Still Hacking

Honestly, being in LA with a cold just plain sucks. It's like having a cold in the middle of summer. Enough already!

And seriously, could anything be more boring than me blogging about my cold?

I didn't think so.

Cough, Cough

I've been laying low, waiting for this cold to run its course. It's worse in the mornings and evenings, and almost disappears in the middle of the day.

It's mostly just a cough now; we're past the congestion portion. Hoping to be more or less back to normal tomorrow.

Thanks for your patience during my personal renovations. We're working to build you a bigger and better blog for tomorrow and the future!

Sunset Over Malibu

I must confess this picture was taken back in December.

I stayed inside the entire day today, fighting off a cold; a cold which feels like it may go DEFCON-5 any minute... (sigh)

Dude, Weren't You On "Viking Quest"?

Driving home from an appointment today, I was hightailing up Fairfax towards the Hollywood hills when I got behind a Jeep with this license plate:

      J DRAMA

I thought to myself, "There's only one person that could be." I pulled alonside the Jeep and, sure enough, Kevin Dillon (a.k.a. Matt's younger brother) was driving.

If you have no idea how I knew it was him, then you need to be watching this show.

Celebrity sightings! Just like New York!

__________

Rough day. Woke up with a touch of a cold, so I decided to wait a few hours to run, then made the mistake of going out in the heat of the day. On the plus side, started at a great pace, and that felt really good; but on the minus side, I hit a long stretch of full-on sun about ten minutes in (82°, and me without so much as a hat), and it squashed me like a bug. I more or less melted and had to stop in the middle and walk back to the car. Realized I probably wasn't hydrated enough when I started, either. Ug. Live and learn.
1.7 miles, 17 minutes.

Brrr.

I'm sure the geniuses who recommended radiant ceiling heat to the architects of my apartment building convinced them that it was an incredible leap forward in technology that would warm the building efficiently for years to come.

Hardly.

What actually happens is, you go to bed freezing despite having turned the heat on half an hour beforehand. If you walk around the room during that half hour, your head is warm, but everything below your shoulders is freezing. And then the next morning, you wake up dry-mouthed and roasting like a thanksgiving turkey.

Weirdly enough, this is not unique to my building. From what I've heard, there were a few years in the 70s when everyone in California was doing it.

Bizarre.

Mind you, these overnight temperatures are still not FREEZING!. More like the mid-40s. Cool enough that you want a pair of wooly socks. Or an oversized cat.

__________

Day off.

Recalculating Route

A good friend of mine (hi, Jay!) relates the amusing story of what happens when he and his wife are driving and they ignore the directions given to them by their GPS Navigation system:

GPS System: "prepare to turn left ahead . . . prepare to turn left . . . turn left now . . .PLEASE, turn left now!"

(Jay and Nancy continue to drive straight)

GPS System (maybe a little grumpily): "recalculating route..."

They find it hilarious that rather than saying "Idiot, you missed the turn," the pleasant female computertron voice simply bleats out "recalculating route" with the sunny optimism of technology that will solve your life's problems no matter how hard you try to trip it up.

In fact, when life throws Jay and Nancy an unexpected and potentially unpleasant curveball—a curveball that requires that they change their approach to a problem or situation—one of them will sometimes turn to the other, smile wryly and repeat the mantra: "recalculating route."

I am recalculating my route today. As any runners who are reading this blog probably could have told me, the idea of trying to run six days out of seven after an extended layoff was maybe a wee bit optimistic (particularly given the toll it's taking on my 40-year old body). As such, while I plan to stick with the fitness plan (I'm already at the point where it feels like it'll stick, and I'm enjoying it besides), I am going to throttle back a tad on the schedule. To wit, something like this in each four-day stretch: short run, brisk hike, long run, day off. This will give my body a chance to recuperate a little from the pounding of the pavement, while still ensuring that I'm doing something healthy most days.

I am also literally recalculating some of the runs I did earlier this week. I thought the high school track was a quarter-mile, but based on my last two days of road running (which I've been measuring with my car's odometer), it's definitely less than that. Probably more like 1/5th of a mile, which means that when I thought was running three miles in 27 minutes (9 minute miles), I was actually running 2.4 miles in 27 minutes (11:15 miles). That jibes a little better with my times and distances of the past two days.

Anyway the main thing, as far as I'm concerned, is to build up my endurance. So today I went for a long run in Griffith Park, an enormous and mostly-wild LA City Park that has several entrances within a five minute drive of my apartment (my Mount Hollywood hikes have been in a different part of it).

From the park's website:

With over 4,210 acres of both natural chapparal-covered terrain and landscaped parkland and picnic areas, Griffith Park is the largest municipal park with urban wilderness area in the United States.

In one section of the park there's a long, mostly level bike path on pavement with a dirt running path next to it that appears and disappears. Still an occasional car going past, but much better than the street running I've been doing.

I set my pace to be very easy, because I wanted to see how long I could go.

The result: 47 minutes; 3.7 miles. A pretty leisurely amble (that's not even five miles an hour), but after a long sabbatical followed by three straight days of running, a long jog with no break for 47 minutes is nothing to sneeze at.

I'll take it. It's doing my body good.

Sick of running talk yet? Me too. And I promise this blog will rarely be about running from now on.

In parting, I'll leave you with this thought:

How COOL is THIS???        :)

Kamsahamnida

My first week back in LA after the holidays, I was really grumpy.

I had been home in New York for three great weeks: I'd seen my family, cooked up a couple of great meals, hung out with good friends, caught up with my cats, seen the premiere of Dreamgirls and, of course, had loads of blissful uninterrupted time with Jody.

All that changed the evening of Friday, January 5. I was back in LA, on my own again, and—what else?—oh yes, I had lost my glasses on the flight.

Just a pair of glasses, right?

Wrong.

They were a pair of effing expensive, magical glasses.

There are very few things in life I will actually go out and spend real money on. But Jody convinced me long ago that it's wise, especially for someone in my profession, to invest in well-made glasses that flatter me: I wear them often enough; it's important that I look and feel terrific in them.

And these glasses had been more than just some vanity pickup for me; I swear, they had gotten me jobs. I had a run of several auditions where I wore the glasses because I felt they helped create the look I was going for (all lawyer/techie/professional types), and I booked all of them.

Can a pair of glasses get you a job? I don't know, but I know that these babies seemed to be working for me.

So after moping through a few days of desolation and letting it really sink in that they weren't coming back (I called and emailed JFK, Burbank Airport, JetBlue, the car service that I took in Brooklyn and the friend that picked me up here—all to no avail), I finally set about replacing them.

First I called the Upper West Side store where I'd originally purchased them. Yes, they still had that model, and they could replace them—for $720. "Um, that price has really gone up," I said, and they replied that everything goes up, and I'd had a coupon last time. I talked them down to $660, but that was as far as they'd budge.

Grrr. I had the feeling I was paying more for the shop's Broadway address than for the glasses themselves. So I got the style name from them ("The Advocate") and set about finding a replacement pair in LA.

I started at the manufacturer's website and found that they listed all of the local stores which carried their specs: 59 locations in a 10-mile radius. And I began working my way down the list, calling the shops one by one. But nobody had them: the model was no longer in the catalog, I was told, it was an old style that was no longer à la mode. Did I want to see some other pairs? No, I did not.

After reaching about a dozen places and getting a bunch of "NOs" and one "We'll call you back," I decided to call the store's own flagship boutique. Success! They had a new shipment arriving in two days, and some "Advocate" frames would be included in it. I could get them, no problem—for only $530.

Well, $530 was certainly better than $720, so I decided to suck it up. I made plans to visit them later in the week to get the glasses fitted and ground. And hanging up the phone, I felt a little better: I'd have to shell out a bundle, but at least I had been able to find them.

And that would have been the end of it, except..... the shop that had said they'd call me back actually called me back!

I'd been a little leery of them. When they'd answered the phone it had been in what sounded like Chinese, and there had been a significant language barrier during our conversation. I'd kept saying "Advocate", and they'd thought I was saying "Avocado". So when they called back, I seriously doubted they could help me.

"We found Advocate!" the gentleman said.

Mmm hmm? "Advocate", not "Avocado"?

     Yes.

In brown?

     Yes.

In stock?

     Also yes!

And I could get the frames, lenses, anti-glare coating, the works—everything I needed—for $380! Almost half off the original New York price.

When I first drove over, I got spooked again: the shop, smack in the middle of LA's Koreatown (so that's what they were speaking!) was renting space on the ground floor of a monolithic, windowless building that clearly had originally housed some entirely different kind of business. They had strung a big tarpaulin sign to one parking lot wall to announce their store's presence. There was no English to be seen anywhere in their parking lot except for the handicapped sign:


Then there was the sign that said something like (I'm guessing here): "These parking spots for tenants of 2880 West Olympic Boulevard ONLY...Violators will be towed!"


But inside, they were incredibly nice, and incredibly professional; plus, they threw in a free eye exam, and updated my prescription. And the glasses were ready two days before they said they would be. I just picked them up on Friday.

Awesome. I've got my mojo back.

So, to Jake and Julie, and the entire staff at 1001 Optical I'd like to give a very heartfelt "thanks"; or as you would say, "kamsahamnida":




_______________________________
Had to run roadside again: the track is in use by the school during the week (duh).
2.8 miles, 31:20.

A Real Post Will Come Tomorrow

But I wanted to get this in:

10:30am, 3 miles, 27:04

Please Help Me Stay Motivated

I have been trying to get back into running mode for a while now.

Sometimes running is very easy for me; sometimes, not so much.

You'd think sunny LA would be one of the places where it's easy. But as it happens, I don't like to inhale exhaust fumes when I run, and there are not a lot of level parks nearby (I prefer to run mostly level ground). So it's a little harder than you'd think. This is why I started hiking more. And I suppose I could run the hiking trails, except they're pretty damned steep, and I'm not up to that level yet.

So today I actually took the time to find a high school track/football field not too far away, and got back on the horse. 3 miles in 27 minutes. Not a lot, but best to re-enter the game slowly, says I.

I truly want to make running a daily habit, the way it was for me way back in the summer of '05. I'm more than a few pounds over my optimal weight, particularly after the holidays.

So I have decided to subject myself to you all as my personal trainers. Every day, somewhere in my post, I'll state how far I ran that day. Even if there's nothing else for me to post about, I'll put that info up. Once a week (usually Sundays) I'll allow myself a day off; but in an effort to really make a difference, only once a week.

So here's your mission, should you choose to accept it:

If any day goes by, and you don't see a sentence somewhere that says "3 miles, 27 minutes" or "day off" or something similar, then I am asking you to call me on it.

I pledge not to be dishonest and just post something to avoid your remarks. Do me a favor and hurl them (supportively, if possible) if you see me slip.

In this way, I'll have a chance to see to what degree acute peer embarassment can be a motivating factor.

Normandie Ave. & Venice Blvd., 6:10pm

There's a time of day when the sky turns Jody's favorite color. I looked up today from the car, and there was that color, complete with silhouetted palm trees.

The Treo does it no justice. Plus the car was moving slightly. Still....

Pony Express

This post will seem like another indictment of LA. But it's not.

It's about the luxury of having something that I think maybe doesn't exist anywhere else in the US except Manhattan: a 24-hour post office.

I take way too much of my New York life for granted.

I have been to the 24-hour GPO (="General Post Office") at 32nd and Eighth more times that I can remember: for late-night postcard mailings such as this one; for warranty instances where I had to have a postmark by a certain date (they'll even do that on Sundays); in the old days, I was there on April 15th every year to get my taxes in. (If you've never been there the night of the IRS filing deadline, you should go just to see the carnival that occurs for one day every year—it's like when they blow up the Macy's Day Balloons. My favorite part is that Bayer or Bufferin, or someone similar always sets up a truck to dispense free headache pills. But I digress.)

So yesterday was the day that I had set aside to do a big postcard mailing. The kind you send to casting directors every month or so (if you're diligent) to remind them what you look like and tell them what you're doing.

My postcard, by the way, looks like this:



My day began, however, with an unexpected war against ants.

As I mentioned before, it's been cold here. (And I have to say, all my snarkiness aside, it's been a problem. I personally still have not been cold, but something like ¾ of the local citrus crop has been destroyed by frost. Prepare to spend a lot more on produce next month.)

So, if you've ever lived in California, you know that ants are kind of a fact of life here. Particularly in the summer months. And, as I discovered, during the winter months when it gets really cold outside (either that, or it was the fact that my roommate made fruit punch Wednesday night and didn't clean up well). Whatever the cause, yesterday I was greeted by kitchen counters teeming (yes, teeming, thank you very much) with hundreds of ants.

And so yesterday morning was spent pulling everything off all the kitchen counters, spraying them with ant spray, leaving the house for a while, coming back and cleaning up the carnage, cleaning the counters down to the tile with bleach and other chemical-filled products, and reassembling the now-ant-free kitchen.

All of which took me until early afternoon. At which point I got down to business and began to get my mailing together. Which involved:

• figuring out which casting directors the postcards were going to
• cross-checking their addresses online in case any had moved since my last mailing
• composing some breezy copy about my latest accomplishments
• adding personalized notes for the casting directors I knew personally
• mail-merging the whole thing and having it print out on oversized labels
• adhering those labels to the backs of my postcards
• creating a label trumpeting my Without a Trace appearance, to go on the front of the card next to my face, where it will garner even more attention from the bored receptionists at the casting directors' offices
• stamping them all
• signing them all

Normally, this kind of thing takes me 3-4 hours. I've gotten pretty good at it, but the clock was ticking, and I wanted to get it in the mail last night so that it would hit people's desks Friday morning. The advantage of Fridays is twofold:
1) you're arriving on a light mail day (as opposed to Monday, which is a heavy mail day); and
2) some CDs take their mail home and you're with them all weekend.

So I did all the above stuff, and was running late, and wrapped up at about 7:30.

And then (can you see this coming?), then I went online to find the location of LA's 24-hour post office.

To discover there isn't one.

In fact, the latest any post office in LA is open (that I could find, anyway), is 7pm.

Oops.

The Sun Shines on Interstate 5

...or, as it is called in LA, "The 5."

Comments Enabled

I accidentally had a setting on that required you to register to comment. But I was alerted to this fact, and I've just toggled it.

Now anyone can comment.

Hint, hint.

I'm Just Sayin'

I'm going to try not to have too many rants about Angelinos being in their own little worlds and on their own little islands and isolating themselves from each other, because that would just be playing to the stereotype. I mean, I'm predisposed to think that, so I must be looking for it, right?

Right.

Let me ask you, dear reader, what would you have done?

I was in the middle of what is rapidly becoming a morning ritual, which was a nice hour-long hike to the top of Mount Hollywood and back. And as I neared the parking area at the end of the hike, I crossed this kind of bridge over a crevasse, with a wall along the side. And on top of the wall, someone had carefully placed a fairly new dog collar; the kind with a breakaway closure for safety. And the breakaway was open, so it had obviously fallen off the dog it was formerly attached to.

So, clearly, someone hiking found the dog collar and wanted to "do the right thing" and put it out in the open for the owner to retrieve it, instead of leaving it on the trail where they found it.

Except...

The collar had a tag with a phone number and an email address on it, along with the name of the dog, its owner's name, and the words IF FOUND PLEASE CONTACT. Plus, it had a City of LA dog permit tag attached to it. And I'm not a rocket scientist, but maybe the dog's owner is already trying to decide how long to wait before they give up and replace everything. And maybe replacing everything will be expensive and inconvenient for the dog's owner.

Perhaps more expensive and inconvenient than pocketing the collar and making a simple phone call?

No One Here is From Here

Went to a pot-luck dinner party in Silver Lake last night, which felt wonderful, because it was actual interaction with a lot of people. And yummy food. I made a couple dozen gyoza (thanks for the recipe, Cy!).

Silver Lake is a kind of hipster/trendy-but-still-affordable nabe just east of Hollywood....kind of like Fort Greene or the LES. Granted, it may not be indicative of the LA population in general. But here's where everyone was from last night (i.e., where they grew up, or where that had spent most of their adult life before coming to LA):

• Brooklyn (Park Slope)
• Seattle
• Palm Springs
• another Seattle
• Brooklyn (Sheepshead Bay)
• "Orange County" (town never learned)
• Brooklyn again! (Fort Greene)
• San Diego
• Ohio (hello, outlier!)
• SF Bay area
• Brooklyn (Gowanus...that would be me)

Try to spot the native-born Angelino.

Oops, there isn't one.

More on the Freezing! Thing

I forgot to include this in the original post.

Try to spot the FREEZING! temperatures in the LA Weather forecast:



C'mon now. Keep looking.....and if you were in Seattle or New York this week, try to stifle your chuckles.

Friday's Hike

Getting back to nature in LA.

Well, kinda.

Angelinos Are P*ssies

I spend a lot of time in LA driving. And since traffic can get bottled up anywhere, the car radio is usually tuned to KFWB News 980 ("you give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world"....just like 1010 WINS in New York).

Every, I dunno, three seconds or so, the KFWB deejays say "the Big Story™...." and then tell you what the day's Big Story™ is (see how that works?)

And what has the Big Story™ been since, like, last Tuesday?

Not the Bush Iraq speech.

Not the passing of legislation to raise the minimum wage.

Not even Apple's introduction of the iPhone.

Nope. The Big Story™ is that it's going to be FREEZING outside any minute!

You know, freezing. Generally accepted as 32°F or 0°C. The temperature at which water converts to ice. Bundle up so you don't get frostbite. Seeing your breath in the air and having your nose get runny when you step outside. FREEZING!

"Arctic temperatures are arriving tomorrow!" cautions the reporter in the field (not that LA actually has a field). "I feel like an icicle!" squeals a young girl interviewed in the street (or more likely on a sidewalk, since jaywalking tickets are actually quite common here).

Wow, I thought, I screwed up not bringing a down jacket back from New York. And I waited for the onslaught and considered buying an extra fleece or an electric blanket.

By Friday at noon, everyone I met was complaining about the frigid conditions. Bitching about the devastating temperatures. The governor was opening additional warming centers and actually declaring a state of emergency.

But for me, a funny thing happened. I noticed that it seemed kinda like autumn in New York. You know, nice football weather. I couldn't remotely see my breath. It really seemed nice and refreshing, particularly in the sun.

So finally I went online and checked the actual temperature. And it was 55 degrees.

And don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's getting colder at night (last night it got down to 38!), and I hear there's a threat to the local citrus crop.

But still. 55 degrees.

So I put on my shorts and sandals and went for a gorgeous hike on Mount Hollywood, just behind the Griffith Park Observatory. And in the space of an hour and a half, I saw five people. No lie.

About The Name

Why bLAg?

It was the immediate image that popped into my head when I thought about creating a weblog about LA. And the collage above, complete with freeways and palm trees, was part of that initial vision.

It's just a combination of "blog" and "LA", really.

It is not:

• blahg—Dictionary.com defines "blah" as insipid; dull; uninteresting. LA is certainly none of those things. People in LA are sometimes some of those things, but the town itself is not;


• blague—"blague" is French for "joke". This bLAg is no joke, y' hear? And I am not French. So that settles that.


• blag—it's bLAg, not blag; "blag" is short for "blaggard" which derives from Black Guard: the lowest menials of a royal household who had charge of pots and pans and other kitchen utensils, and rode in the wagons conveying these during journeys from one residence to another: the scullions and kitchen knaves....I most certainly do have charge of the pots and pans and other kitchen utensils; but I'm not much of a wagon-rider (although I do drive an '89 Corolla....more on that in a later post).

Although now that I read further, there are some other definitions of "blag" from the Urban Dictionary that might well occasionally pertain to me or my writings.

To wit:

To gain, usually entrance to a restricted area or club, or some material good, through confidence trickery or cheekiness. Lying is also acceptable. This might describe a lot of my auditions here, except for the lying part.

Convince another person that all the stuff you just made up is in fact true and worthy. Ha! That's what I'll be trying to do in these posts.

a) To get something for nothing or to do no work. b) To get annoyed by something. I will probably spend a fair amount of my time in LA doing no work. I will surely spend a lot of time in LA being annoyed by something. Most likely, traffic.

An expression that decisively and effectively undercuts the statement of another. Essentially means "bullshit." Hmmm. Any connection between "LA" and "bullshit"? Let's meditate on that one a bit.....

What else?

In my graphic design of the logo, I have attempted to tip my hat to the basic geography of Los Angeles: the "L" and "A" are kind of over-sized; they overwhelm and crowd their "b" and "g" neighbors out of the picture. It's an apt metaphor for the way this urban sprawl pushes up from the Los Angeles basin, crowding out both the coastline and the Santa Ana mountain range.

In all fairness, I dig LA quite a bit. As a born-and-bred east-coaster I still have a baseline suspicion of the place—but by and large, it's far better here than I'd imagined. No doubt that sounds like sucking-up, but it's actually quite true.

Opening Credits

Hello friends, friends-of-friends, and strangers who have stumbled upon this passage.

Henceforth, this corner of the web will be haphazardly and sporadically devoted to any and all observations which tickle my brain as I spend some time out of my regular stomping grounds and simmer awhile in the urban sprawl known as Los Angeles. (Or as Bernardo Bertolucci once referred to it, "The Big Nipple".)

Once in a while you will no doubt come across tidbits relating to my experiences with The Industry, as show biz is called here; that is to say, the film and television business in which I am currently pursuing employment.

But most of my scribblings (or keystrokings, I guess) will be devoted to the culture shock I'm experiencing being here: typical left-coast vs. right-coast ramblings no doubt, and probably a lot of stuff which has been said by others before me. But it will be my firsthand view of these things nonetheless.

Comments are welcome. LA can be a lonely place.