Category: Uncategorized

Motorcycle club fear

Dear Internet:

I was driving down Western Avenue in Los Angeles last night and a biker guy pulled into traffic ahead of me on his large Harley.

He was wearing the colors of the Chosen Few Motorcycle Club, which is an old school black west coast outfit I’d heard of.

He was also wearing a FULL FACE SHINY METAL GRINNING SKULL DEATH MASK.

I have questions.

Do these guys often wear shiny skull masks?

If not, was he wearing the skull mask for a special occasion like an initiation or baby shower?

If not, was he wearing the mask in order to go do some crimes?

If not, was he wearing the mask because he’s a complete goofball and does stuff like this all the time and the other guys are all “there goes Eugene again!”

If not, was he perhaps not an African-American motorcycle club member at all but one of the numberless army of the dead who walk the earth until the end of days who decided to motorcycle instead of walking?

I thank you for your attention to this matter.

howl (slight return)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by marketing, whining hypocritical baked, driving themselves through suburban streets at lunch looking for angry fries, blackglasses hipsters moping for the newest beeping connection to the media death star in the machinery of night, who privilege and misery and hollow-eyed high sat up smoking in the supernatural glow of high-speed internet buying every new dead idea contemplating not

Regency

The word implies aristocracy, wealth, romance, opulence, and a continuous social scene of balls and parties and comings-out. The legacy of ten thousand Jane Austen imitators has made a million prides and prejudices into a story form called simply “a Regency.” And the frothy effortless wealth implied in that word has glued it to every kind of product: cars, air fresheners, pet foods, mobile home parks, bathroom tile, insurance plans. For a whole generation it was the noise that meant luxury and sophistication in a perfectly generic context.

The other night I was taking the long way home down Pickering in Whittier and saw this place: http://rcci.org/

It is a religious organization that started as a church and is now an entire complex, what we call a “mega-church.” As usual it is a charismatic Protestant Christian organization. The church inhabits a working-class town with a broadly diverse population.

My guess is that “Regency” got put on their name in the beginning because it just sounded good. The name suggests success and respect. I doubt anyone meant to suggest that the church would consist of a series of fancy balls in which young ladies and young gentlemen would waltz and exchange witticisms over ices and champagne. I don’t think they use Regencies as texts in Bible study, either. It’s probably just a bit of American class-conscious marketing languages seeping in.

But what would it be like if the church was based on an actual theological regency? God is somehow incapacitated, and Jesus is too young to run the Universe. So we’ll just help out, here, and run things on behalf of the kid until he’s ready. It may take a while! Lord knows it’s complicated running everything and he’s barely sitting up in his crib.

This is going well. Let’s throw some parties! Lots of them! Bring out the champagne and ices!

Being God’s regent in Whittier, California might not be such a bad gig. But I don’t think I’ll suggest it to the pastor. He and his wife seem settled enough with their current theology.

A series of lists

  1. Things I observed taking the long way home from downtown through southeast Los Angeles today
    • Norms Restaurant with neon failure renaming it NOMS
    • Burger joint with neon failure resulting in BUGERS
    • Small business offering INTERNET AND COMPUTER HELP $2/HR WEB / MESSENGER / MYSPACE
    • Cop trying to fix his own cop car
    • One out of five businesses of any kind offering free wi-fi
  2. Things I lost today and then recovered
    • My wallet, which fell out of my pants and then under my car in the garage at work. Found during trip back to garage from office.
    • A credit card, which fell out of the wallet as the wallet fell out of my pants, arriving at a point under the car eight inches further. Found during second, more frustrated trip to garage.
    • A check worth way more than I can afford to lose, found in wrong envelope in small stack of things to throw away on seat of car.
    • Sunglasses (TWICE)
  3. Things heard on the emergency services radio on my scanner in the last week
    • Robbery with suspect being sought: six foot three male wearing oversized foam cowboy hat and carrying (stolen) inflatable parrot toy
    • Fire consisting of a “fully involved roll of toilet paper”
    • The Rodriguez brothers again
    • Person returning once again to store where he had stolen the same thing six times
  4. Phrases I heard at the Harbor & Adams Starbucks on the way home
    • “Standing in the studs”
    • “The Asian lady at the post office was particularly durable”
    • “Street monster”
    • “It was like I just kept flipping over rocks and seeing the same bugs each time”

Breaking news is neither

All the news services offer BREAKING NEWS ALERTS sent to my email or phone. I am a sucker for these things, because I think they will provide only the real zingers, and right away.

Unfortunately they never work. What I want is JAPAN INVADES AGAIN or PRESIDENT REVEALED AS FREDONIAN AGENT or AIDS CURED.

What do I get? The resignation of athletic coaches, the leaked possibility of the announcement of some politician’s retirement, some celebrity did something, someone who has been decrepit for a decade dies, Christmas occurs.

With a moment’s thought it is clear how this happens. Someone says “we shall have breaking news alerts” and everyone knows what this means; it means the big stories I want. There are not very many of these. Maybe none for months! Meanwhile they notice that each one of these alerts creates a crapload of traffic to the website.

Eventually the marketing people will lobby for more frequent alerts, and they will start adding less shocking stories, and it will get more watered down. Finally there will be an “alert cycle” that is nearly a schedule, and someone will sell ad packages including the alerts. At this point not as many people rush to the site after an alert, but it’s still more than typical traffic, and that is what counts.

And that is also why someday Christmas will last six months.

In better news, I had a hell of a good plate of brown rice with saffron tonight.

How are you all?

Annual winter holiday repost

From E.B. White, 1952.

From this high midtown hall, undecked with boughs, unfortified with mistletoe, we send forth our tinselled greetings as of old, to friends, to readers, to strangers of many conditions in many places. Merry Christmas to uncertified accountants, to tellers who have made a mistake in addition, to girls who have made a mistake in judgment, to grounded airline passengers, and to all those who can’t eat clams! We greet with particular warmth people who wake and smell smoke. To captains of river boats on snowy mornings we send an answering toot at this holiday time. Merry Christmas to intellectuals and other despised minorities! Merry Christmas to the musicians of Muzak and men whose shoes don’t fit! Greetings of the season to unemployed actors and the blacklisted everywhere who suffer for sins uncommitted; a holly thorn in the thumb of compilers of lists! Greetings to wives who can’t find their glasses and to poets who can’t find their rhymes! Merry Christmas to the unloved, the misunderstood, the overweight. Joy to the authors of books whose titles begin with the word “How” (as though they knew!). Greetings to people with a ringing in their ears; greetings to growers of gourds, to shearers of sheep, and to makers of change in the lonely underground booths! Merry Christmas to old men asleep in libraries! Merry Christmas to people who can’t stay in the same room with a cat! We greet, too, the boarders in boarding houses on 25 December, the duennas in Central Park in fair weather and foul, and young lovers who got nothing in the mail. Merry Christmas to people who plant trees in city streets; merry Christmas to people who save prairie chickens from extinction! Greetings of a purely mechanical sort to machines that think–plus a sprig of artificial holly. Joyous Yule to Cadillac owners whose conduct is unworthy of their car! Merry Christmas to the defeated, the forgotten, the inept; joy to all dandiprats and bunglers! We send, most particularly and most hopefully, our greetings and our prayers to soldiers and guardsmen on land and sea and in the air–the young men doing the hardest things at the hardest time of life. To all such, Merry Christmas, blessings, and good luck! We greet the Secretaries-designate, the President-elect; Merry Christmas to our new leaders, peace on earth, good will, and good management! Merry Christmas to couples unhappy in doorways! Merry Christmas to all who think they are in love but aren’t sure! Greetings to people waiting for trains that will take them in the wrong direction, to people doing up a bundle and the string is too short, to children with sleds and no snow! We greet ministers who can’t think of a moral, gagmen who can’t think of a joke. Greetings, too, to the inhabitants of other planets; see you soon! And last, we greet all skaters on small natural ponds at the edge of woods toward the end of afternoon. Merry Christmas, skaters! Ring, steel! Grow red, sky! Die down, wind! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good morrow!

My Holiday Wish For All, Damnit

Hi there.

As snowflakes fall on happy little upturned faces and the wassail bowl is flung down decked halls, our minds turn inevitably to how everything is going to hell on hot greased rails. Therefore, here’s my holiday wish for the world:

1. Spend less time raging at the extremes, trolls, and obviously manufactured non-issues you see on the television. Shun Sarah Palins, ACORNs, that crazy thing about the President dad sent in email, and Michael Moore. Almost none of it matters, and the people repeating it have no love for you.

2. Instead, look around where you live. Find out what’s right and wrong with your town and your neighborhood. Look up who runs things and get to know those people better. Find the local charities and political action groups and see what can be fixed or encouraged locally. It’s way harder to be BS’d when you can see what’s happening, and way more rewarding to see change.

3. Pay more attention to your local political representatives and their opponents. Encourage what’s good and discourage what’s bad to them, early and often. It’s the best way to deal with the pain of #1.

4. Lose an argument now and then. No, really.

Ho ho ho,

substitute