Rose & Wall

JM, Rose & Wall, Tracy, 11.19.09

PW, Noted

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Number five on the latest Publisher's Weekly bestseller list, and number six:

5. "A Simple Christmas" Mike Huckabee (Sentinel)

6. "SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance" by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow)

Sidewalk: abstract concrete

JM, Sidewalk: abstract concrete, Glendale Blvd., Atwater, 11.13.09

Mops

JM, Mops on Louise, Glendale, 11.11.09

Spent some time wandering Glendale yesterday. The sandwiches at Mario's Italian Deli on Broadway are decent but overpriced: a meatball is $8.23, and the clerk asked me for those three pennies when I laid down a mere $8.20. I guess Dave's is still Dave's, eagerly providing a paper plate for said meatball; the pool table games didn't last for far beyond five minutes; new felt for old sharks.

Down the road in Atwater, a Legionnaire wandered into the Tam O'Shanter for lunch and was duly saluted.

Spent some time on Brunswick trying to catch a photo of a falling leaf, as an American Sweetgum (which you may know as a sticker-ball tree) was letting loose; this is the closest I got. There is an elan to a falling leaf.

In my opinion, Philip Gourevitch is too pretty to leave the Paris Review for real places, and to do so for the sake of focusing on a book on Rwanda only makes him even prettier. But he is leaving, Leon writes. I don't know where I'm going to send my Tarot poems to now.

Instructive piece on battles with bottles at Pop Matters.

When I wrote that post yesterday about the way people on happy meds never seem to apologize for anything, I got a few correspondences: "You're not talking about me, are you?" The people who wrote: no, I wasn't. The people who never apologize for anything would never bother responding to such a charge.

Motive and the happy meds

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Why did a Muslim American Army psychiatrist kill?

Motive is everything. Of course it is. Politicians need to scapegoat. Society needs to scapegoat.

I know what I think already. I am scapegoating too.

I would look to other recent mass murders for the answer.

The Virginia Tech murderer had a history of taking happy meds.

The Columbine kids were on the happy meds.

The Ft. Hood mass murderer suspect was a depressed psychiatrist. Not a psychologist, a psychiatrist--meaning he could dispense happy meds, even to himself.

Just a wild guess, but I will guess he gave himself some happy meds---which enabled him to cope---for a while.

As they enabled the killers at Columbine and Virginia Tech to cope---for a while.

One thing I've noticed about people in my own life who are on happy meds: they never apologize for anything.

And I believe the stats on murder-suicides will back that up.

The Overnighter

Jose, flummoxed on 7th

"Today we're going to do plaids," Madamina tells her FIDM class. "I've been in the industry twenty years, and you know how many plaids I've done? Two. But they want me to teach you how to do plaids..."

Plaids. They have weft (horizontal) and warp (vertical). They are like Mondrians but mostly more complex. There is a trick to designing them in Photoshop, as precious and secretive as as any accounting trick from a management consultant. I was shown it Sunday while Madamina prepped for this class and I was amazed...

I go downtown via the Red Line. I am meeting Madamina after her plaid lesson so we can go to the dentist---together, because this is the lifestage at which the man won't go unless the woman makes sure he does. Picks me up at 7th and Hope and...the Go-Go Volvo does not start. Click click click...

º º º º º

Jose, tow truck guy, arrives in minutes, beaming authority. 7th is his element, clearing stalled cars his metier. He has never been through anything like Madamina though, who is more inquisitive than most prosecutors. She wants every last scrap of information; she considers meeting Jose an educational opportunity. Never in her household does she get a chance to meet with such a take-charge male. Even so, she slowly wears him down. Flummoxed, perhaps exasperated, he jumps the car, then immediately becomes despondent that the problem isn't more elaborate, but also seems happy to be able to get away. We've missed the dentist by now, which is the first time in my life that I have been grateful that a car broke down.

Drive to Volvo Service downtown off of Washington. Gene in Service says he'll need the car for a few hours to determine if it's a failing battery or something sexier. Spotting a cappucino machine (free!), I pass the gumball machine and note that the gumball machine is for sale. These are hard times.



Very hard times when a gumball machine is for sale. We want lunch because we haven't eaten since morning because we were going to the dentist. Gene, making a guess about us, perhaps a cynical one, recommends The Palm. We are up for it. But we find it's a longer walk than we bargained for.

Empty except for three tables. I ask a perky hostess if we might be able to get a table. She shows us one; stiff backs but intriguing upholstery. Madamina notes the repeat is tiny, eight inches by four inches, a very good job disguising it, as all repeats aspire to disguise the fact that they repeat, and it's easier to disguise over a larger area.

Waitress has name sewn on labcoat-like waiter's jacket: SUEBISCUIT. I inquire about the name. Sue bought a horse, the movie Seabiscuit came out, so she named her horse..."You get the picture," she says, not even mentioning the name. Sue recommends the steak sandwich over any burger. The Palm does these things well. Awful art on the walls, of celebrities and not quite celebrities.



I mean, look at this one. Yes, that's Tom Cruise middle right. But he is surrounded by...Mitch Englander, Andrew Adelman, and Carol Schatz. Madamina notes that the faces are not murals, they are transfers, rendered in some other medium. Everyone has the same flesh tone. The Palm has good food--we also had a Caesar, and the egg in the dressing was raw, which is gutsy in this day and age--and we much admire the unrepentant tackiness of the utterly bizarre frescoes that aren't really frescoes, of celebrities that often aren't really celebrities. It is imitation New York all the way.

Gene calls; it's merely the battery after all. Still, it's a Volvo, which has a special (read: unbelievable pricetag) Volvo battery. This one works, and it's home for the Yankee game.

Sitting in the Japanese chair, legs up on the ottoman, watching Matsui drive in two more runs. Weft and warp, Jose on 7th, Volvo gumball machine for sale, Suebiscuit at The Palm, frescoes that aren't frescoes of celebrities that aren't celebrities. I knew where I had been: downtown. It has, really, ever been thus.