The SoCal Byte

In the world of the electronic business, signatures live in purgatory. We swipe our credit cards though a reader and tap to verify the amount. Then the LCD lit screen requests that we perform a most unnecessary and humiliating act — sign our names on signature capture pad.

One of the great blessings of currently living in Los Angeles proper is that professional football is non-existent. Without it, Sundays in LA have been sublime — a sharp contrast to the steroid influenced irrationally inspired exuberant violence the city experienced only a few decades ago.

What is the national discourse and who says what it is? There’s the national discourse in Washington DC, on cable TV, online, in bar rooms, coffeehouses, at NASCAR, at MoMA, according to Fox, according to Harper’s at Sardi’s and at Pinks. Which one is authentic?

Michael lowers the fly swatter like some gear-driven extension growing from his arm socket, sets aside his Woodcock Blue paint and adjusts his Saint Louis Cardinal’s cap. God is stalking a fly. I’ve seen him hunt down the tiny bastards before — here in his Claremont studio, at the Apple Pan in Los Angeles, at the Art Center in Huntington Beach, at Skull Rock in Joshua Tree, at the Charles Eames Studio, at the Quaker Religious Society of Friends.

It used to be that I didn’t give a shit about Bristol Palin. And by the way, I know I could have worded that first sentence with a bit more sophistication. I might have said, “There was a time when I cared more about balloon animals than I cared about Bristol Palin,” or “My indifference to Bristol Palin was, at times, immeasurable” or “In the past Bristol Palin — care factor zero.” But to be honest and succinct, it used to be that I didn’t give a shit about Bristol Palin. In fact, I gave sub-shit. On a care scale of one to ten with “balloon animals” a ten, Bristol Palin would have gotten less than zero. Yet, in spit of my intense indifference, Bristol Palin beckoned me, wherever I went. One might even say she haunted me.

Sports fans and fashion fans: The two pretend they’re unrelated. Fans of sports worship the moment of anatomy and athletics. Fans of fashion worship the moment of anatomy and aesthetics. They act as if they’re not family. Who are they trying to fool? The swish of the skirt and the basket, the sharpness of the stiletto and the cut block, the grace of Chanel and Willie Mays — it’s so obvious.

Global catastrophe aside, it’s the consensus that consensus building is a decision making process which equalizes power within a group of people — regardless if anyone knows what they’re doing.

It was while performing drunk and irreverently at a Door’s concert at the Dinner Key Auditorium in the Coconut Grove section of Miami on March 1, 1969 that Morrison achieved complete freedom while his penis made headlines.

Today, I’m going to show you how to live longer. Now, I don’t intend to add years onto your life or to make you immortal. We’ll save that for another session. But with Southern California’s latest addition to the self-improvement cavalcade, the Ultimate Minute Extension Program, I guarantee that every minute you live will be prolonged beyond your wildest expectations.

I was driving down Harbor Boulevard last weekend when I saw it arriving. You know what I’m talking about. It started with a 10 foot banner that said “Noel.” Next I saw twinkly lights on the hedges and palms around South Coast Plaza. On Sunflower, cranes were positioning reindeer light sculptures. A block away a chain link fence in a Home Depot parking lot marked the boundaries of a future Douglas Fir holding yard. Jesus Christ on a bike, I’m sick of it already and it’s not even December. Here we go — the slide into obsessive oblivion — our head into the holidays.