A Comment About Smoking

I happened to come across a blog that posted this photo that generated a bit of controversy:


This is a photo of very successful male model, Paddy Mitchell, and the controversy was that he was shown smoking. "Aren't you not supposed to show that?" "Is the designer trying to promote smoking?" "This is a filthy habit." "This can cause cancer." "Is this, in fact, sexy...yes...no?"

Well, I doubt that the designer (or photographer) is trying to "promote" smoking, but he (or she) probably IS desiring to attract some attention, and controversy is one way to do it. Since I, myself, have never smoked a day in my life, and don't ever intend to, I am somewhat immune to any attempts to GET people to smoke (in fact, I didn't really even notice that he was smoking in this picture, its qualities have already been subsumed into the effect of the whole), although I do understand the techniques involved since once upon a time I worked as a research project director for the nation's largest market-testing firm and one of our major clients was the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company (their major brand was Kool, the largest-selling menthol cigarette), and the name of THAT game was to unseat Marlboro from the number one spot among all cigarette brands (which I think will remain impossible). None of the time-tested techniques are on display here, for the motivation here is not to cause an interest in smoking, but to generate an interest in being this particular model (however you perceive him) and wearing the style of whatever clothes he ends up wearing, when he does wear any (and in the case of this particular model, he sells better by NOT wearing many clothes, which is ironic, but then, fashion is subtle).

So in this photo, the cigarette is used as a fashion accessory and to tell us something about the persona that is being sold here, which is a kind of "devil may care", "rebel", "bad boy," which as all men and women know, is a very appealing image. I guess what I am saying is that people generally do not admire sheep. They want to be able to decide for themselves what they want to do, or at least, they admire others who make their own decisions and act upon them.

So yeah, the rebel sells and it has nothing to do with "health" or "non-health".

CAN smoking be sexy? Well, what do you think? I think it is not so much the smoking itself, but the style, skills, and rituals involved. There is a lot of communication going on, such as the brand that the guy smokes. "Marlboro" says one thing, "Camel" says another, "Benson and Hedges" says another (and, yuck, one of those antiseptic low-tar-and-nicotine brands says another, especially some generic plain-packaged brands picked up at a discount store if they still even MAKE those anymore). If I smoked, I would probably smoke some never-heard-of foreign brand (although I understand that they are all awful) to indicate that this was something I had picked up in an exotic foreign land I had visited (how plebian to simply smoke some typical American brand). My father, when he smoked (he quit when I was a little boy), liked to roll his own, having the tobacco in a little bag in one pocket and rolling cigarette papers in another; he prided himself on being able to roll his cigarettes with one hand while astride a horse, so I guess you could say he out-Marlboroed the Marlboro Man and then some. I was also impressed by the style of James Bond as described in Ian Fleming's novels, in which James had a gun-metal cigarette case (that saved his life at least once by deflecting a bullet aimed for his heart) that he would daily fill with fifty cigarettes, which were custom-made with a particular foreign tobacco blend and specially-selected papers. James Bond, by the way, for someone who was really a professional killer, had an amazing fashion-conscience, even down to the designs on his dishes and the brands of jam he would put on his crisp breakfast toast. His taste for life helped fill up the empty spaces in which he was aware that he could be horribly tortured, or killed, at any second. Also, he used smoking as a method of being quiet and to think and plan; as if smoking were the incense used to support meditation.

Think of all the various ways a person can hold a cigarette, tough guy holding it between his thumb and index finger or doing something weird such as holding it backwards and sucking the smoke with the hand twisted outward (this says "Watch out, I am very scary"), somebody effete holding it delicately between the first two fingers as if the cigarette were a porcelain teacup held with pinky finger extended. There are those guys who hold the cigarette inside their hand so that it looks like any second they will be burning the palm of their hand except for the fact that while they are immune to the fear of danger, they are also utterly in control and every second are aware of what is going on with their body and in their surroundings.

What about those guys who blow smoke rings or exhale forceful dragon-plumes from out of their nostrils, what are THEY saying (very skilled, practiced, their bodies are fine-tuned fearless machines, almost like circus-performers, I guess).

I had a friend who did shipping in the warehouse at a place where I worked. Here was a guy who had such masterful control of every movement of his body that I craved to have him be an actor on stage that I could direct, he was a one-man body-communication-machine. He could immediately BECOME whatever race or nationality group he was with at the moment. He nearly made me laugh when he played pool with a gang of black guys (who all were packing heat), white skin or no--he was actually a redhead, himself--he suddenly was perfectly black. Or when he got together with his Latino friends, he slouched and sauntered so that you could almost see a Zoot Suit and you wondered where the low-rider Chevy Impala was parked. But when he was with me, he was the earnest, artistic youth, all wide-eyed, poetic, and philosophical. He used all his tools like juggling instruments. If he did a tire rotation or a brake job, he made the wrenches spin the hubs like Waring blenders and even doing some routine task in the shipping warehouse such as stapling a label on a crate, he'd do it by grabbing the bottom end of the stapler and spinning it around with a slam so that in one singular quick motion he both opened up the stapler and nailed the staple home in the label. It was actually orgasmic to watch him work.

You can be sure that he was a master at handling a cigarette. I liked to lean against the wall next to him when he was on a smoking break, just so I could see him dispose of the cigarette after he had sucked it dry. Without even seeming to move at all, he'd somehow do a subtle flick with his finger that would send the butt flying yards away like a bullet. It was like the physical version of an African click language, whereby periodically the speaker will make a click inside the hollow of their cheeks that could make your ears ring (this verbal sound is indicated as an exclamation point in their written language)--how do they DO that, instantly generating such force and power? Well, his flicking the cigarette technique was just like that and while for him it was merely just a practical method of getting rid of what was now trash, he knew I loved it, so during our conversation he would look up at me with a certain expression for a moment which would tell me to "watch for it" and then "FLICK!", that cigarette would go flying. Kind of reminded me of a girlfriend I had who loved to watch me masturbate and would give a little shriek when the cumshot came. For her this was somehow almost better than having it inside her, where the masculine force of it was buried and absorbed instead of being on fascinating display.

Speaking of women, there, too, cigarettes have their own sexuality. Just this morning while enjoying my fourth cup of breakfast coffee, I was thumbing through a magazine that had arrived in the mail yesterday, Wallpaper, and came across this photo:


And if you don't understand that the photograph is heavily swimming in female sexuality, maybe the bowl of fruit in this picture from the same series will make it more clear (and if IT doesn't, just take my word for it):


That photo of the female cigarette case with the colored Vogue cigarettes very definitely reminded me of another girlfriend I had had when I was in college, who started out smoking black-papered, gold-rimmed cigarettes held in a long cigarette holder, but then moved over to hot pink, turquoise, and other beautifully-colored cigarettes about which I was quite frank in my admiration of. Maybe I was weird in the kind of stuff I liked about women...we could use Faye Dunaway in the original Thomas Crown Affair, one of the most stylish movies ever, as a model of what I liked:


Because of her in that movie, I made all my girlfriends wear hats. I, of course, was Steve McQueen, where even bank robbery was sexy:


I frankly never worried too much about why one of my favorite movies of all time had two main characters who were utterly amoral; this had nothing to do with my own sense of morality, but had more to do with an awareness that beauty, style, and sex can trump morality any time, but morality has to do with an inner character whereas beauty, style, and sex can exist in the realm of outer appearance, and so I see no conflict between my thinking that one probably ought to not smoke, yet I can still see it as sexy and communicative of a strength that is very appealing and maybe even admirable. And what is life, anyway, but conflict and contrast and mysteries that only manage to add up in arcane dimensions that one can spend a lifetime discovering and exploring. So yeah, please don't smoke, but I don't mind it if you do.

Herbie Hancock: 100, Janet Jackson: 0

When one is summoned to serve jury duty with the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Criminal Division, you are told to park in the garage at the Walt Disney Concert Hall (pretty much an empty parking garage during daytime hours). I have parked there several times, thanks to jury duty. Also, one of my favorite places in LA to go is to the REDCAT, which stands for “Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater”, which is in the basement of the Walt Disney Concert Hall. It is an alternative arts space, featuring amazing art exhibitions, experimental films, and various avant garde theatrical or musical presentations. I have loved everything I have ever seen at the REDCAT, and even think it is a great place to go just for a drink or a cappuccino in their lounge. Also, the other people one meets down there are quite unusual characters and well-worth getting to know, such as those of indeterminant gender I have seen at various of the “way way way out there” presentations I have gone to. This really is a place to go for one to broaden their horizons in a way that those horizons need broadening.

But for all that parking in their garage, I had never actually gone to a concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, itself, so this time after I finished my jury duty, I got smart and bought a ticket to something at the box office that happened to be open as I was heading toward the entrance door. I took a glance at their schedule to see what was coming up soon and saw to my great delight Herbie Hancock, who has long been one my favorite musical artists. I hadn’t realized that they had jazz concerts, too, at the Disney, but Herbie Hancock is a serious musician to the match of any symphonic composer, so he definitely belongs there, in my opinion. The friendly person in the box office told me that his concert was completely sold out, but she would check to see if anyone had turned in their ticket, which is, apparently, a privilege for subscribers. If for some reason they see they are unable to attend a concert for which they had requested a ticket, they can turn them in for a refund (or maybe exchange) and therefore their seat would be available for a “Johnny Come Lately” like me.

There WAS a ticket available, right in the center of a section that happened to be the second row from the very top of the concert hall. This was fine by me, as I quite often buy the absolute cheapest ticket I can find that is, at least, near the horizontal center. This certainly saves me hundreds of dollars a year, and rarely has harmed my enjoyment of anything I have seen. The Pantages in Hollywood is a theater where one can sit with their head practically touching the elegantly-worked ceiling without the slightest handicap to their enjoyment—I had a thrilled enjoyment of “Riverdance” and “White Christmas” that way, for example. The only show I had seen at the Pantages where my distant seat was a disadvantage was for “The Lion King,” where it was hard to enjoy the animal mask and puppetry costuming, which was one of the main features of the show. Obviously, that was a rare exception.

So, I very excitedly bought my Herbie Hancock ticket for a seat way up near the top and very much looked forward to the concert.

A couple of weeks later, I received an advertising e-mail listing various upcoming concerts in Los Angeles. Now, after the death of Michael Jackson, I had been kicking myself for never happening to go see him in concert. You know how that is…you take something (or someone) for granted and then when they suddenly are gone, you realize all the opportunities you let slip by. Well, there was now no chance to ever see him in concert, but this LA concert listing showed that JANET Jackson was going to be performing in her “Number 1’s, Up Close and Personal” concert at the Gibson Amphitheater at Universal City Walk. Well, I have long loved Janet Jackson, so, it seemed like a perfect time to get a ticket to THAT concert, as well. However, price very much was an object, plus it looked like tickets were selling pretty quickly for this concert, so, unless I wanted to spend way more than I wanted to spend, I had to be satisfied with a ticket that was not only pretty high up in the amphitheater, but way, way, way (ALL the way) over to the left side of the semi-circle. Looking back at it, I’m not quite sure why I was willing to buy such a badly-located seat; it could be that the next best location was (to me) shockingly expensive, or maybe I felt that it just wouldn’t matter, seeing her sideways instead of straight on would still be seeing her and, of course, I definitely should be able to HEAR her. As I have written here, “cheap” seats had rarely been a problem. Anyway, I bought a ticket for that seat (costing a little under $60; how many CDs, DVDs, or downloads could I have gotten for that amount of money, instead--two, three, maybe even four, is my guess).

It was exciting to be parking at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and to be actually going to a concert there. I had arrived early, so wanted to go get a drink at their “hidden garden” that I had read about. Alas, the usher I asked for directions to the garden was surprised that I thought there was a bar there (well, SHOULDN’T they put a bar there?). Also, the garden not only isn’t hidden, its entrance is a stairway right from the street, so, day and night, anybody could go up there if they wanted, they didn’t have to be a patron of the concert hall. Surprisingly, there was only ONE couple up there, sitting at a table having a picnic dinner that they had brought (and seemed none too happy that another person was up there, now). I didn’t understand why there weren’t more people up there enjoying the atmosphere. Maybe few actually do know about its existence. So I looked around, and then made my way down the various layers of patios and gardens until I got back down to the street level. Around the block was the front of the concert hall again, but up on another elevated patio was on display a new Acura SUV and a man and woman eager to demonstrate this vehicle (this is LA, so you will often find a car on display at an entertainment event or in a shopping mall, usually associated with a drawing to win one, but I never fill out those cards because all they get you is constant sales communications). So I went up there to praise the car and promised them I would tell my sister about it, who is a devoted Acura fan.

I then saw that people were being let up the escalator beyond the lobby into the concert hall antechambers, so I went on up to the highest layer of the building, the last entrance on which was the doorway to the section where I had my seat. However, they weren’t ready to let anyone inside, yet, so I found a relaxing French-curvy couch near the stairway and read my program, instead. Every once in a while, a couple or two, newbies like me, would come up, but they were just exploring the interior of the building, which was a complicated maze of levels, stairways, waiting rooms, bars, and architectural features. I loved it, considered it to be fascinating.

Then a young man and an older man came up, I figured they were father and son, although the relationship could have been something else, and sat down near at the other end of the curvy couch. The young man, probably high school age, I guess, was amazingly beautiful in an unusual way, that is to say, he had his own unique style. His best feature was his VERY long dark hair (nearly down to his waist) that he had in a pony tail (but it flowed widely below the constricting band). Up until that moment, I had hated the look of guys in a pony tail, all of whom I had seen (but not lately….I think that fashion fell out favor) had been fading middle-aged men attempting to grab onto a sort of artsy-intellectual, South American tango-dancer sort of cache; in other words, just too self-consciously affected to be able to stand or to treat seriously. But somehow on a young high school boy, this was very appealing and sensual. I studied him discreetly to determine whether I thought he was popular in school (as I felt he should have been), or a bullied pariah. He certainly seemed confident and independent, to look the way he did, so I figured he probably was one who drove everyone in his class into an emotional turmoil--attracted, yet at the same time feeling inferior. Beyond his thrilling hair, he wore a black suit and a white shirt and a classic narrow black woven tie—he was so retro/cutting edge fashionable that I wonder if he understood this or was it a fortunate accident? The only discordance to his look was his white gym socks and some kind of Rebok or Nike shoes, which was, in its own way, charming, and to be expected for one so young (those could actually be the only shoes he owns).

As for the Dad, HIS appearance was more typical, unremarkable older man (but certainly SOME parental unit in that family was either engendering of, or accepting of, their son's apparently never-cut hair), but he had brought his son to a Herbie Hancock concert, which I think was a demonstration of quite good parenting on his part. I really would like to see way more dads doing things like this with their sons.

At the allotted time, I made my way back over to our section’s entrance door and the young male usher standing there told me that he was curious about “this man Herbie Hancock”, whose music he had never heard of before. He said that he knew it was jazz, and he then used an unusual but I think probably apt phrase to describe his opinion of jazz, which I wish I could remember. Non-melodious, maybe? I don’t remember, but the gist of it was that (using my own words) it wasn’t something that one could hum. I told him that some of Herbie Hancock’s music one could DEFINITELY hum to (at least I can, and do; “Maiden Voyage,” “Butterfly”, and “Spiraling Prism” are some good examples), but then some of it, no. I asked him if he would be able to hear any of it, and he said that it would be broadcast on speakers throughout the concert hall, so he would be able to hear it. I said that I was pretty sure he would like it. “Give it a chance,” I said. “This is a 100% sold-out performance,” he said, “so I think it would be worth my giving it a chance if he is that popular.”

I, myself, was pretty well-dressed up, part of the fun of going out to something like that. I enjoyed seeing the other well-dressed men and women who filled up the seats around me; this demonstrated to me that they considered this a special event. All of whom had, like me, purchased inexpensive seats, but all were impressed at how well we would be able to see even from up there. I noticed complicated baffles up on the ceiling and realized that an acoustical genius had been involved in the architecture of this building, so I expected the best regarding the sound (and, oh boy, did I ever get it!). Also, I loved it that the people around me were real Herbie Hancock fans and I felt that this was part of the joy of going out to a live performance.

It wasn’t just going to be Herbie Hancock; in his band, this time, were also the genius saxophonist, Wayne Shorter, and the well-beloved bassist, Dave Holland, and, perhaps best of all, one of the all-time greatest drummers, Vinnie Colaiuta. I have to admit to not being familiar with the other musicians (but I soon enough got an education!).

Right smack on time the band came out to a rousing applause and cheering, and then they got right down to work. I had no idea what to expect in a concert of this type; would Herbie Hancock make it a “popular” concert by playing some new works and also lots of old favorites? No, he actually did not; it was all “new”, so new, that in fact it seemed like they were generating it right then and there in front of us, it springing right out of the combined genius consciousnesses of those four great musical artists. At first the music was, shall we say, NOT “hummable,” but was, instead, as compositionally complicated as say, a whale’s song (not sounding like that, just complex like that). I began to worry that the young usher hearing this on the speakers out in the antechamber was deciding that he didn’t like it, and I had to ask myself, “Well, do YOU like it?” Almost as soon as I began to ponder my answer, I began to feel that the music made me feel ecstatic! Herbie was doing something way way down on the furthest base notes of the piano, some kind of interaction in the deepest realm of the piano that I don’t think I had ever heard used before, certainly not in such a way that Herbie was, interacting the depth of these notes so magnificently and beautifully that it certainly felt like brand new aural territory. Actually, from that moment on, I felt like this whole concert was “pontillism for notes,” as if the compositions were George Serault paintings, whereby he wouldn’t paint, say, a purple dot, but would paint a red dot and a blue dot next to each other, so your EYE got purple, but in a shimmering, dynamic way that bounced among the three colors. Herbie Hancock seemed to do that with notes, creating new notes from the combinations of adjacent notes. I had never heard anything like this before.

About this time, the bassist made his presence known in the absolutely most subtle way possible, as if you could feel the vibration from his strings before there ever was a sound, and then following that, you could, barely, perceive an actual sound, so careful, so skillful, so controlled in intention. Fine acoustics, oh hell yes, that concert hall was PERFECT for hearing exactly what these musicians were putting forth, my whole body thrilled at that level of design and exposition.

Then Wayne Shorter got into the act, giving us just as subtle of a tone from his saxophone as Holland gave us from his bass. He even could vibrate his saxophone’s reed WITHOUT it making a sound, a woody-version of Holland’s soundless vibrating string. Prior to that, I had always kind of thought of the saxophone as a nauseous instrument, never making a pretty note but, at best, sometimes being tolerable whenever it approached a sound that might be sweet or the rhythms were good. But Wayne Shorter put to rest that idea; his saxophone was as rich and beautiful and elegant as brass itself, as if his instrument were the sound of a luxury ocean liner from the an era gone by, all polished darkwood and velvet carpet, bubbling champagne, the richest food, and laughing ladies flashing diamonds, held steady on the strong arms of tail-coated millionaires, all solid and powerful over the deep splash of a gently rocking sea. Beautiful, just beautiful.

And now, the drums. Had he been playing the whole time, I don’t know. But now he was beginning to stand out, this was not “just” a rhythm section, a human metronome whose only real purpose was keeping the time, no; this was an INSTRUMENT in its own right, and suddenly, rhythm seemed to be a new kind of melody. One could SING this rhythm, it had tone and notes and a music fashioned from the interactions of rhythms just as Herbie Hancock was creating pontillistic new notes from the interactions of other notes. Who knew that drumming could actually be so BEAUTIFUL? The various drums clearly had their own voices and they formed a choir, almost religious in their reverence. Prior to this, I always kind of “ignored” the drums (or thought I was ignoring them), but that will be impossible now.

All in all, this concert was beyond anything I could ever have imagined; my knowledge was expanded, my appreciation was enhanced, and my ability to hear notes and rhythms elevated to a new and different plane. The experience was as uplifting as our row of seats was high. And I definitely plan to return to the Walt Disney Concert Hall again and again.

I floated down from the concert hall clouds, yet maintained that sense of joyful elevation as I got into my car and drove up from the lower levels of the garage. I decided to not take the freeway home, but go the “slow” way (which, regarding getting to and from downtown is often the fast way) on a surface street. I selected Sunset as my route, and after this musical experience, was now entranced by the nighttime FRAGRANCE of gardenia and jasmine that floated down from the Hollywood Hills. Yes, it was now spring, arguably Los Angeles’s most beautiful season. As much as people hate Los Angeles in their love/hate relationship, and I am certainly no different than everybody else in this regard, we must not forget the LOVE portion of that equation. Right now, driving down Sunset at night after this incredible Herbie Hancock concert, smelling the spring flowers, I absolutely loved Los Angeles.

Today, about a month later, it is still spring, Los Angeles’s nighttimes are still delicious, and Friday evening it was time for the Janet Jackson concert. Wow, what a different experience. In a way, whatever could go wrong, did.

Friday was the last day of the first week back to work after two weeks of spring break and it was one of the longest weeks on record. Why, I can’t explain, but everybody felt it. On Wednesday I actually had to look at my calendar to determine what I had done last weekend, which felt like the first weekend after spring break, only to see that we hadn’t had that weekend yet, that we were only in the middle of the FIRST week back. So maybe the evening had gotten off to a bad start because I was stressed and exhausted from the long, painful week back. I planned to treat myself by having dinner over at Universal City Walk rather than going in the other direction back home to cook my own dinner. Eating out is less of a pleasure for me than it could be since I am following a very special diet (no more than 1,100 calories a day, and 40 grams or fewer of carbs a day), on which I have now lost 80 pounds (I now have the fat percentage of a fit 18-year-old). So NOTHING will cause me to break what I am doing; I got through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, my birthday, Valentine’s Day, and various other events without breaking my diet once, so this evening was not going to be an exception.

I generally think of Universal City Walk as a crowded mess, mostly filled with rowdy teenagers, drunken, out of control adults, and, yes, gang activity. So while I wanted to eat there, I didn’t want to venture far into the City Walk. As the Gibson Amphitheater is over on one end (near the parking garage, I thought), I figured it best to eat at whichever restaurant was closest to the amphitheater that served the kind of food I could eat, which means, basically, protein and vegetables, such as chicken or fish, and non-starchy vegetables, maybe a green salad. I bring my own zero calorie, zero carb salad dressing, and my own zero calorie, zero carb Margarita mix, which I add to a bourbon and water to become a whisky sour. I won’t go to a restaurant without checking out their menu on-line first to see if they have what I can, and want, to eat. If I have to simply starve until I am back home, then that is what I will do.

There was a restaurant that seemed to fit the bill, Saddle Ranch Chop House, so I made an on-line reservation. I kind of wasn’t excited about this; I had been there before at a party, and the place seemed to be very crowded and noisy, which I didn’t want. So after making my reservations, I decided to read some reviews of the place. Every single review complained about the slow service, often taking up to a half hour just to get your order taken, and then, of course, there would be another long delay before you actually got your food. Hummm, I had a concert to go to, that seemed unacceptable. So I cancelled my reservation and did a Google search for restaurants in the vicinity of City Walk rather than there at City Walk. A place called “Café Sierra” kept coming up with good reviews, but I had never heard of it and had never seen it, even though I drove past that area twice a day for nearly fifteen years, as it was on my way home from work when I lived in Hollywood. I did a Google Maps search for it and discovered that it was a restaurant inside the Universal Studios Hilton Hotel, right across the street from the entrance to City Walk. (No wonder I hadn’t heard of it; I had never been inside that hotel.) Perfect! I made reservations and they confirmed it was an easy walk from the Universal parking lot to there. I studied the Universal map and determined that the most convenient parking lot to both the Hilton Hotel (other than the hotel’s OWN lot) and the Gibson Amphitheater was the “Frankenstein” lot, so my plan was to park there in that lot.

However, when I got there, I discovered that the Frankenstein lot was all barricaded. So I drove up to an employee directing traffic and asked where I could park, that the lot I planned to use was for some reason barricaded. He explained that the Frankenstein lot was for employees only (unusual, I believe, that the employee lot was the most convenient). Instead he directed me elsewhere, but it ended up where he sent me was VALET parking, which wasn’t what I was looking for. So, asking for more help and making another u-turn, I had to drive all the way around Universal to where the public parking was (in my opinion, quite far away), where I was faced with “Premium Parking” at the “Woody Woodpecker” lot that cost $20.00 (quite expensive in my view), or “Public Parking” at what they called “Jurassic Parking” that cost $10.00 (way more reasonable). Of course, “Jurassic Parking” was as far away as it could possibly be, all the way at the OTHER end of Universal City Walk.

I must say I was shocked to see how crowded this immense parking garage was; if I kind of hoped that Universal City Walk went out business, there seems to no hope of that; apparently they have ALL the rubes they need.

I was part of a solid line of cars going around and around the layers of this garage; it was a good thing that I had given myself an extra half-hour time cushion. It took that entire cushion just maneuvering into the correct parking lot, finding a parking place (on the very top level), and getting out of there and down to the Hilton Hotel. Despite the frustration of this, I did have “time” to be amused by the lack of consistency in parking lot names and also what I think of as a kind of grammatical error in the naming of the one where I was. Of course, they are named after various diverse properties owned by Universal; apparently they seem to have some ownership of or license for the “Frankenstein” character, but rather than continuing the theme of horror movie monsters (let’s say the other parking lots would be named “Dracula Parking” and “Wolfman Parking” or something), they jump over to a Looney Tune character, “Woody Woodpecker,” which leads me to believe that the other two ought to be named “Porky Pig Parking” and “Bugs Bunny Parking,” but no, the third lot is called “Jurassic Parking”. I guess “Jurassic Park” was a Universal Studios picture, but to be correct, in my view, they ought to call the lot “Jurassic Park Parking”. But anyway….

From Jurassic Parking, the Hilton Hotel seemed leagues away, so I opted for the shuttle. As is typical with ALL Los Angeles public transportation of ANY kind, the wait for, and duration of the ride of such transportation is so very often equal to, it not greater than, the time it would take to WALK the distance, and this was no exception. Even though the Hilton Hotel was “next” as far as distance was concerned, the route of the shuttle had to take us all the way down the hill and over to the Sheraton FIRST (and wait for the slow emptying out of the shuttle and then wait for its departure). THEN it went back up the hill and over to the Hilton Hotel.

The shuttle had filled to the brim with people carrying immense amounts of junk food, which they continued to eat on the shuttle. Across the aisle from me was a woman who had a pillow-sized bag of caramel corn, which she kept shoveling into her mouth. The young man next to her (probably not her son, but a way younger brother, maybe?) said to her, “You are STILL eating?” She frowned at him as she continued tossing caramel corn into her mouth, “Of course, I paid $8.50 for this,” which I guess means that if she paid for it, she was going to damned well eat it, ALL of it (but all at one go?). This, by the way, became a kind of a “theme” of the evening, which I will explain in a bit.

At the Sheraton, where all but one of passenger was staying, they oohed and awed over the mile-long Hummer limousine with the hot tub in the back that was parked in front of the hotel. They all wanted to ride in that hot tub.

The shuttle filled up again, this time with a bunch of families with kids who fought over who was going to sit next to whom. Finally I made it to the Hilton Hotel and found my way to Café Sierra, which was a large, beautiful, extremely high-ceilinged room just past the hotel entrance.


They definitely designed this to be an elegant restaurant, and I was greeted by a very polite, refined, maitre d’ who welcomed me and took me to my table. However, other than me (in a jazzy houndstooth raw silk sport coat), everyone there was families all dressed sloppy-casual, as if they had just been shopping at the mall, which in a way they had, but it was souvenir-hunting at Universal Studios after taking the Universal Studios tour. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I think they all would have been happier at an all-you-can-eat buffet joint.

I was really surprised to see so many families and concluded that this still must be spring break at the various public schools.

My waiter was a very solicitous Asian man who kept calling me “Gennelman”. Immediately he wanted to take my drink order, which was fine, I wanted a drink. I ordered a “bourbon and water,” which for some reason always stops waiters, I haven’t quite figured out why. Isn’t that a normal drink? Anyway, I often have to explain that I will be using the water to mix a drink mix that I bring, which, of course, generates more questions. After he understood what I was doing, he tried to make me choose a bourbon brand (naming off some high-level brands), but I already know that if I fall for that, the price will double or triple. “No, please, just your house brand. After all, I am mixing into it a Margarita mix, not drinking it neat, so I don’t need any specific label.” “Ah, you want ‘well’, then.” “Yes, ‘well’, that is the word.”

He then wanted to “give me a tour”, which meant that he was going to point out where all the food was, starting with the dessert section (wrong). Oh, so it IS an “all you can eat buffet,” just dressed up in fancy serving trays. I said to him, “No thank you, I don’t want the buffet, I would like to order from the menu.” This was diet-forced, by the way; normally I LOVE hotel buffets, but something like that would do me absolutely NO good at this point. Ninety percent of what they had would be something I couldn’t eat, so I wouldn’t even want to LOOK at it.

But from there we then had a bizarre conversation that I cannot unravel, but the upshot of it was that I concluded that he was trying to tell me something about how either you had to be a guest at the hotel in order to order from a menu (or maybe even be able to eat there at all), OR that tonight was buffet night for the guests of the hotel and there was no other option. I really don’t know, MAYBE what he was trying to get across was that they had a deal that included in the room price the buffet, I don’t know, but the two things he kept saying had to do with having to be a guest at the hotel and that there was no eating from the menu.

Well, of course this was completely unacceptable, so I angrily got up and as I stormed out, the elegant maître d’ looked at me curiously and disappointedly, so I said to him that the whole thing was a disaster, that I had already wasted half an hour GETTING there, only to NEVER come there again and, on top of that, I now had to write a blisteringly negative review of a place where you have to be a hotel guest to have dinner and you can’t even order from the menu when you are on a special diet and I had checked out this place specifically to see if they served what I needed.

He seemed shocked and told me immediately that of course I could order from the menu and that I could have anything I wanted, there had just been a terrible miscommunication, would I please come back and he would get me a menu right away. I truly have no idea WHAT the actual miscommunication was, but it really didn’t matter, he was making it right, so I smiled and said, “Yes, okay, that is good.” He asked me if I wanted a better table, but I said that the one I had was fine, and he asked me if I wanted a different waiter, but I said, “No, no, it was my fault” (and maybe it even was, who knows), so I was returned to my table and my Asian waiter practically ran to me with the menu. He said to relax and study the menu, but I said that I was already ready to order, that I had decided what I wanted before I had come in. So he pulled out his order book and I ordered the swordfish and a green garden salad. He asked me what kind of dressing I wanted, and I said that, like the drink mix, I had also brought my own dressing. He looked at me quizzically and said, “You don’t look like you have a bottle of dressing with you,” and I smiled and pulled out of my sportcoat pocket two packets of zero calorie, zero carb salad dressing. I will say that this is the first waiter I ever had since I had been on this diet who actually cared about, and understood what I was doing, now that it was explained to him. He was actually very impressed, and complemented me on my dedication. I said, “Well, this is how you lose 80 pounds,” to which he had to say, “Well, it looks VERY good, Gennelman,” which, thank you, I actually did know (because I worked for it) but I love hearing it.

He said, “Do you want some rice with this,” but I said, “No, no rice, no potatoes, only steamed vegetables, but some butter is okay,” and to his question about bread, I, again, said, “No, thank you, no bread.”

The meal was perfect; the swordfish was delicious and cooked correctly (I mean by that, not breaded and fried), every vegetable was exactly something I could have, and the quantity was right, as well. The salad had a good mixture of greens and vegetables that I could eat. It was a meal that did not break my diet one iota, and quite delicious, as was the drink.

I did have time to notice the behavior of the various other diners, who seemed to be enjoying the buffet. What was most amusing was that somewhat near me was the dessert section and the main item there was a complicated, many-layered chocolate fountain that had about twenty different pans that both white and brown chocolate spilled into from one to another to another and another in a quite beautiful and artistic display. The diners had a large selection of fruits, strawberries, pineapple, watermelon, and so on, that they could spear and then douse in one of the chocolate streams. Children, especially, who could hardly reach it, seemed to love this fountain, returning again and again to get more of the fruit dipped in liquid chocolate. It was fun to watch their enthusiasm and joy with this.

As the meal progressed, I wondered if the buffet would have been more cost-effective (I never did check to find out how much it cost); after all, I might have had the discipline to stick with fish or chicken, etc.; but I think what I did was best, even though it wasn’t cheap. I also wanted to make sure the waiter got a noticeably good tip since I had made such a fuss and ended up getting what I wanted; I gave him 25%. I also realized that I PROPERLY also needed to tip the maître d’, although that seems to be lost in our culture currently, but lost or not, I understand that while they should get a tip as a matter of course, they definitely deserve one if they do a special service for you, which this one had, so I decided to slip him a $5.00 bill. I also realized that I needed to tip the piano player who had been playing and singing beautiful jazz standards. So, on my way out, I put two dollar bills into the piano player’s brandy snifter tip glass and gave him a smiling thumb’s up for the beautiful playing (and he for sure noticed and nodded his head in thanks), and then shook hands with the maître d’ who immediately felt the money in his hand and was genuinely surprised and well pleased. I was quite gratified. He said that he was very happy that I had stayed, and I said that if it hadn’t been for his help, I wouldn’t have, but I was glad I did.

In truth, in retrospect, the whole thing was more expensive and more trouble than it was worth. But I don’t decry the experience.

Now, it was time to head on over to the Gibson Amphitheater. It was a warm, perfumed, delicious night, just perfect for sitting outside for a concert. However, despite its name, it ended up that the Gibson Amphitheater is actually an INDOOR venue. Oh well, too bad, but maybe then the sound will be better.

It turns out that the “Gibson” in that name refers to Gibson electric guitars, I suppose to serve as bookend to the Hard Rock Café over at the OTHER end of Universal City Walk (where I had to park). I don’t know, maybe the Gibson Guitar Company (or whatever they are called) somehow “sponsored” this auditorium. Everything is decorated with models of Gibson guitars, all of which have basically the exactly same shape, just come in different colors—yellow, black, red, turquoise—kind of silly as a decorative them, unless one simply goes wild over the whine of such a guitar (which I don’t). The interior lobby is filled with merchandisers (Janet concert tour t-shirts, Janet’s autobiography, souvenir photos, programs, etc.) all along one wall and junk food vendors all along the opposite wall. Oh, and you have to go through a pat-down before going in to make sure you aren’t carrying in a weapon, something I had forgotten about with this kind of place (or the kind of patrons they attract).

It seemed like a long, long walk all the way around to the very far left end where my seating section was. I had forgotten that my seat was on the VERY end of its row. Oh well, maybe being on the aisle is good. But wow, so far over, why did I buy this seat, again?

I got there at 8:00 and the concert was supposed to start at 8:15. Peculiarly, the amphitheater didn’t seem full at all. Actually, it seemed that there were more people roaming the aisles than there were people sitting in their seats. There was a CONSTANT stream of people (who soon enough began to feel like a parade of circus elephants) going up the aisle to go get some food and then bringing it back down again, large trays filled with mountains of French fries cooked in rancid oil, along with gallons of Slurpies or other junk liquids. Honestly, it seemed like the name of this game was eating junk food more than it was attending a concert, and the second most-important activity was taking pictures of each other with camera phones. Oh, and third was texting messages to the Amphitheater’s monitors. “I luv yu Janet!!!!!!!” “My boyfriend is wonderful to bring me to this concert!!!!!!” “Bill loves Steve!!!!!” I get the idea that the exclamation mark key on these people’s phones has all the paint worn off them.

Time proceeded on, 8:15, 8:30, 8:45, and all I had had to look at was a landscape-oriented monitor showing its version of what was being shown on a screen to those in the center, that was in portrait orientation (in other words, the view for my section was distorted). Besides the text messages and various advertising, what the monitor mostly showed was a way-too-broadly smiling face of Janet Jackson and something about “True You,” which took me nearly half an hour of looking at it to finally realize that it was a book she had written. Books are generally in “portrait” orientation, which is why my brain did not immediately register that’s what it was, because on our monitor it was stretched wide to fit its landscape orientation. Once I realized that it was a book she had written, I wondered about the process of hiring a ghost writer (which I was sure she must have done). Is there one that they all know via word of mouth? How do you judge a ghost writer? And what a lame title that is, anyway, “True You.” I couldn’t think of what she would have to say that would make a readable autobiography. Sure, I like her music, and yes, she IS one of the Jacksons, but really, WOULD this be all that interesting? Well, not to me.

Oh, and then there were those two spotlights on the other side of the stage, shining at me; they looked like the headlights on a Jeep and no matter how many times my eyes swept past them (hundreds of times), I kept forgetting that they WEREN’T the headlights on a Jeep and I kept wondering for a second why somebody didn’t turn them off.

Time continued to pass; by now it was 9:15 and Janet’s appearance was an entire HOUR late. No explanation, no apologies. The seats were starting to fill up, but the circus elephants continued their food-bearing parade up and down the aisle next to me. I began to hate everybody in that place. Why weren’t people complaining about the delay? But no, all they really wanted to do was eat. I guess simply being in a room with Janet—once, and IF, she finally arrives. As for me, I wondered what I was sitting there for. The seat was obviously horrible, and seeing was not going to be good. She damned well better have AWESOME music. My body was beginning to hurt, I was getting tired. I somehow knew that even Janet’s arrival was going to be anti-climactic. It was now only a matter of giving her a chance, let me hear the first song to see how it is, let me hear her apology, let me hear her say, “Hello Los Angeles, I love you.”

By now I think the audience was getting tired of the delay. Finally, every single seat was filled (did people KNOW that she was going to be very late?). The audience had taken to clapping and cheering very loudly whenever a background song on the sound system came to an end, as if by their enthusiasm they could MAKE her appear. However, all that would happen would be yet another background song would play. This cycle must have occurred a dozen times.

Then, at about 9:30 or so, the voice of Janet Jackson could be heard and the audience stood up on its feet and ROARED. Wow, she is finally here. I was in too bad of a mood to stand up (I felt no respect), so I just sat there and looked at the monitor. Janet was not out there, they were merely running one of her music videos. What was this, a kind of joke warm-up act? To me, showing the music video was a tactical error. It made me realize that what I knew of her, what I LIKED about her, was her music videos. Yes, I HAD purchased one of her CDs, “Rhythm Nation” (decades ago), and really liked it a lot, but I never bought any more of her albums. (Michael, in contrast, I bought every single one of his albums, and even bought all the videos, as well.) I DID download from iTunes about eight or nine Janet Jackson music videos, many of which are pure genius. I thought to myself HOW could a live performance measure up to these well-crafted, expertly-directed, phenomenally-well-danced-by-a-huge-corps-of-dancers music videos? Even this one shown here at the concert (and then a SECOND one they had the gall to run) was clearly going to be much better than anything that was going to happen live on this stage. I understood that I would have done better watching THIS music video at home on my own wide screen high definition good sound system monitor and not paid any more than about $9.99 for the download.

Now it was only stubbornness that kept me still sitting in this auditorium. I really simply wanted to get up and go home. It wasn’t a matter of getting my money’s worth, I had SPENT the money, regardless; it was a matter of what was going to make me happier.

It was an anti-climax when she finally DID arrive at about 9:45, a whole hour and a half late. First the band came out on stage, about five thugs wearing what looked like white pajamas. They sat behind their instruments along the far wall of a box that was mostly INSIDE the stage, so that where I was sitting, I could only see the one who was the furthest outside. The monitor did NOT pick them up. There was a large blue-lit cloud of steam or smoke which didn’t excite me in the least and when it cleared, there was Janet standing there wearing white jeans and a short white vest that seemed to accentuate that she must have been gorging on the same junk food that most of the patrons at this concert had been carrying down the aisles. She had plastered on her head an earphone headset with a microphone that went across her face, kind of spacy/android in effect, not like actually having a person out there, one you could see, anyway. With her were four, I think (it was very hard to see), back-up dancers, quite ugly-looking, actually, wearing clothes that made no impression on me at all. Their dance moves, such as they were, and Janet’s, were so basic and lame that a two-year-old child could have done as well, if not better. There was no thrill or excitement associated with what they were presenting, instead, it felt like they all were just going through the motions and hoping to get it over with quickly.

I could see the edge of the monitor all the way across the auditorium that showed that in the center of the “box” that was the stage, at the rear, was a large projection screen that showed something like a flowing street scene in Los Angeles. This did not show on “our” monitor at all. In other words, these seats really WERE so terrible that basically we could see only about 1/6 of what was there. And what we COULD see was very boring.

The sound was equally bad. The speakers all pointed frontwards, towards the center of the auditorium, so by the time the sound echoed back over to where we were, it was just a loud muddy bass (kind of like listening to the distorted hip hop of a drug dealer driving down the street) punctuated by her indistinguishable whine. Her lyrics could not be understood as the sounds were simply a blend, like melted frosting on a cake. I did realize, though, that she was singing a medley, but if you like a song, you want to hear the whole song, not just a piece of it. Oh well, she wasn’t singing ANY song that I liked, nor was she putting any emotional modulation into any of it. It was just all at one steady level, loud, much like the singing done by a no-name theatrical company on a Carnival Cruise, meant to signify “excitement” to the musically deprived, but in actuality, just either puts people to sleep or else drives them away (on a Carnival Cruise, to just go gamble, instead).

I was irritated by all the people in my section standing up, so I was forced to stand up, too, just to see what was going on. When I saw Donna Summer at the Hollywood Bowl, her concert was so exciting that almost everybody (including me) was standing up and dancing at our seat or in the aisle (including me)…now THAT was a fantastic concert! But here, nobody was dancing (what was there to dance to, really?), and they were only standing so that they could see.

What I saw, the boring medley continued, the back-up dancers, two of them by now (I guess the other two went back where we couldn’t see them from where we were), were just standing there, not even dancing at all. Well, I was now on my feet, so I used them for what they were made for, I walked on out of there.

I was angry enough by this debacle to contemplate attempting to demand to get my money back (if one even could, something I have never had to attempt before), but there was no manager on site that I could see, only endless vendors. I finally shrugged and decided that I had been tainted by this experience enough, to just go on outside and be done with the whole nasty enterprise. Ah, but that delicious night air felt good. It actually made me happy again, so much so, that I even enjoyed all the drunken patrons having their own enjoyment at Universal City Walk. They, at least, had had the smarts to not attend the Janet Jackson concert. They were having their own fun having drinking games at Bubba Shrimp or whatever; ah, people, gotta love them.

Jurassic Parking ended up feeling closer than it had when I was rushing to get to Café Sierra. I found my car easily enough. As I sat down behind the wheel, I ended up having an amusing thought. This whole thing had begun due to my feeling bad at never having been to a Michael Jackson concert. Now I felt that I hadn’t missed a thing.

THE END

AttaCHE Bags, CHanel, et les CHameaux

When I bought my beautiful Cadillac, I felt that it would be discordant to have my black nylon “attaché” bag lying on the iced-coffee-colored leather upholstery in the back seat, so I bought the perfect beige leather bag from the Levenger catalogue (they bill themselves as selling “tools for readers,” but I always think of them as more “tools for writers”), which has been my daily companion ever since. (The look I was striving for was what I think of as "CEO": a gorgeous leather attache case, a pair of gray suede gloves, and a crisp Wall Street Journal carefully folded in thirds.) I used to get tons of compliments over that bag (which that catalogue no longer sells anything comparable to anymore), but now (110,000 miles later on the Cadillac, which is still more or less pristine, thanks to a rebuilt engine and transmission by my expert mechanic and a new gold vinyl roof and new upholstery on the driver’s seat), the bag has become pretty thrashed. It’s stained and loose and floppy instead of tight and some of the trim on the edges has worn off, but it’s certainly still serviceable, perhaps more than ever. I can’t say that I treat it as carefully as I did before (which in a terrible way makes me think of something written by Zora Neal Hurston about the black man Tea Cake beating his woman because she wasn’t as pretty as another one), and in a way I kind of have my eye open for finding a new one.

But I’m anything but fashionable these days like I used to be when I was younger; it’s almost like “what’s the point,” with this body that’s as used and scathed as the bag I was just talking about. And one thing I have basically stopped completely is wearing cologne, when only about as recently as a decade ago I had a virtual wardrobe of cologne. That is to say that there was “daily going to the office cologne” and “weekend lying about cologne” and “going to brunch cologne” and “incredibly elegant going out on special occasions cologne”. There was even “hmmm yummy ‘voulez vous couchez avec moi?’” cologne. But now, it’s whatever soap I had just used in the shower and a rolled-on splash of Aubrey “E Plus High C” deodorant that I buy at Whole Foods. Does that even have a scent? Let me look at the label…gee, I guess it does, the first ingredient is rose water. So that’s what I am doing nowadays, going around smelling like rose water and sea kelp? (Or olive oil.)

But I’m not immune to marketing…in fact, I am extremely susceptible to it, especially when such experts as Chanel and top film directors and fragrance and color and packaging and language experts get together. Such as here: directed by Baz Luhrman. What’s to not like? Paris, Istanbul, ancient European train stations, the Orient Express, a sleeping compartment at night, ferry boats on the Bosphorus (if you had ever seen the movie Steam, you would be in love with Istanbul), two gorgeous people shown to great advantage surrounded by gold and skin tones, French accents, and (I’m guessing here) Billie Holiday. Might as well pierce us through the heart with a steam roller, but I love it.

Who knows why exactly, but, those marketing experts and my susceptibility again, this very much caught me:



I think maybe because I am drawn to woolen navy blue coats (let’s say like a peacoat, although I do not actually have one, because I happen to live in an almost always warm climate), despite the fact that the model is not actually wearing a peacoat, or maybe it’s the French accent again, or a somehow magnetic shade of blue that is almost black, but only a glance at this advertisement made my think I should go back to wearing cologne again, and that this cologne ought to be the one. It’s all about image, of course…I had NO idea what this cologne smelled like, but, peculiarly, that didn’t even seem to matter (although to a rational person, that seems to be the only pertinent thing, and to the rational and practical person, no fragrance whether you liked it or not would be worth $59 a 1.7 ounce bottle…would it?).

As it happens, my Visa bill was coming due and my Visa card is a Macy’s card, and you can pay your bill at the store. Also, I desperately needed a new pair of shoes, so I decided to go to Macy’s to pay my Visa bill and buy the shoes I needed. I was looking for something extremely comfortable that I could wear to work, so they had to be casual but look acceptably dressy. Regular dress shoes were feeling like a torture from the Spanish Inquisition. However, Macy’s had nothing that was close to what I wanted, so I figured I would try a regular shoe store elsewhere in the mall.

In walking through Macy’s to get to the rest of the mall, I happened to walk past the men’s cologne counters, and remembering the Chanel Bleu ad, I thought I would try a tester. I found the tester, sprayed a tiny amount of cologne on one wrist and rubbed both wrists together. To be honest, I did not like the scent at all. It seemed to be kind of similar to several other popular colognes, but lacked a certain “beauty” that I was hoping for. Well, I’m no expert on fragrance, but this one just didn’t seem to be “me”. Oh well, as I said, I wasn’t wearing cologne these days anyway and now I could save myself from spending $59.00.

I found a shoe store, Clark’s, that had the perfect “comfortable, casual, but looks good enough for business wear” shoe and they were even on sale, so I ended up buying two pairs of the shoe I liked, one in black and the other in brown. I had been helped by both a female sales clerk and a male manager, so they both were at the counter ringing up my sale and they both began to gush over my attaché bag (that hadn’t received any complements in quite a while). They were saying things like “that’s a classic,” “gets only better with age,” “very handsome and appealing,” and I was quite pleased to come away both with some wonderful shoes that I could wear and with so much appreciation for my bag.

Now that I had my shoes, I walked back through Macy’s so that I could pay my bill. Since Clark’s had been on an upper floor in the mall, I was now in an upper floor in Macy’s, a women’s clothing domain I had never entered before. I found a likely sales clerk who cheerfully handled my paying of the Visa bill. She also took the time to gush over my attaché bag, saying pretty much the same things that the clerks at Clark’s had said. Again, I was quite well-pleased by this, but also rather surprised.

Later in my car driving home, I was marveling over this sudden approval over my poor worn out leather bag. At both places where I had a personal interaction, the sales people really loved it. Suddenly as my hands were turning the wheel of my car, I caught a whiff of the Chanel Bleu that was on my wrists, the fragrance now resting on its “final note,” which, by itself, was actually something that I really liked. Then I realized it, that’s what had to be it, it was the cologne that had been causing all this positive reaction to my bag. It must have seemed that I was (suddenly back to being) “fashionable”. That’s what I was thinking then. But then later, I read a review of the cologne by a fragrance expert, who defined the final note of the scent as “suede”…in other words, some kind of “leather”. So now I see that what must have been happening was the final suede note of the Chanel Bleu on my wrists was as if my attaché bag, itself, were sitting there broadcasting its presence and its “leatherness”, very much like if I had obtained from a car manufacturer that “new car smell” (which is NOT the same thing as the kind you can get at the car wash), anyone sitting in my car very well might start gushing over how beautiful my car is, despite the fact that it now has a mileage that has gone beyond 100,000 miles! Fragrance really is a powerful force.

So I guess I am kind of back to keeping one eye open for a new bag, although I haven’t yet seen anything that is anywhere near as nice as the bag I already have. Such as these in the pictures that follow, I don’t like them very well because they have the messy complication of all those buckles and straps. Mine closes perfectly with just one elegant metal oblong device that fits through a slot in the flap and turns from horizontal to vertical to lock it closed. One flip of the fingers does it.

I DO love the marketing idea of these bag ads, though, where they show their bags in use at exotic places around the world. I just happened to think that these camels in these photos are so damned cute, the way they curl up their legs when they are resting. Why aren’t camels appreciated more? I mean, for sure these are as cute as kittens all curled up on a pillow, aren’t they? Yet think how hard they work. They deserve their rest, sweet things. I wish I could pet them; does anybody ever pet the working camels?

Super Model Ash Stymest

I guess I will dare to go out on a limb, here, and say that as a super male model, Ash Stymest must represent something quite different from what we ordinarily expect. I really do like him, but the question is why? I don't think he is particularly good-looking; he is young and all, but compared with some others such as Paddy Mitchell or Luke Worrall, or let's really be unfair and throw in somebody like Francisco Lachowski, guys who are "swoon down on your knees WOW", I don't think Ash Stymest has the same effect. He doesn't have a really great body. Yes, he is at least lean, very lean, but if he has any muscles at all it is because he plays around and is hyper-active, skateboarding, dancing, or just plain won't sit still. But I doubt he has touched a weight or entered a gym, which means there's no conscious effort toward his body, he just sort of has this natural body that is sexy and appealing for no discernable reason other than he just doesn't worry about it, but instead enjoys it without concern.

One of course notices his tattoos (maybe with like, maybe with dislike), but on the whole, those are more of a distortion to the body than an enhancement, I think. I do LOVE the way he says "tattoo," though; I wish I could write it in the International Phonetic Alphabet, but the way he says it is a kind of a lightly skimming over something like "taddauw" but said so appealingly that it almost makes ME want to get one too (and that's saying the nearly impossible). I think tattoos would be truly wonderful if you could walk up to a person with them and ask him about them. I mean, really LOOK at them and get their story, not quickly glance away as if the person were badly crippled or had a horrible disfiguring disease. Maybe Ash Stymest is a person with tattoos that make him look dangerous and tough, and yet you aren't afraid of him.

And honestly, as much as he is photographed, are they ever having him wear any kind of clothes that you would actually wear (although you maybe kind of wish you COULD wear, but only he can and you can't)? This means that you are yearning toward a world he lives in, and you can, when you realize that he seems to making it up himself as he goes along (I think he would be the first one to say this). If he can, you can.

I also imagine that he is kind of unhealthy (although of course I could be wrong, he could be almost Mormon in his pristine personal habits for all I really know), smoking, drinking, taking risks, there are probably drugs in there somewhere, all of which means that he could be eventually wearing out in a painful way, youth doesn't remain immune forever. But then, if so, he's also living in a world you are curious about but don't want to subject yourself to the danger of. So you watch him, instead, and enjoy its reflection.

I think what it is, is that he is a nuclear ball of energy. You never know what he is going to do, and probably neither does he, but he'll do it anyway and that lack of inhibition is powerfully magnetic. I don't think we could possibly stand him for long as lover or even a friend (we're not up to it), he would wear us out or send us screaming to the quiet comfort of a padded cell, but we would like to PLUG INTO him for a moment, but the most we could stand is what we get from a photograph or a video, a three-minute experience, or a two-dimensional one. The full-on experience of Ash Stymest in person would probably burn us out as if we touched a live power line. Does anybody know, does he have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, or are all his human contacts like balls rolling around in a pinball machine, good for a quick bump, but then they've got to skitter away (or he does)? If he has some loved one, I'd love to see what they look like. I imagine hair as frizzy as a Troll doll and if you touched THEM, you'd jump back from the electric spark as if you had spent the last half hour shuffling along a thick carpet (whereas they're the one who has all the residual energy).

In short, what Ash Stymest shows is that you don't have to be beautiful in any tradition that anybody knows, you don't need to work out, groom yourself, count your calories, live in crippling moderation, worry about a future you have no control over, or follow anybody's irrelevant rules. You only need to be yourself without inhibition, regret, fear, social approval, or higher authority. How wonderful it is that a person who seems totally free can be a super model (that is, a representative for others), and that may be Ash Stymest's greatest power, that he is dissident and dissidence is exactly what we need, all of us, even those in power.

Thoughts On The BP Oil Crisis

First of all, I am sick of it being called an "oil spill". It is not a "spill", it is a "leak" or a "spew" or a "gusher" or an "out of control uncapped oil well"; to constantly call it a "spill" is to harken back to the Exxon Valdez and other accidents wherein certain legal precedents were set, but this is a different situation entirely and needs to be looked at with fresh, unbiased eyes. (And using the right words instead of common "sound bites" is always being on the side of truth instead of manipulation.)

Second, I am sick of everybody saying "BP did this," and "BP did that". BP is a huge corporation (a legal creation on paper, actually), comprised of hundreds of employees, including board members, officers, managers, clerks, and every other type of occupation. What caused the explosion was a combination of decisions made by INDIVIDUAL workers on the job. It was a DRILLING SUPERVISOR who decided that chunks of rubber coming up out of the riser (which ended up being pieces of a damaged rubber ring that is one of three stopper methods used to temporarily cap off the well) weren't a problem enough to delay the operation, an operation that already had cost BP close to 30 million dollars, I think it was, in losses due to problems and delays in the drilling of the well (leasing the Deepwater Horizon costs a million dollars a day). Secondly, it was a BP MANAGER (again, an individual person) who overrode the Deepwater Horizon's method of filling the well with "mud" (a thick, heavy liquid substance which has weight that applies downward pressure to counteract the upward pressure of any gas or oil that seeks to escape from a well), which was the second of three capping-off methods, in the interest of making it more convenient and quick for the extraction platform that was going to come in afterwards (Deepwater Horizon is a drilling platform; after they drill, they cap off the well and move on to drill elsewhere while another platform comes to connect with the well and pump out the oil). So now we have two individuals making time and cost-saving decisions that compromised the safety of the operation and effectively eliminated two out of the three methods used to safely close off a well. The third method is the concrete cores that Halliburton installed. I do not have much information on that piece, except that I did hear that some manager at BP counteracted Haliburton's procedure in some way which compromised that, as well (used fewer cores, maybe, to plug up the well?). To hear how this whole thing is being treated, it was as if the Board of Directors themselves issued a policy of "safety features be damned, full speed ahead," you know, due to "greed" and all that, when really, again, it was individual workers on the scene making risky (and wrong) decisions, which can, and does, happen any and everywhere (such as the railroad engineer in Southern California who was text messaging just before having a head-on collision with another train). Perhaps BP "policy" can be blamed for putting on that pressure to hurry? But who has a job where THAT doesn't exist? (Why have I been putting in 12-hour work days for the past four months? Fortunately, I just work at a school instead of drilling the deepest underwater oil well in human history.)

This is NO DIFFERENT from the Challenger space shuttle explosion, where engineers warned that due to unseasonably cold temperatures in Florida that the rubber in the O-rings might have been compromised, but management at NASA refused to delay the launch due to fear of bad public relations and damage to their carefully drawn-out schedule (a delay in launch probably also costs money). This was a decision to "chance it", since they really didn't KNOW what the o-rings would, or would not do. The drilling supervisor on the Deepwater Horizon didn't actually KNOW that the annular ring was totally damaged, nor did the BP Manager KNOW that the pressure from the well would be too great to contain the methane gas without the weight of the "mud"; these men only knew that many millions of dollars had been "wasted" already and they wanted to hurry up and get this well capped off so that the pumping rig could then move in (maybe in a few hours?) and start extracting this oil.

I don't remember there being cries that NASA ought to be drawn and quartered because of this managerial decision to launch the space shuttle against engineering recommendations to not launch. Why? Because NASA is the GOVERNMENT whereas BP is a corporation; to liberals, GOVERNMENT is supposed to be the solution to these problems, yet always, it is individual working people who make the decisions whether they are working for the government or for a corporation. So, the very force that liberals want to use to regulate errors such as made by individuals working for a corporation (BP), were the actual forces that caused the Space Shuttle explosion (workers for NASA). So, increased government control is not the answer. Deepwater Horizon had the best safety record of any drilling facility out there (seven years without an injury or accident), yet the risk-taking decisions of a small handful of workers in a moment counteracted that great safety record and caused the greatest ecological disaster in history. But this is not "BP". It is a laborer for Deepwater Horizon and a mid-level manager for BP. It could be someone like us in some other setting.

"Corny" as it may seem, I feel like saying to all those screaming congressmen and liberals and environmentalists, "Let he who has never been involved in an accident or made a bad decision throw the first stone." Everybody else is just working to satisfy their agenda, which is to "destroy the petroleum industry" and "increase government control over all aspects of life." Sounds good to some level of idealist, but I see they're all still driving cars....

I will probably be vilified for my comments here, but I care about the environment just as much as anybody else does and I detest what happened and mourn the loss of life in whatever form it comes in, and I can't stand the thought of beautiful white Gulf beaches turned gray. But my grief over this situation does not make me succumb to regular "ten-minute sessions of hate" as if I lived in Oceania in 1984. My whole orientation is more "what exactly happened, what can we do to make sure it never happens again, and what can we do now that it HAS happened?" (This, of course, will never happen with a government commission, such as the one that Obama has already assembled of environmentalists and others who have already said that their agenda is to socialize the energy industry.) Looking to find who to blame and brand them as "evil" (members of the Board of Directors?) and spend all our time screaming at them and thinking of ways to punish them is simply medieval and really, not of much practical use to anybody.

They Don't Matter

I'm turning over a new leaf concerning my involvement on the Internet (although sometimes I feel that I am turning over so many new leaves that it is eternally autumn) and although it is a simple and almost childish thing, I am putting it down here in writing for my own benefit in hopes that I continue to follow it.

Virtually all correspondence on the Internet is anonymous and the truth is that we may be temporarily contacting a type of person that we would never willingly stand within 100 feet of in real life. I think of being on the Internet as somewhat similar to riding a Los Angeles Metro Bus, which I sometimes did, for example, when my car was in the shop. But riding a Metro bus is to be packed jostling body-to-body for a horrendous, extremely uncomfortable hour, hour and a half commute with people you just might not want to ever associate with for even a moment, let alone having your entire body pressed tightly against them for an eternity. So now whenever my car is in the shop, I rent a car.

I want to apply an "escape" similar to that regarding my use of the Internet, and this particularly pertains to forums, discussions, comments, and book and movie reviews within which I might participate. It is nearly impossible to read a list of comments on any subject without coming away from the experience being thoroughly revolted by some of the participants--"Who are these people?" and "Keep them away from me, please!"

In the several years that I have been extensively participating on the Internet, I have NEVER EVER seen a person change his point of view during a discussion. There is absolutely no learning, no compromises, no coming together of minds, no progress at all, just an ever-increasing spiral of filth and spittle. It's all about you extending an opinion to an anonymous stranger and then him spitting in your face something vile in response, not only disagreeing with your opinion, but also casting aspersions against your character. What's the point of it, really? If what I was interested in was cock fights, then where you would find me would be in some seedy part of town putting my money on some poor razor-blade-legged rooster. Since that's about as far from my personality as anything I can imagine, what am I doing wasting my time discussing things on the Internet with people who are, in my opinion (as far as the type of people I would willingly associate with), just as objectionable?

So I'm simply not going to do it anymore. Oh yes, I will still leave comments, reviews, my opinion, and I will also carry on a discussion with somebody worth discussing things with, but regarding this other type of person, I will simply ignore them. This is a hard thing for me to do, and in the past, I have been far too easily drawn into further escalating discussions until I can't stand the involvement any more. This has been very stupid of me, but I have learned from the experience and it is now at an end.

One of my favorite people of all time was American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In his day, he was a controversial figure (and actually still is) as many highly creative and innovative people are and he was forced to receive a lifetime of bile from other architects, critics, and various other people who just didn't understand. He was interviewed by Mike Wallace in a series of television programs and one of the questions Wallace asked him was what did he think about or do about this kind of person. And I loved his answer so much that I would like to see it carved into stone: "They don't matter. I realize that I am not for them, and they are not for me." And that ended the matter. Why should this man be interrupted in his progress by stepping into a pile of dog do? He'd just wipe his feet and move on. I absolutely love that attitude.

Old But Not Freakin'

Is it just me, or...

I mean, I know I am "old" and "out of touch" and all, but don't you think that if you were young:


and considered good-looking enough to be a model (though in this picture I'm not too keen on the farmer tan):


that you would do whatever you could to preserve your looks, and not have a freakin' FACE tattooed on your chest?



After all these years, I still just don't get it. But it really doesn't matter, does it, this guy is STILL a model anyway. Like those models who look like heroin addicts. I am beginning to think that on some level (have I ever said this before?), this kind of advertising is similar to those liquor ads that had carefully airbrushed into the ice cubes monsters that severe alcoholics sometimes see when they have delirium tremens, selling a product by appealing to Freud's id, the lowest level of each individual's psyche (unconscious, instinctive, and relentless in pursuit of its basest desires). It's frightening how so many things are actually an addiction. But as for me, I'll draw the line at addiction to needles, which in my view, is what we are really seeing in the picture above. Watch how on him, now that he is started, those tattoos will spread like a fungus.