I've been dying to see this movie again, for like...what? Twelve years? Can it be that long?

Yeah, I know, DVDs, etc., but I just can't bring myself to do it. I never watched movies on video back whenever, and I can't really do it now.

"Ciiiiiiiinema! Ciiiiiiiiiinema!" It's the only way.

Holler if you want to go. It may be as soon as tonight. I will brave all shoppers and double up the hell by going to the Westside for this. It's at the heavenly Nuart, a theater I spent hundreds of hours in when I lived on that side of town in another life.

Anyone? Come on. You won't regret it.

Err...I hope.

Her piece on the Railways of Mt. Washington--where I live--was one of the first sites I started reading a few years ago in order to get to know this magical part of town better. Lots of cool stuff there.

She's also got some neat introductions to some of the more offbeat corners of Chinatown--another perennial favorite haunt of mine--as well as nice observations around the First Street Bridge east of Alameda.

I love those bridges. From First on south, from the spectral fires that burn beneath the Fourth and Sixth street bridges, to the spooky traffic lights and signs that dangle overhead, quiet and pointless late at night, to the old angular brick buildings and the hollowness of the streets, where sidewalks disappear and people are invisible.

Anyway, it's nice running into a contributor to a blog I like who seems to share an eye for some of the seemingly disparate things I love about LA--from the darkest shadows of lonely downtown bridges to the peaks of the Santa Monica mountains.

Her most recent piece on Stunt Road and Saddle Peak highlights another wonderful corner of Los Angeles. She rightly nails the sense of freedom and space you can feel up there.

It's also worth driving down Schueren road and then taking the right hand descent down Piuma.

Even though I live quite far from the Malibu mountains now, I spent many, many days and nights when I was younger up there. One of the more memorable was spent recording Entropy, and an offshoot band of Suicidal Tendencies whose name I forget, on a now very antique Yamaha four track cassette recorder, powered by generator and illuminated at night by car headlights, on a cold, windy winter night on a dusty, deserted bare patch of earth off of Latigo or Encinal canyon. The wind whipped the dust up into the yellow beams of a Toyota truck's lights, flashing off Nic's cymbals, and three or four dozen scrappy punks bundled themselves around their beer bottles, bobbing and careening around like rough phantoms.

That was maybe 1984. I still have the tape somewhere.

The creaky wood floor is cold, the heater is warm, the cat turns herself over easy in front of it, and the house smells like coffee.

It's inevitable. Every year, as I trawl through the internet looking for gifts to order so as to spare myself the horror of a drive anywhere, I end up at Amazon, and go nuts.

Here's yesterday's improvisesd list, with advance thanks to Clint again.

Eluvium (two by them)
Johnny Cash (two more by him, both on American)
Stars of the Lid
Fennesz
Brian McBride
Fred Neil
Colleen
Patsy Cline
Willie Nelson (two more by him too)

I have a terrible feeling friends that at some dim point in my future, there's going to be an unfortunate fusion of this stuff seeping out from beneath the door cracks of my house. Maybe. If I can ever clean out all the junk and bicycle parts that have been piling up in my now-air conditioned and utterly forlorn studio.

It was probably not a good day when I realized the chasm between Merle Haggard and Autechre was bridgeable.

The last couple of days I've been listening to Johnny Cash again. You need to check in with Johnny Cash fairly often.

The last album he did on American before he died is hair-raising. Jesus. Powerful, scary stuff.

Funny thing is, it also reveals the hidden strength in songs or artists I otherwise find irredeemably loathsome. Everyone knows his version of Trent R.'s "Hurt." I still think some of the lyrics are clunky, and it's hard not to hear them--even in Cash's beautiful, faltering voice--and not think of NIN's utterly unconvincing pose, but the song is great. The transformation reminds me of that Scottish band Travis and their wildly unexpected version of Brittney Spears' "Hit me Baby one more Time" at Glastonbury a few years ago, which a bunch of us watched live through the dim haze of a psychotic hangover in a cold Reading flat.

The other song is "Desperado." This time, I really listened to it. And god damn if it doesn't speak to me in a thousand ways. Which is a thousand ways more than it ever did before, in the oily hands of California's greatest fake country rock band ever.

That's part of the genius of Johnny Cash. He can find the gold where blinder eyes don't see.

As I've often said when asked if I'm actually a vegan: "I'm weird, but I'm not stupid."

Anyway, happy 20th anniversary to me. I remember that pepperoni pizza at North Beach Pizza like it was yesterday.

Salsa with strings! I'd never heard anything like it. The vocals stopped, and the music kept on going, and it was so rich, full of swagger and danger and aggression, but also not afraid to pour on the syrup, and not afraid of the sadness and melancholy of something lost, all rolled ahead by a rhythm section that was tough as steel. I dropped my dirt and walked down to the street and walked up to catch the man. He was probably over fifty, missing a front tooth, greying, a little disheveled, wearing rumpled blue sort of tropical pants rolled up above his knees, with leather sandles, a sweaty old t-shirt, and a limp blue cord-drawn bag over his shoulders. Before he heard me, he had stopped in a spot of shade under a tree, and did this curious shimmy back and forth, and then picked up the box and kept walking, stooped over. I caught him and asked him what he was listening to.

Hector Lavoe.

The guy spoke with a thick New York Puerto Rican accent, and was proud of Lavoe's Puerto Rican heritage, saying it was Puerto Rican salsa--kind of. But also jazz, and soul, and stuff. He pulled out the CD, but all it said was Lavoe's name in black permanent ink. We chatted for a second and I said how great it sounded and how cool it was hearing the music move slowly up the canyon, and he said, "yeah, a lady said I should come back from New York more often." Sounds good. I thanked him, wished him a good day and walked slowly back down the street.

When I got back to the house, I didn't want to forget the name--and the three other names he suggested--and I was too dirty to go inside, so I scratched them on the concrete with a shard of sandstone so I wouldn't forget.

Turns out I didn't need the reminder.

Later, I heard him again, this time somewhere above me, and he remained there for probably fifteen minutes. So good.

I digress.

There was that terrible water pipe explosion that caused some serious problems for some of the local residents. It also messed up the fair fun a little I guess.

Anyway, the point I am tiresomely getting to is that I wonder if something bigger and weirder is going on with the pipes, as yesterday, while doing my laps through Mt. Washington and Highland Park on the bike, I saw several teams of yellow DWP/Sanitation trucks with flashing lights driving into residential sections and stopping at seemingly odd places. One truck in each team had a huge tank and pipes and crazy industrial stuff going on, the other was a slightly more conventional looking service truck. I saw another pair today passing through Glassell Park.

What's up with the pipes? The crocodiles? The black microcopters?

My only additional comment would be that I think this group meets more than just once every few months, as last Sunday I saw a stream of lowriders entering Elysian Park early in the afternoon on my way back from errands, and then leaving Elysian Park late in the afternoon on my way out on a bike ride. But I could be wrong.

Either way, I always dig seeing them cruising around. There are a fair amount of these, as well as some glorious much older cars, around this area.

The latest one is a 1967 Lotus Elan. The fabled, legendary, and all-too-rare-in-this-country Lotus Elan, grandfather of all modern roadsters. Like this one, but not red, and not the GT version.

He let me drive it.

Wow. What an incredibly fun car.

We did a few laps up Mt. Washington drive, with its lovely switchbacks and nice new pavement, and down the backside, through Highland Park, and this car is as pure and involving as an early or mid year 911. Perhaps even more pure. The chassis uses a steel spine with an otherwise all fiberglass tub and body, and total weight is around 1,350 lbs. The engine is a built 1600 cc Ford block with Lotus heads and Weber dual side draught carbs, and it is a thrilling little motor, with a surprising amount of torque. While getting the hang of it, I came out of a couple switchbacks arguably overgeared, and the engine pulled remarkably well, even down below 2k. Sweet. The throttle response is absolutely wonderful. So sharp. It makes a lot of modern engines seem terribly sluggish. And the sound through a simple single out muffler is simply intoxicating.

Handling is good, and less 'vintagy' than I'd expected. In fact, I was surprised and impressed by how easy it was to adapt to the car. The shifter was firm and notchy, the racing pedals' actions all positive and firm, and within ten minutes I was heel/toeing with ease, and the steering was mostly without play, although there was a little weird little sort of pre-turn you had to do before the rack would respond, but once it did, it was sharp. Very sharp in fact. It was surprisingly easy to get the car to oversteer, although you had to push it fairly far to get there. I wouldn't call it snap oversteer, but the first time I did it, it did catch me a little by surprise. Fun!

What's interesting is that the cars were set up with fairly soft shocks, and apparently, a fair amount of roll was designed in on purpose. I would prefer it a little firmer, but I could get used to this for sure.

A brand new set of Yokohama Advans on the car sure was nice too.

The experience of driving this car was a neat reaffirmation of the joys of well built, light weight, all-manual everything sports cars with no driver aids. It's just so pure, so fun, and so deeply involving.

What a neat, thrilling car. Frankly, it's kind of captured my imagination. It's not something you'd want to take on the freeway though. It's definitely a weekend fun car. For the 60s it was small. Today, with all the large cars around, you'd be more invisible than a motorcycle. It's that small. When you're sitting in it, you can put your arm over the door and touch the pavement. That small. It makes his wife's new Mini look like an SUV. In a wreck, you'd not have much of a chance, although it does have a competition roll bar and four point harnesses.

I want one. I hope Bob keeps it. I'm lobbying for him to do so. But since they've already got four street cars in the family, it's not likely.

Anyway, what a thrill. I don't recall ever seeing a single one in LA, so not only seeing one, but getting to drive one was a super treat.

Sadly, those of us who grew up there have watched those houses metastasize like a terrible cancer for the last twenty years. These arriviste, faux Mediterranean Versailles are a blight on the city and should all be destroyed immediately. I'll take a dilapidated Craftsman or creaky Victorian house in Highland Park any day of the week over those aesthetic crimes, especially since houses around here actually show signs of life other than the staff, and are inhabited by people who actually live in and around their houses rather than withdraw and hide in them. Around here, it's wonderful to see how many people are sitting out on their porches or steps, talking, drinking, reading; how many people are walking around, and how many people wave or say hi, to say nothing of the lengthy conversations, coffees, drinks, or other such things with most of my closer neighbors.

Even more sadly, the actual house I grew up in, which was once upon a time a notable and fine example of early canyon Ranch houses--subtle, single story, surrounded by natural foliage and built into the contours of the hill and exhibiting a raft of unique, hand-built construction features and materials--has now received the same treatment by its current owners, who've grafted details exactly the same as the center balcony pictured in the linked story on to a two-story extension of the house, and added a "grand" gate front entrance with preposterous giant concrete "vases" and fluted columns. The back entrance and driveway have more monolithic, short columns and a giant wrought iron gate with silly little fleurs-de-lis on top. It's an atrocity, made even worse because it's in screaming disharmony with the original part of the house, which has only been partially horribilized.

Proof once again that money will never buy sophistication.

Some selected quotes:

"Population on the Westside has jumped 23% since 1990 (compared with a 6% increase for Los Angeles as a whole)."

"Each day, workers pour into office buildings lining busy corridors such as Wilshire Boulevard, the burgeoning towers of Century City and the rows of Santa Monica office parks that have become a mecca for media companies such as Yahoo! and MTV."

"...only about 30% of these workers actually live on the Westside, according to a Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority study. That leaves more than 300,000 people a day commuting to the area."

"So many workers drive to Santa Monica from other parts of the region that the city's population nearly doubles during the day, to 150,000 from 87,000 at night. Beverly Hills' population more than triples..."

"The MTA projects that the Westside's population will jump by an additional 15% and jobs by 23% in the next 15 years."

"The Westside building boom is the biggest since the 1980s, with high-rise condos slated for Century City and Beverly Hills and clusters of development planned for Marina del Rey and Playa Vista."

...

I grew up in those parts of town. I remember what it was like 30 years ago, 20 years ago, and ten years ago. The contrasts were even more dramatic after returning from my years in SF, or abroad. The street I grew up on was a quiet canyon when I was a child. By the time I left in 1997 it was a major, bumper-to-bumper artery connecting the valley to the Westside. And the neighbors still don't know each other. But that's a different story altogether.

If you've tried to get anything done on the Westside in a car--especially in the afternoon--I think you'll agree that it's just astonishing that anyone can actually tolerate that as a daily experience. I really don't understand how anyone can think that it's worth it.

But then again, I'm becoming that kind of guy who'll park a block away from the South Pasadena Trader Joe's in the shade in the first easy spot I see just to avoid the catastrophe of navigation that is the Trader Joe's parking lot experience, so what do I know?