Category: Uncategorized

Westwood Memory (I may have posted this before)

Some time in the late 1980s I was in Westwood Village, which is the part of L.A. just south of UCLA. It had been a big entertainment district, the place to be on Friday and Saturday Night, but was in a steep decline. Most of the fancy stores and restaurants had gone, things were dirty, and most of the pedestrians were lost souls. I was among them, since I was taking the bus from my unsuccessful psychotherapist back to my grimy Hollywood apartment.

It was maybe 9 pm, cold and blustery, and the first drops of rain were moistening the blowing trash so it stuck to people and objects unpleasantly. Coming up towards the bus stop, I came upon this scene:

In the doorway to an office building, one of the local homeless poor had set up camp. He was about 35, dressed in what had once been a decent suit which was torn and stained and shedding buttons. He himself had a mop of blonde hair and a dirty face wreathed in a joyous smile. He had a boom box going full blast and was singing along lustily, with a cap on the ground in hopes that someone would reward this piece of impromptu street karaoke.

The song he was performing? Barry Manilow’s 1976 hit “Looks Like We Made It“.

I still wonder about that guy. He certainly wasn’t seeing the dingy, damp, urban failure in front of him, or the RTD bus or the other bums or me in my jeans & jacket & backpack looking at him in horror. He was in heaven, maybe onstage in Vegas. Maybe he even was Barry. Looks like we maaaaaaaade it! I wonder what happened to him?

Elliot Valenstein, the history of lobotomy, and more

“Physicians get neither name nor fame by the pricking of wheals or the picking out thistles, or by laying of plaisters to the scratch of a pin; every old woman can do this. But if they would have a name and a fame, if they will have it quickly, they must do some great and desperate cures.” —John Bunyan

Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness

Interview with Elliot Valenstein on the History of Lobotomy

Elliot Valenstein’s page at umich

The War of the Soups and Sparks, The Discovery of Neurotransmitters and the Dispute Over How Nerves Communicate, by Elliot Valenstein.

hurray for springheel_jack!

I just got in the mail from him two books: Graham Greene’s Journey Without Maps and Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato.

The Greene is wonderfully gloomy. Mr. G heads off to Liberia in the late thirties and wallows in the horrors of colonialism. Not only are things completely fucked-up, but reading it now I know how much worse they got. All of the gloom is worth it, though, for his prose.

Going After Cacciato is a wonderful novel that I read when it came out. I haven’t had my own copy (I read my dad’s) and hadn’t re-read it since, although I have recommended it to others. It’s a picaresque journey/magic realist fantasy set during the Vietnam war, but that doesn’t do it justice at all.

Thanks Nat! That was really cool of you!

The cars he used to drive

My father was a true Southern California, born in Pasadena in 1921. Like everyone else he was car-crazy. Later in life after living in Europe he became crazy for tiny little European sports cars.

He made this list for a piece he wrote in the Los Angeles Times late in life in which he talked about the cars he’d owned. He was astonished at how many there were, and especially at how many enjoyable sports cars he had as a graduate student. I personally got to drive the ’67 MG (he says it’s a ’68 which I think is a mistake), which was a delight; he didn’t get rid of it until the 1980s sometime. The 1990 Volvo my mother still has. I inherited both T-Birds in series.

The Fiat station wagon famously died by dumping its engine on Irvine Avenue with a uniquely Italian flair. I wish he’d kept any of the cars before that. Wow, what a list! The Renaults were, of course, purchased in France and all the Italian cars when he was living in Italy.

  1. ’30 Ford Model A phaeton
  2. ’30 Ford Model A 2-door touring car
  3. ’36 Ford V-8 coupé
  4. ’30 Olds coupé
  5. ’47 Crosley
  6. ’38 Lincoln touring convertible
  7. ’40 Chevrolet coupé
  8. ’47 MG-TC
  9. ’51 Sunbeam Talbot
  10. ’48 Morris Minor convertible
  11. ’51 Morris Minor sedan
  12. ’52 MG-TD
  13. ’55 Austin Healey
  14. ’56 MG Magnette
  15. ’60 Chevrolet Corvair
  16. ’58 Chevrolet station wagon
  17. ’59 Alfa Romeo Giuletta Sprint coupé
  18. ’62 Fiat 600
  19. ’60 Fiat 1800 station wagon
  20. ’70 Opel Kadett statio wagon
  21. ’73 Volvo 144
  22. ’67 MGB-GT
  23. ’77 Renault 6TL
  24. ’70 Jaguar XJ
  25. ’84 Ford Thunderbird
  26. ’87 Renault II
  27. ’90 Volvo 740 sedan
  28. ’91 Renault 19 Chamade
  29. ’93 Ford Thunderbird LX

If you’re interested in the document we found in the files, a scan is behind the cut like so

Long story short it’s supposed to STAY in third gear unless you shift

My car is down for the count, needs a new transmission. Won’t have it back until next Thursday. Thank goodness that Freddy at Tustin Acura is giving me a loaner car, and that this is all under warranty and won’t cost me more than $50. I wonder what a transmission replacement at the dealer would cost otherwise? Shudder.

Thank you for being a cool guy, Freddy at Tustin Acura.

I’m glad no one does the Friday Five any more

  1. Hey everybody! If you have, indeed, never been mellow, soft rock is now back! This is totally awesome news in that I had yet to find a use for my 100 rounds of Federal Hydra-Shok .40 hollowpoint ammunition.
  2. Hey everybody! There really weren’t any ninjas. Sorry. Big old fake.
  3. ROBOT GUINEA PIG? ROBOT GUINEA PIG!
  4. I hope none of you local kids are pals with Logan here, since the Register reports he got taken in last night with 2 pounds of weed and a kilo of shrooms.
  5. And this just in from wearescott: it’s the ultimate AMERICA FUCK YEAH BURGER!