Westward Ho!

Transit: Not Just For Pinko Commies and Drunks Anymore!

This from the newest APA Advocate newsletter:

In the same week that transit ridership topped 10 billion trips per year for the first time in 49 years, companion bills were introduced in the House and Senate to raise the allowable transit commute benefit to match that for parking. Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced the "Commuter Benefits Equity Act of 2007" (H.R. 1475 / S. 712). Commuters can now receive up to $110 per month in transit benefits, but the monthly parking benefit is $215.

"Establishing parity between commuter benefits and parking benefits will provide American workers with an incentive to utilize transit for their commute to work," McGovern said. "Enactment of this legislation will help ease congestion, improve air quality, and reduce dependency on foreign oil. It also makes sense for employers who can use it as an effective employment recruitment and retention tool." The measures have been referred to the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee.

Public transit use is up 30 percent since 1995. That's more than double the growth rate of the U.S. population (12 percent) and higher than the growth rate for vehicle miles traveled on U.S. roads (24 percent) during that same period.

Also in the news recently: the LAX FlyAway bus just celebrated its first anniversary, and with 250,000 users over the past year, it has exceeded the projected ridership more than threefold. It's nice to see that that press release comes from the LAWA site, since it's my understanding that historically they've been against transit cutting into their parking revenue.

Best Week Ever

I've been busy, stressed, and somewhat frazzled lately, and to quote my girl (and sometime Hawkwind groupie) Samantha Fox, "I wanna have some fun." I spent most of my spring break running errands and taking care of obligations, and otherwise feeling lousy, so this week's weeknights (what's left of them) are my take-2 at some actual R&R and catching up with friends. Tonight I'm at the Echo watching the fabulous OOIOO be Japanese and effervescent; Thursday night is hott three-way Silverton-Batali-Bastianich action at Pizzeria Mozza; Saturday night I trek up to Burbank and take a crack at Sardo's 37,000-song karaoke library.

More on the Elevators of the Central Library

David Bunn envisioned two passenger elevators in the Tom Bradley Wing as more than a way to get from one floor to another. The artist transformed them into “observation pods” traveling between subject divisions by using some of the Library’s seven million catalog cards rendered obsolete by the new state-of-the-art automation system. With these cards Bunn papered the inside of the elevator cabs and lined the shafts which are visible      through a viewing window in the cabs. The elevators also display a digital readout of the Dewey Decimal numbers for each floor the elevator passes. “The elevators and the card catalog together form a kind of ‘core sample’ of the library,” explained Bunn. “As the catalog dutifully classifies and finds a place for every book, so the elevators travel deep through the center of the building, encompassing and accessing all the building’s holdings.”

Source: http://www.lapl.org/central/art_architecture.html

My Favorite Library

(title sung to the tune of Robyn Hitchcock's "My Favourite Buildings"...)

I have to put in a good word for the Central Library in Downtown L.A., one of the most beautiful and underrated buildings in the city and a personal sanctuary for yrs truly whenever I'm killing a few hours in the area. They were actually close to demolishing this in the '70s, which wasn't such a radical idea at the time, just another bit of ye olde history-doesn't-exist-here modernist mythmaking and self-fulfilling prophecy. But they didn't demolish it, and a few decades and some nips and tucks later, it's stunning, full of detail, a cross between 1926 "Spanish" deco (think L.A.'s Union Station, although that's from 1939) and a small, vaguely exotic revision of the "City Beautiful"/Beaux-Arts ideal.

It's also locally infamous for being one of the only places downtown where anyone can loiter, sleep, or use the bathroom without being reprimanded by security. Downtown L.A. is thought to have the highest concentration of homeless people in a city that's cited widely as being the homeless capital of the United States, and guess where many of them go when they get kicked out of the shelters at sunrise, or just get tired of walking all day and want to take a leak and look at a magazine? Libraries are great for stopping, refreshing, collecting yourself. Better than Starbucks, and cheaper. The Central Library even has a cafe, if coffee has to be part of the equation.

The elevators are completely amazing -- the walls are clear fiberglass panels with the old printed catalogue cards lined up behind them, floor to ceiling, in alphabetical order. I think this transparent-walls-displaying-cool-innardy-shit is a trendy design concept lately, feeding off the building-materials-mania of a few years ago -- I just heard about an idea for a school (K-12 or somewhere in between) where the building itself would be part of the curriculum and students would get full visual access to the support beams, aluminum siding, wiring, etc. (Back when I was a product of NYC's decaying public school system, we didn't need prize-winning architecture to see any of this stuff, and we got asbestos as an added bonus.)

Anyway, yeah, there are books, and signs that helpfully tell visitors that most of the collection is deep-stacked away somewhere out of reach, and ask for it if you can't find it. But for a main library circa 2007 (libraries in crisis omgwtf), what's on the shelves ain't bad. It just about made my day yesterday when i saw a copy of Excelsior You Fathead.

These pictures don't do the library justice, but oh well. If you're in L.A. you've probably seen it a million times anyway.

Dear Trader Joe's (Culver City location):

If I eat whole wheat pasta (a standard dinner-size serving, more or less), that's good for me, right?

What if I prepare it with bacon -- four strips?

What if the bacon is uncured, nitrate/nitrite free, hormone free, and made from free-range vegetarian-raised pigs?

What if I fry the bacon and cook the pasta to al dente in the fat (which also includes a couple tablespoons of olive oil, the not-so-virginal sort that I prefer in these situations for its higher smoke point) (and a dash of water for moisture, and some marinara sauce)?

Does the pork fat cancel out the whole wheat? Can I still reap the benefits of all that wondrous insoluble fiber? Am I going to die young anyway?

Pls advise, thx.

Overheard: Miracle Mile Area

I get to the bar early last night and I'm chillaxing, nursing the martini I've just ordered. Female bartender takes my $20 bill. As she walks toward the register, a cute guy walks in and strikes up a conversation with her. They know each other, but haven't seen each other in a while. He appears to have come in to see her.

Girl: "How's your wife?"
Guy: "Actually we split up."
Girl (cheeky): "Oh, I'm sorry."
Guy: "No, it's fine, I'm the one that left."

Five minutes later the guy's outta there, but not before...

Guy: "By the way, can I get your number?"

Eventually she does give me my change. Good egg that I am, she gets a $2 tip.

25 Signs You Have Grown Up

25 SIGNS YOU HAVE GROWN UP (forwarded along to me by a fellow member of "the '70s club" -- the small handful of MPLs that were born prior to 1980). Let's see if any of these apply...

1. Your houseplants are alive, and you can't smoke any of them.
I don't have any houseplants. I bought a beautiful vase on sale at Cost Plus, but I keep forgetting to buy flowers to put into it.

2. Having sex in a twin bed is out of the question.
Not necessarily. Depends on whether the other person in the bed is worth it.

3. You keep more food than beer in the fridge.
I have no beer in the fridge (and anyway I've cut back on my alcohol intake). I went grocery shopping earlier in the week though, and my fridge is well-stocked with food.

4. 6:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to bed.
Generally true, but with my class schedule it's not that common for me to wake up at 6 a.m. either.

5. You hear your favorite song in an elevator.
I've been hearing my favorite songs in elevators all my life. I always have to stop myself from singing along.

6. You watch the Weather Channel.
I read the Weather Underground. (What might make me old is that I know the historical significance of the phrase "the Weather Underground.")

7. Your friends marry and divorce instead of "hook up" and "break up."
I have a few married friends, some of whom are several years younger than I am. And I have friends who are older than I am who still have regrettable hookups.

8. You go from 130 days of vacation time to 14.
I'm going to be solidly busy through my next major "vacation." But I am on break for a week right now.

9. Jeans and a sweater no longer qualify as "dressed up."
I just went to a networking event wearing a black v-neck sleeveless dress with a (visible) Badtz-Maru t-shirt under it.

10. You're the one calling the police because those %&@# kids next door won't turn down the stereo.
I've never done this.

11. Older relatives feel comfortable telling sex jokes around you.
These sometimes come in the form of PG-13-rated e-mail forwards. As long as the jokes aren't about those relatives, I don't mind.

12. You don't know what time Taco Bell closes anymore.
It's been a couple of years since I was last in a Taco Bell. I've heard Fight Club-esque horror stories from ex-employees about the kitchen conditions and the fine upstanding people that handle the food.

13. Your car insurance goes down and your car payments go up.
Car? What's that?

14. You feed your dog Science Diet instead of McDonald's leftovers.
My cat (no dog) is back in New York with my folks, but he's been eating prescription food for probably a decade now.

15. Sleeping on the couch makes your back hurt.
Everything makes my back hurt.

16. You take naps.
I worship naps.

17. Dinner and a movie is the whole date instead of the beginning of one.
Hey, sometimes the dinner and the movie are better than the date.

18. Eating a basket of chicken wings at 3 AM would severely upset, rather than settle, your stomach.
If it was the whole basket, yes... but I wouldn't turn down a couple of late-night wings. I'd prefer disco fries though.

19. You go to the drug store for ibuprofen and antacid, not condoms and pregnancy tests.
I mostly go to the drug store for shampoo, deodorant, vitamins, and to pick up prescriptions.

20. A $4.00 bottle of wine is no longer "pretty good shit."
While I wouldn't call Charles Shaw "pretty good shit," Trader Joe's wines have really come through more often than not.

21. You actually eat breakfast food at breakfast time.
I don't know what this means. Does it mean that I eat breakfast? I try to. I don't often have the kind of breakfasts I'd love to start every day with -- eggs, buttered toast, bacon, potatoes -- but I'll usually scarf down a banana or a nutrition bar or something. Does it mean that I don't eat breakfast food in the evening? In practice, I tend not to. On principle, I'm all for it.

22. "I just can't drink the way I used to" replaces "I'm never going to drink that much again."
"I don't drink the way I used to" is more apt. And when I do, my thoughts revert to the latter sentence.

23. 90% of the time you spend in front of a computer is for real work.
No, less than that. I could do more real work on the computer, but I haven't yet fully subscribed to the paperless society. I do love my laser printer.

24. You drink at home to save money before going to a bar.
What's with all the drinking questions? (Oh, and I started doing this in my early twenties, when I was living in a town with a shit bar scene.)

25. When you find out your friend is pregnant you congratulate them instead of asking "Oh shit, what the hell happened?"
In these cases, what I say and what I think don't always correlate.

Hickey & Boggs

My self-curated L.A.-on-film festival continued this week with Hickey & Boggs, an obscure 1972  neo-noir buddy-detective vehicle for I Spy stars Bill Cosby and Robert Culp (Culp directed). I added this one to my Netflix queue after noticing that the Aero would be showing it -- the Aero's a great theatre for sure, but it's not always so easy for me to trek over to Santa Monica on a Sunday night. At any rate, the movie is an interesting curiosity but ultimately kind of a dud. The pacing is slllowww even by '70s standards, but this feeling was probably heightened by the fact that I watched it after getting home from a long, tiring day and had to pause it halfway through because I couldn't keep my eyes open. The principal characters go about their lives with an air of joylessness, and Culp as director gives the film that same sense of grim futility. It could be a great, gripping meditation, but here the realism just comes across as dull.

The shootout scenes in particular are interminable -- what makes them worth it is that a couple of them were filmed in the Coliseum. Fight on!

There wasn't as much geographical trainspotting as I would have liked. I watched The Hidden a couple of weeks ago and THERE'S a movie that loves its setting -- downtown, Lincoln Heights, the pre-redevelopment Hollywood/Highland area, and Melrose Avenue are all prominently, proudly displayed on camera, and if you listen to the DVD's commentary track, director Jack Sholder's affection for L.A. becomes even more evident. Hickey & Boggs was good for generic gritty "urban" shots (check out that opening copter shot of early '70s smog blanketing the basin), and there's a Bel Air mansion and some beachfront property along the PCH.

In movies from that period, it's common to see easy digs at the youth subculture. In the dour Hickey & Boggs' livelier scenes, we see a hippie-slash-Black-Panther sort of commune, where lanky blondes dance with sullen, feline black men as "groovy" music plays (this is probably what's known as library music, a/k/a "stock" instrumentals recorded by hack session players and available for use in commercials, TV shows, and low-budget films).

I'm glad I watched through to the end, because there's a payoff. OK, so Walter Hill wrote the screenplay, and if you know your film history you'll probably know that he also directed the 1979 cult classic The Warriors. The scene from that that everyone remembers is the final one where the camera watches the gang members, exhausted, walk along the beach, disappearing into the early dawn as Joe Walsh's "In The City" plays over the closing credits. The final scene of Hickey & Boggs is surprisingly similar: Cosby and Culp, ready to drop dead after their long and arduous pursuit, walk slowly along the beach into the distance while the camera watches them and the credits roll over a country-folk song. Now I'm dying to know if this happens in any other Walter Hill films!

Manhole Covers

Tonight in my Infrastructure class we got off on a tangent about manhole covers. I sheepishly mentioned that a few years ago someone gave me a book about manhole covers for my birthday -- and everyone in the class who knew me started cracking up. I guess I've been elected class weirdo.