"There are some problems in life even Prada can't solve." -- from "My Lucky Star" by Joe Keenan

For the record: The link in my last post for this site was broken. Or the Israelis have bombed them. I think if you click on the header above, this will work now. If you type it in as I wrote it, it might go through. Of course, there's the small problem that Israel has reportedly just hit the telecommunications infrastructure in Beirut, so some sites (and phone service) may be offline in some areas.

And would somebody please tell our embassy in Beirut to stop sending people down highways that are being straffed by Israeli aircraft? You'd think the American government was out to deliberately kill Americans or something. Naw, they would never do that, now, would they?

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The Getty. The "Global Delights" concert with Paul Livingstone, the Arohi Ensemble and Karsh Kale was everything from Middle Eastern jazz to electronic world music to innovative and classical South Asian music.

There are club kids here, last century's club kids with their kids, a broad swath of the South Asian community and Those in the Know. Quite a number of folk carry themselves like foreign service veterans or academics and scholars.

This was without a doubt the place to beat the heat.

"Justifiable anger is the dubious luxury of other people." *

I'm angry at the parties responsible for this dissonance in the world, but no as much as I was last week. There is empathy, too, for both sides in the conflict.

My family has multiple connections with both sides of the conflict, albeit some of them tenuous.

My anger has been tempered to a reasonable level. That is, I'm not irrationally angry, nor am I apathetic. Rather, I'm empathetic --or hope to be-- to see the affect that the actions of a few have had on so many, especially those powerless to alter the course of events all around them.

ABC News last night on Nightline gave a terribly inaccurate and biased report on the conflict in Lebanon. I haven't seen Nightline since Ted Koeppel left, and I'm not at all happy with what I saw. I don't know why ABC News even bothered. Some of the individual reporters may have well been giving the best information that they could personally obtain under the circumstances, but somebody back at the home office really dropped the ball. And that's being charitable. The impression was given that foreign tourists had the option of leaving the country, without noting that only one route was still open to them to escape the danger, and that that route, the highway to Damascus, was under repeated attack from Israeli fighter planes. As I understand it, the highway has actually been impassable for motor vehicles due to damage from the missiles, virtually closing it to all but wary foot traffic keeping one eye out for yet more incoming missiles.

I studied journalism in college in that post-Watergate era, when we were on fire with the notion of doing something noble for the greater good, not personal gain. I'm sure plenty of those people are still in the business; I'm also certain that anyone reading this can think of their own personal examples in recent years where members of the Fourth Estate have strayed from that ideal.

Since the crisis in Lebanon began last week, I have learned not to rely, sadly, on the American news media for my information. The Daily Star, Beirut's English language newspaper, and Lebanese bloggers (http://www.lebanesebloggers.blogspot.com/) have provided poignant, on the ground, reporting and information. Not all of it is professional or has a sense of detachment.

I had a text, actually, on how to maintain calm and perspective even in the middle of violence, which fortunately I've never had to use. I've been through civil unrest, natural disasters and found myself surrounded by hostile people that might have easily been encouraged to do me bodily harm. But nothing like actually reporting while under fire or expecting bombs to go off at any moment in a theatre of war. It's a hard job to do under the best of circumstances. And for the people trapped in Lebanon, separating rumor from fact is nigh impossible --even though it means life or death. From my vantage point, safely half a world away, I have the dubious luxury of recognizing that some information is created in a climate of hysteria or fear that seems plausible to the people repeating it, that ought to be not taken at face value.

So I'll keep reading and watching and listening. And hopefully, not yelling at the television quite as much. NPR this morning gave me reason for hope and a chance to breathe calmly and even enjoy hearing the news.

And I'll try to appreciate the paradise and calm that I live in (even if that reality is an illusion constructed to placate me).




* I might have gotten that quote slightly wrong, but I think you catch my drift.

Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty

America

This is a very powerful word around the world. Moreso --and with more nuance-- than most Americans realize or understand.

Forgive me if I've written about this before, but it bears repeating.

Years ago, at West Hollywood's Russian Cultural Festival, there were the usual performances by folk dancers and singers and musicians; books and souvenirs from a homeland faraway.

Among the first wave of refugees from the Soviet Union years ago, as with Miami Beach, there were an untold number of Holocaust survivors who silently bore witness to the worst in humanity. Many of them have since passed away.

The announce at the festival spoke only in Russian, but it wasn't difficult to imagine what he was saying.

Somewhere in his impassioned soliloquy he paused, and reverently pronounced, "America."

Several times more he would do this with the mix of a southern minister and when Tony first repeats the word, "Maria," in West Side Story.

Most immigrant from the former Soviet Union arrive today through JFK or LAX. In this announcer's voice, however, one could see the immigrants of the early 20th century rushing to the deck of their ship to catch their first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, a father hoisting his son upon his shoulders for a better view.

America.

I understood the resonance behind the Russian announcer's enunciation of America.

My brothers and sisters have all been born since we arrived in America. They and my friends and classmates all have hometowns to remember... little things like birth certificates, things I have no personal comprehension of, just a general understanding about. How many of you know what it's like not to have a birth certificate? I have a form from the State Department that says that I am not a figment of my imagination. I have Eero Saarinen's TWA Terminal as my Ellis Island.

A hometown. A birth certificate. A place where you know you belong.

I have created a sense of place (remember Jodie Foster and "Pensacola" from First Contact?), a construct of dreams and wishes and wants, of believing in Tinkerbell at Disneyland in the fourth grade, of the stories my mother told us about growing up on a street with filled with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins all living next door to one another. My father's childhood of a farm with a dozen brothers and sisters.

I live today amid a community of many immigrants, refugees, wanderers and lost or displaced people who have each created their own concept of, as Tevye says in Fiddler on the Roof, "...of who you are, and what God expects you to be."

On many levels, this is far better than growing up in some town where everyone has always known everyone else, where the sense of place and certainty of its permanence in your life are a given.

The ethereal concept of having a place in the world and knowing what or where it is, is something so many people take for granted.

Daily, I get to re-create the real --and the concept of-- the place I belong.

This week on the news, we have seen that foundation ripped out from under an untold number of people. They are frightened and lost and lashing out.

The sets change, the cast evolves. Yet I have been given a sense of place to be still when all around me moves at a blur.

Aren't most of the conflicts of the world when people feel threatened with the loss of that most essential sense of their construct of the world and where they belong in it?

According to news sources in Lebanon, the governments of France, Germany, Greece, the Philippines, Spain and the US had advised their citizens in the country to leave.

One small problem: the only way out of the country at present is the road to Damascus. And the road to Damascus is being shelled by Israel.

Oh well.

Four Brazilian nationals have been added to the list of foreign casualties in Lebanon. There are more than 30,000 Pilipinos, 22,000 French nationals, 10,000 Americans (that's ten thousand, folks) and around 700 Spaniards in the country, according to various media sources. Phone service is intermittent at best. Some of the media outlets are offline. Reporters Without Borders has accused Israel of deliberately targeting journalists in their raids, so accurate accounts of what is going on within various parts of the country can be expected to be unavailable, despite modern technology.

Rumors are rampant on Lebanese blogs, with locals and tourists alike all wondering where they can be safe.

Beirut

Beirut is a city with about the same population as Phoenix or Philadelphia. It looks not unlike a combination of Miami and Los Angeles viewed from along the seafront.

As I write this, more than a quarter million Israelis and Lebanese are hunkered down in bomb shelters. There are more than 10,000 Americans trapped in Beirut along with countless other tourists. They have no escape. Usually, one Beirut journalist pointed out, the tourists have to look hard to see signs of the devastating civil war that tore the city apart--which they usually don't. Now they are eyewitnesses. The death toll keeps rising. World stock markets are plummeting.

Imagine if Great Britain had bombed Miami when that tourist was carjacked a few years ago.

They might as well hold a gun to the entire planet. I'm supposed to be practicing my detachment and meditation for peace. But I'm still too angry.

At present there are approximately 10,000 Americans in Beirut as Israel bombs the city. Two aircraft, A310 Airbuses, were ready to leave for Paris and London as the airport was hit by Israeli missiles. An unknown number of foreign nationals are stranded in the city, as Israel has blockaded the airport and sea routes. This is the height of the summer tourist season in Beirut.

Among the dead as of this moment are at least two Kuwaitis and one Asian woman of unidentified nationality. At least ten of the more than 50 dead civilians are reportedly children.

"If you could have dinner with anyone living or dead who would that person be?"

There is a local magazine that I won't name to spare the guilty, that has this annoying J-school 101 cookie cutter approach to their interviews.

Think of how famous people from different eras would react with one another... and who's to say that you would be in the mood to have dinner with all of them at once-unless it was to sit back and watch the interplay among people who wouldn't have been able to meet together in their life time (or if they did, you weren't there!).

Some answers to this question have been flip and others (dare I say) sound like they were either composed by publicists or they've been asked so many times that the interview subject has a ready pat answer.

And what kind of dinner would it be? Politesse or bon homie?

And a dinner, say, in London or Malibu or Paris or Silver Lake would each be different... no?

The best reading of the year, hands down

Eduardo Santiago's debut reading for Tomorrow They Will Kiss at Skylight books was in-eff-ing-credible. There were well known authors in every row of seats that turned out to hear him; the crowd filled the store and spilled into the street. Everyone enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Tomorrow night he'll be reading at Books and Books in Coral Gables, so if anyone is reading this in the 305, get down there.

Smells like team spirit

We've had 48 hours of the Italian tri-color all over town. And interestingly enough, not a peep out of the curmudgeons who had such a problem with people waving anything other than the American flag during all the immigration rallies this spring.

It occurred to me that they don't like it when the flags are from anywhere other than Western Europe. Most of those right-wing yahoos don't know Mexico is part of North America, or even consider the Canadian flag anything other than a brand logo.

At least the giant soccer ball has been taken down from atop the Abbey coffeehouse. Would have been nice if it had rolled a strike along Robertson Blvd. and taken out some of those drunken brats ...like the runaway balloon at Macy's parade... Of course, now the Abbey will have to go back to their usual fare of special events, like release parties for porn films.

Am I the only one surprised that Kathy Griffin even knows what the Rand Corporation is?!?

I'm not even close to being to most hardcore Griffinphile in my family, but she's on my "A" list. I hope Larry King had plenty of his heart meds close by when she was on his show.

And what's up with Adam Carolla hanging up on Ann Coulter!?!?! I tried, I really did, to listen to his show (we were bombarded with ads for it, after all). Just when I'm ready to write him off, he does something cool like hang up on Ann Coulter. You go, boy.

West Hollywood after the World Cup Parties

Japan sends it's envoy to Pyongyang to talk about those missles

"Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There!"

One of the downsides of my recent addiction to LibraryThing is reading too many passages from my books as I open them up to look up the ISBNs and publishing data... as if re-reading favorite passages from my favorite books on a beautiful summer day was something to be ashamed of!

Yet another cool image from Towleroad;
Glad my sister got out of Florida while the
getting was good!

Things I'm thinking about on a beautiful summer day instead of what I ought to be doing.. (isn't that the point of HAVING a summer in the first place?

Photo from the Last Noel Blogspot

Actually, I just started drooling when I saw the photo of this bookshelf on Noel's blog. When I was a kid, I always dreamed of having a house with a library like J. P. Morgan or Henry Huntington. Not the kind of perverse fantasy that one shares with the other kids on the playground.

My friend Mara was a librarian in her prior life before coming to California.

There's a shop in San Francisco that advertises in the print version of Poetry Flash with the most mouth-watering selection of wood bookshelves in all sizes. One of these days, I tell myself... but it's slightly more extravagant than treating myself to, say, an ice cream cone.

Bumpersticker of the day (seen at the Malibu Civic Center on Cross Creek Road:

CATS FLATTENED WHILE-U-WAlT

I know, I know; it's terribly un-PC. So I apologize to any and all cat lovers, feline co-dependents or slaves to their pets.

But it sure got a laugh out of me... especially seeing as how it was on the back of an old pick-up truck surrounded by luxury cars in the shopping-center-that-likes-to-pretend-that-it's-down-to-Earth-while-charging-outrageous-St. Tropez-prices-for-everything-including-a-bottle-of-ordinary-water.

July 4, 8:11 a.m., on the Metro line 439, at Flower and Third, Southbound:

I just found out that the 439 has been divided into two different bus lines. The Hollywood bus took an hour to arrive, making it impossible to get to my first several destinations on time. The holiday schedule has an unwritten proviso: we'll show up when we feel like it, and you'll be damn grateful or we'll leave you standing at the curb. Oh, wait; that's the MTA's regular credo. They tried a promotion a few years ago: if the bus arrived fifteen or more minutes late, your ride was free. That program was rather abruptly cancelled.

Downtown Los Angeles is a real ghost town. Only a smattering of security guards, the homeless and a photographer shooting Disney Hall are to be seen.

No one I mention it to seems to remember a fabulous 1950s B movie set in New york, abandoned in the face of an alien attack save for a disparate band of stranded people in a cafe; a sort of Key Largo meets War of the Worlds meets Lifeboat.

It was a cool movie. I never see it in any sci-fi festivals or invasion-from-outer-space film fests at the local art houses. Too bad everyone thinks I made it up.

Since the MTA didn't feel like going to Silver Lake this morning, and it was already heating up, I ruled out going to Pasadena in favor of going by the South Bay cities; I hadn't counted on the MTA dividing the bus route into two. The South Bay towns have long tried to ensure that it is as difficult as possible for the sorts of folks who go to Venice Beach to visit their towns. Time was when all the beach bus routes would be packed in the summertime with beachgoers. Of late they've been packed with Central American gardeners, housekeepers and nannies heading to the McMansions by the sea.

Fortuantely, we arrive at the transfer point to the other leg of the beach trip with time to spare. The bus driver from downtown to LAX was enjoying the lack of traffic due to the holiday to no end, and made good time.

11:00 a.m., Holly and Main, El Segundo: I make a stop to photograph one of my favorite neon "cafe" signs in all of L.A. at Wendy's Cafe. I popped into Cooke's market where I succumbed to an Orange Crush soda; I haven't seen one in years. I think I drank them exclusively for one summer when I was a kid; when the weather gets hot, nostaglia factor aside, nothing could have tasted better.

At the Jeneral Store, I fell prey to a pair of Havaianas with a cool green-and-yellow Brazilian design that were on sale too cheap to pass up. After only two blocks, however, it was clear my feet were going to need a lot more time to remember back to an era when I wore sandals. By the time I sat down to wait for the beach shuttle, it was debatable that these were the most comfortable flipflops around. The bottom of my feet enjoyed them, but the space next to my big two where the strap rubbed against my skin was wincing and whimpering.

This is a town heavy with retired military, airlines and aerospace personnel. If I couldn't make it to SLO for the Fourth, this was about as small town America as I could expect to find around LA. The Fourth of July bunting up and down the street, and folks reserving their places to watch the fireworks show at 9 o'clock in the morning merely re-confirmed it.

8:30 p.m.: I'm on board the water taxi to watch the fireworks from the water at Marina del Rey. We dock at Fisherman's Village and have a great view.

There are lots of 'unauthorized' fireworks all around, too. Everyone is in a holiday mood; it probably helps that it is, like, still 80 degrees out at 10 p.m.

Cristiano, you've been a very, very bad boy

Now go to my room. And bring your friend.

We'll have to teach you a lesson about being such a tease with The Wink.

I suppose that with France and Italy in the World Cup Finals, all eyes (okay, most eyes) will be on their eye candy.

If we'd only had puppies like this playing when I was in school. Sigh.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's North Korean missles landing in the Sea of Japan and a crisis in Gaza that can only heap more tragedy on top of the tragedy they've already experienced (you do know that the U.S. will have to pay for most of the power plant Israel blew up, right?)...

So I have two main options: gorge on chocolate... or dream about puppies. Nice pleasant dreams, where everyone goes home happy.

Oh, to make time stand still at this moment (Sunday morning, continued)

There are far too many cigarette butts around the brush by the picnic tables, given the dense growth around the bluffs.

The park proper and the nearby university grounds are well groomed, but that area left wild in its natural state does not bode well for fire season. There are signs taped everywhere to remind all that fireworks are illegal. You can't tell just by looking up the hill, but I don't need to be told where the firelines were after the last big blaze when several fires converged and nearly gave us our Nathaniel West ending for the metropolis.

Scarcely two months later was the Northridge Quake. We had houses without chimneys, and chimneys without houses. And the idiots have rebuilt over most of the area burned or shaken with little regard to nature (or the least modicum of taste). There's one house that looks like a beached riverboat on steroids by Malibu High School... is it so wrong of me to have a list of structures I hope will get taken out 'the next time'--and there will be a next time.

The traffic on Pacific Coast Highway scarcely sounds any louder or any different than the waves.

The County lifeguard boat easing along the coastline is the only craft in the water, until one power boat puttering like a bathtub toy cuts a small wake behind it heading in the direction of the Paradise Cove side of Point Dume.

The squirrels check for morsels left by picnickers, but only a few wrappers are to be found. Hopefully the squirrels haven't picked up the nicotine habit. One squirrel stands on his (?) hind haunches to listen to the chimes at Pepperdine call eight o'clock.

A rabbit comes over to the far side of the picnic bench where I set to keep me company, still as a cigar store Indian save for his constant sniffing.

A lizard --the first of many-- darts out from the brush, takes stock of the scene, and scurries back into hiding.

In Spring, this hillside was awash in wildflowers. Now only a few small buds adorn some of the bushes.

Another lizard climbs on a rock to gaze at me. At the chimes marking the quarter-hour, he starts back; another takes his place on the edge of the concrete, as if gazing out over the Pacific.

The waves are more emphatic now that a pair of rabbits and a squirrel sitting atop a picnic table are present to listen. The few humans in sight in the distance, accompanying their dogs on morning strolls, seem as aimless as the wildlife.

After the chimes sound 8:30, voices of a human couple strolling through the park add the first sound of mankind nearby.

Time for me to make my way to the Michael Landon Visitor's Center at the entrance to the park.

Later, a group of cyclists were circumnavigating the park. They join up with others in their jazzy bright blue and red outfits race down PCH. A father and son were hitting balls on the little league field. Only the faintest outline of the coast south of Malibu was yet visible through the haze; a breeze continued to keep the warmth tolerable.

The birds twittered and chattered as before. Some youngsters practiced with soccer ball by the field.

I just make the bus to the Malibu Civic Center. I almost wanted to hike it, but I was a little nervous about snakes. Okay, not a little nervous. This is their time of day to rule the turf.

Later, the heavy traffic forces the bus to take a detour that leaves the bus driver disoriented. The passengers have to disembark, then we have to walk a quarter mile to catch the Santa Monica bus into town. I get to chat with a retired couple from Jones Beach on vacation, amazed at the real estate prices of LA and its vastness.

I convince myself once again that I like LA, for better or worse. You shouldn't have to have a half-hearted excuse for why you live somewhere-- so much of humanity has no say in the matter. It's neat getting to constantly see the city through the giddy eyes of visitors, some of whom are taking their once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to California. The Golden Dream may need a little polishing now and then, but like the top of the Beverly Hills City Hall, when it gleams, man, it gleams.

"The three things I love to do most in the world is sit on my ass, drink coffee and listen to jazz." --Richard Fulton

Sunday, Malibu Bluffs. 7:00 a.m., and it is evident already that today will be much warmer than the weather forecasted.

There is a haze just a few miles offshore, allowing the tranquil, rippling sea to fade from a grayish blue to a dirty white.

The occasional breaker lands on the shore below with enough vigor to make the soft soothing sounds of a gentle wave.

The surfers were all at Castellamare, where the shoreline abruptly turns left and begins running eat-west instead of north-south. No where else is appears are the waves sufficient to warrant their attention; yet so many heads were bobbing up and down on the swells like seagulls one wondered how anyone would get a chance to ride a wave.

The birds trill and squawk with a Sunday morning lassitude.

The seagulls, by far the largest, are far below along the shore; most of the others are no bigger than finches, venture inland, perched upon the flimsliest of branches in the brush. Small wonder --there are bugs a-plenty for them to feast on.

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I finally got to read one of the articles in the twin three-foot stacks I've culled from newspapers and magazines over the last few months... this header is from a story in the LA Weekly by Matthew Duerstein on a documentary about Leimert Park.

For those of you who never got to meet him, Richard Fulton, known to everyone as "Fifth Street Dick," was an urban legend that could never have been dreamed up by any screenwriter. He made his dream into a reality: a coffee house with poetry readings, jam sessions (sometimes with big names sliding in unannounced to listen or join in), and so much more.

Man oh man, do I miss perusing the selection of mags and newspapers from all over the diaspora, and sitting down for an espresso and a heaping wallop of peach cobbler at Fifth Street Dick's. As the Leimert Park arts district grew, locals got used to the jazz caravan bus from KLON pulling up in front. The ever increasing number of arts festivals that would take over the neighborhood got increasing notice from a broad cross section of people --academics, musicians, struggling artists, students, African-American intelligentsia in need of sanctuary, black entertainers and sports celebrities, jazz aficionados, and more... It was an incredible example of a community forming without the aid of urban planners or politicians --although they found their way down to the corner of Degnan and 43rd in due time.

It got to be where I even cursed myself for having brought possibly one-too-many people to experience the vibe around Leimert Park. It's been almost a decade since nearly Dick passed away, yet the World Stage still lives on, and his eponymous cafe has survived around the corner from its original location in the space occupied by the Lucy Florence coffee house.

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Critical Miami has this cool (and scary) animation of a Category One through Five hurricane. For any one who like to get stoned in front of the computer, you might really get a kick out of it. It's only a matter of time before someone adds a soundtrack to it.

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While reading Critical Miami I also came across another really cool site, LibraryThing. If the first thing you check out in someone's home are the book titles on their shelves (assuming in this day and age that they even have books) you'll get a kick out of it; I can hardly wait to do it myself. But it's a holiday, and I'm too lethargic, so not yet.

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I saw that Eduardo Santiago's novel Tomorrow They Will Kiss, is on the shelves at bookstores. I came across a new (to me, at least) book by bell hooks, Outlaw Culture. And the oversized book that made me have to leave the store because I got all choked up I'll have eventually return to finish reading, about the Anne Frank house.