oh my...

When I cam in on Friday looking like this, nearly all my kids said "Oh my god, you actually did it!" My favorite response came from one of my older kids who didn't now what was going on. She took one look and starting nervously shaking her head, saying, "Oh, no no no, no, Mr. Sherwood, no..."

I learned that had I been from a different time period I could easily rock a shaggy Chester A. Arthur facial hair design. Maybe I'll try bringing it back...

A mentor and colleague said that my street cred skyrocketed as a result of the move. That wasn't exactly what I was going for, but I'll take it.

My face was confused. Normally my chin wouldn't be cold, but on that Friday it was. It was like wearing a parka but walking around bare-assed.

I shaved minutes after I got home that same Friday. When I met with my wards this past Monday, before sickness has me chilling at home today, many voiced their opinion that I should have let it keep growing, like they wanted to live vicariously or something through an interactive chia-pet-face.

Post-Apocalyptic Movies and Descriptive Titles

There is a sub-genre in the science fiction realm dedicated to post-apocalyptic scenarios. Many films in this zone have easy crossover appeal with horror when zombies are involved, or pandemics (like The Stand; or 28 Days Later, which mixes both).

I grew up with Mad Max and the spectacular flop Waterworld. I don't remember hating Waterworld, but I do remember thinking it wasn't good enough to beat down the built-up head of steam of popular-consciousness hate that followed it from production to post- to screenings to its opening. What can you do? Aeon Flux is another one...

So, the post-apocalyptic movie I'm going to mention now is Snowpiercer. I remember reading a bit about it over the summer and had wanted to make a trip to the cinema to see it. It didn't work out, as we'd have to get all the way to Hollywood to find one of the five screens that was showing it.

It's on Netflix now. GREAT flick.

One thing that got me, and gets any other discerning viewer, is the premise. That goddamn premise. An attempt to combat global warming has gone horribly wrong and an ice age has been induced. Earth's surface is cold and dead, and the only humans left are riding around the planet on a train that is on a global track.

The story is based on a French graphic novel from 1982, and this film is directed by Joon-ho Bong, the Korean director of the great The Host, one of the gems Netflix makes available to your eyeballs.

In this story the last two cars are where the lower class lives, and maybe that should be "lives" with the quotes. They are perpetually on the brink of starvation, subsisting on black gelatinous protein bars (the contents of which you see later as a nice a reveal) and are kept in line through brutality and a religiosity that becomes more apparent as the movie progresses. As a form of punishment, Spud from Trainspotting has his arm put through a portal into the freezing night for the requisite seven minutes, and upon it's return to the inside of the car, is smashed to bits with a huge mallet.

Captain America plays the "hero" who starts the revolution and the march from the tail of the train to the front. There's so much death along the revolutionary march that it's hard to believe that survivors can really keep the gene pool deep enough...

Anyway, the cars along the way to the front get steadily more bizarre. One is a elementary school classroom where the children sing in unison about what happens if the train stops: "We all freeze and die!" they cheerily shout.

The ending makes you remember viscerally that the director is not American. But, really, if your idea of the survival of the human species is to perpetually ride a train, the game may already be lost.

Days before we watched Snowpiercer I told Corrie about it. At the end of the week she said, "Oh, we should watch that movie Snowtrain." She has an adorable habit of changing the names of movies to be more descriptive titles than actual names, especially if the name is cryptic. 

I believe it's because she simply doesn't care that much. Cowboys and Aliens, a generally lame movie but with a title that is a play on "cowboys and Indians", to Corrie becomes the more appropriately titled Cowboys vs Aliens. Movies just aren't things that for her are worth much brain power outside of the experience and our conversations about it directly after the fact. 

She sees subplots and generally what the director's up to; she understands foreshadowing and the elements that make the moving-picture experience pleasurable, she just doesn't really care that much. There's too much other real shit in the world going on to be concerned with movies.

In one minute Corrie can talk about the forced and characteristic whimsy in The Grand Budapest Hotel and relate it to a grand scheme of Wes Anderson's views on family that seem to stitch his movies together...

...and in the next minute tell someone, "Oh, we went to go see the new Star Wars movie," when in reality she's referring to Star Trek Into Darkness. For her, it's in space, there's a battle, or conflict, or something...so Space War? No that's not a thing...Star Wars, yeah, that's a thing... 

She's funny. We were just talking about it the other day: 

Me: It's like when you told Adrian about seeing Star Wars last year...

Her: Whatever. I know the difference. One has Jean-Luc and one has Luke and Leia. See? They're both in space, so...meh....

Me: (Laughing) What we went to see didn't have any of those people...

She does, though, pay attention to me when I talk about nerdy things, so she's pretty well versed on the intricacies if you pressed her. Same with sports. She knows more about A-Rod's contract status than any baseball-hating wife non-fan probably should.

Feeling Like a Kid Again

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. It was a combination of many factors I was deeply interested in at the time: death-defying adventure and high-velocity travel. Honestly, those remain interests.

But SPACE! Space was about the coolest thing this side of dinosaurs.

In the last twelve months twice I have ventured to the cinema-house to enjoy high doses of spectacle, the dreams of my childhood consciousness finally hitting a double movie crescendo.

Last year we left the Pike Theater wide-eyed and giddy with the prospect of free-falling around the entire planet during a shitty day at work. Last year it was Sandy and Georgie in Alfonso's Gravity. Last year it was the slow twirl of the initial fade-in to see the noob, Sandy, just trying to maintain on her first duty: tightening bolts. Yup, I remember nodding in the darkened theater, some days at work kinda suck, but most aren't 250 miles above the ground.

The mundane painted across the spectacle of an entire continent below using a brush heavy with nausea. Something about that opening set piece in Gravity felt so real and honest and...routine. But hurtling in constant freefall around Earth turns routine into life, and even then a storm of orbital space trash can come and turn that shitty day at work into a masterpiece of outlandish survival.

I haven't seen it in a year, but, does Gravity even let the audience have seven minutes before Sandy's Supermanning her way into oblivion? Four minutes? I know it get's right to it, not messing around even a little. I remember thinking, What? Already? Is this movie for real!?

There were some things that were kinda preposterous in Alfonso's space movie, but it is not a documentary---it is Sci-Fi, with the capital letters. It was a grownup's movie. Those scientific transgressions are easily forgiven because it otherwise is as accurate as it could be.

AND because it's so damn fun! I enjoyed the hell out of it. Easily the best movie I saw all year.

This year again we left the Pike Theater dazed and giddy, our brains full of dust and space and time-warping tidal-wave mountain walls. That was the spectacle. The thoughts, though, were deeper than the spectacle--they raced about meaning. They ignored the sentimentality and tried to appreciate the difficulties ahead.

This year it was Matt and Matt and Anne and Mike and even Topher in Interstellar. This year it's the tortured dad versus the dystopian future that needs farmers more than engineers. This year it's gravity re-purposed. This year it's not a shitty day at work, it's SAVE THE WORLD.

Interstellar is the 2001 for our generation. Right? Isn't that what we've been told over and over? Maybe it is...

It certainly aims to do things that Gravity simply wasn't interested in. Gravity spans in nearly real-time the three hours Doc Stone takes to go from tightening a bolt to being birthed from the lake in Arizona. Interstellar, on the other hand, relativity as a plot-device.

I don't want to give away too much, but Michael Caine plays "the Professor" who runs what's left of NASA in the dystopian future when food is scarce and crops world-wide are failing...

Trying to tease out the plot does an injustice--just see it if you're into the current transcendental Sci-Fi experience. Interstellar is trying to say something.

That something could be different for each person, but my takeaway was: do you see how hard any of these outlandish planet-saving missions are? In the fictional world of the movie they're nearly impossible...We need to fix this ourselves...

The science, again, is under assail from physicists and astronomers, but they do take pains to praise the intentions and most of the big-picture elements. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and Star Wars are obvious inspirations.

Again I went to see a grown-up science-fiction film in the theater and again I enjoyed the hell out of it. It reached for the stars, literally, and came back with its hands full of the dust and emptiness and sadness that you'd expect to find alone in the vastness of the interstellar void. The movie isn't really that bleak, and there is some clunky sentimentality, but Mathew McConaughey basically jumps into a gigantic black hole.

And they use relativity as a plot-device.

Christopher Nolan has made some of the most original movies of my adulthood. Memento? It took non-linearity to a creative extreme. Inception and Interstellar? Big-time, big-concept movie events.

Gravity: holy cow it's awesome.
Interstellar: holy cow it's awesome.

Nothing like a couple of Sci-Fi movies to capture my child-like wonders with the realities of space travel.

Will the World Series be Televised?

I know, certainly, that baseball's championship culminating event, the World Series will be on the airwaves and brought into the homes of whatever fans are still interested. I'm just not sure which channel.

The playoffs so far have been televised during the middle of the day on random channels that I don't get; namely TBS, the MLB channel, and Fox Sports 1. Literally, there were two games I could find on regular Fox: one saw Clayton Kershaw, the best living pitcher on Earth, get his ass handed to him by the scrappy Cardinals; and the other was, maybe Game 2 of the ALCS between the Giants and Cardinals. It was last Saturday evening.

Every single American League game was on TBS, an easy channel to get if you get basic cable. If you don't get basic cable, then, apparently, MLB is saying F-YOU. Fox Sports 1? The MLB channel? Playoffs on the MLB channel?

Now, I know my bitching falls on mostly disinterested ears: apparently enough people have basic cable, and maybe FS1 is widely available to basic cable subscribers, that baseball executives can make the statement "If you don't have cable, GFY." Most people I know feel the same way, so there's that.

This issue for me isn't about the shafting of the people too poor or too uninterested in television to pay for cable (as it has been in the past (me and my whiny bleeding heart)), the issue is about baseball, as an organization, screwing the pooch.

I love baseball. When asked which sport is my favorite, or mine in the sense of possession sports fans are prone to harbor, my answer is always baseball. That being said...

DON'T HIDE THE PLAYOFFS ON RANDOM CHANNELS I CAN'T FIND EVEN IF I HAVE CABLE. This is an important topic to me, frankly running neck and neck with the question HOW CAN WE SPEED UP THE PACE LATE IN GAMES.

I know the leisurely pace of a ballgame is one of the nostalgic-infused, Americana-soaked morsels that true fans really savor.

In a world where the NFL and our modified rugby game called "American Football" has a finite shelf-life, the slow fade of baseball from the main cultural consciousness is something that we're all painfully watching but shouldn't have to. Baseball can't help itself. I do like the one play-in game, because WHY COMPLAIN ABOUT MAKING IT MORE EXCITING? And I don't care that it's the hottest team instead of the "best" team---this new system may make it more prone for a mostly substandard team making the World Series, but so what? My Yankees lost to the red-hot group of kids with Marlins on their hats back in 2003--that's just baseball, so I know the feeling of being beat by hot pitching...

But, like the 2003 Yankees with the Marlins, the Angels and Orioles from this season had chances to beat the Royals and couldn't. So why not KC in the World Series?

It sounds like this year's playoffs have been exciting---extra innings, close games, rocking stadiums that were half-filled just a few months ago...

...just kinda wish I could watch some of it.

Anyway, and I realize that blasphemous statements are about to follow, but I think I'm rooting for the Giants. Representing Nor-Cal, baby! But I'm also not die-hard for the black-and-orange; I'd be fine with the Royals winning.

Off in the Woods Part 2

Hot. Shimmering heat lines rose off every surface. The 2014 LA Summer Heat-Wave that began in March was at full tilt in early September. Unrelenting was a cliche we'd been living with for nearly seven months.

The southwest facing wall of our apartment acted like the oven's furnace while the door to Sherweezyland faces direct sun after 10 am. No respite.

The "Sherwood Weekend" was quickly approaching. My father is from a large Irish Caitliceach family that decided after years of living crammed together they'd had enough. Big reunions happen about twice a decade. I have cherished memories from the 1990 trip; scattered perceptions from 1985; and solid if unspectacular memories of 1995 at Lake Tahoe (I had my learners permit and relished any opportunity to get behind the wheel). 

In the summer of 2000 both my brother and I attended the shindig in Bedford (in Westchester County just north of the Bronx) at the house of an auntie. I remember being shocked by both the humidity and the green---everywhere was luscious and green---and that was just waiting for a ride at LaGuardia.

Anyway, that was the last trip I made to one of the Great Sherwood Weekends.

And now, after seven months of baking at home and at Sherweezyland, fourteen years later, I'd finally be able to introduce Corrie to the majority of my father's siblings.

An hour outside of Syracuse, nestled on one of the various lakes in that area, is Camp Nazareth. To this day it remains a summer camp, and back in the sixties when they were kids, my father and his siblings would sojourn there for two weeks. They'd swim, canoe, and hike.

The canoes are still chillin' on a lake beach head:

How does the weather look in that picture? How about this next picture of my dad returning from something?

But I'm getting ahead of the narrative.

"Okay, Southland, get ready for another blast of heat. This front is bringing another push up the dial this weekend. More details after the break," the smiling, buxom, microwaved skin and scantily clad weather girl was saying as I turned off the television. The weekend was going to be more of the same, up to triple digits in the Inland Empire and upper 90s at the Beach Cities. (I understand this isn't the high-highs of blast-furnace Arizona or wherever, but for the LA area after seven months of the same?)

"Do you think we packed alright?" was a conversational topic we had even on the plane. We would see. Worries that we'd lost cold weather packing/dressing/coping skills would be tested.

We left Thursday evening, walked the tarmac at the coolest airport, and had little issues. It was September 11th. We flew the red-eye to JFK, tried sprawling out like hobos in a quiet corner to grab some more shuteye, felt...something... We didn't have something soft like cardboard to sleep on, and we didn't have, eh, what're they called? You use them to cover yourself when you're not all sweaty and wishing the fan could be more powerful but quieter...oh yeah, BLANKETS.

Waiting for our flight to Syracuse and trying to sleep on the floor in a corner of the JetBlue terminal we were cold for the first time in MONTHS.

We landed in Syracuse before 11 am, met my dad---who'd stayed the night in Syracuse instead of subjecting himself to a Denver-to-JFK red-eye---at the airport, and exited to pick up the rental car. It was the warmest it'd be for the rest of the trip, but we didn't know it at the time. I thought it was glorious. It was crisp. It was breezy. It was autumn. It was 59 degrees. I smiled and took deep gulps of air and waved my hairy arms around just in my t-shirt.

Firstly we were going to drive to Whitesboro, a satellite town to Utica and the location of a house the majority of my aunties and uncles, including my father, called "home". We were going to find that house and make the new owners feel uncomfortable. It turned out that our car wasn't alone in that sentiment on this Friday morning, and upon arriving at the house on Main St (literally), three of my dad's siblings were there, standing across the street, gabbing and staring like weirdos. We're all weirdos, so, whatever...

Corrie got to meet some more of my aunties and uncles, and one of my cousins who was there, but we didn't know we were heading direct to meet people. It was about then that I grabbed my lone "warm" garment, a fleece pullover.

On the drive to Whitesboro, aside fro getting lost a little, my dad was funny: geeking out with childhood memories. He hadn't been to this stretch of highway or cities in 40+ years, so that was cool and made a certain sense.

After the informal meet and greet, and a trip to a familial-tradition institution---a local pastry shop---we headed out for the camp site where we'd be staying, the aforementioned Camp Nazareth.

Camp Nazareth is open during the summer months, of which September is not included. One of my uncles arranged to have the place rented out just for the Sherwood Shindig, which meant we were the only people at this lakeside campground. It was a collection of summer cabins, though, that hadn't been updated really since the 1930s when is was built by a Jewish businessman, even after it was purchased by a local diocese in the 1950s and became Camp Nazareth.

So, the place was dripping with memories and perceptions, things starting conversations, conversations unlocking more memories, and on the cycle went.

But that was for my dad's generation, his siblings and cousins who came to visit.

For us, our generation (of whom came I was the oldest), it was a spooky and abandoned rickety campground without enough lights. Throw in the fact that it was rainy and cold, evidenced by my dad's attire in the picture above, and what we get is a good test of California intestinal fortitude.

After helping out in the nice-sized cafeteria's kitchen, I rode along with three other cousins to Albany to pick up a fourth. I took the opportunity because I realized I had no idea who my cousins were.

The next day, Saturday, was the only full day Corrie and I and my dad were going to get at the site. We tried to keep dry and warm, visited a ton, and eventually we hit up the canoes. Corrie and I shared one, and some cousins of mine took the row boat, the three of them fitting nicely in that vessel.

Here's a picture of my cousin Becky, an upperclassman at a Boston university, trying to prepare herself for the rigors of the weather to be encountered on the rowboat:

If she ever sees that I put this here she may end up upset. Lucky for me my readers are mainly isolated in California, Arizona, and Latvia.

After more kitchen work, and cuddling next to the fire, Corrie and I moved sleeping quarters to a warmer and more connected spot. The next day we left first, heading back to Syracuse for my dad's early flight.

We drove south on down to Ithaca to have brunch with some of Corrie's architecture pals, a married couple who moved so the fella could attend graduate school at Cornell. The lady got pregnant, had the baby (who's now sixth months old), and the fella, wanting to move back to San Diego, postponed that move by taking an architectural teaching job at Cornell. Could be worse things...

We toured Cornell's campus (SPOILER: it's really nice) after brunch, and got a feel for how cool and beautiful Ithaca is. On a related topic, I realized how little I actually want to live in a primarily college-town, That may change...

Anyway, we zoomed back to Syracuse for our own flight back to Queens, waited for a few short hours unable, for some ridiculous reason, to watch the Jets game on any television in the terminal, and eventually made it back to Long Beach.

When we landed at 9:40 the announcer on the JetBlue flight called out, "Welcome to Long Beach, where the temperature is a beautiful 89 degrees." Twenty minutes to ten pm, and it was almost 90 out.

Our apartment was just as broiled out as when we left, likely close to 100 inside.

The whirlwind nature of some of our adventures can be draining, but there's always reasons for these trips. The cousins I was seeing I was seeing for the first time in fourteen years. Fourteen years. Corrie hadn't ever met nearly everybody at the campground. Reasons are reasons, and sometimes they make sense and sometimes less so.

As we unpacked our bags we noticed that all of our clothes and our sleeping bags were just as frigid as when we'd packed them. How about that, we mused. Here we were sweating on top of being smelly and grimy from a shower-less weekend, unpacking in the oven that is our apartment during a heatwave, and we'd brought some of the Upstate cold home with us.

Here's one last picture, my dad, his brother, and one of my cousins (not the son of the pictured uncle):

Off in the Woods, Part 1

We returned recently from a quick sojourn to the lake filled region in the Adirondacks to celebrate a Sherwood Family Reunion. Here are a taste of pictures (because I don't have too many more):

These are the cabins I hear kids stayed in during the peak-season:

The Kentucky Derby is Still Decadent and Depraved...

...and is, apparently, getting an NFL player in trouble.

Wes Welker, a feel-good story player made famous playing for Tom Brady in New England, has been suspended for the first four games of this season, this time missing playing time with the Broncos and Peyton Manning.

Why was he suspended? Well, it turns out that his appeal was denied. He failed a drug test. What did he fail for? Was it steroids, which, oddly, nobody seems to care about in football, despite people's health and livelihoods being literally on the line?

Nope. Ecstasy.

He failed for MDMA.

He was at the Kentucky Derby. Getting his fade on, apparently. I've heard he won big, like BIG, and was handing out hundred dollar bills to strangers on the way out of Churchill Downs. Check out the picture:

He's even dressed like our favorite son of Louisville.

Where's Steadman to tell the story in pictographs when you need him?

Distracting Fluff

Having finished a multi-month Netflix trek through all seven seasons of Malcolm in the Middle I can say that Dewey is my favorite of the sibling characters.

The initial draw of the show early on, especially for intellectual viewers like myself, was Malcolm's travails through the gifted program and the normal difficulties of being smart in a society that doesn't value that specific quality. Like Lisa Simpson or Squidward, the resident intellectual is a specific character with whom other intellectuals can identify. That's how fan bases develop for shows: have a character people can identify with, and in the beginning, Malcolm--and the smart writing and domineering mother--was our "in" for the show.

Having watched all seven seasons in order (over months), we were able to see how the writers of the show developed each character and gave them depth. The oldest of the boys, Francis, began the show having been sent away to a military school in Alabama. There he was the spiritual leader and antagonist of the status quo. He then left the school for Alaska, where he found himself in nearly the same position: the only one able to recognize the absurdity of the situation and challenge the reality. Later he successfully ran a dude ranch, until both that subplot and the character's appearance on the show stopped being regular.

The second boy, Reese, is a mindless and brutal bully who terrorizes both his younger siblings and kids at school. The show's writers let him have the gift of being a natural chef, but in the latter years they did less and less with this aspect of Reese's personality. One of the best Reese subplots in any single episode in the show's run has him joining a pack of dogs, eventually rising to alpha-male, only to get caught by police leading an attack on a chicken coop.

Malcolm is the boy-genius over-thinker malcontent. He sees the world's absurdity (like Francis in the beginning) and regularly complains about it. He is destined to be President, as the show concludes, as well as being destined to have a hard life. Nothing will ever be good enough or easy enough for him, and he be forced to work hard for everything in his life. This is revealed to him by his mom, Lois, and it is an important truth about the world that the show describes in good detail.

Some people will have to work harder and nothing will ever be easy for them. Others will seemingly glide through life, making an easy go of it. A tough and bitter truth, one of the most bitter and toughs truths ever addressed by any sitcom.

Dewey, the next son, is the example used for whom things will be easy and natural during life. He turns out, in the later seasons, to be both a musical prodigy who writes operas and a genius-leader of his own group of troubled youths. He teaches his peers lessons unaddressed by his teachers while simultaneously composing both the librettos and music for a school production.

It is in this enlightened role that we see how good of a person Dewey is, about how he has internalized and listened to the shouting his mother's been doing for all those years and has adjusted his actions thusly. He is both contemplative and generous. He is talented and generally correct in belief and action. He tricked his parents into paying for a party for his younger brother, Jamie.

The youngest boy, Jamie, is walking by the end of the show, but hasn't developed a characteristic beyond being ahead of his older brothers in his development into a parent-baiting maniac.

Once Malcolm in the Middle got into the other characters with some depth, the true natures of the stereotypes that were the "brothers" became more nuanced and interesting. It made for a fulfilling viewing experience.

"Death Alley"

I recently watched a short film produced by a presumably wealthy and privileged British young lady of either Indian or Iranian descent that concerned itself with the "murder capital of Los Angeles County". This lady went around and talked with former gang members, teachers and principals, and other community leaders, interviewing them about, among other things, PTSD.

The rates of post traumatic stress disorder in the kids in this specific neighborhood are out-stripping the rates seen in the soldiers returning from Afghanistan as well as those home from Iraq. At least PTSD is now something the military and our national leaders are acknowledging...will the new-found interest get any attention paid back to the 'hood?

In any case, watching this little movie was an odd experience for me--it all looked so familiar. And I don't mean "familiar" in the sense of "areas of The Wire's Baltimore look just like where we lived in Bed-Stuy", but rather, "I was just there, wasn't I?"

The name "Death Alley" was given to s two-mile stretch of road in LA county that had the highest number of homicides as well as the highest homicide rate. The short movie, though, never was explicitly clear about this location.

I had to look it up later.

It turns out that the two-mile stretch was Vermont Ave, between Manchester and Imperial, which basically encompasses the Metro-Green line's stop at Vermont-Athens.

I couldn't say I was really shocked: this is precisely the 'hood that christened me "Sherweezy". Vermont is my zone, almost as much as Normandie...I've walked the mile-and-a-half walk from that Vermont-Athens stop to my Fortress of Solitude more times that I can remember. (I don't do it anymore...)

The LAPD worked with the LA Times and created a homicide locator visual program, and the following picture shows "Death Alley" and the surroundings. I've placed an arrow at that Fortress, where Sherweezy was founded:

This is the second-largest metropolitan area in the country, and unsurprisingly New York is the largest.

Somehow I've created deep and intimate experiences in this country's two largest metropolitan urban areas specifically in the heart of their murder-capitals.

Go Bed-Stuy! Go Westmont!

Languid Summer Days

The clouds usually burn off by noon. If the mercury rises above 85, complaints fly and our newly finished apartment bakes right before supper.

In the meantime the soccer has finished, possibly the most exciting tournament in modern history. I'm working on a Gerries post, but until then, the days blend through sundown into nights, and I think about math.

I think about the future. I think about books and authors and films (why can't Snowpiercer be seen in Long Beach?) and sports. I think about bureaucracies and fever dreams, about bike rides on rebuilt knees, about stuffy coffee shops filled with ideas and thick odors.

I think about struggles, about the neighborhoods upon which we're trying to affect positive change. I think about projects, both physical and brainal.

I think about American soccer, about how exciting sports today in America are---except for my Yankees. Besides Tanaka, the Yanks are traveling farewell tour for their 40-year-old superstar, and then Tanaka might need Tommy John surgery, ending his year...

I think about friends, old and new, talking to them at the same time:

I think about the end of the summer, the beginning of the new gig in the new Sherweezyland, and about fresh beginnings.

I like bow-ties and not shaving; blondes in violet dresses...languid summer days...

Ruminating on the USMNT

The World Cup.

The quadrennial global sporting event that gets the masses whipped up into a tizzy. (Thanks for being confused, Olympics, that's adorable.)

But we're down to the final four.

I started this post back before the last weekend, after the USMNT was eliminated. Every time I see that (stupid) acronym I think of the Ninja Turtles... The US Men's National Team, once a laughing stock of international soccer, has become one of the powerhouses. It was only a mater of time. Not much beyond a quarterfinal match was expected this year, and while we didn't reach that, this turned out to be a promising trip to the precipice of futbol relevance: fans being told by Jurgen Klinsmann (the coach) that we, as a people, need to be disappointed and motivated from this experience.

Klinsmann left Landon Donovan, one of the two premier graybeards of the squad, at home, and presumably next tournament, in 2018, will be PD/PD, Post Donovan/Post Dempsey. We got a taste this year of these kids on this squad, and the future is finally starting. And exciting.

Can the bloody Americans actually win the whole enchilada? It's not as ridiculous as it would have seemed even a few years ago...

Anyway, back in 2010 we were living in Texas, I was working the two gigs and watching the World Cup on Corrie's lappy at odd hours of the day. The tournament provided fodder for a handful of posts, mainly because I wasn't posting about anything because I didn't have any time. Actually, one of my favorite posts and a nice example of the literary potential of the blog-post form came from those posts.

I haven't posted anything this year about the World Cup for two reasons: 1) I've been painting our apartment; and 2) we went to the mountains for a week,

In 2010 I watched occasionally when big games were on broadcast television (we didn't have cable--we still don't), or on the laptop. In 2014, every game is broadcast on Spanish-language television, at reasonable times, and I've had every single game on whether I was in the room or not.

The final four in the tournament in 2010 was Germany, Spain, Uruguay, and the Netherlands. I mentioned back then that I tended to root for South American teams over European teams, but that I had a fond spot in my heart for the Gerries, and had adopted Uruguay as my South American Team. (If you follow the link above, you'll see me wearing a kit of Diego Forlan, a footballer from Uruguay). Neither of those teams made it that year, as the final saw the Dutch lose to the Spaniards. I did not like Spain.

This year the final four are set, and once again Germany and the Netherlands are represented, and if they win their next games, they will face each other. Their opponents: Brazil and Argentina. South America Vs Europe, times two. Brazil plays Germany, and with superstar Neymar out, the stadium will be very tense while rocking the entire time. The Netherlands get Messi and Argentina.

The final could be all South America: Brazil/Argentina (can it possibly not end in a riot?) or all Europe: Germany/Netherlands (will people be okay after the elimination riots after Brazil and Argentina lose?).

This has been an exciting tournament, one for all time I hear. It's pretty cool not being to understand the commentators I watch--it makes me form my own opinions of what I'm seeing. Costa Rica making a quarterfinal trip after throttling the "Group of Champions" was pretty damn sweet. They were in the foursome that featured Italy (4 World Cup victories), England (1 WCv), and Uruguay (2 WCv). Costa Rica was an afterthought. After they easily handled Uruguay, whipped Italy, and rested against England for a draw, people almost took them seriously.

They just lost against the Dutch, falling on penalty kicks after 120 minutes of soccer. During the last fifteen to twenty minutes they were noticeably dragging and looked badly overmatched against the orange draped European powerhouse, yet the Dutch couldn't score. It was glorious for a CONCACAF fellow.

Anyway, my Uruguay team made it out of the group stage with Costa Rica, which saw both England and Italy go home early. Watching the Celestial (Uruguay) play was maddening at times: Forlan and Cavanni are both playing, but no Suarez; then Suarez and Cavanni, but no Forlan; then Cavanni and no Forlan and Suarez is suspended?

I missed that entire exchange. Suarez...(Norm, you'd get a kick out of this guy...)

Luis Suarez, back in 2010, was one of the two marquee Uruguayan strikers to play in Europe (along with Forlan and a few seasons before Cavanni got his payday) and make the national squad that made them serious contenders for the Cup. It was shockingly unrealistic that a country the size of Washington State and with less people that LA city proper could ever have a chance, but with Forlan and Suarez, any team would have a chance.

In 2010 the World Cup was held in South Africa, and in the quarter-finals, Uruguay was playing Ghana, the last remaining African team. 700 million people were Ghanaian that evening. With the goalie badly out of position, Suarez jumped up and blocked a sure goal with his hands. Everyone was stunned. He blocked a kick with his bare hands. He was red carded and kicked from the game, and Ghana was awarded a penalty kick. They missed. Ghana eventually went on to lose, and Suarez became the most hated soccer player in Africa.

Jump ahead a few years, and Luis Suarez is a superstar on Liverpool in the English Premier League, arguably the top soccer league in the world. Suarez has been suspended twice--twice--for biting opponents. BITING opponents. Awesome...I guess he's a biter?

Any guesses what he was suspended for from this tournament? ANY GUESSES? Could it be that he has some kind of crazy-gene, the, eh, Mike-Tyson-gene, that causes him to, when under crazy stress, chomp the closest adversary? Quite the legacy...

This time around I don't have a hate on for any of the remaining four teams (last time I didn't are for Spain even a little), but with Neymar breaking a vertebrae, Brazil winning it's sixth World Cup will be that much harder.

But, if Brazil doesn't win, it will be considered a monumental disaster. Remember, this country hasn't fought any major wars, and the largest national disaster of any political kind was when Uruguay beat their beloved team in Rio to win the World Cup in 1950.

One last silly thing I remembered and now feel compelled to mention: Brazil is the home of the single-named nicknames for their soccer stars: Pele, Garrincha, Rolando...this year they have Neymar and Oscar and, up front as the main striker, possibly the funniest single name on a jersey: Fred.

Brazil has a striker with "Fred" on that iconic canary jersey.

Post One Thousand

One thousand posts. On this blog alone. Finally made it...

Okay, P1K Pop Quiz: What's wrong with this picture?

Don't worry if that picture and question are baffling; the answer will follow. It may not enlighten as much as you'd like, but it'll be there at the end.

I've been thinking about things coming full circle for some time now. A while back I was given a gift-card for the bookstore on campus where I am enrolled during this whole new adventure. But since I'm rarely ever on campus the gift-card languished away in my sock drawer for nearly a year.

Nearly a year? Dang...my internal sense of timing has been pummeled over the last thirteen months.

Anyway, I came across a video on Cracked's website about Harry Potter, or whatever, and watched the trailer. That was the first time I saw one of their creators doing an interpretation of Hunter Thompson. I even wrote a post about it a few posts ago, something about Artistic Sampling.

So far, it seems I've brought up three completely incongruous things.

In between seeing the HST portrayal and the related post, I made it to campus and happened to remember the gift-card. I moseyed to the bookstore and started perusing. I don't need textbooks or sweaters or shot glasses or coffee mugs. I don't need pennants or pencils or candy or soda. I guess I don't need books of a non-textbook variety, but that's where I headed.

I picked up a book about the Poincare Conjecture (it's math; about the shape of the universe), and a discounted copy of Outlaw Journalist, a biography of Hunter S. Thompson.

I haven't finished the HST book yet, but only because I'm not riding the trains of LA twice a day anymore and have too much to do around the house. BUT, it is proving to be an exciting read. A few things I didn't the know: the "S" stands for Stockton, and the pair, Hunter Stockton, as a first and middle name, come from his mother: her maiden name was Hunter and her mother's maiden name was Stockton. The "Dr." part of his personality came from a magazine send-away to become a "Dr. of Divinity"---seriously. Despite what's portrayed in the Johnny Depp 1998 film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter didn't get into cocaine until the mid to late '70s.

Another odd anecdote: on my "Artistic Sampling" post I have a photo I found of Hunter sitting with Oscar Acosta. Oscar is the gentleman with whom Hunter was trying to get away from Los Angeles that started the entire Fear and Loathing story. Anyway, Oscar was so livid after it was published that he threatened to sue Jann Wenner of the Rolling Stone for libel and wreck the magazine and Hunter's writing career; he single-handedly held up publication of the book for nearly a year. Both he and Hunter were nervous that if it was known that it had been Oscar that had accompanied Hunter during this felonious weekend that he may be disbarred.

In a personal letter to Hunter, it sounded as it his biggest complaint was that he was portrayed as a Samoan. And then, at the last second, in exchange for the dropping of the lawsuits, he demanded that a picture of both he and Hunter be on the dust jacket of the book. That picture from the sampling post is the one from the back cover, while they were at Circus Circus in Vegas. Probably high on mescaline, but you never know.

So...coming full circle...

I had a few ideas from a very hot week a while back that I started to give the gonzo treatment to. By that, what I mean is to cast a skeptical and searching eye onto the activities in question and...

...well, what does it mean to "give it the gonzo treatment?"

Fifteen years ago it would have meant "feature drugs and use of same heavily". And that's totally not what Hunter was all about. Sure, he used and abused everything he could get his hands on, but the focus wasn't on the substances, it was, in his case, on getting the story. He just happened to use and abuse everything he could get his hands on.

So that's when I started to find trouble with this project--the hot week and gonzo treatment. I have the scenes in question, the auxiliary characters set--but what's the deal? What is the perspective of this gonzo narrator and why is this perspective the case? That's when I really tried to figure out the center of the HST trip: what is the importance of altered states of consciousness? Is it the only way to achieve a rich and varied experience with the universe? Is that what Hunter was really all about?

And, most importantly for me, how will this shade my decisions on how to set the point of view of my protagonist? Can a story been given the gonzo treatment and not have a couple of fools driving fast all full of drugs with nowhere to go?

So, sometimes, while thinking about these things, I feel the need to jump on my bicycle and ride around Long Beach. On Monday of last week, after finishing grooming that bear I'd been working on for a while the Sunday before, I realized I had just a single day without any other obligations---no housework yet, no new-gig work yet, just me and my bike and my thoughts and my notebooks.

I set out to once again check out an area I was planning on writing a long blog post about (maybe even something longer). There is a tiny encampment underneath a large freeway overpass where there had once been many folks living in tents. I had planned on my piece being titled "Under the Bridge" (too cheeky, super-LA name, fo' rilly). It would profile the people who lived there, how they got there, what it was like, maybe even stay a night or two myself. I thought the idea could appeal to human-interest story fans as well as hipsters.

I went once and didn't get a chance to talk to anyone, and by the next time I made it over there, after recovering from my couch-summer, there was nothing left. I heard the cops pushed them off permanently.

So I return every once in a while.

Like this Monday I'm talking about. I rode my bike back over to the zone--it's just a quick ride, five or six thousand feet away, and mostly straight--just to let some ideas play out in my brain. The gonzo hot-week piece, my WiLA project, a specific scene in my novel--all these things running in my head at once. And then I saw that graffiti from the first picture.

Huh, I thought to myself. I'm not a master of tagging, and this barely qualifies in the artistic sense, but I'm also not uneducated on what certain things mean. And that graffiti has something wrong. I spotted it almost immediately and may have even said out loud, "Amateur?"

As I left the spot I went back to my thoughts and joined to LA River bikeway as it beelines for the harbor. Less than a minute ride away I rode by this, obviously the same handwriting, only this time the issue was fixed.

Can you see the difference; and if so, can you explain it?

Now, this leads me onto a related tangent: some people, myself included, have, on occasions, found themselves saying to somebody else about traveling to "the LBC" or meeting us "in the LBC" or some such. I've tried to excise that from my normal language, but I haven't really started calling people out on it yet.

It's obviously attributed to a line in a popular Sublime song, where it is actually used correctly, "...representin' the LBC..."

I think the valley girls and social drinkers who use it with the greatest frequency that I hear think that it means Long Beach City. In all honesty, it does roll off the tongue rather nicely.

The "LBC" is not a place: it stands for the "Long Beach Crips".

I guess that's more of a clue than a related tangent, but those don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Happy M! Happy 1000! Happy Thousandth Post!

Thanks for keeping up, if you do, and if you don't, thanks for making it to these last sentences.

Words just want to be read!

The Streets

I always have plans. I'm working on different writing projects perpetually it seems. I always have a number of blog post ideas brewing about in my head, or tiny collections of pieces that I'm trying to hammer into pocketbook style releases, or tiny collections of treatments or theories that are awaiting a similar pocketbook focus. I have a series of political-fiction graphic novels for which I'm still awaiting a collaborator. And my novel... I'm also working on an anniversary present that I may finish by Decemberween (only six months late).

I have one blog post idea about sap that was born on a rainy Saturday afternoon in December of 2012. After I actually write it up I'm sure I will be mostly disappointed and let down...after that kind of time of build up, what else could the results be? The piece be everything a writer always wants it to be?

So, with that interior battle playing out every time I feel like chilling out and watching a futbol game or taking a nap, like I'm wasting time if I'm not actively doing the housework or working on a project, I present today a loose outline of a section of a bigger (yet ultimately tiny) piece that isn't listed above.

I named this piece "The Streets", and it concerns the set of streets that define the area that Americans (and other folks who may live in other places but have cursory knowledge) understand as South Central Los Angeles; the zone of Boyz 'N the Hood and NWA...

I'm an outsider in the neighborhoods about which I'll be speaking and am able to eye it like a drunken westerner on an African safari. Only I'm not afforded the safety of the tourist van.

Early one day last October I set about sketching my morning bike ride, testing myself if I could remember all the names of the streets that I crossed daily. I exited the train at 103rd St in Watts. Watts is still a neighborhood that suffers from low socioeconomic status and political value. From there I would ride west along 103rd past Compton Ave over to Central Ave, where I'd turn left, and head south.

I rode down to 108th, where I'd turn right and start west again. 108th had a defined bike lane for a significant stretch.

Also, at the corner of 108th and Central Ave is the Maxine Waters Adult School, considered one of, if not the, most dangerous corners in all of the 'Hood. Someone I know was stabbed while waiting for unit recovery classes there.

Anyway, I would ride down 108th. The first light was McKinley, then Avalon, then San Pedro, then Main, then Broadway, then under the I-110 freeway, then Figueroa, then Hoover, then Vermont. I would turn left on Vermont, head south to 109th, turn right and head west to Normandie, where, very quickly I would be at my first location. The next major block past Normandie is Western.

Originally I would ride my bike back not through the neighborhood straight, rather I would ride along Imperial Hwy, from Normandie to Willowbrook, where I could pick up the train one stop south of where I debarked in the morning. I got to see these same streets--Normandie, Vermont, Hoover, Figueroa, Broadway, Main, San Pedro, Avalon, Central, and Compton in this reverse order but on Imperial.

Because of the feeling of impending doom on Imperial Hwy, this didn't last long, and soon I rode south past Imperial down to 120th and then turned east, cutting north for a block to get to the Willowbrook Metro stop. That simple change made a world of difference. 120th is still the 'Hood, with the capital 'H' and all, but it surely isn't the Crip-ruled battle zone that fills the residential area north of Imperial past 108th and up to surely the 90s, where the 103rd Hoovers battle with the encroaching Manchester Bloods.

Manchester is the next major east-west road north of 103rd and represents the next stop north on the LA Metro past Willowbrook, only there, on the east-side of Central Avenue, it's called Firestone. Our good friend and kitty-babysitter Victor, during his time growing up in the 'Hood, was close to Manchester and Western and has enlightened me on the Bloods in that area. In the neighborhoods I've described above, the majority are probably Crip territories, but this oversimplifies the nature of the gang landscape.

I exited the train at 103rd and headed west. My colleague exited at the same location and headed east, to his residency site, and through the Grape Park Crew territory; they're represented by anything purple. The Firestone/Florence side of Central is marked by more Latino organizations; whereas the Manchester/Centennial side, possibly due to it's proximity to Inglewood, sees a heavier black presence in the crews. There are huge (and I mean HUGE) projects right off the 103rd stop, stretching the distance between Compton and Central, and, to the south yet unconnected, there is an entire city of projects off Imperial Hwy, and these complicate the picture a bit.

So, that was my first, rather lengthy, trip over the streets in question: mostly Crip territory, and three (or four) separate venues, (103rd) 108th, Imperial, and 120th. It was in this territory that I picked up the moniker "Sherweezy".

After the change in residency, I found myself staying on the Metro a little longer: past 103rd and Firestone to either the next stop, Florence, or the stop after (which was slightly closer), Slauson. Slauson worked best for making the trip on foot, but Florence was the better stop for biking. This time, my location was again to the west, but far closer. I'd only have to cross Compton and head to Central. This neighborhood was certainly different than even a few miles south. Most every commercial establishment in the vicinity is Spanish only, and instead of Crips and Bloods bickering through gunfire, you have to deal with Florencia.

Somebody I know is trying to make his bones as a Futures. Futures what? I tried to piece together without asking...of course he meant Future Florencia. Also, a friend had told me, "You can't get off the train at Slauson! That's where my cousin got lit up! It's not safe with your bike, man!" I shrugged and reminded him, "That's okay...that's when I'm on foot."

He tried to convince Corrie to get me to change my residency, or means for getting around.

That added 61st and Gage to the list of cross streets for Compton and Central avenues.

So far these are two distinct neighborhoods that some folks call "ghettos". I refrain from using this term too often (and haven't yet in this entire piece so far), only because the people I meet there don't use it that much. They are, by any stretch of the imagination, exactly the kinds of neighborhoods that most people would consider warranting such a term, and are, by all observations, rough and tough. (The Crip zone is rougher by my measure.)

So now I have new gig, and I've been visiting. I haven't been driving just yet, and I take my bike on the bus, and have been riding home the entire way. It is a bit further that I'd like to ride in one stretch, but I could get used to it a few times a week, and in only one direction.

The new location, my third in less than twelve months, is on Western Ave, west of Normandie and Vermont. Only this time it's closer to 246th. So when I ride home, again I'm passing Normandie, Vermont, San Pedro and Avalon. Central dies at Del Amo, a reality I saw last summer with my bike commuting to my own classes.

But this neighborhood is just another kind of 'Hood. It may not be as ravaged by organized violent hoodlums, but it is lower socioeconomically, and it has many of the trappings that busted out and depressed neighborhoods have.

It is my desire to really organize these thoughts into a more cohesive thing, along with different impressions--about content, context, people, and organizations--from my time during this residency and the immediate aftermath.

Photos would be nice, too.

I forgot to mention a place I went for an interview. It was just off the train two stops past Slauson, at Washington. Here the neighborhood was far closer to the immediate downtown of Los Angeles, and the roads are all screwy, roughly resembling Greenwich Village (not the buildings, of course). I crossed Compton Ave again, for what's worth, at, like 24th St. Compton Avenue there was thinner than our own street here in Long Beach.

It's always a work in progress or a half-completed project...

Also: if any of my fine readers bust out a calculator, you may get an idea for my next post (by adding up the posts thus far...).

One Day of Summer Break

Whew!

I've been occupied recently with a massive bear. It needed a shave, a haircut, and a bath. It took enough days (and weeks and months) just to get it hosed down with one of those kitchen sink hoses, not to mention the distaste that the bear showed during the hosing. Eventually I got the flea and tick shampoo lathered in, rinsed out, the buzzers shearing off layer after layer of grizzly growth.

Yesterday I was able to wrestle the bear to the ground, whip up some cream with the badger-hair brush than Dan got me for my birthday, layer the snarling and furious beast's muzzle, and shave it with my old razor.

The giant and scary task was finally completed, and I spent the rest of the afternoon melting into the couch, and, like I told my bear-shaving colleagues, to laze the day away drooling beer over my unshaven chin. My facial hair has returned in the absence of shaving everyday as I had been during my pre-summer-vacation activity time.

The One Day mentioned in the title of this post refers to the activities I have scheduled for my new gig on Tuesday and Wednesday, before we start resurfacing the floors in the bedroom. So, after finishing shaving that bear yesterday, the last of my bear-grooming activities, and before the new gig gives way to domestic duties, I have today as my one day of summer vacation.

I'm sure there will be more days, but I have many writing project plans, and I need to return to these neglected blogs, my focus having been for too long on grooming that bear.

Feels good to be "back"!

Rooting Interest

The Stanley Cup Finals begin on Wednesday, the championship series in American hockey. Meeting in the finals are two teams I have a specific interest in: the first is the team I grew up rooting for, the New York Rangers.

Like so many of my favorite sporting teams, my hockey team followed from that of my New York-born father; Yankees, G-Men, Knicks, etc... When the Rangers won the Cup in 1994 I was a kid rooting, for the first time I could truly remember, intently, chilling on the couch in the hot dusk early June Sacramento.

The Rangers will be playing the Los Angeles Kings, winners of the Cup just the season before last. I went to the championship parade the day before I broke my femur. The Kings were part of the original major NHL expansion back in 1967 (the year the number of teams doubled), played for their first year in Long Beach, and sucked pretty much until Gretzky was traded by Edmonton. They were relevant for a few seasons, made the finals but lost, and pretty much were mired in mediocrity until winning the Cup in June of '12. I have developed a soft spot for these lovable hardscrabble underdogs.

The Rangers traded their captain away a few months ago--not always a good sign for a team heading to the promised land. The return on their captain was a player once thought to be in the twilight of his career, only to have played in integral role in their recent trek to the finals.

Since my attention on sports has seriously waned as of late, I'm not sure for whom to root. If the Kings win, sweet! We'll have another champion in the County. If the Rangers win, sweet! Nothing's better than winning in New York, and King Henrik, Mr. Lundqvist, the Swedish superstar goalie for the Rangers, will rightly earn his spot as hockey-god du jour.

Artistic Sampling Once Again

I have a very specific theory about artistic "sampling" that I've maybe only explained to Corrie and maybe one other person (Norm).

Here "sampling" is being used in the sense of American hip-hop artists taking bass lines or drum beats from established songs and using them as the backbones of their own songs. MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice both got sued very badly for not acknowledging the sources for their mainstream busting hits "You Can't Touch This" and "Ice, Ice Baby", respectively (originally, also respectively, Rick James and Queen).

I believe that this kind of sampling can occur in other forms. Personally I've been working on a novel (down the pipeline) that touches on this subject (I've spoken about it with Norm and maybe Corrie). My prospective novel dealing with this is a little more in depth than another item that has to be in this same area, the mostly well known "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". I'm sure you can guess the idea...

Now this post is about something entirely different from re-writing a classic piece of literature from the prospective of a zombie invasion (way far away from my own idea), but could be seen as a "sampling" I posit.

Okay.

My brother Dan turned me on to an episode of a web show on Cracked.com's site. The show, After Hours, featured four friends sitting around a table dissecting, hilariously and highly intellectually, pop culture items, and the specific episode Dan sent me was "Why 'Back to the Future' is Secretly Horrifying". That turned out ot be the first episode from these folks, and has since been seen by nearly five million people.

It you haven't yet seen it, please watch. All the episodes are enlightening and entertaining. The website has other shows that they create, on a shoestring budget really. For a while, one of the character/actors from After Hours, Michael Swaim, played a robot who sifted the internet for random websites and brought them to viewers like Tosh. It was funny.

The producers began to get ambitious. They made a show about a Jedi school in the Star Wars universe. I didn't watch it too much, but it looked good.

Another recent show they created is called "Rom.com", a show at a dating website office. It's quite funny and very smart.

And then we get to the show that caused me to post in the first place.

"Welcome Back Potter" is the name of this newest show. Michael Swaim plays a mostly adult Harry Potter who, with Ron(?), left Hogwarts and took off for Muggle-Land in America as a kid, and they, he and Ron, have been using magic and scamming Yanks since they arrived. The chick, Hermione maybe (sorry, I don't know anything about Harry Potter besides the drive-in movie I watched in SLO with Gary Oldman and mucho vino) has come to America to try to convince them to return and stop the nose-less dude, Voldemort.

That's the premise that's discussed in the opening thirty seconds of their webisodes. Where am I going with this? Right here:

Who does Swaim look like here?

I saw some of the previews and thought, oh my, Swaim's playing Harry as Hunter. Harry and Ron changed their names, Harry to "Jarry" and Ron to "Don", and "Don" has based his mannerisms on those of somebody from Jersey Shore.

Swaim is playing an adult Harry Potter exactly like Raoul Duke, and it's pretty exciting. This is one of the moments that made me think of artistic sampling. Here's one writer/actor's interpretation of a scamming adult Harry Potter on the lam---Raoul Duke.

This led me to look for some pictures...

Ron/Don isn't playing Oscar Zeta Acosta, which is kinda a bummer, and probably too much to ask for, since The Situation opposite Duke is funny enough. Here's Oscar (and Hunter):

I won't waste the reader's time with who's who.

Hunter S. Thompson/Raoul Duke and Oscar Acosta/The Avenging Lawyer have been represented before in film, first in 1980:

and again in 1998:

Which makes this picture marginally more meaningful:

From 1994: Bill Murray and Johnny Depp both appeared in Tim Burton's Ed Wood. In other times they both befriended and then portrayed one of Hunter's alter egos, Raoul Duke.

Now...if only I could find a Peter Boyle/Benicio del Toro movie...