The city from my view.

A pulse on a vibrant Megalopolis.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

High Above Hag Hideaway

Great Horned Owl blinked his plastic eyes, turned his head completely around and then flew into the air. He rose higher and higher over the hood looking down on Hag Hideaway. His camera for a brain swept the area below, snapping shots of all there was to see.

Deep in Hag Hideaway, a lone light shone from a window. Dim and yellow, its energy could only light one small part of Hag Manor. Great Horned Owl peered further to see only Hag near the lamp of yellow light. She was reading while laying in a small bed inside a tiny room in back of Hag Manor. There was only the turning of pages of a great book.

The book was so large that Hag had to support it on her thin bony body and reach up to turn the pages. A book on spells and sorcery. How to call dragons and brew storms. When to plant hemlock and thick thorny brambles.

Hag has no cat or dog, she has no chickens or goats. Hag has lizards. Wily lizards that tuck in her sheets and bring her berries from other lands. Hag feeds them with two fingers that hold a morsel at the spiked end of her long nails.

The lizards grab it and run off while others wait their turn. Hag turns another page and watched a spider as it crawled back to the center to spread the pages apart so Hag could read.

Great Horned Owl said to stay away from Hag Hideaway, keep out of Hag Manor and to give Hag eggs and flea spray whenever she asked for it. It would be better that way than what wrath Hag might bring for being stingy with her. I agreed.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Hag Hideaway

For many years Hag lived behind fences, shrubs and trees. She preferred dark shade and rust to light and flowers. Hag though, recently within the last two years had most of the trees and shrubs cut or removed. It exposed an eclectic yard of abandoned cars and structures. Hag had let the light in which started her undoing.

Now exposed, Hag's appearance was noticeable. Bony to the extreme with missing teeth and those left, precariously exposed beneath the receding gum line. Hag's dress is plain and simple as most hags are and with little note other than a cotton print cloth in a handmade fashion. Hags skin hangs  from her bony frame as if once it was saturated with muscle but now that that has left, only the crepe paper crinkle of skin is there to drape her frame. It is lined with veins and spotted with age. Hag's hair hangs around her shoulders, gray, dead and lifeless. No bounce, or highlights, like seaweed on a knot of driftwood drying in the sun.

Sometimes there have been scenes with, what I assume, are relatives of one sort or another. People who called to her to come out, to open her wood gate and let them in. Pleas even but they have stopped now for some time and I haven't seen the daughter of Hag for quite a while. A bit more kept than Hag, but not by much. In fact, at first, it was hard to tell who of the two was Hag.

Now there is a quietness to the place between the Western Bunker and the house of Village Idiot. A deep quiet that lets no sound in or out. The webs of spiders, spun day after day, collect here and there to begin the cycle of darkness for Hag. She has, as far as I know, survived now on a can of flea spray and six eggs. Not being sure how long a hag can survive on that, I would say for quite some time it appears.

Tonight the Great Horned Owl with the camera for a brain will fly high overhead and report what is sees. Great Horned Owl can see many things we cannot. And if life at Hag Hideaway is still there, Great Horned Owl will see and know.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Victory

It was cool for the first twenty miles. Small rolling hills out to Aguora and then, as we rode toward the North Ranch area the sun began to peek around gray clouds. Jack was near on each of the climbs. I could hear his labored breathing until he gave. I felt victory in my veins, a small payback from years of being passed. But there were yet steeper and longer climbs ahead and after the Starbucks break came the first, Erbs.

He made no move to the front, even with my slow pace waiting to see what he would do, he made no move. But on the next climb, at Wood Ranch, he passed early. I came up on his tail at the end of the climb, he had a smile on his face that didn't bother me. We had to go through Simi Valley and to the Santa Sue climb. The longest and hardest of all the climbs. We rested before the climb with a soda and refill of our water bottles. Jack pulled out a plastic squeeze bottle of honey and squirted a good mouthful in in just before we left. Once the climb started, after the first steep section Jack once again passed but now, stayed about forty yards ahead. I waited.

As the miles went on into the climb I could see him tiring, each time I gained, he had to shift and spin, shift and spin, until near the top I went to a harder gear and swiftly passed before I went to the big chain ring and made distance between me and Jack.

When he pulled up to me on the other side of the climb, he said,"You certainly got a shot of adrenaline at the end there."

"Yeah, I sure did," I said with a smile on my face.

Ah, victory. Sweeter than honey.

Friday, August 27, 2010

You In The Cheap Seats Stop Clapping

There is something to be said for paying for a better seat at the Hollywood Bowl. Not for listening to the music, it's so that you can listen to the music.

For the last two Thursdays, a woman shows up with a male partner and they sit near us. They have a little folding table and an electric candle to place on the table. That's okay, weird but okay. She has some kind of lung condition, in that there are few moments she isn't hacking her lungs up. At one point, during a particular rough batch of hacking, she farted. Yep, a real ripper. But that's not all, she unwraps things, constantly unwrapping one cellophane product after another and hacking with an occasional fart thrown in.

It was a night of flouting flute music with Sir James Galway and his wife playing and near the end of the performance he played, Danny Boy which Mr. Galway introduced with a joke. "If you want, you can say a little prayer while listening. And you know what that will get you. Nothing"

I loved the joke and really liked hearing him play Danny Boy, it's just that I wanted to set the coughing farter on fire while listening to one of the sweetest pieces of music there is.

Sir James Galway, when he announced what he was going to play got a roaring ovation from the cheap seats and that brought out another of his zingers, "You in the cheap seats, stop clapping."

I know what he meant. The unwashed, the rowdy, fart-sneezing-package-unwrappers-bottle-tippers can't stop making noise. Even the people who shush the noise makers make noise. And if it isn't a fucking cough-and-fart woman, it's a damn plane or helicopter droning over head.

Ah, yes, the cheap seats, all the farting coughing you can get for a buck-fifty.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Are You Being Served?

The caddie has been acting a bit ill. After spending almost a thousand on repair so the old girl could past the smog test, we thought it should run very well but it doesn't. The caddie has this hesitation when you step on the gas, especially when the engine is cold.

A friend, riding in the car one night said, "Just get a cleaner for the gas, one full tank and the cleaner will get rid of that."

So we went to a local auto store. There were practically no customers in the store, or for that matter, any store, the heat was horrendous today. A man behind the counter asked if he could help.

"I'm looking for something that you add to your gas and it cleans the engine, a friend of mine said to try it."

"How do you know that you need it?"

"I don't, I just thought I would try it before going to the mechanic."

"Has the mechanic replaced your gas filter?"

"I really can't say, he did replace everything for it to pass smog inspection."

"Well, you should look at your receipt and see if he replaced the gas filter."

"I guess I should, but I thought I try this first."

"If it doesn't work, you'll be back in here, yelling your head off that I sold you a bogus product."

"Trust me, I won't do that. If it doesn't work I'll take it to the mechanic."

"When were you last at your mechanic?"

"Just earlier this month, and spent a bundle for the caddie to pass muster."

"You spent a bundle and you don't know if he replaced the gas filter?"

"I was happy to pass the smog."

"What year is the car?"

"89 I think."

"You don't know?"

"I don't know shit about cars. I know how to drive one and that's about it. Do you have a product called STP I think that's what my friend said to get."

He took me to a wide array of products, some made by a company called STP. "Well here they are but, like I said, if it doesn't work you'll be in here screaming that I sold you a bogus product."

I thought I would never, ever come back to his store, no matter if it worked or not, but seeing the size of the man, I thought who in their right mind would argue with him and grabbed one that cleaned everything, even the windows.

The product seemed to work. After adding it to the gas tank and filling up, by the time I was home the problem had stopped. But who knows? Tonight is the Hollywood Bowl and I can see the fat-ass caddie holding up a line of traffic to make the Beijing gridlock look like a daisy chain.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Cops and Guns, Oh My!

This morning came the hover craft, the cop helicopter that comes in low and circles its prey. The blades, that close, beat loud enough that you can feel the sound. It drove Millie into the house and me into the front yard to see what in hell was happening now in the hood.

There was a squad car parked in front of the house in the middle of the street and two cops, one male, one female, got out and advanced slowly down the street. They walked in the street and get this, at the time of rush hour traffic. Do you think the fucking asshole drivers that use our street to cut off a wait at the light would fucking slow down?

Fuck. No. I was surprised they didn't just swerve but  didn't honk the hell out of their fucking horns for the inconvenience when they went around the squad car. Morons, really, I mean you come up on a squad car with its lights on stopped in the middle of a neighborhood street with two cops walking slowly in front of their car and you would think they would register alarm. Fuck that, they have to get to some miserable fucking job as if their life depended on it. They swerved and sped on.

Some old guy came out of a house down the street. He talked with the cops and another cruiser came up and they talked, then--everybody left.

The fucking commuters could go back to commuting and the hood settled down to some hot, mid-west sultry weather. The action did drive the young piano player guy that lives in the Palace next door out to see, 'Whass Up?' Daddy told me once that his brother's son played the piano. They have a shit load of people living in their Middle Eastern Palace, and the kid actually came out of the fucking house, that I know of, in two years they been living there to take a look at the hood.

Snob too, not interested at all in talking about dick size or crochet, let alone raising chickens. Fuck'em.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Wicked Heat

I'm watering chickens and the yard. So far, both are holding their own. The heat is bone dry and the two misters attached to fans in the patio are working well, close to 110 in the shade, it is only 96 under the patio roof. When the fan comes by, blowing the fine spray from the misters, it feels like you're at the ocean, except as soon as the fan rotates, then it dries quickly--very quickly. Yet, for a moment, there is a cool, slightly damp feel as it passes.

Millie is in her element. She loves the heat, cheap fur coat on and all, that girl lays herself out and catnaps to her heart's content in the patio, both of us on the hammock.

Every morning, Millie lays against the length of my bare back, I can feel her soft fur and warm presence in the early morning hours before I wake. Once I get the paper, we settle in the patio for a read with coffee. Millie, however, wants some play time and the paper is as good to get my attention as anything else. She prefers to sit on the front page, So I choose another section to start with and when I want to read what she is toying with, I have to play. Or, scratch her ears and under her chin.

At the end of next month is two weeks at the beach. A place to forget the furnace type heat that can and does boil up here in the San Fernando Valley. But Millie likes the hot days and that makes it okay by me.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

A Beast in the Field

Searching for ripe tomatoes yesterday, I came across a shocking site. There on the ground, half ate was a big, at one time, yellow tomato. I don't know what tomato it is, it came up all on its own but the flesh is delicious and apparently some wandering beast thinks so as well. It can't be squirrels, they take a bite and go to the next. This was half gone, a raccoon or possum perhaps, there are possums about the place. It could be a raccoon, I hope not, they're big trouble and then too rats. I'm not sure about the rats though, I think Millie would have something to say about a rat hanging around.

It could be Daddy or Mean Queen, the tomato plant came up right at the new wood fence that separates the palace from us. Daddy wants us to go in on half the cost for a cement wall to replace the new wood one. Someone like that would eat a half of tomato and throw the rest down. I'll have to check his bite the next time he tries to talk me into actually going half on his palace wall. I'll look where his teeth line up on his lying lips.

"The cost would be very expensive, don't you think?" I asked when he cornered me at the car.
"Oh no, not expensive." He said in his broken spit-gibberish  accented English.

This comes from a neighbor that can't pay for regular garden service. The lawn, what's left of it, has dry brown patches with areas of high growing weeds. He corners some hapless gardener working in the hood to cut his lawn on occasion. I can see what he has in mind, something comforting like the wall that surrounds Israel, keeping the peasant population of Palestinians separate. Ugly and cheap, it wouldn't survive the first temblor. And I bet the bastard would ask me for half the repair.

Yep, he ate half of the fucking yellow tomato. I know it.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Queers for Guns Club

There was a lull for a few days, not much to target into except for the occasional wasp. Mom was afraid of missing a wasp but I wasn't. Kill baby Kill, the Palin's motto, I can see now the allure of guns. And for less than five dollars a gun, this takes killing to a new level and with retrievable bullets. I told Mom that shooting wasps has a special thrill, but it's a must to find the body of the stinging beast, lest you step on it later.

Mom stuck to the flies. And happily we chatted, killed and ate. Typical afternoon activity in the patio waiting out the heat. The flies seemed to have dropped off. We thought we might have gone too far. We possibly have wiped out the fly population for a radius of a hundred yards. With the fly trap next to the chicken coop, it takes in thousands of the varmints, and us, the 'Queers for Guns' club, we have, so I thought, decimated the fly population.

They are clever beasts, the flies. But we have guns.

The wasp population began to falter and I choose moths, but they only fly at night and usually land on light bulbs, a difficult but do-able target. Then the flies returned. They came right and left. Reload after reload was shot at the fly squadron. They fell  from patio chairs and glass tables. They littered the floor with dead, flightless bodies. We shot at them in mid-air, difficult but the Queers for Guns have tasted what the Gun lobby has told all of us. Killing is fun. Kill baby kill. We see something in common with the Pailins outside of the hot body on Levi Johnston. The Palins have his balls hanging in the trophy room.

We, the Queer for Guns, have put fear into the hearts of flies.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Back In The Saddle Again

The pills the doc gave me seem to work. A booster for the thyroid to get it to kick into gear. About twelve pounds down and a whole lot more energy. Well at least I can keep my own on a hill climb. Now if there was a pill for ego.

There was a day I was king of the mountain, but age and apparently a bad thyroid took its toll and people began to pass with one leg tied behind their saddle. The worm has turned and even with the hot weather, I'm doing okay, holding my own.

We're having a heat wave. It's suppose to last in to next week. The chickens are doing all right with the heat too. The garden isn't so hotsy-totsy but its hanging in there. Maybe we can give the planet a pill for all that ails it. Like a meteoroid.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Mexican Monkey's Cha Cha Car

It's big, fast and butch. Mexican Monkey sits pretty behind the wheel, cruising the boulevard in his new truck. Paid for by the sweat of the peasants who adoringly call him, "Patron." Especially when they want a paycheck.

The Patron pays well and at the end of the day, after designing T-Shirts for the next Swap Meet, he climbs behind the wheel of a big fat fucking American truck and turns the key. Mexican Monkey hears the roar of eight cylinders, sees above all and turns on his stereo speakers to Lady GaGa.

The thrill of it all and with his latest, "I just came from Juarez" shirt and boots, looks absolutely epic when he steps into a Cantina. The latest young lads look toward Mexican Monkey and someone in the crowd whispers, "It's the Patron, Mia Madre."

A hush falls and then the four foot seven Inca dwarf walks forward. Mexican Monkey is now in his element, they know him as the, Patron, He who blesses with jobs and money and He who takes away when you don't put out.

"Patron! Patron!" They cry, their eyes diverted down as he walks by. He inspects their booty before he chooses the favored. Ah, the life of a Mexican Monkey, it is good.

Monday, August 16, 2010

The Alley Hag

At the gate in the back alley was an old woman saying "Hello?"
It took a few time before I heard it and went to the gate. Practically toothless and bone thin, she had on a plain dress and looked distressed.

I asked her if she needed help, and yes she did need help. Someone had left a cat or cats at her house and now she had fleas and on top of that, her daughter was in the hospital. She lives between Village Idiot and the Western Bunker.

I gave her a can of flea spray and some eggs, after she admired the chickens. Since then, I haven't seen her. I'm not sure if she used the flea spray, or the fleas got her, or she sprayed the eggs and ate them.

But Hags have a way of living on, I think, someday soon, the old hag will come knocking on my back gate once again.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Dead Eye Dick

One night, recently, while drinking beer and swattin' flies, missing most with a handled fly swatter, I remembered a contraption called a fly gun. It is a fly swatter propelled by a spring action toy gun. The string keeps the fly swatting part from flying too far and retrieval easy. It is also lethal on flies. An Internet site led me to them, all the way from South Africa and post was included, four fly guns for less than twenty and the postal stamps were really cool.

And such fun. Hitting flies when they land is okay but we have advanced to hitting them on the fly. Like skeet shooting, only the target is now doing circles. It has a retrievable projectile, with an advanced system of string tied to the gun and the other end tied to the rod that propels the weapon of death on hapless, if not extremely annoying Musca domestica. But the insect is not crushed, leaving the fly swatting web clean of fly gunk. In fact there are wounded to deal with. Flies stunned or crippled begging to have their lights out. A quick reload, a crushing slam and the fly, flies no more.

I'm finding the summer absolutely delightful. Cold beer at hand, fans with misters attached, stand at each end of the patio and me, sitting in the shade, writing, drinking and shooting flies. I feel, that I just turned a corner in my life. I have found a place in the cosmos.

To deal out life or death, while never leaving my chair, is an exhilarating experience and as the day grows warm and beer flows, I sit with sinister desire waiting for a chance to nail one of the bastards. Far better yet, when friends arrive is to get them involved in the carnage. We ordered enough fly guns from Africa for a platoon of, Dead Eye Dicks. I'll need to order more, flies keep coming, we keep reloading and with a steady supply of cold beer and a laptop--heaven awaits those on the short end of the string.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Car Club Night

It seemed like a good night for Big Boy hamburgers, tasty and Bob's has a damn good milk shake too. But on Friday night, it's also when Bob's Big Boy has a car club gathering. Which is a good thing, at least for me. Lots of crazy people sharing the same interest carousing about while one of the best burgers are available.

Now, the cars were fascinating. All creatures of their creators that parade around the restaurant similar to a clutch of chickens. The males strut, their protruding guts that once were flat, stick out from the bottom of their club shirts. As Shakespeare once wrote, "That fine capon line," of maturity.

The vehicles were incredible works of chrome and flashy paint. The things that dick-people will do to promote their dicks--their maleness. Cute in a sort of savage way, and if they knew in the midst of them was a queer cyclist with his husband, we might have been stomped. I think though, they were more upset about the Cadillac's poor condition. Crack windshield, and very dirty, parked right next to the show case car. Well, next time don't park next to the handicapped stall for two guys that don't give a shit about cars but are interested in they guys that drive them.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

If it's Thursday it Must be Bowl-Night

The Hollywood Bowl awaits us on Thursday. Every Thursday, for years now, during the season of the Bowl, we manage to get ourselves to see the Thursday night concert. In early days we did so by climbing two mountain ranges, crossing a major highway, without assistance of a light or stop sign and traversing a long underground tunnel filled with music, open hats and incense laden air. That's before the long walk up to the seats.

Then the underground came to town and we went by subway and bus. Very Metro but it required a race back to the bus after the performance. If you missed the first bus to the Kodak Center, you had to wait until the last person exits the Bowl before the bus leaves. There are only two buses that go back to the Kodak Center, or you walk back which is all down hill to get the underground.

Now we have handicap parking. Ah, the handicap, those madcap-fun-loving geezers. Cranky--they make a prostituting transsexual look saintly when they open their mouths. "Don't park so close to my car. I'm handicapped."
"Oh, yeah? Well what do you think I use this cane for? Other than to shove up your ass. And you're not handicapped.You're just damn ugly. If you had any decency, you would put a cloth bag over your head the next time you go public."

I love them and the wicked race to the go-carts. Carts that haul fat-ass crutch people around the Bowl. The cripple geezers ply the drivers with drugs from their Medi-Care bag to beat the other go-cart. Or threaten the driver with raised walkers over their heads that if they loose they will plummet them harder than Sarah Palin's four inch stilettos can crush Levi Johnston's balls.

It is so bad that they now barricade the entrance to the handicap parking area. You drive up, show them your placard AND that you bought handicap parking before they remove the barrier and let you in. When you see the attendants wearing flak jackets and jock straps for ice hockey goalies, you know that these geezers are to be feared.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

A Fly in the Ointment

On the second cup of coffee, pouring the non-fat cream in the rich brew, a fly bobbed up among the clouds. Flies are a fact of life here and pretty much everywhere else. Mom, she'll throw the cup out, wash or get a new cup and refill--if she has the stomach still. At least that was the scenario before she took forensic's for cops. She got an A+ in blood spatter, we're so proud of her. But now will come the test of, flies in the ointment, when one lands on what she is going to put in her mouth. She did raise some recently in her closet. A scoop of dead person in a jar, then wait to see how long the scoop of dead become maggots and finally, flies.

I considered a new cup myself. The thought was there until I realized I would have to make another pot if I wanted a full cup of coffee. With a flick of the finger, out went the fly. A trick taught to me by an uncle when I was twelve. He used it on bird shit in his beer. We had a large Chinese Cypress in the backyard the birds loved and so did we on hot summer days. Sparrow shit is flickable. When it comes to birds larger than that, you have a problem.

The coffee wasn't as pleasant as I had hoped. It was a necessary drug however for waking up. Tomorrow, Mom is coming. She is in a dilemma over her gay grandchild's need to grow his fingernails long and her son's ultra conservative religiosity and his need to have the boy cut them to a manly length.

Oh, those manly men. I can see him now towering over his beautiful child, "What are you? Some kind of Girly-man?

Mom is standing by, trained in the art of the Fey, and will protect this little one from the Manly-Man and his un-holy ways.

Friday, August 6, 2010

The Palace Cypress are Sick. Very--Very Sick

The Great Horned Owl, with a camera brain, circled above the Palace. The Cypress fence is in distress. One sapling is dead and the others don't look good. Great Horned Owl took another shit. The package landed right on another stupid fucking cypress sapling.

I think it's going to die.

Now that August is upon us, the lawn at the Palace ain't lookin' too good either. And why should it? Months of not mowing, allowing the grass to seed and what happens once an annual is allowed to seed? It dies.

No need to mow now, the weeds have infested the land at the Palace gates. Sturdy, hardy weeds that could grow on Mars.

Daddy is in a pissy mood. He goes out early to tend to the weeds and the dead trees. He commands them to spring to life. But they don't. Instead, a branch breaks or a weed sprouts and spreads. Daddy comes from the land of rocks, IED'S and really smelly people. I mean they glisten with sweat in the Holy Land. The land of the gods. Yes indeed, the god factory. They sprout rocks and gods and all the other shitty things on this planet.

Great Horned Owl is circling, his camera for a brain scans the target and fires.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Freedom From the Villiage Idiot

When word got out in the hood of the federal judge overturning Prop 8, Village Idiot went berserk. What he enjoyed most, being Village Idiot, was that homosexuals were on the ladder rung below him. Now, only Village Idiot is at the bottom of the food chain.

Right wing, stupid as shit, Evangelical Village Idiot went into convulsions. Even Drag Queen was yelling at him, after throwing two or three rocks, to get the fuck over it. We're here and Queer, get use to it even if you are the village idiot.

Why is it, that every right wing, Christian fuck is the village idiot somewhere. How do they populate being so fucking stupid?