Category Archives: Muddled Musings

Zen and the Art of Saddling

Aside from being dead before I hit 15 because there would be no insulin, I think I would have liked life in the late 1800’s.

buy disulfiram 500mg Not for the gadgets, for crying out loud (a phrase I am bringing back). Or the toilet. Nor the lack of Skittles.

But the mode of transport. I don’t know what it is about the horse, but god I love it. So fast, huge, flaring, utterly streamlined, down the mane. All atop four toothpicks which, if even one fractures, likely kills animal and rider. How’s that for a harmonious ecosystem? Screw you, nature.

Still, I can’t help but be mesmerized. Mom and Dad used to tell the story of how, as a toddler, I took a pony ride once at a petting zoo. Round and round, I must have imagined myself an original member of the James Gang: ramrod straight, stern glower, tight jaw — until I saw my parents, who, unlike me, couldn’t keep a straight face. stern

Yet I remain that wannabe cowboy. Maybe that’s why I prefer motorcycles.

I use any excuse to ride. I ride to Teddy’s vet just to order his epilepsy meds, instead of calling. More times than I’d like to admit, I take off on the bike with no idea where I’m going. The way will decide.

Lately, the way has been a 50-mile roundtrip trek to Malibu along the Pacific Coast Highway, through San Fernando’s amazing canyon roads. It morphs from mountains to seaside, green to brown, and the temperature changes more than 25 degrees on the scoot from Valley to water.

But you can’t help but feel…alive. The terrifying reality of a bike is that it’s a terrifying reality. Driving a mile a minute is insanity enough. But on two wheels, with L.A. traffic that buzzes like an angry wasp, you realize that every trip, no matter how short or brief, requires your undivided attention. There’s a reason you never hear about motorcycle drunk driving. Sober, cars are threat enough.

Still, there’s something to being aware on the drive. How often can we say we remember a car drive we took?

A few things I’ve learned on the bike:

  • Nothing smells as good as spring jasmine.
  • Everyone smokes weed in their cars.
  • A comfortable dry heat is bullshit. A microwave gives off dry heat. It will still pop your Orville Redenbacher.
  • Everybody is pissed off.

That last lesson I learned recently coming back from the PCH. I was idling at Vanowen and Balboa, a half mile from my house. Then I heard something.

“Hey!” a woman in a wheelchair yelled. “HEYYYY!!!!”

She was trying to roll across Vanowen, where an SUV douche sat at the corner. He was gunning his engine, trying to bully the Kia to make a turn on red. It did, and douche was next. But he wasn’t bothering with the crosswalk, only northbound traffic. And his jacked douchemobile was too high to see the wheelchair.

“I’M CROSSING!!!!” the woman screamed.

I put the bike in neutral and was about to get behind the woman and push her across. The other nice thing about a bike: people tend not to honk at someone in a helmet and leather. You never know. They could have a criminal record. Or muscles.

Feigning both, I begin to step off the bike. Traffic can go around.

Suddenly the woman’s legs began to work. Both, scuttling on the pavement, arms churning. Kind of like a frenetic beetle upended. I’m not sure if her butt was paralyzed, cuuuuuuz her arms and legs seemed to work just fine. And she was definitely gaining speed.

When the SUV driver finally saw the woman, he stopped gunning the engine. Fine, I’ll wait 10 seconds, though I really should pay homage to work. He, too, was caught off guard at seeing the miracle of her working legs.

Once the woman knew that douche saw her, she did something odd. As she neared the corner, she began to coast. Legs back up, feet in footrests, arms in her lap. Looking at the driver. Fuck you, Mr. Escalade. Wait for me. Once she reached the curb, she seemed to take a particularly long time to roll up the sidewalk slope. Maybe it just seemed long, because she probably could have picked up the wheelchair and placed it on the curb.

Cadillac must have thought the same thing, because he screeeeeeched out of the intersection when she finally made it curbside. I kicked the bike into first and, dumbstruck, puttered home.

That’s one way to remember the ride.

 

Piglet Love and the City Surf

I have needed the dogs nearer of late. To feel visible. Or, more accurately, I have needed to be nearer to them, though for the same reason.

They do not care my reasons, of course. All they know is I’m around. They see me.

And they’ve taught me. Man, they’re onto something with this whole backyard thing.

I used not to give it much thought, their everyday world. Hire a lawn guy. Install a dog door to kick them out and not feel guilty. Repair the fence when the Santa Anas show me she’s boss.

But there is more to it than that. So much.

Because of daylight savings time (come on, Indiana, pick a side), the sun sets on the yard around 6 p.m. And because that’s dinner time, that means unbolting the dog door, calling them in, pouring the dog food, preparing for the night.

But I walked out recently, apparently so quietly they didn’t hear me from the side door. And suddenly, I realized: Their world is kind of wonderful.

I could hear the train that bristles by at Balboa and Roscoe. I heard the rising traffic on Sherman Way as people began the buzz commute home. I smelled the Anheuser-Busch brewery two miles away (it’s the smell of grain after it’s been processed of its sugar and before it’s fed to cows). Planes droned the Van Nuys Airport, awaiting their turn.

It was…alive. Particularly when Teddy and Esme realized a real human being! was outside and sprinted around the corner to greet me as if I had been gone since Christmas.

But it was too late. I had felt it, the city surf, in its high tide. I would discover there are low tides as well. After 9:15 p.m., you can hear the gentle hum of the night owl traffic, though rarely a honk. The single prop plane — what do you think up there, at once above and below the heavens, alone and aloft? The train’s whistle now more a melancholy wail than a churn. Just as alive. Just in deeper breaths.

And so is borne tradition. If I’m home, I’m back there at 5:35 p.m. The dogs have learned there’s no need yet to lose their shit over kibble. They know; their landlord is going to want to be in that chair, which has to be positioned just off the porch, at cement’s edge, to catch the sun’s full and final rays, to tell it good night and see you tomorrow. And they must assume I’ll bring the Mellow Playlist. Because I will.

house

They still don’t care my reasons. I guess they don’t need to. All they need to know is that they have new company at the shore of the city surf, where you can smell summer on the way, feel a warmth that’s beginning to linger, hear a heightening hum and still curl into a lazy, sun-drenched ball of fur that says dinner maybeontheway but what’s…the….rush?

What better place to be sure?

 

To TAMI: A Tribute to Rhythm, Beats and White Boy Dancing

I tend to be a music freak. Particularly dead music.

So a story on the TAMI show caught my eye this weekend.

TAMI stood for Teenage Award Music International, and it was held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in winter 1964, when I was but a zygote.

It served as a sort of Lollapalooza before it became a label-driven shopping mall. The biggest stars of the country — The Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, Chuck Berry, The Supremes — all showed up for the two-day event.

Organizers knew it would be big — But not this big. Teens mobbed the auditorium, which was built more quiet country-folk celebs who would draw, in a good night, a concert with only rafter seating available. On the rarer occasion, it would sell out.

Not this TAMI. This was going to be different. More than a pre-Lollapalooza, this was more of a pre-Woodstock. Kids traveled across the country for the 60’s legends.

And egos traveled even further. When singers realized how big this could be (there was even going to be a documentary filmmaker in the audience, rare for a concert then), Stars began clashing over where they would be in the roster. Who would kick off? Who would conclude the first night. And the ultimate question: Who would conclude the concert.

While TAMI didn’t feature the Beatles, it did attract the ultimate anti-Beatle band, the Rolling Stone. Sexual, hard drinking and fond of chemical, they were emblematic of rebel times.

On the other was James Brown and the Flames. Huge in the black community, he was one of the early minority singers at the time who had captured the attention of American teenage girl, once thought only the province of rocking teenage boys. He, too, was sexual and fond of intoxicants.

But organizers didn’t see him as a breakthrough performer, even though he, more than the Stones, represented a nation going against the times. Look at today’s music, its stars, its movement, and try to mount a case that James Brown didn’t break mold; he reshaped it.

The two camps argue bitterly over who’s performance would be show’s finale. The organizers — perhaps reflecting on record sales, commercial viability, race, temperament, who knows? — chose the Stones. And it was a terrific performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2XIbJ3J_Sw

In fact, TAMI was full of showmanship. The show was a huge success, and went on to set the template for multi-band shows. The documentary, kept for years on the shelf because of label contract disputes, wasn’t seen for nearly a half a century.

Which was probably good for the Stones. Years later in an interview, Keith Richards said following James Brown’s performance was the band’s single greatest career mistake.

To the undeniable power of dance.

And the inescapable fact that we white boys can’t do it.