The Fire Down Below

This morning there was a filming notice on the front door of the hotel. One or more helicopters will be flying around and landing nearby today between 2 and 10 p.m. I think it was. A while ago they landed a couple on the roof of the hotel here, first having evacuated us all to a portable building a couple blocks away where they fed us the worst pizza I ever had. There's often filming going on around L.A., and on weekends there are different projects going on all over the place. It was much the same up in San Francisco when I was living up there. I don't stop and look for famous people every time I see a film shoot like some tourist, but I've caught sight of a few familiar faces over the years. When I first got back to L.A. to get legal in 2003, I was staying down by USC for a while. Just up the street and around the corner I'd for the longest time see a major production in progress with like-new 1950s cars and fancy clothes from the times. I had no idea what they were doing in there. Then like way later I saw S. Epatha Merkerson win an Emmy for the role she played in an HBO movie called Lackawanna Blues. When I spotted that DVD at the library I decided to check it out. I recognized the old unpainted house they'd been filming in that I'd passed by so many times. Now I look at the house as a kind of shrine, that movie is so special. (I was by there last week and it's still the same.) (On Adams just west of Hoover.)

This morning while I was having my first cup of coffee and checking my e-mails, a story came on the radio news about all the formerly middle-class folks up in Santa Barbara who, because either they or their landlords were foreclosed upon, are now living in their cars. California law says that nobody can sleep in a vehicle parked on the street, so the city has opened special parking lots to overnight sleeping. Then the commercial comes on with a guy saying he loves his big gas guzzler "dripping with chrome" so much that if it had a bathroom, he'd live in it.

Another story was about a climate report the White House has been refusing to release since it was completed in 2004. A court finally ordered it be made public. Though it paints a bleak future, the corporate folks really running the show are putting as many zeros on their bank balances as they can before the general public takes its collective heads out of the sand and finally admits what's happening and decides to seriously do something about it. Many folks figure it's already too late, but at least the multi-billionaires' kids and grandkids are all gonna fry just like the progeny of us regular folks. But men and women who've felt it necessary to accumulate that much wealth don't think past the next quarter, so there's really no stopping them I'm afraid.

Today I also heard a neat phrase. "Consensual crimes." Where people are doing something they want to, not involving or hurting anyone else, but other folks have decided that this whatever-it-is shouldn't be allowed. The arrogance of making such rules for others should be the crime. "No, I don't want anybody doing THAT! Who do they think they are!" Only vicious, despicable, self-righteous folks think like that if you ask me, but there are hundreds of thousands of their victims in prisons, like it or not. (Don't get me started.)

Wow, talk about kicking the hive . . . now they're going to evict gang members AND THEIR FAMILIES out of their houses and apartments here in Los Angeles. THAT should certainly put an end to the violence, kick some heavily-armed criminal's mother and little sister out of their home. (Where do they FIND these mental giants who come up with these ideas?) I look at the gangs out there now just like the ones back in the 1920s. Imagine the chaos if they'd started putting Al Capone's and Dutch Schlutz's men's families out of their homes in an attempt to get them to stop shooting at each other over the illicit profits from the alcohol prohibition. I predict they're biting off more than they can chew in their quest to get the entire population to live like family hour on TV. The only thing that stopped the shooting in the '20s was legalizing beer again. They know that. (Remember the words of Brigham Young I recently quoted? Without his constant watch, his people started PLAYING CHECKERS! and PLAYING CARDS! Ol' Jehovah musta been shittin' his drawers when He saw that! People actually enjoying themselves! Sinners all. No wonder they lock people up for oral sex and making hash brownies!) (Or I guess the other way around.)

Teach people how to relax and enjoy, smoke a little weed and make love, go swimming, everybody work three days a week and share vehicles and appliances. We might stand a chance if nobody now running gets to be President and "gets the economy rolling again", which will only fry us all that much faster. Jeesh.

Well, it's now Saturday morning--where does the time go? I'm almost afraid to turn on the radio again.

Good luck to us all.