The Annual Christmas Dinner

 
Each Christmas we gather, what friends and family are left for gathering, for dinner at a special restaurant. Most times it is at the same place but that place has changed now and then through the years. Presently it will be at the Culver City Hotel where we celebrated last season.

 It is always just before Christmas when shops are open to browse and people fill the streets dressed in winter wear and bright smiles, an unusual sight for LA LA Land. In particular, the Culver City Hotel was made just for this. The building has been restored to its glory days of 1924--only better.

The city has made their downtown a place to go. The streets are wide, walkways plentiful with small green parks placed here and there. It makes a stroll on the avenues pleasant and rewarding. There are benches to sit on, photo ops everywhere and a good selection of bistros and bars to try along the way.

The hotel's food is excellent with daily specials made from farm to table ingredients, and the service very good. Last year there was a mix up on the reservation and for it they accompanied us with seating where we wanted in spite of the error and presented a bottle of champagne to soothe the mix up. The historic structure sits on an island and this makes for a wonderful outdoor setting. You get the feel that your table is special due to the well placed foliage and sparkling lights that accompany your surroundings. It makes dining al fresco a favorite seeing the weather is good most of the year.

But for Christmas we dine inside where there is live music and enchanting heirloom antiques placed about. A fireplace warms a sitting area to enjoy a drink or two while you wait for your table. Fresh vases of flowers overflow on grand tables and the towering walls that surround you have high arched windows to view the city's lights. It makes it grand and special, the perfect way to celebrate a wonderful holiday that brings family and friends together at least one time each year. That's the wonder of Christmas, the joy it brings anybody who wishes to celebrate the love of those close and dear to us.

Merry Christmas Everyone.

Christmas In The Hood

Like a lot of folks my age I have grown in girth instead of height. The girth became a problem not long ago with a warning from the doc about weight, diabetes and all manner of ills that come from the excesses of the good life. I've lost the weight, got my blood sugar under control and working on the daily exercise. That's where Sweet Pea comes in.

Our dog, Buster Brown passed away after years of faithful service. Buster was very good at eating, barking, and messing in the house, but his one redeemable act of devotion to Wally was unmatched. His last moment on earth was to crawl to Wally's feet where he laid down and died, quietly and at peace. Buster was not a dog that enjoyed walks, but he was faithful to the end. When we adopted Sweet Pea from the city shelter a few months back he wasn't quite a year old and like all puppies came with a full charge.


Me and Sweet Pea go for our walk in the hood almost every morning. It is Sweet Pea's favorite part of the day, he doesn't whine if I'm too busy for our walk, or if I have to make it a short constitutional. It is when he hears, "Do you want to go for a walk?" And the leash comes out, his tail goes into high gear. Sweet Pea gets so excited it's hard for him to calm down seeing that a walk is better than a steak cutlet. Currently we are reviewing Christmas in the hood.

Now, our neighborhood is where I grew up from the age of ten. It is where all my traumatic memories, outside of the scalding water, happened. It is where I have watched over sixty years of change to the housing tract made for World War Two vets to start a family. Every forth house is the same, yet one of the first things most folks did was make them theirs. Attached garages made into rooms, rooms added, and all manner of additions placed, yet you can still, for most of them, see what they were like back in 1949 when babies popped out around America like a kettle of corn at a carnie.

People have come and go, I don't know who is left here from when I was a kid, they all have passed to the great beyond that I knew, but the hood still holds families starting out. It still has dreams and tragedy, and in all the mix, Christmas comes and so do the lights, the lawn dressing and all manner of things that say, "Merry Christmas."

In the stark reality of daylight, the flashing lights and bobbing Santa Clauses go still and flat yet in my walks with Sweet Pea, we have noticed that it doesn't matter, for when night returns, the magic comes and turns our hood into festival of light.
Happy Holidays Everyone.   

Los Angeles is a big city full of small town people.

One of my favorite places nearby is a water hole on Ventura Blvd. A sports bar with television screens all around and windows that look out on the street and parking lot. If you have enough to drink the parking lot turns into a beach front and the street turns into a canal of floating vessels. It's very comfortable there perched on a bar stool facing the screens of a variety of sports. I enjoy baseball and soccer but watch what ever is playing, it's the movement of color after a drink or two that makes it interesting--that and the people in the bar.

In one corner is a man who is there every time I am. I go on Saturdays as a rule, not all Saturdays but when I do he's there. A kind of ear to conversations, he gives high-fives when the occasion merits, smiles when you smile at him and a general 'All is well' ambiance to himself. He sits near where the condiments of lemon wedges and lime, peels of zest and fat green olives are kept. He has a lemon wedge in his water along with some drink I'm not sure of other than its clear and the bartender knows instinctively when to refill.  For the rest of the patrons, they come--they go and some I have seen on occasion while others look new.

The bartender is a young black woman, very smart with a great smile and attitude to match. I thought, like most of the help there, that she was in college but she is not. She should be because the woman has a good head on her shoulders. But college isn't for everyone and she seems to do very well without it. Her birthday is next week. I know because when I came in she was asking around for someone to take her shift that day so she could party.

The bar is a place where a lot of folks come to meet one another. Probably from some dating site or app. They appear, the women especially, well dressed and searching for someone in particular and sometimes that particular person shows up to introduce themselves. I never see them after that as a couple but I have seen the same person search for another particular person to show up from time to time. They are always older, as I am and sadly desperate as I hope not to be but probably will at some point.

There are hustlers and cheaters, lovers and loners and they come, as Los Angeles, in all colors and ethnicity. They are there because the parking lot turns into a beach front, and the street a canal of floating vessels after a drink or two, just when you wish, as the man sitting next to the condiments does, that the world will stay still for a moment. It's why I'm there, to have the world stop so I can take a breath.

I've had it with my Trump campaign. I'm so tired of the tyrant and hearing his rants and raves that I can no longer write about it. Too horrible to endure any longer I am like the lady who wedged herself between my shopping cart at Ralphs and the magazine rack in front of the cashier. She had to have a National Enquirer. Why? Because she wanted to get away from the awful politics swirling around us like suns circling a black hole.

I almost got one for myself.