On Safari in Jersey City

1. It's a party!

2. What the hell is that?

LAX Excursion

I’m flying out of LAX tonight and it’s possible I’m going to miss my plane.

Right when I was leaving the office, some people decided they had to talk about a very important issue, so I was running late. I ended up grabbing a Lyft to Van Nuys Flyaway because I thought it would be the fastest way. (Normally I get the Red Line to the Hollywood or Union Station Flyaway.)

Well, that was a big mistake. The wait for the Lyft was annoying, the traffic was horrendous, and the bus left 20 minutes late.

Note to self: Always opt for the train during rush hour. 

So I was looking up how to walk from Terminal 1 to Terminal 7 in case I have to jump off the bus and run while it makes its loop around, and hey, something amusing came out of this irritating night.

Decades Past

Here's a fun photo my mom posted today.

How about those socks I'm wearing!

Blockage

Eight months and 24 days after learning the hatch in the JC basement was super-leaky, it's blocked up! I tried hiring a landscape designer to deal with my backyard, but the only person who bothered to give me an estimate was crazy-expensive, so I put some laser-focused google-power to work and located the builder that company works with.

He was quite reasonable. Also, awesome.

Next step is to get the staircase and concrete out and fill it with dirt, drainage, and gravel. Actually, it's unclear what the next step is, but I'm hoping to find out soon.

Heritage Square Field Trip

In 1969, a bunch of cool old Victorians were picked up and moved somewhere safe from real estate development.

I went there over the weekend, needing to get out of the house.

The living homes of Carroll Avenue in Echo Park are more exciting, but these are cool too.
Here are some photos.

Enter Stage Left

Snagglepuss, the stage adaptation, was nominated for a Harvey Award! 

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑑𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑛𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑙𝑢𝑑𝑒 𝑆𝑜𝑛𝑦’𝑠 𝑂𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑟-𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒 “𝑆𝑝𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟-𝑀𝑎𝑛: 𝐼𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑝𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟-𝑉𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑒” 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑣𝑒𝑙’𝑠 “𝐴𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟𝑠: 𝐸𝑛𝑑𝑔𝑎𝑚𝑒,” 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑡-𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑜𝑣𝑖𝑒 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 ($2.8 𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑜𝑛) 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑑𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 — 𝑎𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 “𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑛𝑎𝑔𝑔𝑙𝑒𝑝𝑢𝑠𝑠 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑠.”

Where Have We Heard This Before?

This former New Yorker drew a circle around his new office in the map, and tried living in different parts of LA via AirBnB within that circle. He also takes public transit.

Sound familiar?

I can hear my aunt saying it now. “I told you to write an article.”

Of course, writing an article is easier when you already work at a newspaper. Perhaps my story needs to be told as a comic.

Stuff of Legend

Look what Rev Cool, a radio host in southwestern Ohio, uncovered when cleaning out his barn.

It's a poster from a seminal event of my college years. I was at a DIY conference of radio hosts at Rev Cool's house, with the other "new music" (or whatever we called ourselves then) hosts from WYSO community radio. Me, Rev Cool, Marty Lou, Chuck, Dennis, I think.

"Do you think Antioch would book the Dead Kennedys?"

"Maybe," I said. "Probably not."

I was wrong.

Do the Hustle

I returned my Yosemite rental car before work yesterday, then at the end of the work day, walked outside my Burbank office building to catch the bus to the metro to Vermont/Sunset, where I hopped on a DASH bus up to the Greek. I had a ticket to see Blondie and Elvis Costello.

This kind of event is so easy here in LA, if you can work around the parking costs and the traffic into Griffith Park. The outdoor amphitheaters are huge, so you can always get a ticket. The settings are pleasant, enjoyable even if you're watching nothing. I wouldn't think to buy tickets to much of anything if I had to get myself uptown to the Beacon back home—I'm more a small event or more likely no-mainstream events-at-all person—but here events are more appealing due to the settings.

So I went to the Greek on the bus and watched Blondie and I thought about disco.

Disco was happening during my childhood. Donna Summer was the soundtrack to the 1970s, along with the Fifth of Beethoven, Play That Funky Music (White Boy), Gloria Gaynor, and as kids, we all tried to do the Hustle. Or something. I don't know if it was really the Hustle. But there were dances people would try to do, and I was certainly not great at them.

Moving Up

I was sitting in a cafe at the center of Yosemite National Park on Saturday (one of only a few spots where the outside world can intrude via wifi or cellular), when I learned an announcement about my promotion was going to show up on a website this week.

Which is odd since my promotion happened nine months ago. I was puzzled but ambivalent. Okay, sure.

But what I wasn't prepared for was the onslaught of congratulations! Which is awesome, but awkward, given the nine months in-between.

I practiced grace for several days. I sometimes succeeded.

Yosemite Photos

Here are photos of my short trip to Yosemite. 

I really need to do this kind of thing more often while I'm living here in California.

Yes Bear

It wasn't pocket lint after all.

Give Me A Tent and a Patch of Ground

Tonight’s lodging.

Looks fine, except the neighbors are traveling in a pack and blaring music through a tinny Bluetooth speaker.

Glacier Point

Here are some photos of Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point.

Bear Where?

I awoke early—well, that's probably an exaggeration. I managed to leave the lodge at the outskirts of Yosemite before 9 in the morning. That's early enough, but hardly worth mentioning.

I drove to Glacier Point, a nearby outlook to get a glimpse of the Yosemite Valley I'd be arriving in soon.

Marvelous.

And then I drove back, slowly down the winding road to the main drive. And then I saw a crowd of people and cars, and I pulled over.

I saw a bear! I think.

Short Fridays

Back on March 15, I'd been hovering over my keyboard at 7 a.m. As immortalized on Sunset.com, I was signed in on Recreation.gov, waiting for Yosemite campsite reservations to open up.

I barely grabbed one and they were all gone for July 15-Aug 15 within a minute. I couldn't even get the same one for two consecutive nights, so I took a site for Saturday and reserved a still rare but less competitive single room with shared bath at a park entrance lodge for Friday night.

"That actually works out better," I thought. "In case I get held up in traffic out of LA and arrive late."

And here I was, five months later, cursing the slow traffic out of Los Angeles County. I'd meant to leave work at one, which is the earliest we can leave on summer Fridays, and I'd managed to get out just ten minutes late. But then I had to stop by my place to grab my blue IKEA bag of tent, sleeping bag, travel pillow, towel, and 19-year-old Thermarest. I shoved a few clothes in a knapsack, grabbed a water bottle, the old phone I use as an iPod, and was finally on the road by 2.

Traffic crawled from Burbank to Bakersfield, giving me plenty of time to alternate between being annoyed and contemplating my journey. My old car had been to Yosemite without me back in 2002. On the great cross-country trek with Turbo the Aussie, Henry the 1990 Ford Taurus had been driven to Yosemite after Turbo put me on a Greyhound back to LA. I was to be in a wedding, and while I can't remember which city Turbo and I had parted in, I remember being pissed when he'd locked the keys in the trunk right before I'd had to catch my bus. He'd been eating a sandwich out of our picnic gear in the trunk, and he had a habit of tossing the keys down inside the trunk while he made his sandwich.

"You're going to lock the keys in the trunk that way," I'd said a few days before.