Strange goings on in the park outside my window

I'm fortunate enough to have an office with a window, even if our building is in the middle of absolutely nowhere (or Encino, depending on where you're from). I share this office with a wonderful roomate with whom I can discuss topics ranging from the Revolutionary War to why on earth anyone watches Scott Bakula on "Star Trek: Enterprise." She seems to like him so she provides an excellent counterpoint.

I am also fortunate that the window looks out on a park which is now in full bloom since spring has arrived. There are kids playing on the basketball court, mothers with their children at the playground, and all kinds of picnics going on here and there.

But the park has seen a lot of very strange things. I will keep you posted as they develop and appear, but for now, a few prominent examples from the past.

First, there is a wierd man who wanders through the trees until he comes to a stop and simply stares. At nothing. He has scraggly long hair and some sort of pack, but I don't see him sleeping in the park so I don't think it's his home. He just stands and stares. Once he performed this stunt on the corner of our street. And another time in the entryway of the Johnny Rockets down the block. Who is he? Where did he come from? What does he see that we don't? Perhaps the park has given him the answer to life, the universe, and everything and he is enlightened. Or maybe he's just nuts.

Over the rainy winter a lot of hillsides chose to move to lower elevations. Sometimes the houses they shared their spot with came too. But for the most part, anything on level ground stayed where it was. Except for the gigantic oak tree right outside the window. Despite the fact it was completely flat and despite the fact there was nothing else around it, the tree just decided to call it quits one day and flattened the chain link fence below it. It took a crew about three days to get rid of it and they have since repaired the fence, but the broken stump remains with a little "warning" barrier next to it. Let this serve as a reminder.

Then of course there is the intersection right beside the park which, even though you can see clearly in all directions from every point, is possibly the most dangerous intersection in all of Los Angeles. Every day there is screeching at least four or five times, but sometimes you get the payoff of a really good crash. One drizzly day while we were eating lunch in the hot dog stand across the street, we watched three old ladies get into a three car pileup - presumably because one stopped at the light and the other two didn't. There was no serious damage to the cars, but that didn't stop the incident from drawing two ambulances and a fire truck. So if you're driving by Genesta and Ventura, WATCH OUT!

Stay tuned for more on this oasis of mystery that lies in the heart of Encino. Who know's what'll happen next...

Sin City and the relative evils of our society

I recently went to see Sin City, expecting it to be more or less an entertaining evening of comic book adaptation. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it somewhere between Spiderman and The Punisher which are both relatively edgy interpretations of their predecessors. A little violence here, a little sex there, what you would typically expect from today’s “R” rated comic book/ graphic novel iterations on the big screen.

But it appears that the makers of Sin City weren’t going to be satisfied until their film came close to, if not actually achieved, the title of “most violent movie ever conceived and/ or brought to fruition.”

In fact, the “R” rating is highly conditional, I understand, since it is likely it would have been given harsher treatment by the Ratings Board had all the blood and gore not been in either black or white or some other strange color. I guess making the movie monotone except for someone’s lips here and there, and on one occasion a man’s entire yellow body, softens the blow of watching someone get a hatchet up the legs, his face pounded into mush on the ground, or being cut into tiny pieces by an amazingly adept hooker/ ninja swordfighter.

Here’s a snippet of what you might find in this delightful romp:

------

DWIGHT:
She doesn’t quite chop his head off. She makes a Pez dispenser out of him

(They then show you this process)

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PRIEST:
There's a farm at North Cross and Lennox. It's all there. And while you're at it, ask yourself if that corpse of a slut is worth dying for.

[Marv shoots the priest]

MARV:
Worth dying for.

[Shoots him again]

Worth killing for.

[Shoots him again]

Worth going to hell for.


(Ahh…the age-old sport of killing clergymen)

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[Voice-over]
JOHN HARTIGAN:
I take out his weapons.

[Shoots Junior’s hand]

JOHN HARTIGAN:
Both of them.

[Shoots Junior’s groin]

(Ouch.)
-----

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a little violence every once in a while. Sometimes it’s strangely cathartic to watch your hero avenge the death of his family/ girlfriend/ pet salamander by pushing a car out of a window, throwing any number of people off a bridge and torching four city blocks, but there comes a point when the human stomach is just not equipped to handle it any longer. Braveheart is an incredibly violent film, but it was more or less necessary to the story and it was not excessive. You have to wonder, though, if you really need to watch some man rip off some other guy’s mangled genitals, even if his body is made up and colored to be a cartoon.

But the bigger question at hand is why is this considered appropriate for mass consumption and OK for anyone under 17 to see as long as their parent is there, but a quick flash of Janet Jackson’s breast on national broadcast television is the most traumatic attack on our country we have ever seen. Why is the FCC reacting to complaints and asking NBC to hand over all of their Olympics footage to see if viewing ancient, yet naked, statues around Athens is a violation of the sweet, sweet innocence of our country? I think we should be showing these things. At least in my opinion, seeing what a breast looks like will be more useful to our nation’s maturing young boys than seeing how to appropriately chop off a man’s legs and feed them to his dog while he watches.

I think Michael Moore didn’t quite get to the core of his thesis in Bowling for Columbine as to why our country is particularly violent. I think the reason is because we are a nation of violent, yet sexually awkward and inept individuals. No one knows how to appropriately court and seduce a lover, but if you had to inflict serious pain on him or her, that’s totally fine. Why is it that we embrace violence and accept it as completely normal and more or less business-as-usual, but any hint of the sex act sends our puritanical country into a tizzy? I am convinced that had Justin Timberlake shot Janet Jackson on screen, there would have been no mosaics over the footage they replayed over and over on the news. And the Parents’ Television Council would continue on their merry way.

Someone mentioned the Bible as the root of this disturbance of the balance, and I think they may be onto something. There is a lot of discussion as to what you should and should not do sex-wise (most of which is taken out of context, I might add), but the pre and post-Jesus God seems to be pretty liberal when handing out the butt-whoopings. Torching the city of Sodom, killing the native residents of Canaan, drowning entire legions of Egyptian soldiers, and not to mention almost anything that happens in Revelations. We missed a step or two along the way folks. Europeans are known for being fantastic lovers and having no qualms about showing human body parts on television, and how much violence do they have? I think some figure showed England as having eleven gun deaths in one particular year. I think there were eleven gun deaths in South Central last night.

So all in all, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be allowed to see violence like Sin City, but I am saying that if something as far out and “suggestive” as this and other films like it are acceptable, then we need to ease off on our fear of sex and nudity so that we can get a balanced view of the world. And quite frankly, if anyone was watching the Super Bowl and hadn’t seen a breast before that incident (save the actual children who probably shouldn’t have) then there is a much bigger problem in this world. Women in America, I do not envy you having to teach sex-ed to your twenty-something serial killer boyfriends.

Journey to Machu Picchu

A group of family and friends recently returned from a week long trek to Machu Picchu in early April. The trip was a fundraiser for Hike 4 ALS, an organization that puts on local and international "signature" hikes to raise awareness and funds in the fight against ALS or Lou Gherig's disease.

My mother died of ALS over two years ago and this incurable illness continues to strike without any apparent cause across the world. It is a horrible disease and we must do everything we can to find a cure. I will keep you posted as to when Hike 4 ALS has local hikes in Los Angeles, but in the mean time, please visit www.hike4als.org for more information.

To get the play-by-play and see any number of entertaining photos of our family's 30 mile trek, please check it out: journeytomachupicchu.blogspot.com

Thanks for your support!

I don't think God intended humans to do yoga, Hummer limos are a questionable idea, and other mind-boggling observations

I think it is safe to say that I maintain a rather love-hate relationship with the city of Los Angeles. We are like two lovers who love to hate each other - there are times you just have to get away from this city, but then you miss it and can't wait to come back. Why is this the case? Because this is quite possibly the strangest place on the planet. Even after living here for five years, a few incidents from the past weekend indicate how this amazingly bizarre place continues to baffle me (yet intrigue me enough to come back for more).

1) Yoga: everybody's doing it.
With the crazy pace of this city, everyone looks for a way to relax and find their inner peace. New York has no idea how blessed it is that everyone is riding on a subway that has a set speed and course, instead of each individual person moving at heartbreaking speeds in their own metal bubble in very random and erratic courses. Waging a veritable war on the roads every day is a very stressful proposition (especially for anyone who was clever enough to choose a commute all the way to Encino every day). So how do you relax? I hear yoga is good for that.

My gym membership has included classes all along, but I've never gone. So this would be an excellent way to take advantage of all the ammenities of the West Hollywood 24 Hour Fitness and try yoga at the same time! What fun. I even bought a mat and everything. I was so set.

Cut to: me bending my upper arm over my bent right thigh, my left leg extended above my head and my other arm reaching around my torso to grab the other. I'm really not sure this maneuver is covered in my body's owner's manual.

Yoga I believe is the ancient Buddhist's version of twister but you play by yourself and it hurts - a lot. Looking around the room it appeared that some other people were quite skilled at these positions so it must be possible to achieve at some point. But for now, I'll just have to half-ass it like the old ladies who were standing next to me. It's also very difficult to keep a low profile when trying yoga because you look like you've lost all motor skills and coordination, and people tend to notice when the sound of the quiet music and soothing voice of the instructor is masked by you slipping and falling on your mat in a most uncomfortable fashion.

But once I watch my DVD and learn my asnas, you better believe I'll be supporting my controted body off one finger...just you wait.

2) Hummer limos: why?
Let's get one thing straight. A Hum-Vee is a military vehicle. It is built for light arms support and personnel transportation over various terrains. The roof is outfitted to mount any number of weapons and surveilance equipment. They're using them in Baghdad right now.

The problem is, they are using them on Sunset Boulevard right now as well. These Hummers, however, are different in that their drivers have no formal training on the awesome power of their military vehicles, they are not camoflauged but instead painted in garish colors like mustard yellow, and this precious coat of paint is protected by the fact these cars will never see a square inch of rugged outback terrain. Maybe the fascination with military transportation has something to do with the earlier point about driving on the ferocious streets of Los Angeles.

Now what do you get if you take a shi-shi Hummer and stretch it out to about six times its normal length? It becomes the wonder that is the Hummer limo. It doesn't get much better than this folks. The best of both worlds of driving in a really long car and being chauferred in a very big and fortified military vehicle. That is until your driver, who is an LA driver just like everyone else, realizes he cant quite make the right turn on that busy street and ends up wedged in the middle of the road.

When your Hummer limo is stuck in the intersection on the corner of Santa Monica and Vine and the car is so large that it blocks both lanes of oncoming traffic, the question arises as to whether the huge load of cash you blew on it was really that worth it in the first place. I sat and watched this guy try to dislodge his car from this most precarious position as angry natives honked and skirted around him. You almost have to sit back and laugh at this ludicrous sight as traffic on a busy street comes to a standstill while the passengers in the back have their windows rolled down with a look of fear on their faces. Maybe next time they'll take the Panzer Tank Limo.

3) In the OC it is very difficult to differentiate between children and adults.
A friend's film festival screening took me down to the lovely city of Newport Beach, well behind the Orange Curtain. It is amazing how an area so phenomenally conservative like Orange County (the bright red star in the middle of blue California) can be right next to somwhere so extremely liberal like LA. But one thing is for sure - they have a lot of money in Newport Beach and they too drive their chic military vehicles.

But the other thing they appear to do is make themselves look as much like their children as possible. While walking through the fashionably fashionable Fashion Island shopping center, this girl was yelling at another group of girls her age to hold up. "Girls, wait up! Girls!" It did seem a little odd she'd be refferring to her friends as "Hey girls." But then it got even odder when she started yelling at them and scolding them. So it turns out, she is their mother. Even though she looks younger than they do. We're talking high school age here. Enough Botox to kill a donkey.

Why would you do this? I understand no one wants to get old and look it, but don't you want to at least appear like you have SOME experience under your belt? Or are you hoping that in the event of a hostage situation the captors won't know which are the children to kidnap and which are the parents to ransom? Is there a benefit to being able to slip in and out of a crowd of teenage girls and have no one catch the fact three of them could be yours? Perhaps if you are a reporter posing as a high school student to write an expose, that can help. Maybe they'll make a movie about that.

And finally, a few quick thoughts.

4) You would think a chewed up polo shirt would cost less than $50.

5) Opening a Chessecake Factory at the Grove will cause a density of people great enough to make a black hole.

6) I think aliens designed and built the Grove to conquer humanity and are being quite successful at it.


God bless LA! The land of building the largest and strangest facade you can so no one can see who you really are! The major metropolitan city that has a disgraced basketball team, a hockey team, a soccer team, but no football team! The world's leading producer of precious, life-giving smog!

But I love it here and I'm not going to leave.