Deja Vu All Over Again.

You know, the thing about moving back to the city of your youth and early twenties is that you forget that you aren't twenty and yet you are constantly reminded that you AREN'T twenty. Quite frankly, I don't know how to get anywhere, but when I get in my car and drive around I listen to the same college radio station that I listened to when I did know how to get around, and since everything on the radio sounds like the Gang of Four or the Slits or the Bush Tetras, it seems that the soundtrack hasn't changed and that I'm going someplace I know how to go. And then I'm somewhere and it doesn't add up in the map in my brain, some parts of town butt up against other parts of town, like I can see Century City from my house, but I can drive to Culver City in two minutes by turning left onto La Cienega - and the two are not supposed to be close. Or I've forgotten whole stretches of neighborhoods and so things are farther apart than they should be. And dear lord, recruiters call me up all the time and ask me to accept jobs that are hours of driving away and they think I'm crazy when I say that's too far, but often they tell me that it's really close and I don't really know for sure so I say, Okay. And then I end up driving through Compton thinking "I sure wouldn't want to have an Unreliable Car driving here. I wanna get Strait Outta Compton!"
And speaking of that Deja Vu all over again, it was time to take the peebs to Hancock Park, locally known as the La Brea Tar Pits. Or the Tar Pits Tar Pits, because La Brea means tar pit. The Giant Sloths are an age old favorite. Here they are graced by the peeb nation.

The tar pits have these really great statues all over the place of saber toothed tigers and woolly mammoths. Here saber-toothed tigers are depicted fighting on Wilshire Boulevard.


They've built a fancy Museum-On-A-Hill to educate the public about Fossils and Dinosaurs and Woolly Mammoths and Saber-Toothed Tigers. The entire place smells of tar, which drives the peebs wild, so imagine what it did to Saber-Toothed Tigers.

The great thing about all these prehistoric animal names is that they are bloodily descriptive - just the thing to interest children. A kind of fabulous ferocity of the slightly weird. A Woolly Mammoth is like an elephant but with hair and bigger tusks - and you know what tusks mean (aside from the obvious phallic Freudian meaning) but they mean something fierce. Giant Sloths, they are the obviously fantastical prey, slow moving tons of meat. The mere idea of a Saber-Toothed Tiger is enough to send any young boy into a frenzy, never mind that fact that they remind me of Victorian Gentlemen with handlebar moustaches.

But in this weird kind of California\LA kind of way, we were treated to statues and dioramas when we were young of these fabulous creatures and the are still there today, (like the dioramas at the NY Natural History Museum) with much the same text on the (new) signs. Most of the way we think scientifically about prehistoric creatures has changed significantly in the past twenty years. And so the scientific depictions of dinosaurs have changed, T-Rex has been re-assembled so that he is not so erect.

And here we have a picture of the lakeside diorama depicting a couple of mammoths watching another mammoth sink into the oozing lake of tar. The text describing this to visitors says "A family of Mammoths watch helplessly as the Mother Mammoth sinks into the tar."



What kind of weird anthropomorphizing shit is that? "Helplessly" Mammoths had kinship relationships and we should have anthropologists studying them as well? While they've found Mammoth bones in excavating the tar pits, they didn't find Mommy Mammoth bones. This is just the hopelessly sloppy, emotional thinking that is endemic to our educational system, and I don't think visitors reading the signs think that they are post-modern ironic constructs about meta-structures. And we are right next to the art museum, so they could be written by someone like Stephen Prina or Jenny Holzer trying to fuck with us. But I doubt it.

So while I, like many before me, THRILL to the thought of a Saber-Toothed Tiger in all it's hyphenated glory, I would like the educational sign writers to be a tad more educational. It's their job to be precise, it's my job to be hyperbolic.

Signs: Observation Pit

This is the incredibly smelly observation pit of my youth.

Signs: David Candy

So I've always sort of wondered about painted signs, they are on walls, exposed to the elements, they are destined to become an architectural palimpsest. This sign is frayed, it looks old. Is it telling us that David makes Candy at the Co? Or that David Candy works here? Is it the David Candy Candy Company? Who's David? Is his wife Candy? Are they fashion designers, lawyers, happily married, plump from eating candy? Where does the candy fit in here? Is it chocolate or fireballs? This sign raises more questions than it answers.

This sign, however, boldy asks a question and answers it. What is Kabbalah? - well come on in and find out by spending a tuesday evening with them. What could be more homey?

I have been spending a lot of time talking to people who I want to convince to hire me. It is very hard to be pleasing and competent and say the appropriate TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) while talking to strangers who have hidden agendas while you have a painfully obvious one - please employ me!!!!! All this nattering is leaving me too tired to listen, write and speak to the actual people who I like to listen, talk and write to. For example, after a comletely disasterous interview at a company that left me down and blue for a day, I picked up the totally fluffed out dogs from the groomer. We found a groomer in Beverly Hills and apparently the good people of the hills of beverly like their dogs to be highly poofy. Beso came out looking like a little round old english sheepdog - highly fluffy, and even Leche with her more griffon-like coat was a little round poofy ball of hound dog. They were so clean we took them for a hike along the beach where they made many people smile at the poofy dogs. Anyway, like I said I was tremendously blue, and when I got home from our walk I had two messages to return. Two people called while I was returning those phone calls and just after I had finsihed three hours of talking to 4 recruiters on the friggin' phone about why I am such a DGITPM (damn good IT Project Manager) and had poured myself a glass of wine, the phone rang again and I had to talk to another recruiter about WBSs (Work Break Down Structures - another TLA!) while a glass of Chardonnay was sweating untouched in front of my face. All that said, it makes it hard to talk to my friends because I'm tired of my own voice!

What's in a Name

Ah, the beloved pancake circus, a place that evil people invented to make children even MORE scared of clowns than they already are. Imagine a diner filled with bad clown artifacts and terrible pancakes. It's enough to make anyone eschew carbs and stick with Atkins for the rest of your life.
But enough of Felini-esque remnants from Sacramento! Last week we went to Santa Anita, (the Turf Club, mind you, we were not with the hoi polloi, we were lunching in an area that has a dress code and a wine list along with the mediocre food) to watch the ponies run and lose some money. It's lovely there, the hills behind the race track, the gorgeous thoroughbreds, the little men in brightly colored silks, the beautiful Hollywood building. The names of the horses are pretty funny, I had to bet Mango Frappe in the fourth race, while Nasty Mood ran better. Here are some names of thoroughbreds: Hit it Skip, Wee Jinky, Where's My Halo, Swedish Radar, Run to Me, Ecstatic, Kingdom Come (Is this one of the horsemen of the apocalypse?), Guillame Tell, Speedy Cajun, Rhythm King, Noble Masterpiece, Adorable Emily, Intelligent Male, Roanwiththepunches, Buck Tuddy Buck, Fly Forrest Fly, Bye Sweetie.
Someone's been thinking overtime on these names.

And yet, they sound vaguely like the names of the people who email me about chinese herbs and viagra. For example, Altiplano V. Milksops is interested in selling me black market viagra, as is Valerius Millan, Clambered Q. Papacy, Masochism D. Squirmier, Hypercritically J. Terminal, Servicemen L. Befouls, Odessa J. Heron, Donnie Decker, Emitted F. Grunting, Citbore Terrones, Exiled S. Personalizes, Absorbency R. Enameled and Tabby jejuneness. Someone with a dirty mind and an English dictionary is coming up with these viagra spam names. I think they're pretty funny, so I've been saving my spam.

Signs: Watch

This is a damn good sign I found while walking around. Damn good.

The Hood

Every neighborhood needs a castle, and my new one does not disappoint. Here is our local castle, my only quibble with this is that they did not go the whole nine yards and just get the moat as well. You know, moats really increase property values, especially when the Rodney King riots "came here!" As most of the people I meet tell me in this neighborhood. Oh my! I mean, just in case rioters come up from down south Pico you would need a moat and a drawbridge to truly protect your castle. Moats increase BOTH your property values and your personal security, so you can sleep at night. If, of course, your husband lets you out of the dungeon at night. Don't you wonder, how far these people go? They bought a CASTLE down the street from Olympic Blvd! It has to affect their sex life.


My neighborhood has all these cute little buildings that are built in the style of how Californians from the thirties thought that French People in the 1800's would build apartment houses. This is my building, and I just love the turrets. Well, this could be my apartment building, it is in the style of my apartment building, but it is not actually my apartment building. I value my privacy, so I would never actually put a picture of my home on the internet, that would be silly. So I put pictures of other people's homes on the internet, because I don't know them and so they have no privacy. But I admit to the subterfuge which makes me more ethical than Page 6 gossip columnists who are allegedly journalists and have an actual ethical standard by which to be judged.

Melon Shopping

When you first move to a new city you have to figure out where to go shopping. The sort of daily necessities and the other things you need, where's the bookstore that's going to be mine? Where can I get cute shoes? And, ultimately the most pressing question, where can I get good turkey bacon???

As everyone knows I'm a terrible food snob and so I am spending time trying to find farmer's markets. The first weekend I was here we went for a walk on the beach and then hit the extremely large and crowded and festival like Santa Monica farmer's market. Where I looked for fava beans. The next weekend, I was delighted to find a closer market on, get this, Melrose Place. This one was smaller and more intimate and also lacked fava beans. A tour of the Whole Foods, Wild Oats, Gelsons in the near and far area also pointed out the dearth of fava beans. Which means I've discovered one thing about the Los Angeles area; something as a new yorker is unfathonamable, to wit -- there are no Italians here.

Think about it. Italy plus Spring equals Fava Beans. So I guess all these pasta restaurants around here are all being run by Scandinavians or Guest Workers.

In addition to the shocking lack of fava beans and Italians, I find that the closest place to get turkey bacon is the Whole Paycheck in Beverly Hills. Whole Foods is known not only for it's stunningly expensive food but also it's seductive and bountiful array of fruits and vegetables that everyone is too busy to prepare. It's springtime and there are globular artichokes and fragrant melons. There are also a shocking array of breasts on display. Indeed it's hard for me to know what I should be feeling up in the veggie section. Maybe it's the fact that I've spent a year and a half in Sacramento where breasts are not displayed or maybe it's the fact that I didn't spend any time on the upper east side when I lived in NYC, but in BH man those girls know how to show off their titties. There are the corset on the outside, stiletto heels gals with their breasts pushed up and out defying gravity as they totter around getting organic salmon tartar, and the yoga vibey gals with sheer white t-shirts draped artfully around their torsos and strategically missing top section where black net bras display their breasts. My word, they must be limber!

I was carrying my bag of artichokes, garlic aioli and whole wheat sourdough baguette out to the car while following one of these women, watched her get into her mercedes convertible when I realized I had forgotten something about wealth and new wealth in particular. If you buy it, you have to show it off.

If you buy your titties you gotta display the results!

The Vulva of the Getty

I never realized that the Getty Foundation was a feminist institution, instead of a home for ormolu and excessive ornamentation, but here, starkly and plainly is evidence that J. Paul Getty, despite being the only geriatric multi-billionaire NOT married to Anna Nicole Smith, was a feminist.

The Vulva of The Getty

The Getty center was having a Courbet landscape show so we toddled on off to the top of the mountain after my interview with a recruiter and had a lovely lunch at the restaurant (my asparagus and fennel risotto was lovely and spring like, Cam.'s grilled asparagus salad was dressed beautifully) and polished off a bottle of Duckhorn Sauv. Blanc before we strolled around the grounds and into the actual exhibits of rococo furniture and Louis the XIV's castoffs. It's actually beneficial to understanding the work if you have a little buzz on, because really, there is only so much baroque furniture and ormolu clocks one can look at. I'm surprised that the Frick left any ormolu around for anyone else to collect but I am sad to say that JPG got every darn stick of what was left, and surpassed the Frick. But enough about my tolerance for gilded furniture with tempting shepherdesses lolling about them. The Courbets were lovely, that guy could push paint. Unfortunately he had a fondness for putting does and deers and bambis all over his forest scenes which was hard to take. But some of the paintings were spectacular, his ability to capture that moment in a storm when the wind has chased away half of the clouds and the sun is shining on the craggy mountains. Or the sea at low tide with a scattering of kelp on the beach.

Here is a picture of me, not wearing the nun shoes in a suit at the Getty.

At the Getty one walks around the galleries looking at rich people's furniture from ancient times (Oh those porcelain shepherdesses! Oh those Ladies on Swings!) on the inside and then you wander around outside looking at rich people's landscaping. My my, what a couple billion, a sea side mountain top and a gang of landscape architects who are apparently Fredrick Law Olmstead's kin can do. There is a huge, spiraling garden walk that takes you down to a pond, filled with gorgeous native plants. In a post modern joke, that garden is filled with curry plants and onion flowers so it smells like an Indian kitchen. Here's an onion flower - pretty isn't it? They make good cut flowers, except they smell like onions.

The back side of the descending garden walk is this, no one ever takes a photo of it, probably because it's the back side. But I have a thing for back sides.

Next week I'm going to try and get to LACMA to see the newly restored to their rightful owners after being looted by the Nazis Klimts.