Missing Moon

The last time I tried to see a complete lunar eclipse, the rain had been coming down hard, but finally let up just when the eclipse started.

Denise and I put on our raincoats and went over to Newport Mall and climbed up to the top of the parking garage. We walked around looking for the moon for some time, hoping the clouds would give us a break.

They didn't.

Tonight, even after the week of crazy rain, the sky cleared up just enough to where I could step out onto my Burbank balcony and wait.

The atmosphere is still gray enough that we aren't getting the full-on blood moon others did, and my point-and-shoot Lumix did better than my phone even though there was nowhere great to perch my mini-tripod, but at least this time I got to see something.

RBG Not RGB

The ticket seller at the Skirball didn’t even ask what exhibit I was here for. Just gave me my sticker and pointed me to the Getty Gallery.

I’m such a cliche.

Playhouse Surprise

I was looking at my phone map today to find my way from San Marino to South Pasadena, and I spotted something unusual on the map.

It's Pee-Wee's house from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure!

Muddy Hands

I used to take pottery classes at La Mano in Manhattan. It's a great studio. Not only is it right by the PATH and the F train, it's spacious, well thought-out, and things just makes sense there.

That's where I learned how bad I am at pottery. I had some luck early on and made some cool things, but as with most things, the more I learned, the more I realized I had no skill or talent at this. I dug in, making mug after mug, bowl after bowl. I just couldn't get the perfect large bowl I was trying to make. I have a mug made by Catherine Rhodes, and for years I've been trying to get good enough to replicate its large size and light weight, but I keep making small mugs that weigh a ton.

When I first moved to LA, I tried going to a pottery studio in North Hollywood, but the space was too small and most of the students appeared to have been going for years. Systems were unclear. How did it all work? I couldn't figure it out, and there was no space and the teacher was frequently a substitute. The worst was the limited studio hours, when the studio would be packed. Limited hours and various business trips later, I didn't get back in time to pick up my fired pottery, so I guess it went in the trash.

Back to Nature in the Middle of Hollywood

Yesterday I went over to Hollywood to attend a workshop on square foot gardening.

The idea is you have a small raised bed of dirt, say it's 4x4. Then you use strings and staples (or whatever) to divide it into a grid with four one-square-foot sections. Like laying out four standard floor tiles next to each other.

You plant in each of those square sections—for example, broccoli only gets one plant per section, but peas can be in five per section. Radishes and carrots get planted at 12 per section. Someone has worked out how many go in each foot, and what order you plant in and in what season.

This class was a lot of fun! I was thinking about doing this in my backyard in Jersey City one day, but then the teacher said how raccoons and possums like to eat the veggies and so unless I want to get into a protracted battle with local wildlife, this seems like a bad idea.

Maybe I can do this on my balcony in Burbank, but only if I get a shade cloth. We get a bit o' sun here in this part of the world.

LA Cliche

I saw my first LA police chase! These are a local sport here.

No, I wasn't driving.

Instagram Star

My house is such an ambitious social climber. Here it is, clamoring for attention yet again for Instagram. 

And here we are the morning of January 1st, when the power decided to go out in the neighborhood just as I was packing to go to the airport.

Excessive Prep

I shipped this Bundt cake pan back from Jersey City.

Game on, Burbank. I'll try to be ready for National Bundt Day this year. I've got 9.5 months to get my act together.

The Fourth of January

January 4th, 1988 was a Monday, and my first day as an intern at Marvel Comics. (My desk next to Mark Chiarello came with a typewriter, and there was a Wang word processor right behind me, which the whole department shared.)

Today is the 31st anniversary of my life in comics, but it's also the 18th anniversary of the day I caught a train at Penn Station, ultimately disembarking in Los Angeles to take a freighter from Long Beach to Melbourne, to begin my year-long solo trip around the world.

Pretty sure my other January 4ths have been less eventful. I don't anticipate today being something I'll talk about moving forward, but you never know.

End of Year Check-In

I have a lot of bad-to-mediocre years and some incredible ones, and in spite of the domestic and international shit-show as our world spirals into madness, 2018, as an arbitrary marker of the passage of time, marked a decent set of events of the course of my personal and professional last 52 weeks.

Here we are at the start of the new 52, so taking a quick look back, here are some highlights of the past year:

• I bought a sofa. (First time I actually sat on it and watched the television was 1/1/19, after my flight landed before I could finish season 1 of Mrs. Maisel on the plane. So sue me.)

• Touristed Tijuana, Tunisia, Barcelona and Valencia (quickly), Haiti, San Francisco, and a late-night bench in the Chicago airport when weather screwed up a flight connection. 

• Continued my ongoing explorations of LA area, including Highland Park, Anaheim, the DTLA Chocolate Shop, Randyland in Echo Park, the Garment District, Flower District, the LA River, Frogtown, Beverly Hills, Old Town Orange, Atwater Village, the SkySlide, Sequoia National Park, DTLA former speakeasies, and Long Beach retro row. 

• Learned (sort of ) to play my ukulele, handmade by my deceased friend Edward Readicker-Henderson’s brother.

• Used the Greyhound bus to move a table across the country.

• Finally crossed that age threshold where I have to worry about a deteriorating physical form and pay attention to food and exercise. Hooray.