Sunday, September 25, 2011
L.A. Seens
Work brought me back to Los Angeles for a short time last week, and I wound up in an impregnable black Crown Vic tooling around various parts of town like a cop searching for clues, or a really good burrito. (failed on both counts, btw.) However, I did screen a few interesting frames of the long-playing IMAX that is Angel City, so I’ll share them here why shouldn’t I already?
West Westwood: Traffic is crawling on the big street in the shadow of the freeway. The door to an undistinguished office building opens and a tan, trim, beautiful woman emerges in a flattering LBD and three-inch heels. She traverses the walkway fronting the the building, where she encounters a tall leggy woman in a bright short red dress and candy-colored pumps. They stand chatting, golden in the golden light of the late afternoon, casual, thoughtless, almost otherworldly in their physical perfection. Ten feet away, on the underused sidewalk that runs along the edge of the clogged thoroughfare, an old man stands in a worn blue shirt that’s as wrinkled as his face. He is skinny and his posture is poor. His hands hang limply at his sides and his knees are slightly bent. He is staring at the women like a hungry man stares at food.
NoHo: Four men sit at a flimsy patio table under a blue canvas umbrella at night. Jeans and shorts, t-shirts and polos, sneakers and sandals, three clean-shaven, one with a mustache. They’re in their 30s and 40s and eating custom yogurts from the adjacent shoppe. Three hunch forward, red plastic spoons dipping into red cardboard cups; the mustache sits back in his metal mesh chair. He’s been talking loudly enough to cut into my own conversation, but when his voice drops I really start listening. “So… when they let me out, right away I got me two fifths and drank’em right down. Then - “ He flicks his glance back and forth around the stripmall parking lot at nothing in particular, and then leans forwards to get into the good part of his story. His voice has dropped so low that I can’t hear it anymore.
Echo Park: A shuttered tropical fish store, pale blue with big windows all painted over with pale blue paint, confined under pale blue-painted iron security screens wrought with simple curlicue designs. A desolate stretch of sidewalk in front is lit by a frowning overhead lamp. A man stands there, indecisive, overweight, alone: probably in his 20s, curly blonde hair, bushy mustache, baggy chinos, shabby grey t-shirt. He wanders to the curb and looks aimlessly up and down into the street. Then he ambles back, close to the building, and turns to face traffic again, as if waiting for the bus at a place that is not a bus stop.
Silverlake: A club painted dark maroon, its marquee sign disconcertingly bright and cheerful with colors straight off circus balloons. The open doorway is pitch black, leading in from a colorless sidewalk. Before the door stand four young women, four short skirts, eight long bare legs, four cleavages, eight proudly distinct breasts. Their clothes are variously satiny black, strawberry red, silver lame. Their hair is glossy and well-cut. One wears a shiny spangled conical party hat that sprinkles reflections randomly into the night, casting a long pointed shadow away from the glare of the marquee. Twenty feet away, a young man stands alone - dark hair, olive skin, tucked-out button-up shirt, frozen on the sidewalk, gazing longingly over his shoulder at them.
Pershing Square: A naked man lies in a queen-sized bed. It’s late and traffic on the street outside has died off; each car revving its way up the hill three floors below his windows is distinctly audible. There’s built-in cabinetry opposite the bed, with big empty architectural sections that make the room feel under-furnished though nothing is actually missing. Dave Alvin is playing on the portable mini-speakers he’s plugged into his cellphone; a single nightstand lamp illuminates the room a bit more brightly than necessary. He refills his plastic cup with the dregs of a 24-oz can of Negra Modello that’s still in the flimsy black plastic bag in which he received it earlier that night at a sketchy liquor store in Hollywood. He starts writing another paragraph in his little book of words.
That was enough fun for one trip, I suppose, but I’m not even getting into the dol sot bi bim bap, the tasty fried tacos, the massive Pantry breakfast, the incredible array of multicolored macaroons, the $12 shots of bourbon at the hotel where the Academy Awards were first Academy awarded, the sketchy homeless guy being photographed by the college kid on the bus.... and while I was away the contract I’ve been negotiating for the past four years was finally ratified. Next time, maybe I’ll do up a few local SF vignettes for variety’s sake. For now, you’ll have to be satisfied with that. I was.
