LA Diary

[More pics to come -- Camera on Hiatus]

Thoughts I Had Watching TV on the Flight to LA

The tvs on my flight kept needing to be rebooted, so JetBlue ending up comping all the movies. Even then I wouldn't watch Social Network. I love Aaron Sorkin even now that he’s sober, and I’m sure Jesse Eisenberg was great and Justin Timberlake can do no wrong in my book, but I still didn’t want to watch it. Later I realized why. Every day in every way I’m having Facebook pressed in my face like Aunt Ida's tits and not in a good way. The last thing I want to do on my time off is pay $20 or $0 to have it shoved in my face some more.

Instead of being cast in movies about accidental relationships brought on by the onset of an unexpected baby, Katherine Heigl should be cast as Wonder Woman. She has the boobs and hairline for it.

Outback Steakhouse is so fucking cheap they don't even hire actual Australians to do the accent.

Arrival

I know I’m somewhere radically different: the Long Beach baggage claim is outdoors. There not a speck of snow anywhere. Not even one of those residual snow piles that linger into May in NY.

Golf Dave picked me up.

Dave. I met him at the old Moshulu Golf Course in the Bronx. He was golfer who painted and I was a painter who golfed. Most impromptu golf partners are dicks or weenies, so our bond was instantaneous in spite of his being almost twenty years my junior. A few years ago he moved back to Cali, resurrected a gallery [http://raidprojects.com/], enrolled in grad school, had a baby, got married [Hello to Heather & Wagon Girl], and resettled in his native Long Beach. Tired of hearing about my desire to go to California to see Dave and meet the new fam, Beth arranged for me to get out there. Dave did the rest.

Most other motels only 

advertise high ceilings

I'm staying right across the street from 

combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell

After Dave checked me in and took me to meet Ryan. Ryan is a completely ür California experience in and of himself. He paints in a Quonset tower within an amazing little family courtyard [his dad and grandfather both worked there] that contains a beautiful old workshop and tons of surf boards. His work is a little bit like Alfred Jensen meets Ed Rusche, but he’s not yet sure where his own hand fits in. Time will tell. After the studio visit we settled into a bar on the main street drag of Seal Beach. We talked about a lot of things including my propensity for cursing in public [not a great idea in Cali] and Californians propensity for criticizing people’s life styles to their faces [not a great idea in NY]. Then Ryan mentioned that he was into guns and owned a couple. He wasn’t into guns for hunting [I didn’t so much as see a squirrel in my whole time in LA], or self-defense, as he was into having one in case of, “You know, apocalypse.”

Maybe it was because it was 4am my time or because the whole Arizona calamity was fresh in my mind, but something crystallized for me and I had to respond:

The belief that having guns around to protect us from bad people is pure childhood fantasy and magical thinking.

If a burglar comes and knocks out Daddy, I’ll hide behind the door and jump on him when he tries to come into my room and I’ll be the one to save Mommy.

If there wasn’t anyone on hand in that Arizona parking lot to pull a gun and take down the bad guy, when and where will there be? In Arizona even concealed weapons are allowed to carry concealed weapons. But none of that matters because the chances of a civilian being in the right time and the right place and having the wherewithal to take out a deranged gunman in the midst of perpetrating a random massacre are even lower than the odds of the massacre occurring in the first place. As for all hell breaking loose, sure it could happen: civilization could break down. But as I told Ryan, “If the country really did go to hell, and I really did need a gun, I’m sure I’d be able to rustle up something.”

Living the Dream

Put palm trees around them!  

[No one will ever noticethe oil rigs 20 feet of their shores]

Friday morning : I had the best breakfast burrito of my life.

Friday afternoon: I hit out of deep sand from 40 feet up a steep face to within 6 inches of the cup.

Saturday night:

I have now lived the social network in action. After a pleasant stroll through MOCA, I told Dave I had a hankering for sushi. He didn’t really know any places, so he did the text driving thing [we did a lot of the text driving thing – I felt like such an outlaw] and put the question out on Facebook.  A young woman he knew, Dot Girl [she draws pics of endless color pencil dots], hit him back, and in 20 minutes we were in Little Tokyo eating really good sushi [http://www.sushigenla.com/]. Acoustic indie rock was playing in the background the whole time.

There was a couple seated next to us at the restaurant who were clearly on their first date. The man had those multi-level asymmetrical side bangs Japanese dudes seem to dig. The woman, super petite and immaculate, sat perched on the front edge of her seat, her large leather purse behind her. After they ordered, she took out an inlaid case. She withdrew pieces of wood and ivory, and screwed together her chop sticks like a pool shark would her cue. The woman’s order arrived all sea urchin and monkfish liver. She lit on each piece like an expert fly fisherman and slid her strikes into her mouth with deadly precision. She will marry this man and run his life and the lives of their children.

Later at the opening at the gallery Dave used to run, I saw a lot of girls with cute hats and complex tattoos including Dot Girl. The gallery is part of a complex called the Brewery part of which had been a brewery but was also composed of warehouses and office courtyards. Like LA at its best, it combined the inside with the outside in a sprawling open way that makes a tight assed easterner giddy in the dead of winter.  There were giant studios and lofts and odd converted live/work spaces that made huge artwork make sense. We wandered and came back for the end of the opening and then wandered again through the warren of space, past a loading dock converted to a terrace and a back office space now a live/work space where Dot Girl was hosting a party with her roommate Airbrush Boy. It was a nice party, everyone was nice to me, and I was neither drunk nor stoned. Weird.

Sunday morning:  We surfed. 

Ryan lent me a board that was about 9 feet long and about as easy to maneuver as a garbage scow. Dave said it was better for me, but I think that after three days of putting up with me he was just looking to fuck with me. I did show Dave a little something by miraculously wedging myself into a wetsuit he was sure was too small for me.

The thing about surfing is it all looks so nice and bucolic until you try to get past the breakers without vomiting a lung.

I don't think any other person has ever said the word "paddle" to me as much in my life cumulatively as Dave did that one day. The only thing I succeeded at was not getting conked out by my own board as I was tossed like an overstuffed rag doll by the waves.

Eventually Dave tired of watching me and told me to try riding the whitewater. Eventually I got on top of a couple an almost got to my knees. I got a glimpse of the thing, and it was beautiful. Dave swore I did not look like a tool. He was lying.

Going Home

Living the Dream Part Two: I watched the Jets beat the pretty boy qb and the lipless sore winner/loser coach on the flight home via Slingbox and in-flight Wi-Fi. Not bad for a man who remembers the IBM Selectric as the height of technology. I managed not to cheer out loud both for the passengers on the plane who might have been taping the game and because I am, always have been, and always will be the guy stewardesses would most love to tase.

 ___________________

Ski Day with Beleaguered Dad in 82 Steps: 

1. Wake up
2. Make coffee
3. Make breakfast for boys
4. Get boys dressed, loaded with gloves etc.
5. Get self dressed, loaded
6. Load car w skis, etc.
7. Forget lift tickets
8. Drive to slope
9. Park
10. Get Max in ski boots
11. Get self in ski boots
12. Carry skis etc. to slope
13. Take Simon to ski school desk
14. Get ski school pass
15. Go to ski office to get temporary lift passes for day
16. Wait for and get temporary lift tickets for day
17. Find Max give, him pass, send him off skiing w no rendezvous plan except the one he forgot from last time
18. Take Simon to rental place
19. Get Simon boots and board
20. Take Simon to ski school at foot of bunny hill
21. Go back to ski school desk to sign Simon up for another hour b/c he just missed first 15 minutes of 60 min lesson
22. Explain to guy at ski school desk that I’m the beleaguered dad
23. Go get my own skis on
24. Try to find Max
25. Give up and go skiing
26. After two runs, run into Simon getting onto the ski lift w his instructor: asks me “Where’s Max?” [he cares about his brother!] then tells me I was getting paged
27. Run into ski school desk
28. Ask if it was they who paged me [Yes and they knew it was me, beleaguered dad, Max was looking for, so after he waited around a while until they told him to go ski and meet up w me at noon when Simon’s lesson would be over]
29. Noon: all reunited at last
30. Back to lodge to eat lunch
31. Get table
32. Get food [one cheeseburger, two orders of French fries, a cup of cookies, two hot chocolates and a Diet Pepsi = $32]
33. Eat lunch
34. Take Simon back to bunny hill and leave him there, so I could ski w Max whom it turned out I had left alone for two hours
35. Do two runs w Max, drop a pole off ski-lift on first one
36. Pick up Simon
37. All take lift
38. Simon and I get off lift half way up hill, Max continues to the top
39. Watch Simon board, fall, board, fall, board, fall, board…until he gets tired of my watching him board, fall, board, fall, board, fall and sends me to the bottom to wait
40. Do it again
41. Meet up with Max and we all go to top of mountain
42. Watch Simon board, fall, board, fall, board, fall…
43. Using video cam on cell phone, I video Simon boarding while I ski with one pole. [Back in NYC, Beth disappointed I only videoed Simon]
44. Watch Simon board, fall, board, fall, board, fall…until he gets tired of my watching him board, fall, board, fall, board, fall and sends me to the bottom to wait
45. Do it again
46. Send Max to lodge to get himself hot chocolate
47. Simon and I return to rental place to return his board and boots
48. Go to ski repair shop to look for guy who sold us skis in November on the super cheap
49. Find guy
50. Ask for new pole and snowboard and boots for Simon [I realize now that Simon’s boarded twice, the skis I bought him will be useless]
51. Go outside to check my pole size [no jokes here please], second pole gone
52. Lewis [the ski repair guy] sells me used board and boots and set of poles
53. Cost of boots and board: $50  -- Not having to wait for Simon to get rental equipment next time and thereafter: Priceless
54. Get Max from lodge
55. Buy water for Simon and myself [flop sweating is really dehydrating]
56. Bring Max to ski repair shop while Simon is getting fitted
57. Listen to black guy make anti-semitic crack to Lewis
58. Pay Lewis
59. Bring gloves, hats, scarves, new poles, board, boots and boys out to pick up area in parking lot
60. On way out of rental place pass two guys dressed like they’re trolling for paparazzi at Sundance instead of for night skiing at Catamount
61. Almost get in fight with two guys, who are dressed for night skiing at Catamount like they’re trolling Sundance for paparazzi, because as I passed them I couldn’t help saying, “Really?"
62. Leave boys to get car
63. Take off ski boots
64. Bring car around
65. Load car with boots and boards and gloves and hats and scarves and boys
66. Leave mountain
67. Go to supermarket, leave boys in car listening to music
68. Buy food for dinner
69. Get home, unload car
70. Crack a beer and some pain meds
71. Make dinner
72. Eat dinner
73. Make the boys clean the damn kitchen
74. Nod off watching Monty Python w the boys
75. Wake up to put them to sleep
76. Put them to sleep
77. Tell them I love them to which Simon responds, “You don’t have to rub it in.”
78. Shower off flop sweat
79. Watch golf on Slingbox
80. Draw
81. Read Time and Again
82. Sleep

My New Band


Black Swan Keys Eyed Peas Sabbath Crows


Furniture Hockey


It's hard for me to write for very long at a stretch. First of all, at any given moment I'm usually very tired. Second, I'm easily distracted, and, third, I'm not very talented. On top of all that, my neighbors have just resumed their endless game of furniture hockey. As best I can gather from what I hear through the uninsulated wall between of our 125 year old tenement apartments, furniture hockey involves uncarpeted wood floors instead of ice, and any item of furniture instead of a puck. The players seem to have shed ice skates in favor of what I imagine to be bowling ball shoes.  Not bowling shoes, bowling ball shoes. The goal of furniture hockey is not to slide the furniture into an open rectangle of metal piping. The goal of furniture hockey is to utterly and completely shatter my mind. Them 1, Me 0.


Rich v Poor

The NPR show, Morning Edition, did a feature monday on a study about the differences between the ways in which rich and poor people raise their children and how that impacted education. The study was remarkable on many levels. On the first level it is remarkable because, unlike most of the studies NPR cites under the heading of "Why it sucks to be poor," the answer to this one was not merely reduceable to "Because they have less money." [As opposed to earlier studies such as those that showed that poor people often receive worse health care or drive crappier cars, or the one that showed a staggering 100% of all poor  people have less money than their wealthier counterparts]. One of the major findings of this study was that rich people tend to talk to their kids more. A lot more. More than three times as much. This finding supports my own findings even from among my generally affluent students. Often I get students who, in spite of being quite intelligent and even moderately well read, still have horrendously limited vocabularies. I always ask them if the members of their family speak to one another of if they merely grunt. After a few laughs, they usually say "Grunt." 


Is He Having a Laugh?

Now that Ricky Gervais has lost the weight he joins the ranks of Joe Piscipo and Roseanne Barr as those  who, after dealing with longstanding physical insecurities, cease to be funny. In his recent HBO special Gervais spends a good 20 minutes of the hour telling us, with all the transparent self-loathing he could muster, why it's proper to make fun of fat people. As if no one had ever been brave enough to do that before. Edgy. 




Why I Love My Wife

Beth emailed me the web page above with a confirmation of a motel reservation she made for me in Long Beach.


I wrote back:
Thanks, and thanks for having them stock the pool.


To which she replied an instant later:

It's catch and release, though.

Why I Love My Wife, Part 2

This Tuesday evening as we were sitting in the front room trying to wind the kids down for the night, I looked out the window and saw a clear and giant fire in the window of an apartment across the street from us. At first I thought the fire was inside the apartment; then I realized it was a reflection. From across the street. From us. 


Beth and I were down the stairs at once, leaving the boys behind a closed apartment door. We got to street level, Beth got out the door first, and all I heard was her say, "Oh my god." Luckily the fire wasn't in our building at all [do you know how hard it is to replace a 2/3 bedroom rent stabilized apt on the Upper West Side?]. The fire was in the six foot high pile of garbage and Christmas trees next to our tiny walk-up building. The flames were easily twice the height of the trash and  ridiculously bright yellow. The doormen from the huge apartment building next door [whose trash it was] were out front milling about. Then one of them disappeared, presumably to call the fire dept or dig up a hose. Beth told me to get a fire extinguisher. I dutifully ran back into our building, stopped and asked her where one was. To her undying credit she didn't say, "On every landing of every floor you've walked past at least twice a day for the past 15 years." She just said, "On the landing."


I got the fire extinguisher, pulled the pin [which I found myself still clutching another 20 minutes later], and went for it. All I heard before I let 'er rip was some dude behind me say, "Good luck with that, man." 

End of Year Notes

The Black Swan

 For all the hype about lesbian love scenes and self-mutiliation, The Black Swan is really a  spot-on character study disguised as a classic melodrama/opera/ballet adorned with the occasional Japanese style cgi horror image. Portman gives her best performance since Beautiful Girls perhaps because as in B.G. she is playing closest to herself. Aronofsky, for whatever reason, is able to slide into the head of a ballerina. He really does. I know. Trust me or else I'll tell you about the ballet classes I took in high school. Now there's a disturbing image. 

Abstract Expressionist New York

Moma's exhibit of works all drawn from its own fabulous collection brings forth:

• the  under-represented pleasantly represented: Baziotes and Brooks
• the enduring masters: Pollock, Krasner, DeKooning, Gorky, Rothko [displayed in in stunning range], Reinhardt
• those hanging on for dear life: Kline,Still and Hoffman,
• and those who have fallen off entirely:  Motherwell and Gottlieb - who must have been one charming dude to ever to have ascended as far as he did.

Favorite extended wall caption [it always thrills me that when dumb paint on canvas can rouse people to outrage, Outrage!]:

When Reinhardt’s black paintings were first exhibited at 

MoMA, in 1963, their reductive imagery and stark 

palette shocked visitors, prompting at least one 

Museum membership cancellation, in protest.

I loved the photography, not the obligatory Robert Frank's but the all-over, all out ab-ex silver prints of:

Aaron Siskind

Harry Callahan

Nathan Lyons

Frederick Sommer, and

Minor White [best name ever]

I did not love most of the ab-ex sculpture which, with very few exceptions, could not escape looking like dated dental office art.

Exhibit of the Year


Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield   curated by Robert Gober


June 24 - October 17, 2010

Unlike great athletes who often do not make very good coaches, great artists often do make the best curators. There is precious little I could quibble with in this pristine tour de force of an exhibition. If you don't know Burchfield look him up or buy the catalogue. He was an upstate New Yorker who lived his life as a working, middle class artist. He did things with nature, watercolor and raw energy that had never been done. Most revelatory, later in life he returned to paintings he'd begun decades prior and added to them by tacking on additional pieces of paper. I don't know what the dude was smoking, but like Cezanne and Morandi before him, you can see the air rippling around his world, but unlike either of those gentlemen you can also smell the moisture on the forest floor and hear the flutter of the butterflies.