Several times a month I ride my bike to work across seven miles of city streets. It takes me 45 minutes, depending on traffic. I rarely stop, even when I should.
The Atwater Bridge stands less than halfway through my journey, but it is the hardest part. It is the one place I must stop, in order to leave the street and get on the bridge, I hoist the bike onto the curbed sidewalk; I lose my momentum.
As I make my way across, I first pedal up a deceptively difficult incline into Los Angeles with both the 5 freeway and the L.A. River beneath me. By the end I am out of breath. I never look at the river, or the gentle hills of Griffith Park to my right.
This morning there was a bedraggled man who preceded me on the bridge. He was riding a rickety bike, very slowly. There was no room for me to pass him, so I was forced to slow down.
And that's when things changed. Pedaling casually, I saw a nest of birds in the rushes of the river. I saw the sun rising to my left. The bike moved easily, my legs weren't strained. I thought, "Why is it so difficult every other day?"
Because every other day I race over the bridge, competing with no one but myself, taking no time for enjoyment of the scenery or my own comfort, spoiling a joyful moment, making what should be a great ride into something with a flaw.
"Who is pushing you, Marty Barrett?" I said.
There is a rest area in the middle of the bridge, and the bedraggled man pulled to the side. Without thinking, I sped up and zipped past, soon aware of how much my legs hurt again, how I was out of breath, and how I was racing for nothing. I stopped and turned around.
The bedraggled man had resumed riding and was making his way slowly across. I got a good look at him. He was very likely homeless.
"He seems to have all the time in the world," I thought. "He's not straining himself. He's probably having the time of his life."
I thought for a moment, and decided to light the homeless man on fire. The smoke met the sunrise, and his ashes blew northwest against the line of the river. I went southwest, because the southeast is for assholes.
There have been a lot of changes to Lowell, Massachusetts, my birthplace, since I left; the city has embraced native son Jack Kerouac, it has a Single A baseball team, and it has finally gone ahead and christened a thoroughfare Crack Street.
"High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell" is a 1995 HBO documentary that follows three likeable and engaging crackheads through a year of half-hearted detoxes, breakups, reconciliations, and the daily drama of their lives.
Co-directed by Richard Farrell, an ex addict and Lowell native, "High on Crack Street" shows a side of Lowell's culture that doesn't jibe with its boosters' plans for urban renewal.
As a former National Park Ranger in Lowell, I was happy to see my former co-worker, Warne P. Nelson, in a featured role, standing by a canal and delighting tourists with stories of the city's industrial past. It was also a pleasure to see the late, lamented Eat A Donut, where my family would get a dozen excellent doughnuts every Sunday after church.
More than anything, though, "High on Crack Street" contains the best examples of the Merrimack Valley accent. Massachusetts natives know that people from Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont talk differently than each other, and people from South Boston speak differently than people from Cambridge. Very few people pahk theya cah in Hahvid Yahd, and if ya did yid get a fuckin' ticket, ya retahd.
The Lowell/Lawrence accent is distinct from any in New England. I hope it never goes away. And even Brenda the pregnant crackhead has moments in which her North of Boston accent makes her sound genteel.
Thanks to Youtube, you can watch the whole thing.
Update: Brenda went missing after the documentary and there are reports that she has died. Gary "Boo Boo" Giuffrida is still around. Dickie Eklund was released from prison and is now the subject of David O. Russell's "The Fighter," a film in pre-production starring (as of this writing) Christian Bale as Eklund and Mark Wahlberg as his half-brother, "Irish" Micky Ward. Melissa Leo plays their mother.
Here is Dickie Eklund fighting Sugar Ray Leonard in 1978.
Here's Eklund's younger half-brother, Micky Ward, in his first, legendary fight against Arturo Gatti. You can see Eklund as his cornerman. This fight is considered by many one of the greatest televised fights ever. It was the first of three. Ward won this fight and narrowly lost the next two, retiring after the final fight in 2003. He and Gatti remain good friends.
And while we're at it, here's the Dropkick Murphys' ode to Micky Ward, "The Warrior's Code":
In all, "High on Crack Street" reminded me of "Grey Gardens" without the landscaping.
On the trail of the Kogi truck: Coming to terms with Twitter
Like thinking people everywhere, I see little use for the social networking site Twitter. My life is complicated; can it really be summed up in 150 characters or less? Do the people who depend on me for guidance and moral leadership deserve to only know part of my brain? Furthermore, what can they glean from
Mavervorl Killing our fish and ducks. less than 20 seconds ago from web
But I've found the one use of Twitter that is neither narcissistic nor extraneous: Tracking the Kogi trucks as they make their lonely journey across Los Angeles.
Deployed exactly six months ago, the two Kogi trucks, which serve a blend of Korean food in traditional Mexican enclosures - like kimchi tacos - "tweet" their locations for their nightly stops, which regularly draw hundreds of people.
Taco trucks, or loncheros, are a cultural institution in Los Angeles. But last year the L.A. County Board of Supervisors passed a law that would make it a misdemeanor to park for more than one hour in one location. And this law has teeth: supported by stationary restaurateurs who claimed the loncheros were unfair competition, it levies fines of up to $1000 for any truck overstaying its limit.
Since the Kogi trucks cannot say for sure where they will be or when (the website gives approximate times and locations), the "Roja" and "Verde" trucks will tweet their coordinates only when their destinations are certain. Then crowds gather.
Thus the clientele at a recent Kogi stop in Eagle Rock all seemed to have smartphones. Scheduled to arrive at 10 p.m., the truck rolled in around 10:15 to a crowd of about 110 and applause. I might have been the oldest person in line. I texted a few people (I AM AT THE KGI TSUCK) but the lack of a QWERTY keyboard and an Internet connection made me feel like an imposter.
Because of my age, I became their leader. Tiny UCLA and USC students sat at my feet and listened, rapt, to my stories of a time when mixing Korean food with Mexican food was known as a Mistake.
But the line was long. From my arrival to the time the food arrived ($5 burritos, sliders, and quesadillas, $2 tacos) was almost two hours. My suggestion? Drink.
The Kogi truck staff is friendly and, by the time we drew closer to the truck, there was a festive atmosphere. But by now we had gone beyond curious and were now hungry, so we needed the eventual food to be exceptional.
And it was. I ordered the sliders, some tacos, and the quesadilla. The sliders were unlike anything I'd ever tasted. I can see becoming addicted to this food. The quesadillas were too concentrated, the tacos too dissipated, but the sliders were a perfect combination of spicy exotic and tastes more to my limited understanding.
So I'll be back, and I suppose Twitter has won this round.
Thoughtful perspectives on selecting your upscale grave
Large, freestanding, and often rectangular outside advertisements are known as billboards. Here in Los Angeles there are a number of them, alerting potential consumers to available goods and services.
The Forest Lawn Memorial Parks, a franchise of high-quality, well-maintained, tourist-friendly ossuaries and crematoria, advertise their trendy boneyards via billboard campaigns that speak to our gentle acceptance of the mortality of our loved ones and ourselves.
Below are several of my own attempts to hit the right note with Forest Lawn's target audience, but I didn't get the gig.
With a girl as fine as she was then: The Psychopathological narrative in "Raspberry Beret"
Nearly a quarter century after she "walked in through the out door (out door)," the woman wearing the title garment of Prince's 1985 song "Raspberry Beret" continues to puzzle and intrigue scholars.
But it is the narrator who has emerged as a dangerous and unstable sociopath.
"I was working part-time in a five-and-dime ," the narrator begins, telling us that his employer, a Mr. McGee, had to repeatedly tell him that the narrator's "leisurely" attitude toward work engendered feelings of dislike in his employer for not only the narrator but also the narrator's social, ethnic, racial, political, or religious group, i.e. "kind."
People with developmental disorders often need to be told several times to complete tasks such as those required in the type of retail establishments where the learning-disabled may find work.
We introduce the notion of the narrator's own mental impairment as the basis for his attraction to the beret-wearing girl. While there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that "opposites attract," it is more often the case that interpersonal relationships are founded on shared values and interests.
If the narrator is autistic, however, he is high-functioning, as demonstrated by his ability to vary his menial tasks in order to hold his own interest:
"It seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing," he says, "but different than the day before."
It is then that he sees the subject of the song, as "she walked in through the out door." Consistent with Persistent Developmental Disorder (Not Otherwise Specified), he repeats "out door."
"She wore a raspberry beret," he tells us, "The kind you’d find in a second hand store."
Researchers disagree on whether the narrator's choice to speculate where the girl might have found her beret is Asperger's Syndrome-style "Information Bombardment" or a genuine attempt to connect with the listener.
In any case, and appearing to validate PDD-NOS theorists, he compulsively, almost fetishistically repeats her headwear throughout the song, adding that, were the temperature appropriate, the probable group home resident might not "wear much more."
Up to this point in the interview, students and professionals have been inclined to agree that the narrator, whether a stroke or head trauma victim or otherwise mentally compromised, was basically an amiable and harmless person, even if he might have proven a minor management problem to his employer.
But alarm bells sound in the next set of lyrics.
The narrator, based on the girl's inappropriate entrance to the five-and-dime as well as her hat (and his opinions about whether or not she would wear nothing but the hat should the weather become "warm"), makes a compulsive and staggering logical leap:
"I think I love her," he says.
While condemnation of the narrator's premature profession of love is unanimous in university and medical circles, the following lines divide scholars:
"Built like she was, she had the nerve to ask me if I planned to do her any harm," he says.
Does this mean she was attractive to the narrator and, knowing this, that she would flout a reasonable person's fear of being harmed by him?
Or was she unattractive to the narrator ("Built like she was, she had the nerve to ask me...") and therefore unworthy of questioning his malicious intent?
Either way, it is clear that she recognized the danger; when does it come up unless someone is in danger the question of whether they are to be harmed?
The American Psychiatric Association recommends a simple Appropriateness Test, which it calls the Cocktail Metric:
"Go to a cocktail party and approach a friendly-seeming stranger with the statement in question," its literature suggests. Would you approach an amiable stranger and ask him/her if he/she planned to do you any harm?
It gets worse:
"So look here, " the narrator challenges us, "I put her on the back of my bike and we went riding down by Old Man Johnson's farm."
Not "she got on the bike willingly and of her own volition" but "I put her on the back of my bike" like a wounded or trophy animal.
Perhaps due to abuse, trauma, or the schizoid belief that he is a being that draws power from celestial bodies, the narrator then observes that his ability to perform sexually is influenced by the visibility of the sun or the moon.
"Overcast days never turned me on," he says, and then for the first time openly derides the girl by comparing her to noxious smog:
"But something about the clouds and her mixed."
The narrator then savagely beats the girl with his feet, attempting to make the listener believe that she was not only the aggressor but also that she wanted him to beat her with his feet.
"She wasn't too bright, but I could tell when she kissed me," he says, " - she knew how to get her kicks."
Having dragged her into some kind of stable, silo, or manger, the narrator feels an almost lycanthropic connection to nature.
"Rain sounds so cool when it hits the barn roof," he says, and researchers concede that he's right: Rain does sound cool that way. But we shouldn't let the sociopath charm us with his studied behaviors of normal human interaction.
Because then, as if denying his own humanity (and the responsibility of his crime) by attributing human characteristics to animals, he attempts to divert listeners' attention to his temporary stablemates.
"...And the horses wonder who you are."
As if shaking his fist at a universe only half-complicit in his offenses, the narrator goes on to accuses Nature that "thunder drowns out what the lightning sees (and) you feel like a movie star," (possibly Hannibal Lecter, the Son of Sam, Leatherface from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," or even Satan, as depicted in several films).
The narrator invokes this pandemonium of murderers as "They": "They say the first time ain't the greatest," he says.
Boldly addressing us again and bragging of his lack of remorse: "But I'll tell you, if I had the chance to do it all again, I wouldn't change a stroke."
The narrator's megalomania at its zenith, he taunts listeners by referring to them collectively as an infant, hinting that the girl is no longer alive:
"Baby, I'm the most," he says, "with a girl as fine as she was then."
Despite acknowledgment by Prince that the song was about ex-girlfriend Susan Moonsie and documentation that her intelligence is within normal limits, and that Prince himself is not criminally insane, I'm still hoping to use this abstract to get my license to practice Psychiatry in the State of California. Wish me luck!
Lawry's of Beverly Hills: An Airstream Full of Meat
The Valet took my car and parked it 30 feet away. Later, his coworker would charge me $6 to get my keys back. But I know how this scam works and I'm getting too old to fight it.
It used to be that if I could see where valets were parking my car, I would find parking somewhere else and walk. Why hire someone to finish the final 30 feet of what I've already spent 15 miles doing?
But I've eased up, especially when dinners are free.
I'd be dining at Lawry's The Prime Rib on La Cienega Blvd. in Beverly Hills. It was like the 1999 pilgrimage I'd made to the A&W Restaurant in Rancho Cucamonga.
"Root beer built this place," I told my unborn offspring.
And because I was familiar with Lawry's line of salad dressing and seasoned salts, visiting the mother ship would be like finding a baby Clydesdale in your Budweiser bottle and riding her all the way back to Belgium.
Upon entering Lawry's, the visitor is greeted by uniformed staff in what appear to be Russian nurses uniforms of the 40s if Stalin was running the United States instead. Our server took us to a private room where she began to perform a service with a spinning bowl that I'd first seen when I snuck away from the tour group in Mazatlan. But this turned out to be different.
Grasping a large silver salad bowl with her left hand, our server began to spin the bowl while pouring salad dressing into its center with her right. As her right hand was stretched high above her head, the server showed great skill in getting the dressing into the bowl at all. But she could have poured the dressing in like everyone else does and not worried us so.
I assumed it was a party trick.
But the greatest conversation piece was a a trolley that looked like an Airstream trailer filled with prime rib. Our carver, Jose, was wearing some kind of medallion like something one might be given by the Wizard of Oz. From the back the meatwagon looked like a car in a carnival ride. It was the type of contraption that one wouldn't expect to be filled with meat but with whole families migrating from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl searching for a better future in California.
But instead of Joads what I got was a load of meat, a gravy crater in a mountain range of mashed potatoes, and a dollop of creamed spinach that continued to leave butter deposits in my car on the way home.
I couldn't help but think that the meal I had connected me to people I'd seen in black and white photos, the women's lips so black that you knew their lipstick must have been very red. I felt jowly and I had an urge to go to the track, guard the border, and elect McCain simultaneously.
Dessert was an excellent hot fudge sundae and a thin but potent glass of Tawny Port.
As I left Lawry's my car was already rolling toward me. I had to back up, just to be polite to a valet who'd probably feel bad that I walked farther across the parking lot than he'd driven.
But at that point I felt the need to give back a little.
Matches come in a box, tobacco in a pouch, milk in a carton or bottle. Perhaps the scariest part of "The Omen" is that knives were transported in a towel.
"State law requires I ask you a couple of questions," the guy said.
Recently I went to have knives sharpened. While hacking at a carcass with heavy, dull blades provides a satisfaction of its own, time is tight and my family needs its food cut with efficiency and precision. And we can't afford lasers.
So there I was, with a cleaver and several other knives wrapped in a dishrag, and the sharpenist was quizzing me.
"Do you now, or have you ever belonged to a religion that demands blood sacrifice?" he said.
"Yes, but only symbolically," I said.
"Do you believe you or a loved one is harboring the AntiChrist?" he said.
"Harboring is a strong word," I said. "But I'm driving by and he's waiting for the bus in the rain, I'm gonna pick him up."
"Do you intend to use these knives for any activity other than meal preparation?" he said.
"No."
"Not even opening boxes?"
"No."
"I had to ask," he said. "The End Times are coming."
So I was not surprised to see my knives returned with instructions.
As you know, Ambassador Robert Thorne, who had the misfortune of being the earthly caregiver to the AntiChrist, received the Daggers of Megiddo in similar inappropriate packaging. It's like carrying your golf clubs in an omelette.
"You want me to kill Damien with these?" he asks Bugenhagen. "Preventing the reign of Satan's son is surely worth a Coach bag."
"We give you a coupon later," Bugenhagen says.
Thorne, played by Gregory Peck, also killed Audrey Hepburn by this method in "Roman Holiday."
For centuries, the blade has been the preferred method of slaughter for sons on either side of the theological fence. Commanded by God, Abraham was to sacrifice his son, Isaac, with an axe.
"Sorry it didn't work out," Abraham tells Isaac.
Leonard Cohen uses "The Story of Isaac" as an allegorical war protest. Why "sacrifice these children" when [governments] "never have been tempted by a demon or a god"?
When my son learns to talk, he will doubtless ask me if I would ever run him through with a consecrated kitchen or garden implement on orders from the almighty.
"Jem," I'll say, tousling his hair while checking for Beast-related birthmarks, "My father once told me that I could stab all the AntiChrists I wanted, but it was a sin to kill a mockingbird."
Several times a month I ride my bike to work across seven miles of city streets. It takes me 45 minutes, depending on traffic. I rarely stop, even when I should.
