Damn, this is the place I try to go and hike every Sunday, you know, cardio out in nature. I started going to Bronson rather than further east in Griffith Park back in 2007-8 after the big fire that consumed what seems like half the park (and now making a remarkable recovery).
Some questions re this discovery:
seems like the “head” was dropped in a really accessible place, not only for dogs but also for children and other humans – as in, no real attempt to “hide” or “destroy” it. So, whoever put it there wanted it to be found, right?
how did the initial police reports of a disembodied head figure out it was an “Armenian man?” I guess someone who looks like they might be Armenian could also look like they come from half a dozen other nearby countries, right? Or, was it something else, like ID in the bag?
Or, was he an individual already well known to LAPD?
now I’m reading in an update that they found a hand as well – so they can ID through dental records and fingerprints? Doesn’t that again seem like it’s too obvious?
Posting more as the story unfolds.
UPDATE 1/19/12: since I wrote the first story, they found the other hand as well as both feet. No other body parts – yet. Knowing this trail quite well, where they found the head (don’t know about the rest) is beyond where you can drive, after the trail becomes pedestrian-dirt only. So whoever put that head there had to carry it there.
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Today, a reprint of (LA Weekly’s) 50 true and sometimes humorous reasons why the city is just the best.
It doesn’t hurt that the high temperature forecast for today, January 1, is 82 degrees (not the norm, but hey…).
Enjoy the list! What would you add to the list if you could? And, Happy 2012 to everyone, Angeleno or not.
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Upon returning from New Orleans, I found this note put up in the lobby and near all elevator doors.
The Horror! Drama has enveloped the Broken Arms in Valley Village.
“Pictures were taken. Eviction imminent.” Have they called Homeland Security?
Notes:
how do we know this is dog urine or dog crap? Could it be a human violator? Feline?
As a previous landlord myself, I know that eviction is a really fracking complicated process. It would be better to say “eviction proceedings will be imminent.” (and good luck with that)
Perhaps the writer of this note should have taken a few deep breaths.
That’s what I feel I am doing now, after the sadness of the last couple of weeks, emerging from a murky lake. Breathe in, breathe out. Write the book. Look for work. Go to gym. Hell, somebody’s even got a holiday party tonight and invited me. Dress up. Go out.
Live.
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I did my usual Thanksgiving Day hike yesterday. This time it was in Bronson Canyon in L.A. I caught the tail end of a cloud front making its way across the L.A. basin with the sun coming out just as I neared the top of the climb to the road on the ridge. (That glint in the distance is the sun reflecting off the Pacific Ocean.) What you can’t see from this angle is that the sun’s rays are directly illuminating the Hollywood sign!
This is my car, a 2005 Scion Xa, parked in Shorewood on a visit
My one week long Carfree experiment is over today.
Honestly, it wasn’t all that much of an adventure, and there wasn’t any palpable angst involved. Meaning: it was really easy to not use a car for a week.
Why did I do it?
It’s a recommended activity in Chris Balish’s book “How to Live Well Without Owning a Car”, which I’ve been studying, wondering if I could really live in Los Angeles without one.
The answer is probably yes. I probably could, in fact with my current conditions for work (self-employed at home) and social engagements (so far I haven’t found any not within walk, bike, bus, train or taxi parameters) lend themselves well to not owning a car. Only men around the globe face impotence Going Here viagra price in their life. Let me take a moment to help you levitra tab 20mg understand the solutions which you are ought to have if you consume ed drugs. Stress should be taken care of as and when you buy generic cialis should take the drug. levitra generico uk Antitumor antibiotics block certain enzyme and cancer cell changes, thus affecting DNA.
Will I go carless? I don’t know. I love the idea of saving $6,000 a year (that’s what the Edmunds website true cost to own tells me I’m spending on the car I actually own) and I love the idea of walking and riding my bike a lot, and I also love the idea of reducing my carbon footprint and actually walking the enviro walk, so to speak, trying to do something more than recycle my soda cans.
And can we talk parking? I have never enjoyed driving all that much, but parking is an activity I absolutely loathe.
But it’s interesting. It’s the social thing. I don’t want to become a social pariah (more than I already am!). When you mention the very idea to people, they become confused, it really doesn’t register in L.A. You get questions like, “oh, your car is in the shop?” “If you didn’t have a car, how would you get anywhere, how would you do anything, how would you get food?” Etc. It’s true, many white people have never been on public transportation and have no idea how to go about it. Also, walkers in L.A., except in a few neighborhoods, can be few and far between, so you do feel exposed and vulnerable.
I was telling a friend last night about my carfree week when he realized I had ridden my bike to the restaurant where we met. It was like it didn’t compute at all, like why would a sane person do such a thing?
CicLAvia October 2011: What fun. What a beautiful day to close off streets for people, and to keep cars away! I joined the thousands of folks on bikes, skateboards, with strollers, walking, running, hanging out, etc. on routes that stretched from East Hollywood to East LA, through Downtown and Little Tokyo and even Chinatown.
It was great, as always, to take in the diversity that is LA. To see the street art and other murals. To hear the musicians. Even to witness the bafflement of residents who picked up on the idea that something out of the ordinary was going on. Smiling cops with relaxed expressions. A good event for OccupyLA to get awareness for, as the route passed right in front of the occupation encampment at City Hall. So much more, that you never would see driving down the street in your car.
The CicLAvia route ended on the east at Hollenbeck Park in Boyle Heights. I don’t think I’ve ever been there before. I went a little further south to take a couple of snaps of the Linda Vista Hospital, site of a great Ghost Adventures episode. Spooky! Even in the bright sunshine.
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Enjoy the pix!
Near Bicycle Kitchen at LACC, Melrose/Heliotrope
More drummers at Melrose/Heliotrope – cultural diversity I love about Los Angeles
Drummers at Melrose/Heliotrope
Family affair
On 7th Street near Asbury
Headed toward DTLA, MacArthur Park melting on the left there
Linda Vista Hospital – what lurks behind those dark windows?
Linda Vista Hospital across from Hollenbeck Park – haunted?
The mighty mighty LA river (that trickle on the right)
Looking toward downtown from 4th St Bridge
Looking north from 4th Street bridge at train yard, clear day
It’s day four of Carfree Week. Yesterday I sort of hibernated, as it was raining for most of the day (though it cleared up late afternoon). Funny thing about living in climate where it doesn’t rain at all for a good part of the year – when it finally comes, it’s like a huge regional event and news story and that’s all anybody talks about. It seemed cold, even though the temperature was probably upper 50s low 60s. If I had a fireplace I would have made a nice toasty fire!
Any readers who live where there’s real weather will roll their eyes. Believe me, everything is relative. Also, having lived both in the snowy Midwest and desert Southwest, I can tell you, those Midwestern brick homes keep the heat in. SoCal, not so much!
Sorry for the digression. How to get to the gym? Very easy:
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When I realized where I was going to live when I moved back to L.A., I rejoined Gold’s, which lets me use their Hollywood, DTLA, or North Hollywood locations as part of the membership (and I think there’s a few more locations in the package, too, but those are the ones I’d mostly frequent). As you can see on the map, it’s an easy 1.5 mile bike ride from my place to the gym on Laurel Canyon, which has a bike lane. Still, the cars go very fast on that street and I’m super cautious. But there are a good number of cyclists and plenty of lights to slow things down.
So instead of driving to the gym, I got some extra cardio coming and going. My workout? Today it was chest and elliptical, which I hadn’t done in awhile.
Link above, but there’s an update: They decided to retry the murderer of Larry King, Brandon McInerney, after all, still as an adult, but without the hate crime allegation. Now we have jurors from the first trial expressing a wish for leniency on the murderer, that in fact he was “bullied” by the victim, a classic case of the “homosexual panic” defense.
This makes me insane!
Can we have a little genderfuck scenario, please, as a bit of illustration just in case some can’t see the blatant homophobia here? Let’s pretend, for an instant, that the victim was a pretty, straight, 15 year old girl, “Jaye.” She’s popular in her school, perhaps she’s a cheerleader or some other kind of teenage extrovert, happily secure in her heterosexuality, so much so that when she meets “Larry,” a classmate who just happens to be a gay kid, Jaye can’t resist the urge to try and “change” him by overt flirting, perhaps exchanging some words back and forth over the period of a semester.
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We can certainly understand what happened. Jaye was “bullying” Larry; we can understand his revenge even though it was a little extreme. But it’s certainly understandable that gay kids would go into “heterosexual panic” when threatened, so in a way, the killing was justified because of Jaye’s actions, in other words, she brought it on herself.
Let’s assume for an instant, dear reader, that the above scenario is what played out. Can you imagine for a second that we’d be having this conversation about this murder not being a hate crime or even all that serious to begin with?
No, you cannot, because our society is biased toward the majority, toward heterosexuals. Brandon McInerney should be retried for murder, with the hate crime clause intact. IMHO, this kid knew exactly what he was doing. He killed his classmate because Larry was gay.
Yesterday (Sunday, October 2 2011) was the West Hollywood Book Fair, concurrent with the grand opening of the new (beauteous!) library in West Hollywood Park.
Homo-Centric booth (thanks Hank Henderson!)
Like last year, I was invited to read something at the Homo-Centric tent (thank you Hank Henderson) and was delighted to do so. Also like last year, what I read was from my novel-in-progress, but the same novel-in- progress as a year ago!
attentive listeners to John Boucher
It’s called The Forest Dark, from the Dante quotation pertaining to midlife, about losing our way, about not knowing which way to turn in the dark wood. Apparently, I’m not knowing which way to turn in my dark home office, either, as the damn thing isn’t done.
To my credit, I will say it’s way more done than last year. So there’s been progress. I wish I was a faster writer. Maybe someday. I still contend that the internet has given me a shorter attention span and I have to use helpers like Freedom and Leechblock to get through any quality time on creative writing.
John Boucher
Richard Villegas reading, Hank Henderson second from left
Kyle T. Wilson reading, Richard Villegas on the right
captive audience!
For your enjoyment and perusal, here is the extract of what I read from Forest Dark, as well as some pictures of me and other morning readers (sorry all the rest of you Homo-Centrics, I had to leave early, though I’ve seen plenty of afternoon pix on Facebook):
Jim Arnold reading at West Hollywood Book Fair, 2011
The Novel’s called The Forest Dark. It’s about the relationship of a gay man, Noah, and his straight female friend, Eden, over the course of about 25 years.
At this point in the story they’ve been separated for most of that time — but Eden’s recently returned to LA for a job and they’ve reconnected in their 50s. This piece comes right after Noah takes a new job as a caretaker at Precious Blood, which is a Catholic retreat house owned by some nuns. Eden’s excited about an upcoming reality show taping, and she’s on the phone with him. The selection is told from Noah’s point of view:
START:
Eden had called twice before but he’d ignored her and only picked up on the third try. It was the stress level, he thought, already high from that first presentation group at Precious Blood.
Which went surprisingly well. It had to, as there was no way Noah could afford to lose this job.
“How did it go – your first day, right?” she asked.
He wondered if she was mocking him.
“No bad, not bad,” he said. “They gave me this gray shirt and pants to wear – like in prison.”
She was quiet. He read her quickly: Noah Baldock had shown so much potential, so much ambition when he was younger. This latest development was really just … depressing.
“Will you wear that on Louie’s show?”
He was making the final rounds of the property for the day, not only checking locks but also looking for anything out of order, a possible clue to something more sinister, the real value to his new employer.
“No one’s said anything about it to me one way or the other. Have you been given some wardrobe instructions, Eden?”
From the convent residence above where he stood, he could hear the nuns singing grace before dinner.
“Actually, this woman called me, said I should ‘reflect that New York social circle’ I run with!” She laughed. “I can’t believe we’re going to be on TV with all these kids!”
Noah took the stone steps down from the main level to the back door of his gatehouse. The scarlet bougainvillea on the property was overgrown and he pushed a branch out of the way. A thorn scraped along his forearm, making a nice, wet, red line.
“Fuck!”
“What’s wrong?” Eden asked.
Inside the small apartment, boxes were still stacked against the wall, though the computer on his desk hummed.
“I cut my arm,” he said, grabbing a towel to stanch the bleed.
“You OK?”
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“I can come over. Or, I could call Louie, he’s closer – ”
“I’M FINE!”
* * *
The Precious Blood gatehouse had a door built right into the outer wall, meant for packages and vendors and such, but equally useful for tricks, Noah figured.
He all but hung up on Eden. Noah was as angry with himself as he was with her – after all these years, still falling for her shit, being on the yanking end of that von Eiff chain.
Bitch should’ve stayed in New York, she’ll only fuck up everything Louie’s got going, he thought.
There was a little silver bell hung on the outside of this door, something an old nun would’ve thought heavenly. It rang.
This would be Mockingbird.
The dark-skinned, dark-haired man wore a black t-shirt and black jeans and black, ankle-high boots. The blue, green and yellow of a parrot tattoo on his forearm stood out as the only bit of color.
“Finally,” Noah said, pulling Mockingbird in by the arm so he could shut the door quickly.
“So – this is your new place,” the younger man said, taking it in, a thin smile on his handsome face.
Noah had “met” Mockingbird online, but his constant text-spelling mistakes proved problematic. He’d then run into him for real at the Eagle one night, and those earlier failings were forgotten.
Mockingbird was shorter and rougher; as far as Noah was concerned, the perfect friend with benefits. He didn’t even care if he never found out what his “real” name was, undoubtedly something mundane like Hector or Juan.
“You like it?”
The main floor was all one big room, with the kitchen set off by a sparkly, formica-covered “bar” someone must’ve added in the 1960s. At the far end, next to the bathroom and the door that led to the interior courtyard, was a narrow brick staircase leading up to the loft bedroom.
“It’ll take some getting used to,” Noah said, placing his hand against Mockingbird’s chest, his fingers a lazy circle in search of a nipple. “I was in the old place for almost 30 years.”
Mockingbird grabbed Noah’s forearm and squeezed it, hard. “Don’t remind me, you’re older than my father and I don’t want to think about that.” He twisted it, making Noah gasp. He used his other hand to push Noah’s shoulder down, forcing him to his knees.
Noah knew this script well. He pulled at the younger man’s belt buckle but had only got it part way undone when Mockingbird slapped him across the face.
“Not so fast, old man. You got your bed here somewhere, am I right?”
“It’s upstairs.”
“Sir.”
“It’s upstairs, sir.” His cheek smarted – but this was only the beginning.
Mockingbird pushed Noah up the steps and he tripped.
“Get your ass up there!” Mockingbird lifted him by his belt and shoved him further.
“Quiet, sir, I don’t want to disturb the nuns.”
“Fucking nuns, I’ll show your goddamn nuns!”
Noah could only pray that the hard slaps Mockingbird then delivered, along with his resulting sighs and yelps, got mixed in with traffic noise and the occasional helicopter flyovers. He couldn’t even begin to think what Octavia and her sisters would do if they knew what was going on.
After he let Mockingbird out an hour later, he ran a hot bath in the small tub, while Harry Connick, Jr. played the piano on a CD. Noah’s ass was red from the spanking he got and his butthole sore from Mockingbird’s aggressive fuck.
For once he didn’t care about Jivan or Eden or Louie’s stupid reality show. He sank back into the lilac bubbles and closed his eyes.
* * *
So dear reader, tell me: what do you do to keep the nuns from hearing your sex noises?
It’s good they are cleaning it up, it’s not so good it’s going to take so long, but I’m going to keep my fingers crossed and expect the results will be spectacular.
Echo Park and its lake figure quite prominently in my own L.A. history.
When I first moved to the city in 1981, Echo Park was given as the freeway exit to take to get me to my new apartment, rented sight unseen from Milwaukee. So, indeed, Echo Park Avenue was the first city street I ever drove on in L.A. if you don’t count the freeway.
At first, I used the circular path in the park as a running track. This didn’t last long, however, because so many of the local residents (at the time) brought their dogs, sans leash, who would chase me down without mercy. As much as I pleaded with the cholos friendly neighbors to observe the signs that said dogs should be on leashes, alas, I was ignored at best and threatened at worst. Vascular disease is yet another problem which plagues men cute-n-tiny.com buy levitra from canada constantly. The easiest way to cute-n-tiny.com generic levitra prices to find out if you or a family member would are eligible for one such programs by way of studying the section which says Personal Help. The allograft tissue isn’t cheap viagra like other grafts in that it comes from the patient. There could be several viagra australia online reasons that may be affecting your sexual health and wellbeing.
Since then, long since I stopped jogging, there have been picnics, first date strolls, and a couple of press conferences for a job I had (the park has an excellent backdrop view of the downtown L.A. skyline behind the fountains).
Whenever I cross over the park’s little bridge above the giant lily pads I think of Jake Gittes and the duplicitous older woman in “Chinatown” (Ida Sessions), who lived in an apartment court nearby.
He finds her murdered with her bag of groceries strewn across the floor. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there’s a couple of bodies dredged up in the sediment.
So, what are your memories, past/present, of Echo Park? I’d really like to hear all the dirt, separate from that being dredged from the lake bottom.
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